I am a little late to the game in regards to Glennon Doyle Melton (author of the blog Momastery). I just picked up her book, Love Warrior, this week and I  felt like I’d sat down and had coffee with a lifelong friend.  Oh my gosh, me too.

I explain that addictions are safe little deadly hiding places where sensitive people retreat from love and pain.

Those words resonated up from the page.  That could have been me.  I still worry on hard days that I won’t keep pressing in, but that I’ll hide.  Some days, hiding just feels easier. Hiding feels quieter and safer.

I watched the special on Elizabeth Vargas and her struggle to admit an addiction to alcohol that had soothed the overwhelming burden of anxiety in her life.  I was so struck by her description of what the first five to ten seconds as the cameras rolled looked liked in her world.  3,2,1-heart pounding, can’t breathe, her right arm reaching way out across the counter as she sits, right hand gripping the hard surface, her left thumb digging into her engagement ring on her left hand.  White knuckle fear.  We do this.  I do this.  With our kids.  With our marriages.  With the future.

“We think our job as humans is to avoid pain, people who are hurting don’t need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers.  What we need are patient, loving witnesses. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpless vigil to our pain. I promise that I’ll be that kind of mother, that kind of friend. I’ll show up and stand humble in the face of a loved one’s pain.  I’ll admit I’m as empty-handed, dumb-struck, an out of ideas as she is.  I won’t let my discomfort with her pain keep me from witnessing it for her. I’ll never try to grab or fix her pain, because I know that for as long as it takes, her pain will also be her comfort. It will be all she has left. Grief is love’s souvenir.  The Journey of the Warrior. This is it.  The journey is learning that pain, like love, is simply something to surrender to.  I’ll be helpless and broken and still-mutual surrender.  The courage to surrender comes from knowing that the love and pain will almost kill us, but not quite.”  (my paraphrase of Glennon’s words, Chapter 12)

I texted the underlined page of this book to my sister, because I felt thankful.  She and I had just stood in our childhood home the week before and been patient, loving witnesses to one another.  We didn’t hide, we surrendered to the pain.  We put our arms around each others’ shoulders and tears streamed down our faces as  It is Well played over us.  We held each other in the unexplained infertility and in the anxiety. We said, me too.

“Through it all, through it all,  My eyes are on you, Through it all, Through it all, It is well.” The music filled the room.  Do you believe it?  Okay, me too. 

“The waves and wind still know His Name, It is well with my soul.”

I have spent so  much of my life avoiding the pain, but there is much to learn in this place. Today, I’ll dig in and not choose to hide.

It is well with my soul.