Day #5 - Stress Recovery - the Day Noah Faced the Truth

It happened. I spent enough down days during my 15 Day Covid-19 Stress Recovery for ALL the feelings to start coming up like a fountain of the un-imaginable. Except this time, it wasn’t me who overflowed.

It was my Noah.

Even though he was 3 when the assaults happened, he has actively dealt with the fallout his entire life. It’s unalterably life-defining to have a violent sexual attack happen to you when you’re small. Yes, even when you don’t remember all of it.

But despite his active pursuit of his own healing, there was something he never realized stemmed all the way back to the moment(s) he was assaulted - his fear of intimacy with other people. Noah has an impenetrable wall when it comes to those outside our family. We’ve encouraged him to stretch himself as he’s grown older and while it was a desire he himself has (finally) had for many years, there has still been something holding him back. He prayed to find what it was? How could he move forward with his newly adult life?

And after much prayer and increasing layers of deep study, God revealed the answer to him as a complete thought; a balm to his questioning soul. Noah doesn’t trust others because he had his trust severely broken as a small child. Monsters are out there. He saw it himself.

It was a surprise to hear it was simple, and even that it was completely related to the horrors he endured. Like many other things in life, it seems patently obvious from the outset. You’re probably thinking “How did they miss that?” But just like blaming parents is the easiest thing to do as adults process our broken past, making us avoid it unless everything else is removed as a possibility, so have both boys always made sure the root of any emotional or spiritual issue wasn’t something else - anything else - before they settled into knowing it was because of the attacks.

We were in the car when he told me. He grabbed my hand and said “I’m so sorry.” but truly, I’m okay. I’ve dealt with the fact I will always hold some responsibility for not protecting Noah from Sam. Ignorance and deception are no excuse. Parents still need to stand up and claim any pain their children endured at the hands of a pedophile as their fault. It’s not only their fault, but they are still to blame. I am to blame. My children accepted my apology long ago, and I forgave myself long ago. Now we are tight in ways we never would have been, if we hadn’t walked through it together. We are the epitome of the scripture “God works all things together for good……” and He DOES!

It’s been nearly 17 years since Noah was attacked. The man who did it was never imprisoned, though I’m sure he’s done it many times before and since. I’m positive he will do this until he’s locked away, if he’s locked away, only to emerge and do it again. He is smart enough to get by with it, and make more of the smallest and least able to communicate boys in the world go about their lives wondering why they’re broken? Why they can’t give and receive love, intimacy and sex like others do.

But for Noah, there has been a victory. He has come to terms with the why, and now the prayer is how. How to move past this. God is faithful & He will show Noah the way.

I’m sure of it.

"Mama, my banana isn't full" and other heartbreaking + empowering moments in parenting.

It started whimsically. After calling Hannah “Hannah Banana” so many times, I started to rhyme Joshua’s name, too. “Joshua Squash-oo-ah” - you know, because it rolls right off the tongue, right?

Not really. But families are goofy at best & we are the goofiest of all.

But a friend of ours couldn’t stand that the middle child was left out of the consumable nickname trend going on, so as he left our home one day he proclaimed “I’ve got it! He’s “Noah Cup-a-Joe-ah!” and it stuck. They were 2, 4 & 6 years old. My goodness were they cute. And tiny! Tiny little edibles.

Hannah Banana
Joshua Squash-oo-ah
Noah Cup-a-Joe-ah

Often they were called by the second half of their names only. Banana, Squash-oo-ah, Cup-a-Joe-ah & that’s just how it was. No one questioned it!

As they struggled to make sense of their emotional ups and downs, we talked. A lot. (still do!) We talked about how that sad feeling they had sometimes was because their cup was empty and it needed to be filled. Joshua and I talked about it the most. He was dealing with his therapy and recovery from the assaults he’d endured and this helped him to name where he was on the emotional scale that day. A good day meant his cup felt full. Days where he felt heavy and sad, angry at what had happened or just a general feeling of frustration, he could tell me his cup was pretty empty and we’d work together to fill it up and make things incrementally better. It was a wonderful & empowering tool for our boys in recovery. I highly recommend it.

Then one day, a tiny Hannah toddled up to me and told me her Banana was empty.
Now, you’ve just read all of this back to back, so of course you get what she meant. All that talk about Cups & Noah had cup in his nickname, so little Hannah had connected the two and then told me her Banana wasn’t full. I didn’t have that privilege & I have to tell you it confused the heck out of me!

But when I did get it, I felt both happy she was able to express her emotions and sad she felt empty. One look into her eyes and I knew it was true - her banana was, indeed, empty. But I knew what to do for my little girl & we filled her right up!

For years, she expressed herself in measures of banana and like other moments of being little, she grasped what she’d done and changed her language. I was sad all over again.

As they grew older, Joshua and I refined the discussion to where they all have multiple cups - one for God, for each parent, for peer relationships, for adult relationships, finally for romantic relationships. The tool has expanded to help us understand one another’s needs and when to fill them. We seek to help those who fill their cups in all the wrong places and/or walk around empty. It’s still empowering.

And there’s never been a better example than the day Hannah told me her banana wasn’t full.
(Just so you know, today she is VERY full in ALL her cups!)