Me...

I spotted this online.  It is perfect.  And it is me!

I met with my pastor before church tonight, with much fear and trepidation, even though my dear, dear friend Mary gave me a most excellent thought to hold and to ponder last night.  

I have been so very worried about this passing of the peace thing, about it being a terrible trigger for my PTSD and how distraught I was last week and how distressed I have continued to be.  All I kept thinking was that I couldn't possibly join a church if that was a part of the regular church services.   I mean, I would be running and hiding all the bloody time!

However, I needed have worried, because my Good Shepherd had already provided for me.  My new pastor is definitely a sharp cookie in the batch.  He was aware of what was happening with me last week.  In fact, he shared with me that the woman sitting behind me was his wife.  She knew something about me and, when she realized who I must be from my obviously distressed state, she was warning off fellow parishioners who were headed my way.  I, in my abject terror, was not aware of her help.  Even in that my Good Shepherd provided.

But that wasn't what I mean.  What I mead by His provision is that my pastor said that there was no need to ever have the passing of the peace on a Wednesday night service again if I am to be there.  He said that it is a rare thing for them to do as a church ... just a few times a year.  He said that there were a few parishioners who really liked it.  So, during Creative Worship liturgy services, sometimes it is included.  But no more on Wednesdays for me.

That means I don't have to figure out which of Mary's suggestions for trying to manage the problem might have worked at least in some fashion for me.  I don't have to figure things out because Christ had already provided for me!  I was humbled, even though I was still nervous.

Even so, even quaking in my beloved boots, tonight I joined Peace Lutheran Church!

In so very many ways, I believe that it might just be a church home for me in a way that I have never really experienced.  I say that because whilst I have had church homes before in my beloved Bible Belt, I have never had a church home with a seelsorger, a carer of souls (if I am remembering that translation correctly).  I want to say curer of souls, but that would be Christ.  In any case, my pastor and my elders have already shown gentle and generous care of me.  They have worked to make me feel safe, even as they have treated me as a normal person.  It has been both refreshing and comforting to walk into the church each week.

I mean, seriously!  Who would have thought that I could find a liturgical Lutheran church with a lovely water feature right by the front door!

I've listed them before, so I shall not do so again.  But passing of the peace notwithstanding, there have been so many glaring signs that this is the place for me.  Can you have signs about church?  Is that a sacrilegious thing to think?  I don't know.  I just know that over and over and over, I have thought of how very blessed I have been from features to people when it comes to this church.

What a merciful God we have!

So, what was the most excellent thought Mary had for me?  It is this:  I do better when I know what to expect.  She is right!  If I had known what to expect with what was basically an after-hours CT scan, then I could have avoided the situation all together or at least better advocated for myself.  If I had known about the passing of the peace, then I could have avoided it altogether or at least better prepared myself.

I have been down right despairing over my freezing with that handsy CT tech.  Shut up.  Be still. Wait until it is over.  I went there and stayed there for the entire time I was changing, getting the CT, changing again, and going home.  I was frozen and numb and ashamed.  

Someone couldn't understand why I didn't just tell the guy to back off.  Or to at least stop touching me.  But that person doesn't get it.  When you are frozen, when your mind responds to trauma as fight, flight, or freeze, your entire being is engaged in that action.  You are not thinking as you are fighting.  You are not planing as you are fleeing.  You are not logical as you are freezing.  You just are that state of being.  

What fell me was that had the CT tech been a nefarious person, I would have been assaulted once more.  I wouldn't have fought.  I wouldn't have fled.  I would have just let it happen once more.  That I was right back there crushes me.

My therapist was actually really happy that I jerked away from the usher who reached out to touch me.  She said that was actually a way of saying "no."  I hadn't thought of that that way.  Instead, I was just ashamed at my terror over the passing of the peace and my outcry at the usher.  

She tells me that there is no shame, because it is my body's reaction that is happening and it is a normal reaction for me.  And she tells me that I did give a type of "no" to the usher is huge, having frozen just two days earlier.  Perhaps the trauma of being triggered on Monday gave me some impetus to avoid any such further touching on Wednesday.

I long to be the person who doesn't loathe touch and feel so very ashamed at its trigger, at my thoughts, and at my shame.  Someone said that it was difficult to understand why touch is so hard for me when it wasn't before.  I wasn't in the throes of PTSD before.  I mean, I was in that the other symptoms of complex PTSD I battle were still very much present, but I had not gone through what I went through in the fall of 2010 and then the pit bull attack in July of 2011.  Whatever resources I had that enabled me to outwardly endure that which I still mostly disliked, to pretend, resources that had already started to erode as memories were resurfacing, completely disappeared with the trauma of that time.  

I oft despair of ever being normal again.

I hate my PTSD.

It is terribly, terribly lonely and a terrible, terrible burden.

But, alas, I turn back away from those thoughts to the one Mary gave me.  Perhaps I am not so much a failure as I was caught unawares.  I had never before experienced that CT tech as a handsy person and I have never before experienced passing of the peace at that church.  So, knowing that I do better when I know what to expect, should either situation arise again, I would most likely navigate it in a more successful manner.

Her thought is one I should tattoo on my body somewhere, for I am most certain to forget it.  And I believe that it is a key thought for me to learn and embrace in my healing process.  I am mightily blessed through my friendship with Mary ... even though I've forgotten most of it.  SIGH.

So, me, a church member.

Me, better when I know what to expect.

Me, #teamcake.