Smashing Cassette Tapes With God

Face stained with tears, body language defeated and weak, she leans her back up against a wall and slowly descends to a sitting position. Knees propped up in front of her chin, her head goes forward and rests against them.

That’s the perfect way to cry in pain... right?

Yeah, or it's only the Hollywood version. I don’t look that pretty. First, I don’t have the time to lean against walls and dramatically descend, or cry sullenly without interruption. Second, I don’t even think it would be that fulfilling anyway - but maybe because I'm the wrong personality type. Grief for me - with the Oliver issues, and now the husband-lies thing, was uglier than that. Not to mention at this point, I was early in pregnancy too, and afraid everything I did that wasn't sunshine would end in stillbirth again. So the daily pain would come, and I’d be so frantic to not let my heart-rate go up, terrified... Ugh. Going through husband-lies, within the foundation of a stillbirth, and you guys - I could not get upset, AT ALL. Calm, and cool, and breezy was my job.

So I went to counseling cause breezy wasn't happening. Obviously, my husband was the problem and I didn’t need help in marriage or life (ha. ha.), but I was willing to take one for the team and try to learn how to breathe for pregnancy’s-sake. And?

Well, I didn't stop going, weekly, for almost two years. YOU GUYS. We spent our entire savings on counseling. We live in a three bedroom townhome, with three children, that we’ve planned on moving out of for four years. We’re Realtors. My degree is in Residential Planning and Design. And our house is planned overrun-like, without a yard, an unfinished basement, and (the sweetest, older-like) neighbors with absolutely no friends for our kids who are widely spaced apart in age. Even better, we live in Minnesota, where those kids have no where to go but all around my feet half the year when it's negative degrees out.

But there still isn't a day I wish we hadn't spent it all on that weird counseling thing.

Why was it so awesome? Oh geez. Good thing I have a blog and I'm only in my thirties. But we'll start with me coming in and saying how I can't just NOT be super duper mad about Oliver, about my husband, about all of it together. I wanted to run away three times a day, I said. That's how I deal. But now I had to be breezy and stay put. So there's nothing for me to do, and now I'm in your counseling room.

And she gave me some professional LAMFT advice:

Try throwing things.

Haha! Right! That would be funny. Oh what?! You're serious. Oh gosh. Ummm... no. This is NOT okay, you can’t condone that. If I start throwing things, I’ll start... being wrong and throwing things all the time. (Context: my mom didn’t allow any kind of squirt guns growing up. I wasn’t allowed to watch PG-13 movies until I was 14, and she taped down my radio dial to nice stations. I had all sisters. My Dad’s favorite show was Andy Griffith. THROWING THINGS, no.) Pretty sure I just stared at her in silence... and then looked at the diplomas on her wall to double-check.

(And, hold up. Don't twist me. It's not like you're thinking: it's throwing things that aren't dangerous and can't backlash on you. At a planned place with things that don't cost you. Like, go throw rocks in a pond. Like throw pillows. Throw cotton. Whatever. And, it's only triage-coping for tragic life events until you learn how to move on to not needing to throw things. I threw like five times and then that was it. Mostly. So stop thinking mean people who throw at other people, cause I'm not okay with that either. Different. And, blah: vulnerable blogging is always making me disclaimer.)

Back home, it didn’t take long for that moment to come. I hadn’t prepared or anything - which is what I was supposed to do. But I just felt wrong entertaining the idea so decided I'd be breezy already. Christians don’t ever, ever, need to throw stuff - for the love, Annie. But then this big painful conversation came up. And... I ran as far away as I could go - to the basement. Not good enough. God help me. And then I noticed a grocery bag I had filled full to the brim with old cassette tapes (half-full now) that were a part of the “I don’t know what to do with these, they’re not donate-able”-pile in our storage.

I discovered they actually were, in fact, useful still. In those first weeks and months after Oliver’s death and my husband’s betrayal, I'd periodically throw those old tapes against our unfinished cinder block walls (kids were in bed. They couldn’t hear. It’s okay.) They’d break open and the two ribbon wheels inside would fly out, trailing through the air like kite tails and then land and roll across the whole floor before stopping. And you know what was on those tapes?

Hundreds of church messages about God's love, by a woman I adore. (She has CDs now.)

And, it worked. It started off just getting my mind of things - I'd try to throw it certain ways or get it to open without the things coming out. But then it made me cry harder and real-er - and I realized why tape-throwing was a thing for me: I was a lifelong charismatic-church attender, and it was my perception that God would save me before these kinds of unholy moments came. Incredible anger and tears and pain with no where to go, ugly stories with no one safe to tell who wouldn’t use you for gossip - isn’t that what having a Christian life protects you from in the first place? So it “will be well” with you? It’s not supposed to be this way, I thought, over and over. So then why is it THIS WAY?? Why? I have to be doing something wrong. God cannot condone tape-throwing, especially tapes with sermons on it. I should be stronger at being breezier. I should just be able to take some breaths and think of calm things, and then I could come back and talk to God. When I had that whole Gentle Fruit of the Spirit thing going on. Count to ten or whatever. Get better, THEN COME BACK.

Gosh, you guys, I’ve spent sooo long thinking I should just come back to God later when I’m "better". My perception of God’s lack of willingness to fix my life without “pretty” and “gentle” requests from me is what kept me a life-prisoner for decades. I was rarely gentle in the hurt places, so we didn't talk a whole lot about those things. It took me some time to believe God wasn’t appalled at my tape-throwing, but eventually, I got vulnerable enough, trusting enough, to pray my most heart-felt prayers in those moments. How much I needed Him came out desperate like, with no I'm-put-together wrapping. Because they were in the moments I thought He would have ignored me, before. It was the beginning of learning how to genuinely pour my anger and pain over to God, and that He'd stand right there with no thought of how wounded my delivery had been.

Months and months later, I’ll never forget the day I came downstairs to find Max had somehow wrapped our entire dining room table and chairs, and kitchen, in a cassette tape ribbon he had gotten “in the base-ent.” It must have rolled out of sight months before (I hadn’t thrown one in a long time), but he’d somehow found it, and wound it, around and under and over. He was laughing hysterically over our cat’s reaction to it, still throwing around the excess with her. Can I tell you the sweet symbolism of him getting JOY from that same tape I had thrown in pain, which was also full of sermons on how God loves?! In the rush to make it to an appointment, we were tripping over it, getting stuck in it... getting annoyed by it... God’s love was all over the place. Broken out and free cause I got real with Him. And now? We were going to get tangled in it.