As I covered this issue in my new prayer routine, I came across Luke 10:18, in which Jesus reminded Satan that he saw him fall like lightning from heaven. Like lightning! There was no holy battle or heavenly war; he hit the ground faster than I could blink my eyes! I thought that if God can defeat sin that quickly, He will surely take this from me one day. I decided Jesus Christ did not die on the cross to be minimized by lies. In fact, He might actually be using me to defeat this lie. As I declared the truth over my internal bondage, God might actually strengthen me.
I still had low points, but I had rehearsed so much prayer that I just repeated it without thinking. Just like Jesus wandering in the desert, I made it a habit to tell Satan to get away from me (see Matthew 4). As time passed and my hormones settled, the involuntary psychosis began to fade away. I realized that just as God walked me through the settlement of my thoughts, guilt, and hormones after having a child, He could have very easily allowed me to cross paths with a professional who could have recommended medication. In my state of fear and desperation, I would have done anything. I didn’t have a pediatrician or an assigned OB-GYN, so seeking professional help would have required some level of understanding of what was going on with me. I didn’t, which is why I prayed so desperately. I didn’t know it was normal; I thought it was something that would eventually get my child taken away.
On the other side of this season, I was just as thankful for the sanctification process as I was for the healing. God showed up for me because I never told anyone what I was going through. In my ignorance of my own condition, I was sustained by totally leaning on the power of God, because I had none. For the first time, I needed God to demonstrate the same control over my situation that He had shown me a hundred times with Josh. I felt honored to be the one He left the ninety-nine for (see Matthew 18:13), but it took me years to realize that I chose isolation out of fear, judgment, and shame. How different would my experience have been if I had not allowed fear to swallow me up in this season? How much better would I have felt knowing I had a community? How differently would I have looked at myself if just one person had said, “This is actually very normal”? How many other moms live in shame like I did?
JOSH
By the fall of 2013, we were really struggling with living in Building 62 with a baby. I constantly thought about how families with two, three, or four kids did it. These families were putting multiple kids in a single bed and creating sleep spaces in closets at Building 62. The kids who never moved to Walter Reed stayed with relatives to continue going to school. Time after time I heard a mom on the front patio of Building 62 try to hold back tears as she listened to another story of her kids getting in trouble, making bad grades, or crying themselves to sleep at night, wanting their parents. Some wives went back and forth, one week here, one week there. Other parents made the kids go back and forth. Some finished out their school years at the end of May and then moved the family up to the hospital for the summer with the intention of starting the next school year in Maryland. Some wives never saw their kids because they couldn’t let their husbands out of their sights. I was constantly wondering how long we would have to try to raise a baby on a hospital campus. There was nowhere for kids to play or even really gather. It seemed like the elementary school–age kids were constantly in trouble—they were just so bored, and even though their parents tried, they had no routine of their own. The kids who were used to soccer games and Girl Scouts now just followed their parents around to various doctor’s appointments and played on iPads until they were told to relocate to another waiting room for yet another doctor’s appointment. I was worried that the more Harper and Paige lived on my hospital schedule, the harder civilian life would be.
Many guys at Walter Reed refer to their injury year as their “class,” so we are in the class of 2012. Since we all got blown up around the same time, we were all trying to get out around at the same time. As we watched our friends grind through the retirement process, our class began pursuing every opportunity to speed up our own advancement. We all felt the need to spend our leave time looking for homes, land, jobs, and school systems, only to return to Walter Reed with no idea when we would actually be able to move. Paige and I had found a small place to live on the outskirts of Auburn. We paid a deposit for the place but could only ask for grace when they needed to know a move-in date. Nothing could push the process along, and not even our friends who had been gifted homes were allowed to leave the hospital yet. I couldn’t imagine being given a handicap-accessible home and not being allowed to live in it. Not only were we facing a slow system, but most of us were less than thirty years old, trying to retire from a job. Injury justified the retirement because time of service was not enough. Our retirement wouldn’t look like that of the career Army guys, who spend the last couple of months of service going to a job and filling out paperwork between tasks. We would bounce back and forth between Army
