NotitiesDancing With a Porcupine
Jennie Owens, Sherrie Eldridge, and Kristen Berry
"Dancing With a Porcupine" is een boek waarin de auteurs hun ervaringen delen over het opvoeden van kinderen die trauma's hebben meegemaakt. Het behandelt thema's als hoop, herstel en de uitdagingen van het creëren van veilige en liefdevolle relaties, terwijl het ook de complexiteit van emotionele en gedragsproblemen belicht.
I look back now and wonder how I am alive to tell this story. That I didn’t die or lose my mind and end up in the hospital, psych ward, lake, or prison is an absolute miracle. After all, I’d put myself on the back burner for a long time. (Location 40)
It was hard to go back into those dark times in order to write this book. Yet through those times, I learned that no matter how dark the journey gets, there is always hope. Healing didn’t always fit my expectations or follow a straight path, but it came. (Location 46)
I almost forgot that relationships are hard. All of them. (Location 113)
I didn’t have the energy to care about anything. (Location 134)
I thought back to my first conversation with our kids’ therapist a year earlier. “I feel like I’ve been in a war zone,” I’d said. It was the only way I could describe it. She said, “You have.” (Location 141)
learned how deeply wounded children push others away so no one else can get close enough to hurt them again. After being abandoned so many times, they reject you before you have the chance to reject and abandon them. In an effort to protect themselves, they especially push away the primary caregiver, and he or she becomes the target for their anger. They try to prove they don’t deserve love or anything good, because they believe this about themselves. (Location 225)
This was not the last time Brianna tried to get me to force her to do something that she already wanted to do. Countless times, uncomfortable with making a positive choice on her own, she created a scenario where our only option was to give her a consequence that put her exactly where she wanted to be. Sabotaging her own success at times and keeping herself out of an uncomfortable situation at other times, Brianna complained to others that we didn’t give her enough freedom, even though the situation was of her own making. (Location 271)
As if in some strange, confusing dance, though she pushed me away, she demanded constant attention and never wanted to leave my side. (Location 284)
Early on, I read about the need for children who had been through trauma to experience bonding activities. (Location 349)
Part of the reason they needed those experiences was because wounded children’s emotional age rarely matches their biological age. I didn’t understand that those younger behaviors were normal and that wounded kids needed to fill in the gaps in their childhood. (Location 358)
When my kids wanted every moment of my attention or to eat whatever I had, they were acting out their emotional age, which was somewhere in the toddler range. Even if they had their own pancakes, they wanted mine. (Location 361)
To help kids attach, I learned that mom and dad should be where the fun is, so I took that to heart. (Location 386)
Neither child displayed an ounce of stranger-danger, a trait very common to children with attachment issues. (Location 414)
The incessant questions were likely related to the fact he was on the autism spectrum — something we didn’t discover until he was 17 because it was masked by trauma. Since he was emotionally young, much of his life centered around himself. He may have been trying to connect to us by talking about something he already knew. (Location 534)
Most importantly, it caused me to realize that my success in parenting Parker did not depend on his behavior. It came down to mine. (Location 559)
My sense of being a good parent came from loving my child well, despite his response. My success was based on my choices, which I could control, rather than his behaviors, which I could not. (Location 562)
At one early counseling session, I told her, “Parker keeps pushing and pushing. It’s as if he wants me to beat the crap out of him.” “He does. It’s what he’s used to.” Like many children from traumatic backgrounds, Parker attempted to recreate the chaos of his childhood. Many of these children feel odd in calm surroundings. Uncomfortable, they attempt to change their surroundings to match their insides. (Location 597)
It was hard to remember that sometimes the defiance was because they had trouble regulating their emotions, which is typical of wounded kids. Like young children, their brains hadn’t developed this skill yet. There were times they were truly not capable of doing what I asked of them, due to brain damage caused by trauma, in-utero drug and alcohol exposure, or developmental issues. (Location 700)
I had to learn to let go of “should,” because many times the kids simply couldn’t do what I expected. (Location 705)
Something about what abused kids go through makes them experts at reading people. I knew they weren’t trying to be hurtful, but it seemed that they spotted my buttons and — like a shark drawn to blood — pushed them over and over. At times, seeing the hurtful words as shields that they used to protect their hearts helped me not to take it quite so personally. (Location 749)
“Why do you need her to like you so much?” Her question startled me. I hadn’t thought about it like that. After a few moments of introspection, I replied, “I guess I’m afraid of what others may think. What kind of mother has a child who dislikes her so much?” (Location 757)
Their rejection forced me to reexamine this belief, because when parenting wounded children, a child not liking you is not necessarily connected to your performance as a parent. (Location 763)
“A double bind message is where someone sends two or more messages, with one message contradicting the other. Successfully responding to one message means a failed response to the other, thus creating a confusing, no-win situation. In a double bind, the person receiving the message is unable to resolve or leave the conflict, nor can they comment on the conflict.” It made so much sense. Successfully responding to such a situation becomes impossible because you’re wrong no matter how you respond. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It made me think of an article I had read about a lab experiment. When rats received a shock every time they touched an item in their cage, they stopped touching that item but freely explored the rest of the cage. Lab rats who received random shocks unrelated to a specific behavior ended up sitting in a corner, huddled and afraid to move. Rather than avoid a specific object, they stopped doing anything. They experienced “learned helplessness.” (Location 792)
One day, the kids’ therapist challenged me. “You know you’re going to get payback no matter what you do, so decide what you want to do and do it. Don’t let the kids’ payback control your decisions.” It helped me to recognize the difficulty of dealing with a double bind message. I had to learn to stop looking for any kind of affirmation from my children. (Location 807)
I also had to keep in mind that this was their issue, not mine. I was caught in the crossfire of their internal conflict. (Location 813)
Why didn’t I realize they were experiencing extreme grief? No matter how much safer they were, adoption was a huge loss for them. Their birth mom wasn’t coming back for them. (Location 909)
Often when my children acted out, I did a “time in,” having them come close and sit with me instead of sending them away in a time out. It helped with the bonding process and didn’t cause them to feel the rejection wounded children so easily feel. It communicated that even though they were making a poor choice, I still wanted to be with them. (Location 986)
After researching how to handle homework, Lynn and I had determined the best way to do it was to give the kids thirty minutes of homework time, during which they could sit and do nothing if they wanted. If they weren’t doing well in school, they obviously needed more time for homework and had to spend an hour. We never forced them to do their homework, but I was always available if they needed help. We learned that if we made their homework more important to us than it was to them, they would try to sabotage it anyway, so it was better for us not to force anything. (Location 1073)
Sometimes I struggled to recognize and validate the kids’ grief, but it became obvious over the years that they needed to talk about those important people in their lives. While I viewed their parents as people who’d abandoned or hurt them, their sadness made it clear just how personal grief was. (Location 1166)
When Parker was tested for autism, we discovered that when he experienced anxiety, his brain function shut down significantly. During those times, he became unable to process information, handle emotions, think, or remember. My attempt to hurry him likely triggered his anxiety. (Location 1250)
I’d seen brain scans of a child who’d been through trauma compared to those of a typical child. The scan of the child who had been through trauma looked like Swiss cheese. Almost all of their brain activity occurs in the “fight-flight-or-freeze” part of the brain, with little activity in the cerebral cortex — the part of the brain that allows us to think and process rationally. (Location 1273)
“It will NEVER be enough, no matter what you do,” the kids’ therapist told me at our next appointment. She explained that when a child has gone through severe neglect, abuse, or trauma, their heart becomes like Swiss cheese, a bucket with holes in it, or even a bucket with no bottom at all. You can endlessly give, but the child still feels they need more. It didn’t matter how much I gave or how hard I worked. She went on to say that giving the kids too much attention in the beginning was probably not healthy for them. They needed to learn that healthy adults take care of themselves; their lives don’t revolve solely around their children. They needed to know that a healthy family makes sure everyone’s needs are met. I had fed into their selfishness, keeping them from feeling emotions they needed to deal with. (Location 1297)
It was like an emotional version of Prader-Willi Syndrome – their minds always signaled the need for more attention and love, never feeling full or satisfied. (Location 1309)
Parker was sending what I later learned to call a “miscued message.” He outwardly communicated that he wanted us to interact with him every moment, but really, he simply needed constant reassurance of our love. (Location 1355)
Parker’s behaviors made it feel like he was working hard to pay me back for my absence. For years, it frustrated and angered me. Finally, I realized he was trying to say, “I missed you.” After that, when he acted out I’d say, “I missed you too, Buddy,” and the acting out lessened considerably. (Location 1360)
I’d read quotes like the one by Dr. Karyn Purvis, author of The Connected Child, that says, “It is not you against this child. It is you and this child against this child’s history. It’s not a personal attack on you.” (Location 1387)
It felt like my children were creating the waves of rejection, but they were being pulled under by those same waves. They weren’t against me. They were victims, drowning in old wounds. When I set out to help wounded children heal, I became a lifeguard treading deep waters of pain. When I first experienced how children who have endured trauma try to push others away and control those around them, it made me mad. Lynn had a more insightful take: “It’s not really them trying to get control; it’s more that they’re drowning and trying to grab onto anything around them to keep themselves from going under.” In those times of treading deep waters with my children, I needed to hold on to something stable in order to help them. Lifeguards don’t race into the water without a life preserver. Otherwise, they and the person they’re trying to save would both drown. It was time to look for help. (Location 1391)
“Bloop, plap, flap, bloopedy-boop, glop, glap, flibity, plop,” Stephen added nonsense noise into the mix, getting louder and louder until he got the attention he desired. “Stephen, it seems like you really like to make noise. I’d like you to sit on this bar stool and make noise for me.” At times, Lynn and I would require the kids to “practice” a behavior we didn’t want them to do. We used the excuse that if they were going to do something, they may as well be good at it. The real reason we did it was that, for the most part, if the kids knew it didn’t bother us, making them practice the behavior took away their motivation to keep doing it. (Location 1413)
I felt like a freak, shouldering the pain of the world. My life centered around topics people didn’t talk about at parties, and I didn’t want to share things that would embarrass my kids. I lived in a world no one wanted to visit, where bad things happened to little children and ugly behavior overtook all joy and laughter. I learned early on that most people could not handle the intensity of my emotions or knowing what I was really going through, so I softened things as I spoke. How do you share feeling tortured, hopeless, and in despair when someone asks in passing, “How are you?” (Location 1560)
Parker looked down. “Fear.” “What are you afraid of?” Parker looked up at me, his brown eyes tearing up. “I’m afraid that if I let myself not be angry, you will find out the things that happened to me. Then I’ll lose another family, and no one else will want me.” (Location 1663)
Detachment is allowing others to be who they are, rather than who you believe they should be. (Location 1721)
Feeling angry toward my kids was an indication that I was working harder on a problem than they were. When I backed off, I could more easily look at their mistakes as learning opportunities rather than failures. My children got the message that they were capable of handling their lives, rather than feeling that they couldn’t do life without me. (Location 1730)
“Detaching does not mean we don’t care. It means we learn to love, care, and be involved without going crazy…” Melody described what she saw when working with those living with alcoholics: “I saw people who had gotten so absorbed in other people’s problems they didn’t have time to identify or solve their own. (Location 1736)
Elizabeth Brown wrote that part of detaching was simply accepting your reality. (Location 1741)
She said when families stopped feeling guilty for disliking their challenging child, she could finally make progress with them. (Location 1829)
The loss of that dream relationship was more than I could bear. I found myself grieving what could have been, though at the time I didn’t know I was grieving. Sometimes I felt extremely sad or irritable without understanding why. (Location 1858)
When jealousy began to creep in, I recognized it as a sign that there was something I needed to grieve. (Location 1863)
The whole time I was whining at God to change my circumstances, He had been pointing me to the truth that the only person I could change was me. Later that week, I was reading Living Successfully with Screwed Up People and came across these words, “Failure to forgive locks you into a self-focus that pleads for restitution and revenge… True forgiveness stores indiscretions and wrongs in the file under the heading ‘No Longer Relevant Except for Lessons’… Forgiveness allows us to grow as a result of lessons learned and prevents hardening of the heart from bitterness.” (Location 1912)
As I realized how much I needed to forgive, it dawned on me that I needed to forgive God. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was holding on to resentment toward Him. (Location 1919)
One of the things that made forgiving my children difficult was that I felt like a monster for harboring ill feelings toward them. It was a struggle to admit how much they had hurt me, and although I logically knew they were behaving out of self-protection, I still resented their behavior and needed to practice forgiveness. In my mind, forgiving them would undo the seriousness of all they had done to me. If I forgave, it meant they hadn’t done anything wrong. If I forgave, all my battle scars were for nothing. They would get off Scot-free, and I would be stuck dealing with the results. I held on to resentment because I felt it justified keeping my kids at an emotional distance. I didn’t have to continue getting hurt by them; I could keep them at bay and avoid having my heart repeatedly torn into pieces. In the end, I learned it was quite the opposite. When I held on to even a little bit of bitterness, that was when I became stuck, like a fly wrapped in a spider’s web. (Location 1924)
Forgiveness is about the victim not being victimized two times: first by the wrong, then by a misguided requirement to hang on to the wrong. Forgiveness is about freedom to live above the hurt and to go on with joy in your heart, in spite of the injustices. . . Forgiveness is a determination to be free! I won’t let what someone else does destroy me, regardless of how I am affected. Whether you forgive or not has nothing to do with the seriousness of the abuse or wrong; it has everything to do with whether you want to be free or prefer to carry the burden. —Elizabeth Brown (Location 1933)
Putting the Fun Back in Dysfunctional (Location 1940)
After Angie left, I thought about the difference having a little fun had made. I walked away from my time with her feeling recharged, ready to face the week. I need to infuse more laughter into my life. (Location 1967)
After Angie left, I came across a quote that challenged me in Living Successfully with Screwed Up People: “Each of us is about as happy as we decide to be.” It reminded me of something I read by Victor Frankl: “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” He wrote this from a Nazi concentration camp. (Location 1980)
Fun seems to be the first thing to go when a family is parenting a severely wounded child. I had watched fellow parents become so engrossed with their child’s pathology that they ceased living life in a healthy manner. (Location 1994)
Part of my struggle was thinking that if I allowed myself to be happy, it was like admitting the situation wasn’t going to change. If I stayed miserable long enough, I could somehow force my situation to change. I had also begun to believe this sad, lonely, tired version of myself was the true me. (Location 1998)
After all the post-move craziness, I desperately felt the need to have someone return my love. Lynn didn’t always understand my anger and frustration with the kids, and I frequently felt utterly alone. I craved the unconditional love of a dog. (Location 2005)
I had become used to being punished for loving, but this little dog reminded me what it was like to have love returned. (Location 2026)
I thought back to the first time I made the mistake of telling the kids something was important to me. (Location 2251)
Now, seeing the chair I loved in pieces, I wanted so badly to call my mom and cry to her, but with a two-hour time difference, I knew she and Dad would already be in bed. Instead, I wrote in my journal: “Anything I love gets destroyed. Anyone I love besides them gets hated, so I feel like I can’t love anything.” (Location 2264)
Whenever we got home after therapy, I struggled to function well. After finding out what my kids had gone through, I felt ill-equipped to deal with my own wave of emotions. I didn’t know then that hearing about another person’s trauma could create something called secondary, or vicarious, trauma. (Location 2373)
“Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.” — Hans Margolius (Location 2411)
didn’t know at the time, but choosing to do something enjoyable every day would be a key move toward my emotional health. It reminded me who I was, without my children’s pain and anger distorting my view like a circus mirror. (Location 2447)
That Monday afternoon, I got a call from Parker’s teacher. “Parker was so excited about his birthday,” Mrs. Pratt said. “He raved about it all day.” “Really? I was feeling guilty we’d given him such a terrible birthday party!” “No, he told me, ‘That was the best birthday ever!’” I got off the phone, shocked. I was learning that for him, less was often more. At the time, I didn’t understand over-stimulation and sensory overload, which are common in both children with autism and those who have experienced trauma. Quieter and simpler often works best for them. As I practiced simplicity throughout the school year, I found he responded well to it. I also took the “less is more” approach to physical affection with him. Despite my fatigue, I had tried to give him lots of hugs to help him bond. “Stop hugging Parker,” the therapist finally said. “But aren’t I supposed to be trying to bond with him?” “Some kids can’t handle getting close. I think he may be one of them.” “How am I going to help him bond, though?” “You’ll have to give him short, quick displays of physical affection, like high-fives or touching his shoulder.” I learned that he did better with these “drive-by” displays of affection. They didn’t overwhelm him, and his behavior quieted. His anxiety lessened, and the house became more peaceful. (Location 2491)
I was discovering that love was doing what’s best for another person regardless of how we feel. Feelings of love may come later, but ultimately love is how we treat the other person. (Location 2546)
Especially in difficult relationships, true love comes down to decisions over feelings. (Location 2550)
I worked through Daniel Siegel’s book, Parenting from the Inside Out. He said that parents must resolve their own past trauma to do the therapeutic parenting needed to help a child heal. (Location 2561)
Dealing with an angry person made me feel like a kid, trying to figure out what I did wrong. Even hearing someone yell at another person made me incredibly uncomfortable. I grew up assuming that if someone was angry with me, I was automatically responsible. (Location 2565)
It is natural to focus on the apparent cause of our distress. But this is a distraction. Our real focus should be on ourselves. We need to look at our own feelings and our own responses to difficult people’s behaviors. We need to ask ourselves why we are reacting so strongly… I find it useful to think of the difficult people in my life as being like skilled tennis opponents or tough professors. I don’t like what they do, I don’t like how I feel, but I recognize that they provide me with an unmatched opportunity to improve myself, one that is available nowhere else. — Mark Rosen, Thank You for Being Such a Pain (Location 2574)
As painful as it was, in dealing with my own issues I took some of that control back. After all, wounded children can’t push buttons that aren’t there. I did not find it easy, but I discovered that if I looked at the children’s bothersome behaviors as an opportunity for extreme growth on my part, I could handle situations much better. (Location 2590)
As I read Cheryl’s book, I became very aware that my level of self-care didn’t match my extremely stressful situation. I was getting better at taking care of myself, but self-care was usually the first thing cut when stresses increased. I’m not taking care of myself like an Olympian. I resonated with her about the importance of having a place of beauty. I dreamed about creating such a space. I knew beauty could be incredibly healing, and I needed a sanctuary, since my home had become a battlefield. (Location 2711)
The studio restoration project did more than make the room beautiful. It restored my soul. (Location 2748)
I always feel guilty when I do something for myself.” “Me too. But our kids need to see us taking care of ourselves. It helps them learn that they can take care of themselves, too.” (Location 2757)
I reminded myself that I was parenting on an Olympic level, and Olympians needed to care for their bodies to succeed. With high stress levels, I had to undo the negative impact by caring for my body at a much higher level than others did. (Location 2788)
Mother’s Day was a reminder that I would never be the first mom in my kids’ hearts, even after they healed and bonded with me. Especially in the beginning, they loved another mom much more than they loved me. Even though I expected that, it didn’t make the loss less painful. I wasn’t the mom they wanted to be with, and they made that clear in the early years. (Location 2842)
The human brain can’t distinguish between being chased by a hungry lion and dealing with a ten-year-old throwing a tantrum. When it perceives any threat, blood pressure increases, the heart pumps more quickly, and the blood vessels narrow to more quickly send blood to the larger muscle groups. Blood is diverted away from some internal organs, and we go into “fight, flight, or freeze” mode. When blood bypasses our digestive system, it doesn’t receive the nutrients necessary to sustain healthy flora. This allows unhealthy bacteria and yeast to take over the GI tract. (Location 2936)
I wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but I began to understand that my life needed to stop revolving around my children. My entire identity was invested in being a mom. (Location 2955)
You can have compassion for yourself—which is not self-pity. You’re simply recognizing that “this is tough, this hurts,” and bringing the same warmhearted wish for suffering to lessen or end that you would bring to any dear friend grappling with the same pain, upset, or challenges as you. – Rick Hanson, Just One Thing (Location 3006)
In early spring, I could tell I needed another big break from the kids. “I’m about to lose it. I have to get away for awhile,” I told Lynn. “You should visit your parents.” “That’s exactly what I was thinking. My mom’s birthday is coming up, and I’d like to surprise her. Especially since my Aunt Anna’s funeral, I feel the need to be around family.” Three weeks later, I boarded the plane and took my seat. The flight attendant began her instructions. As I watched her bring the oxygen mask toward her face, a phrase stuck out to me in a way it never had before. “If you are traveling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your mask first and then assist the other person.” How had I heard this so many times and never made the connection between this advice and a wonderful life lesson? Many of the struggles I experienced over the past few years had been because I’d been putting my kids’ oxygen masks on before my own. While I’d gotten better at practicing self-care, I still felt guilty every time I did something for myself. But just like on the airplane, parents aren’t any good to their children if they’ve passed out or died due to lack of oxygen. (Location 3012)
I had never understood so clearly how connected conscience development was to a child’s attachments. I’d read that children develop a conscience as they are able to trust the adults in their lives, but this made it much more obvious. I had always been bothered by the way my kids could hurt others and not seem to care. I secretly thought it made them bad kids. But there’s no way they could have had a conscience until they started to trust. (Location 3049)
I discovered that counselors, doctors, nurses, and others who interact with traumatized people are the ones who typically suffer from compassion fatigue. While not a formal diagnosis in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), compassion fatigue describes helpers who experience isolation, apathy, sadness, fatigue, and other symptoms from being immersed in trauma without adequate self-care. Some use the term interchangeably with burnout, vicarious traumatization, or secondary traumatic stress. I began to think of compassion as a muscle or organ, just like the heart or a leg muscle, or even the adrenal glands. Giving compassion in healthy balance is good, but overusing the “muscle” without enough rest causes problems. (Location 3077)
“The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet.” (Location 3091)
Over the years, I noticed my PTSD symptoms came out more as the kids healed. At first it confused me, but I realized that it was happening as I felt safer. (Location 3179)
I found a book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, MD. He explained that trauma is stored in a different part of the brain than language, which makes it hard to connect to or talk about it. He said that people with PTSD are on constant sensory overload and that “all trauma is preverbal.” (Location 3210)
I ended up figuring out that a weighted blanket also helped release trauma from my body. (Location 3221)
“These neurotransmitters are meant to give you energy. Your norepinephrine is low, which can cause fatigue, low mood, and weight issues, as well as the focus and memory issues you’ve been having.” I’d gained back quite a bit of weight since I hadn’t been focusing as much on taking good care of myself. I was also still struggling with depression, despite taking antidepressants. “Glutamate, PEA, and epinephrine also get you going, but yours are too high, so that can cause anxiety, focus issues, and sleep difficulties. The high PEA can cause your mind to race, which contributes to sleep problems.” (Location 3235)
The test came back with a recommended list of supplements, which Dr. Caporiccio had already ordered. As she handed them to me, she gave me the “mom” look. “This doesn’t replace the need to rest and take good care of yourself.” She knew that while I had come a long way, my natural tendency was to push myself way too hard. Taking these supplements helped my fatigue like nothing else we had tried. Resting and taking things off my stress load also helped. I was working with Vicki, the dietitian on Dr. Caporiccio’s staff, who had a son with autism and understood my levels of stress. She recommended that I take extra magnesium, vitamin C, and B-vitamins, since those vitamins are quickly spent during times of stress. The extra supplements helped tremendously. For a year and a half, I’d had an eye twitch that wouldn’t go away. I laughed at the thought that for a long time I probably looked like I was winking at everybody. I’d also felt nervous, like I was about to speak to a huge crowd of people. After increasing my magnesium intake, the anxiety and muscle spasms went away completely. The B-vitamins helped increase my energy and mood, and vitamin C helped me stay healthy. (Location 3241)
I realized how easy it is to look at someone else and think they’ve got it together when we feel like a failure. (Location 3263)
I wished someone had told me in the beginning. (Location 3267)
“Your emotions are a normal reaction to an abnormal situation.” (Location 3277)
As I learned to become gut-level honest with myself, I loved being able to give these parents a safe place to express themselves without fear of judgment or criticism. (Location 3279)
When I found myself getting frustrated with Parker’s obnoxious antics, I had to remind myself that I didn’t get one call that day from the school telling me to pick him up and I hadn’t had to worry about him hurting our pets. That was progress. (Location 3318)
None of our experiences were wasted. Every struggle, every pain, every difficulty has been used for God’s glory and our good. I do not want to go back and relive what we have been through, but God used it all to grow me – and us – in ways I never thought possible. (Location 3440)