Maybe you need to hear my story: Fighting to survive the next few minutes

It’s painful to be vulnerable with readers. It can be heart-rending to write about failures.

In fact, it’s often even harder to re-live those experiences in order to write them.

But, as I told you last week,

we share our stories for the benefit of others

who might be fighting similar battles.

Maybe you need to hear my story

so you won't feel so alone,

and so you can see how I survived, eventually.

So, I'll tell you about my meltdown

what it looked like, what it sounded like:

I was not happy with the way God was working things out—or, rather, not working things out—in Lomalinda. (See the past few blog posts.)

For several days I’d given my very best to unpack and get myself and our family settled at our remote mission center.

I was fighting the battle of my young life—trying to wrestle down homesickness, culture shock, extreme weather, strong odors, and exhaustion.

But then suddenly it all caught up with me: Something inside broke.

In Chapter 8 of Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, I wrote:

A couple of times in my life I’ve had the air knocked out of me, figuratively speaking, when I had no strength or interest in fighting to make life work. In Lomalinda, though, it wasn’t a blow that knocked the air out of me—it was a slow pummeling.

I returned to the kitchen and stooped toward the suitcase strewn with clothes, towels, tools, and medicines. But the ground lurched. I felt disoriented, topsy-turvy.

I stood and stepped back from the suitcase. After that, I couldn’t move. Undone.

“God,” I prayed,

“You got this all wrong

when You sent us to this place.

What could You have been thinking?"

I don’t know how long I stood there, feet cemented to the floor, but when Dave walked through the door for lunch, that’s where he found me.

My feet might have been dysfunctional, but my mouth wasn’t. “We should not have come here. We made a bad mistake. And I’m Not Unpacking One More Thing. We Are Leaving! We Are Going Home!”

Dave knew I meant what I said.

Hands on hips, veins in his neck bulging, he thrust out his chest, flared his nostrils, and looked me in the eye. “You are irrational and emotional. I refuse to discuss this until New Year’s Day.”

He paused. “We committed to working here for at least one school year. Leaving now is out of the question. Classes start in a few days. People are counting on me to teach their kids.”

He took a deep breath. “If you really can’t handle living here, we can leave at the end of this school year, but I’m not talking about it until New Year’s.”

I was stunned—Dave refused to discuss my trauma for more than four months!

His dismissal didn’t seem right. A black panic threatened. I felt trapped, unhinged, alone. A sinking, cold sensation overtook me, despite the tropical heat.

My grip was failing. I struggled even to breathe.

I stood at a crossroads.

Later, only much later, I realized that God had held onto me and, if I’d been able to listen, I’d have heard from Him, “Your world has been beyond your control for a while, but now you can do something that is in your control.”

At the time, although I didn’t exactly hear Him say that, down deep in some wild and desperate way, I perceived it.

And I had a strong sense of hearing Him say, “Fix lunch for Dave and the kids.”

Feeding my family—that was something I knew how to do. And I was so ready to stay home instead of hiking the hills to the dining hall beneath that cruel sun. Fixing lunch would help me survive the next few minutes.

I could stop fussing about the future and instead, focus on one easy, familiar task.

With dreams of making good ol’ homemade sandwiches, I reached for the bread I’d bought at the commissary, but when I untwisted the wrapper, an ugly odor poofed out—rancid lard and something else.

I examined the loaf. It looked like bread, but it sure didn’t smell like bread. It was far from fresh, yet I could find no spoilage.

I started to slice a piece off the end, but it crumbled apart. I sliced again with the same result.

We needed eight pieces of bread for four sandwiches, and every stinking slice fell apart.

So, there you have it,

my ugly, bad-tempered meltdown—

well, just the first segment of it.

Next week I’ll tell you how the rest of that afternoon went.