"My Hands Are Holding You"

I went many years before I would tell this story to anyone for this reason:  Embarrassment over a temper tantrum I threw that ended in a very personal experience between me and Heavenly Father.  This is something that happened almost eight years ago. I started feeling prompted to share it a couple of times starting about four years ago, and for the last few months I have felt I should write about this experience in my blog so I am finally doing it.  To be honest, I felt like I was finished with my blog.  The purpose for it was to help me heal and be whole again through writing out the pain and the blessings I experienced.  What I feel now compared to how I felt when I started this blog is such amazing change.  I am starting to recognize myself again.  There were so many years I didn’t even recognize myself because of the heavy weight of the relentless burdens I felt.  But I’m finding that, valiant, righteous woman again.  For many years I would read through my old journals and I would notice what a better person I was before the severe experiences of life.  They had really taken their toll. 

A month or two before I found out I was expecting Abby, Parker started violently screaming every time something happened he didn’t like or if he had to go through a transition.  I wrote about this in greater detail in an earlier post but it was a very exhausting and depressing experience for me.   During this time for a few weeks I just didn’t feel right.  I told Brent I wanted to get a pregnancy test while we were in town.  He was convinced it wasn’t possible for me to be pregnant.  It took four years for me to get pregnant with Parker and Parker had just barely turned a year old.  We weren’t ready for another little miracle, not while our first little miracle was so impossible to deal with.  At that time, we lived in a tiny condo in the middle of Bailey, Colorado.  It’s a long story how we got there but I do remember we had felt guided to the remote area and I loved it….until we had children.  After that it was just torture.  It took 45 minutes to an hour one way to get to the closest affordable store down in a Denver suburb.  Parker would relentlessly scream if he had been in the car too long and the day we came home after buying the pregnancy test was no exception.  I had become sick because I was unknowingly pregnant.  Brent had to keep stopping the car to, well, let me be sick.  To add to this it was the 4th of July weekend and every celebratory person and their cousin headed to our mountains for camping.  There was also a major rain storm that backed up traffic and the trip took two and a half hours to get home.  Parker screamed for most of that. We were completely rattled and it put us in a terrible mood to find out the news, that I was expecting another baby.  
 

Going up and down that beautiful mountain during this time in our lives was absolute torture and I was convinced we should have moved off the mountain before we had brought Parker home from the hospital, much less have another baby on top of it.  Brent no longer worked for the law firm that had insisted we live in the mountains (because they were in the mountains).  But we were trapped.  We purchased our home a year before the housing prices dropped.  We were still completely unable to sell our condo or even rent it out.  I would make the long and terrible drive up and down the mountain while my moody baby tortured me with his relentless screams. 

There is one day that is still vivid in my memory.  It's the reason I'm wrighting this post.  My OB’s office was as far as a drive for me as it could be.  I would travel to the bottom of the canyon then continue to drive an additional 20 minutes to the hospital.  During this time in our lives Brent would ride a bus to downtown Denver to save on gas and parking costs.  He would drive his car 10 minutes to a bus stop, take a bus down the canyon then into downtown, ride a trax system 6 blocks then walk two blocks to his office.  There was only a morning bus and an evening bus.  On this particular day, I called to let Brent know I was going to a doctor’s appointment, and he asked if I could drive to downtown to pick him up because he would be finished with his work early.  In good traffic this would add an hour to my commute back home, but I loved the idea of Brent returning home with me instead of late at night like usual, so I set out to downtown.  About halfway there the traffic completely stopped.  Parker was full blown screaming at this point and there had to have been at least another two hours ahead of me.  I had no other choice but to cut across town and head back to the mountains without getting Brent.  By time I reached the mouth of the canyon, Parker’s screaming was still building momentum and I had a good 40 minutes ahead of me.  My nerves were absolutely shot and I was beginning to become unraveled.  All I wanted, dreamed of, and prayed for, was to move off that treacherous mountain.  It was so beautiful the first two years we lived there without children.  Even though the drive was long it was pleasant and peaceful.  But as soon as I had to drive back and forth with a stubborn, moody infant with his relentless screams in the back seat the drive was bondage. I didn’t even notice the beauty all around anymore.  It was like a chain was wrapping around me, suffocating and overwhelming me.   I felt a panicked anxiety in the center of my chest that was brewing into anger and I finally lost it. 

                I started screaming at the top of my lungs and yelling at God.  We had always been so faithful to Him and this was unfair.  How could I have another child in that tiny condo that was only big enough for two?  We were about to become a family of four!  How could I add another screaming child to that drive and mentally survive it? How could we all be safe in the blizzards that plagued the mountain each winter?  How could I handle being so isolated and alone when life was so overwhelming, when I needed friends and support?  It all came out.  I had never lectured God before and my screaming and whaling only frightened Parker and made him cry louder.  I finally got to a point that I could breath instead of scream.  I waited a minute, forcing myself to calm down.  I began to pray again.  I asked for forgiveness then I asked for help to calm down.  I don’t know how it was possible to hear the whispering of the Holy Ghost in that crazed state of mind, but I felt prompted to turn on the local Christian station. The first words that came out of the radio were “I love you, I love you, I want you to know that I love you.  I’ll never let you go. No, no.  And I’ll be by your side where ever you fall.  In the dead of night whenever you call, please don’t fight these hands that are holding you.  My hands are holding you.”  I was stunned into silence. I began to weep. I wrapped my arms around the steering wheel as I slowly moved back and forth on the winding mountain road.  I don’t even remember hearing the crying any longer. Maybe Parker finally stopped, but it was just me and my Father in Heaven and He was telling me how much he loved me.   It was as if the steering wheel had become the chest of God for me to rest on and a peace settled upon me. 

Our young little family continued to live in that condo an additional year and a half before Brent was out of work and we lost it.  Those were some of the darkest and loneliest times in my life.  I didn’t  know that day that things were going to get so much worse for our family before it got better. But, a God in Heaven had spoken to me and gave me a renewed strength.  I downloaded that song and over the last eight years I’m sure I’ve listened to it over a thousand times.  When my sanity is slipping or my doubt is high I turn it on and listen to Heavenly Father tell me all over again how much He loves me.  It gives me brighter hope and greater strength to never give up no matter what life is putting us through. 

Here is the link to the song  By Your Side, 10th Avenue North