Brave Surrender Page 14

  Skyler pulled the car over, grabbed me, and tried to get me to breathe and snap out of it. His voice sounded far away, but I clung to it like a drowning victim to a lifesaver. As he slowly reeled me back to reality, I started to catch my breath, and tears began to pour from my eyes.

  “My baby! What if my baby is dead?” My words were tumbling out of my mouth. “Do you think my baby is dead?”

  “It’s okay, hon. The baby is okay,” Skyler assured me. “Just breathe. Come on. Deep breaths.”

  I wanted to believe him, but it was a struggle. Only when I arrived at my checkup and heard the baby’s heartbeat on the Doppler did I finally settle down.

  We went to the memorial service for Chris and Alyssa’s baby. I wanted to support my friends, but my body was wracked with fear. When they started a video slideshow with pictures of their beautiful boy, my entire body began to shake violently. I was so overcome with fear. Skyler put both arms around me and tried as hard as he could to hold me still. I was totally surrendered to the fear that encompassed me. I couldn’t even fathom trusting God. I felt betrayed by Him because He hadn’t preserved this tiny baby’s life.

  My friend who had lost her child to anencephaly heard about the Quilalas’ stillbirth and called to check on me. Earlier that year, I had opened up to her about the fear I experienced after the death of her daughter and finding out I was pregnant. She asked if she could set up an online counseling appointment with a man who had been counseling her. I agreed to do it, but I knew I needed to do some work even to get myself to a place where I could confront my fear with a counselor.

  I recognized that one of the issues contributing to my battle with fear was that I had become wrapped up in trying to find answers to the question that the losses of my friends’ babies naturally provoked: “Why?” Unfortunately, that question, so often asked in the face of suffering, death, and loss, is one for which we rarely get any kind of satisfactory answer, and if we get hung up on it, we can damage our faith and trust in God.

  Bill Johnson once preached a sermon—one I listened to many times—that addressed the reality we live in and the mysteries we wrestle with. We understand that God is powerful—He can heal, set us free, and perform miracles. Yet these are not always the outcomes we get, at least in the way or timing we expect. Why do some people get a miracle and some do not? As Christians, we live in that place of tension where things don’t always make sense. The big question is what we will do while living in that tension. Do we choose to trust and worship God, regardless of the outcome? Or do we shake our fist at Him, allow our hearts to become offended, and put distance between us and Him?

  As they had many times before, these thoughts strolled down the hallway of my mind. But I finally decided that once again I would choose God. I knew He was my only hope for freedom from the torment of fear. I knew I must choose Him above my demand for answers. Once I got my heart to that place, I was ready to talk to the counselor.

  Over Skype I explained to the counselor the fear I had been living in all year and my struggle to trust God completely. I had a big job ahead of me—birthing a baby—and I couldn’t go into it with all this fear!

  The counselor agreed and said the most important thing was to get my heart connected to the heart of God again. He asked me to close my eyes and recall the most recent time I felt the most connected to Jesus.

  I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to drift and remember. Interestingly, the moment that came to mind was Wyatt’s birth. Wyatt was born face up, and I had to push for four hours to deliver him because his head was resting on his shoulder, which caused him to be stuck. Yet the whole time, I felt incredible peace. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see Jesus standing over me with His arms stretched out, holding back a dark cloud of fear. It was almost as if He created a circle of protection around me. Even though he was stuck, Wyatt’s heartbeat never once faltered. He was just as calm as I was and undoubtedly felt that peace.

  As I remembered this moment, tears began to flow, and I felt that same peace coming over me again. I saw Jesus standing over me and pulling back the dark cloud of fear, and I felt myself once again settling into that bubble of protection.

  The counselor asked, “Is there something you would like to ask Jesus?”

  In this moment of calm and peace, I felt the courage to ask the question at the forefront of my mind. To my surprise, it wasn’t quite what I thought it would be.

  “Do You love my baby?”

  I suddenly realized that the fear of my baby dying was rooted in a lie that God did not love my baby. How could I trust Him with my baby if He didn’t even care about my baby? Where did that lie come from? I wondered. I thought about it and decided it must have come from the belief that I was unprotected and unloved by God as a child. Of course, at this point in my life, I knew it was not true. But when faced with a situation like this, my brain and emotions still behaved as though this were true. God had given me the truth, but it was still a battle for me to get that truth to transform my behaviors and reactions.

  I saw a picture of Jesus walking toward me with the biggest grin on His face. His eyes were completely lit up with joy. He reached out His hand, put it on my heart, and said, “Can you feel that? Can you feel the joy? This baby is pure joy and happiness. I am so excited about this baby!”

  I began to laugh as I felt His joy. It was overwhelming. I could feel Jesus’ excitement over this child in my womb and the joy inside my belly. My baby was moving around, as if to say, Yes! I am full of joy!

  I knew there was still pain in there and work to be done, but I felt reconnected to Jesus and ready to have my baby. On the morning of December 22, we welcomed another boy into the world. We named him Bear and decided he needed a name that expressed the gift of joy he is. One of his middle names is Kaemon—an old Japanese Samurai name that means “joyful.”

  December 22 was also the day that we closed on our house in Redding. It felt like the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new chapter, all in one day.

  Sleepless Nights and a Sudden Loss

  The next two years proved to be the hardest I had endured in a long, long time. It was very challenging to have two babies only fourteen months apart. There were many times I felt that having twins would have been easier! Just as one would exit a stage, the other would be entering it.

  Wyatt looks just like Skyler, but his personality is much like his mama’s. He loves to be the center of attention and is always trying to bring out a laugh in everybody. He has a very strong will and a strong need not just to be told something but to really understand it. Bear looks exactly like me but has a temperament more like Skyler. He lives in his own little world most of the time and is content to be alone. He too has a very strong personality! They are both adventurous and curious, which was evident in the early days.

  In those two years, I worked partly from home and partly at the Jesus Culture offices. I remember many times when I’d be sitting at home breastfeeding Bear while on a conference call, and a babysitter was playing with Wyatt in another room. Meetings were scheduled around naps, and when I came into the offices, it was pretty normal for the staff to see me with a baby in tow.

  As a newborn, Bear had severe reflux issues that caused him to be fussy and upset most of the time. It was so hard to spend so much time tediously trying to get a newborn to eat and calm down while trying to give attention to my one-year-old.

  One day when Bear was still only a few months old, I was looking through some photos of the Christmas after Bear was born. He was only three days old, and suddenly as I looked at Wyatt, a sad truth struck me. He was still only a baby! In most of the pictures, Wyatt was wearing a diaper, had a pacifier in his mouth, was drinking out of a bottle, could only say a few words, had hardly any hair on his head, and was unstable on his feet.

  I burst into heavy sobs as I realized that the moment Bear was born, I didn’t see Wyatt as the baby anymore. He looked so big compared to Bear! I needed him to be older more quickly now that I
had another baby, and without even thinking about it, I had expected a lot more from him. I felt horrible. Grief and shame were slapping me across the face.

  That night when I tucked Wyatt into bed, I said to him, “Wyatt, I am so sorry if I wasn’t there for you the way you needed me to be when Bear was born. I’m sorry that I expected more from you than what you were ready to give. Will you forgive me?”

  Wyatt looked at me with quizzical eyes. I’m sure he was too young to understand everything I was saying, but it didn’t matter. I knew his little spirit could hear me and understand, just as I had understood things as a little girl. It was important. A big grin flashed across his little face, and he said, “I yuv you, Mama.” My heart melted.

  The other bane of my existence in these years was the total annihilation of good sleep. Neither Wyatt nor Bear were good sleepers. Perhaps it was that they were always in a different time zone, in a different bed, in a different room, and in a different environment. I didn’t sleep through the night once during the first three years after Wyatt was born. I didn’t understand at the time how badly this lack of sleep was affecting me mentally, but I would soon find out.

  Skyler had dreamed of opening a board shop, so we decided to make it happen. We opened a snowboard and skateboard shop in Folsom, California. I took on all the accounting for the store while continuing to run Jesus Culture’s record label, record albums, travel, and help with the church plant. I was still running full steam ahead—on fumes.

  Toward the end of April 2015, our whole family went on tour with Jesus Culture to Brazil. While we were there, I got a phone call from my mom.

  Without preamble, she said, “Kim, the doctor has put George in hospice.”

  George had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease about eleven years before and had undergone multiple brain surgeries and various treatments. I couldn’t fully understand Parkinson’s disease or how serious it was or wasn’t. There were many times when he seemed to be getting better, but also scary periods when his health seemed to rapidly decline. However, his sense of humor remained intact. He had started to develop dementia because of the disease and had joked that I now had two dads with brain damage. Sometimes laughing was the only thing that got us through hard moments when we didn’t know what else to say, think, or do.

  I couldn’t understand my emotions with George. By this point, we had become good friends, and I had grown to really love him and appreciate him, but I hadn’t yet been able to recognize all the important ways he had impacted me, my family, and my faith. I still held him at a distance at times. As his health grew worse and he began to lose his ability to speak, I found myself in conversations with him that made me uncomfortable.

  “Kim?”

  “Yes, George?”

  “You know I love you, right? We’ve had a good relationship, you and I, right?”

  “Yes, George. Of course.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure why he was asking these questions, but it hinted that part of me was still afraid to fully open my heart to George and express my love for him—and he knew it. There was still some of that little girl in there who felt afraid of being hurt and rejected. And I responded to this hint as I do with things I don’t really want to face: I got busy. I didn’t want to think about George leaving us for heaven or have a vulnerable conversation with him that required me to open my heart wider.

  So when my mom told me George had gone into hospice, I found myself speechless. For starters, I wasn’t even sure what hospice was or what it meant. She went on to explain that George was nearing the end of his life and that I should come to say good-bye. I took a deep breath, sucked in every painful and helpless emotion that wanted to come raging out of me at that moment, and began to work on a plan to get to Oregon.

  We were at the tail end of the Brazil tour, so we made it home only a short time later. The day after we landed in California, Skyler and I loaded the kids onto another plane, flew to Oregon, dropped the kids off at my mom’s house, and went straight to the hospice house to see George.

  When I walked in, I barely recognized him. His body had been ravaged by the disease, and he looked frail and small lying in the bed. George had always been a handsome man. (Many women thought he looked a lot like George Clooney—he loved that!)

  I walked to his bedside, sat down, and managed to squeak out his name. George slightly opened his eyes for a moment, and I knew he was listening and had recognized me. I let out that breath I had been holding in since the phone call in Brazil, and with it came a flood of tears and emotions. It was as though my heart had burst open and allowed that vulnerable little girl who had been abused and hurt by men and who desperately wanted to be loved and protected to finally admit she had found what she was looking for with George.

  “George, thank you for rescuing us!” I sobbed. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t say it until now. But I’m so thankful for you. Thank you for loving me even when I rejected you!”

  He had been a dad, more than I had wanted to admit or allow myself to see. He had been unrelenting in loving me, even when I refused to love him back. I told him he was the reason I was a Christian, and that I didn’t even want to imagine what my life would have been like had he not come along. I thanked him for loving my mom and adopting my baby brother. I asked his forgiveness for not being able to open up my heart until now.

  Suddenly George’s eyes opened, and he said, “Kim, sing that song for me—the one I love!”

  I knew he was referring to “Healing Oil,” a simple chorus on my solo record Still Believe. That album was all about healing, and I had written many of the songs with George in mind. It was one of his favorite albums, and he listened to it all the time.

  Through my tears and sobs, I began singing the song the best I could. I watched as George’s mouth twitched like he was trying to sing along, and he managed to slightly lift his arm, like he was trying to stretch it out in worship. George never stopped worshiping and loving Jesus. He never stopped asking Jesus to heal him and never stopped believing it could happen.

  George went to live with Jesus on May 16, the day after my sixth wedding anniversary.

  A New Kind of Grief

  Though I felt joy that George was no longer in pain, I cried for days and months after his death. It seemed now that I had allowed the doors of my heart to fling open and vulnerability to spill out, I couldn’t get the doors shut again. Memories flooded my mind—moments with George that were so precious and that I had taken for granted. I was a mess. I was still sleep-deprived. I was stressed from all the things I had going on in my life and couldn’t seem to get control over.

  Guilt and shame came in. I’m a leader, I thought. I shouldn’t be such a mess! I was trying to hold everything together and convince everyone I was okay. I was trying to be wise and help my husband run his shop and support his dream. I was trying to be a perfect mom for my boys, always comparing myself to other moms and feeling like I was coming up short. In my mind, I couldn’t appear weak, out of control, or messy. But when I stepped onstage to lead worship and sing certain lyrics, I was thinking, Do I really believe this? Do I really think God is a “God of miracles”? After all, George never got his miracle. I could feel myself longing to wrestle through my faith—and my doubts—but would instantly shut it down. I could feel the familiar anger I had as a teen rearing its ugly face again, taunting me with blaming God. How could I, a worship leader and someone whom people looked up to, waver in my belief?

  In the darkest moments, when the sleep deprivation overtook me, I had dark thoughts of wanting to hurt myself and make the pain stop. I had heard that voice before—the voice that says to end it all. It’s funny—I think a lot of people who have never heard that voice would imagine it to be dark, scary, and angry. But it is actually a calm and soothing voice, which just adds to the evil deceit. After those thoughts came, I recognized how rash they were, but then I’d beat myself up for having such bad thoughts.

  My mom came for a visit a few months after George passed
away. One morning I came downstairs and walked into the kitchen, mumbling things to myself. I was deliriously tired and angry about it. My mom gently said, “Kim, I think you might have postpartum depression.”

  I laughed out loud. “Oh my word, Mom! Believe me, I do not miss being pregnant!”

  “Hon, I don’t think postpartum depression means what you think it means,” she said.

  I went back upstairs and lay down on my bed. I picked up my phone and wondered if my mom was right. I thought that postpartum depression was when women loved being pregnant so much that they missed it after the baby was born. At the moment, being pregnant sounded like the absolute worst thing that could happen to me, so I didn’t believe I had depression. Then I Googled “postpartum depression.” My mouth dropped open as I read the definition and symptoms, which perfectly described me. I jumped up, ran downstairs in tears, and shouted, “I have postpartum depression!”

  I was so angry at myself. How could I let this happen? I didn’t want to be put on medications, so I did a lot of research, looking for natural options to help me. I researched different vitamins and supplements and began to exercise and watch my diet. I also started to see a counselor on a regular basis. I was trying so hard to make everything perfect and clean up the mess I found myself in.

  Letting Him into the Mess

  Then Jesus came knocking. One day, as I sat alone while my babies napped, I felt Jesus at the door of my heart, wanting to come in. It was one of those moments when it suddenly feels like the whole atmosphere changes in the room because Jesus has just showed up and you weren’t expecting it at all. You are both shocked and excited. I was taken off guard but also felt a sense of relief that maybe He was there to help me out of my present circumstances. However, my immediate reaction was to scramble around, trying to clean up the messy house of my heart. I can’t let the God of the universe come into this mess! I thought frantically. I need to clean it up and make everything perfect for Him.