The true story behind The Place of Endless Lights: Part III: Facing fear in our children

Part 3: Facing fears in our children

The song

What is that dream I carry, deep and groaning inside me, for my children?

A deep desire for their flourishing. For them to be whole and wonderful and forfiled. For them to experience life in all its colour and wonder. To stand at the doorway of my home and watch them charge out, confident and full of hope to live lives of freedom and joy and beauty and adventure. Do you feel that too?

The reality is, a lot of parenting is not watching my children triumph or charge off into their lives with glory. It is watching them get hurt. Hurt by their friends. Hurt by the broken world around them. Hurt by themselves. Most horrifying of all, hurt by me.

And these cracks in the fabric of their world create anxieties in them. It holds them back, keeps them from courage.

How I hate these fears. How I fear them, especially that they may in some way, be my fault.

Eva was in year 1 when I got sick, and the insecurities and timidity that I had seen all through her early years suddenly swelled up into a full on balloon of anxiety. She was full of tears at school. Incapable of doing anything outside of her comfort zone. I will never forget watching her in a school play at that time. The previous year I had a video of her singing her heart out in a performance, grinning from ear to ear - cheeky and hilarious in donkey ears and a sparkly blue top. But half way through her year 1 Christmas show, I watched, helpless as Eva completely dissolved into a wobble of tears and ended up on a teachers lap. What had happened to my little girl? Why was her fear winning?

The fears didn’t stop there. Going away became a problem. No one but my husband and I seemed safe, and even that didn’t feel enough. Night became the worst enemy of all, sleep elusive, and when it eventually came we would find her, curls stuck damply to head where she was hiding inside her duvet, too scared to let her head out into the dark of the room.

My own fear in response to this new world, was creeping and total. It was my fault, I realised with certainty. It was because I was sick. It was because I had not been enough. It was those early years of depression when she was a baby. It was my inadequacy in disciplining her, the times I had made it too personal. It was my anxiety, leaching on to her. It was my unprocessed view of myself, my inability to be kind, she was anticipating rejection. I did this to her. It was me.

If I caused it, of course my first reaction was to try to fix it. To reduce what I perceived was my negative impact. I did my best to be calm and safe, not to parent in a way that was going to exasperate the problem. I worried about everything I’d ever said and done, as if that might take the sting out of it. I tried to get better. And when that didn't work, I mentally punished myself for being sick. I attempted to keep her from the terrible thing that was surely pushing her anxiety to these new heights. And I let anxiety have its day in me too, whilst this in itself pushed the lie even deeper. The anxiety in me, was surely causing the anxiety in her. I had to stop it! I had to reduce myself down. I had to become less. Otherwise she would be anxious. She would become just like me.

But of course, as we are coming to see is the pattern (see my previous post), nothing changed until I accepted where we were. Eva was anxious. The worst had happened. My little girl had entered the horrifying world of anxiety. And it was stealing from her. And the harder truth. I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I could not take her out of it. I couldn’t carry it for her. She had to walk through it herself.

Isn’t it good though, that when we do not have answers, and when we cannot enter fully into someone else’s darkness, we have one who can?

This place, Jesus showed me, this incredibly vulnerable place of motherhood, where I could not stop the anxiety from tangling up my girl, could become a place of beauty. Where even here, there could be light. Even here, there could be connection and beauty.

One night, another long and sleepless one, twisted with nightmares and sweaty sheets, I was lying with Eva on her top bunk, eyes open in the gloom, exhausted by another uncertain night and terrified that this would last forever. I remember Jesus spoke to me. He showed me the beauty of my presence with Eva in that bed.

"What a gift," he said, "for Eva to know, that even in her darkest, most tangled places, where all seems too big to handle, too scary for sleep, that even here she is held. That when she calls, from a place of having nothing and giving up, that she will receive help. That she will be loved."

"This moment," Jesus told me, "Is the gospel lived out. It is sacred. And I can make even this troubled shore into holy ground."

And then, bit by tiny bit, Jesus walked us through. He didn’t fix things in an instant. It involved a really helpful toolkit he gave us, piece by piece. And lots of those things are in my book. Here are a few of them.

We learnt that there are normal reactions to fear. That it often makes us fight, or fly, or freeze, just like the way people react to the tunnellers in my story. Miss Matilda tends to fight, Uncle Stickleberry to roll into a ball and freeze, while Aria, always, always runs.

We also found that stopping was the better way. That when fear hits, we need to breathe. This is why Aria has to stop running when the tunnellers are on her tail. We use 5-4-3-2-1 in our house for panicky moments, where you name 5 things you can see, 4 you can hear, 3 you can feel, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste.

We learned that naming our fears was really helpful. We learned about catastrophising and voicing the stories we were telling ourselves. Aria is always picturing the worst case scenario in the book, but she slowly learns to imagine the Endless Lights instead, and look for the promise, and the Trailmaker's presence, not anticipate the worst.

We learnt that giving our feelings a character, like a tunneller, gave Eva a way of listening to what they were saying, and spotting the lies they were whispering. Turning these into a character helped her realise that she could choose whether to listen to those lies and ‘what ifs’ or not.

We talked about singing out for help. Learning that it isn’t weak to ask for help, it is beautiful and brave. Singing is important for so many reasons. It regulates our breathing, activates the vagus nerve which calms the nervous system and releases oxytocin, which makes us feel connected and loved. When Aria finally manages to sing, it is also a moment of surrender and complete trust. This is what we learnt we need most of all. To surrender the problem to Jesus.

We learned that in the end we have a response to every lie. And his name is Jesus.

And this is why I wrote the book. Not just to collect the things we had learnt, but to try and sneak past her thinking and into her heart. To convince Eva through what she tasted and experienced in the story, that she was never alone and there is one who can light up even the darkest of her nights.

Protecting my little girl from pain and struggle seemed like the best thing for her. But maybe there was a treasure from deeper down that I could give her, if we hung on in the depths. Maybe the biggest present, is to catch a glimpse of the one who makes a trail no matter what, and can light the darkest dark. Whats better than never going in the dark, is going there, and knowing the one who will light it up.

Underneath it all, this story is built on a conviction that though we cannot pull our children out of their moments of darkness, we can trust the one who is goes into them with them. Because he is the one who is not scared of the dark. Who is willing to stay by our side through the darkest of our nights, and, from the inside out, to fill it with lights.

My prayer is that just as it was for Eva and I, this book gives you a way to talk to your children about their fears. To talk about the darkness, and the lies that chase us and make us run. My prayer is that it will give a shape to conversations and help them become about concepts of fear and faith, which are so hard to get children’s hands around. I pray that it will give concrete pictures and feelings to what it means to be loved by Jesus; what it would be like to hang out with him on a hill; how kind he is to children.

My prayer is that you will be able to remind your children too that Jesus has gone before them into their scary days, and placed endless lights there for them to find. My prayer is that this book will hang a lantern for them in dark places where we cannot take the darkness away.

And just as Jesus whispered to me, when I was close to hopeless. I pray that this truth will be one our children can carry too. As the Trailmaker says to Aria in the branches of the canopy tree:

‘Your feelings are big, Aria,’ the Trailmaker said. ‘But they’re not too big for me.’

If you think this book would be helpful for you or someone you know, you can pre-order it here.

There are so many children living nearby to us who struggle with anxiety, many with much more trauma and darkness in their lives. It would be the most wonderful thing to give them all a copy of this book too, in the hopes of hanging a lantern where even their parents don't have hope for their darkness yet. If that appeals to you as well as me and you'd like to join in, then you can buy an extra copy of the book on the website. Or, if you're feeling really keen, email me at hello@katyhollamby.com and we can chat about buying a whole load of copies for children in Hattersley or near you. My publishers are super keen to help with making this as affordable as possible.

Can't wait to hear from you. Every share makes so much difference - it completely changes the visibility of the posts for me.

Thank you,

Katy

To read more about this book, go here. And here.

To read more about this adventure of business with Jesus, go here.