In the summer of 2012, I began realizing our family’s time on the mission field was coming to an end. I’ll spare you all the gory details but suffice to say that I wanted a deeper level of emotional wholeness as a sexual abuse survivor and the resources I needed for such an intense process simply weren’t available.
It was a tortuous decision for someone who had “made life work” in confining emotional spaces for fifteen years.
Was this phase of life truly different? Was I at my tipping point? Couldn’t I figure this out, without having to leave?
I remember thinking one day, “This would be so much easier if my team leaders would just send me home.” And a split second later I knew I’d hate that too.
For eight, eternally long months I battled my inner demons as I chose to care for my own soul over other people and things. Slowly I realized it was a choice only I could make—unless of course I were in full-blown crisis. And that is the convenience of a crisis—others are forced to choose for you.
Suicidal depression, extramarital affairs or substance addiction would have compelled others, whether it was morally or legally, to push my own eject button.
Choice is a risk.
Which means…
Choice may cost us something of immeasurable value.
Therefore…
Choice feels like a burden.
So…
Powerlessness becomes a relief.
Those tortuous months of choosing for myself gave me two wonderful gifts:
1) A visceral reaction of disgust to stories (like in the musical number below) where the path of abdicating choice is portrayed as an easy escape route.
2) Opportunities to walk alongside clients at the same crossroads—will they choose to care for themselves as faithfully as they care for the world around them?
The battle to hold a sense of agency over our lives is so important to win because abdicating to powerlessness can be retraumatizing, creating even more fear in holding power in our own lives.
What important choices did you make growing up? What were the risk factors in those moments? Did these experiences encourage you to exercise choice or abdicate your power in order to avoid blame, isolation or rejection? In your life today, what’s a situation in which you would rather not choose? What collision are you hoping to avoid? What story, if told, would massage some of the scar tissue constraining your authority in caring for yourself?
From the song “On the Steps of the Palance” from Into the Woods:
Better run along home
And avoid the collision
Though at home they don't care
I'll be better of there
Where there's nothing to choose
So there's nothing to lose
So I'll pry up my shoes
Wait no thinking it through
Things don't have to collide
I know what my decision is
Which is not to decide
I'll just leave him a clue
For example, a shoe
And then see what he'll do
Now it's he and not you
Who is stuck with a shoe
In a stew, in the goo.