A few years ago, our daughter began exhibiting some scary behavior, which began to escalate quickly. We knew that we had only a short time to act or we were going to lose our daughter. Sophia needed help, and she needed it fast.
At first, we were resistant to the idea that we needed outside help to take care of our daughter. It was a difficult decision, but we knew we couldn’t wait for years as the problem worsened. We feared that if we waited too long, it might be too late. After talking it over with Sophia, we knew things were spiraling out of control already. So, we spoke with a therapist and found out that Sophia was suffering from severe attachment issues. She was struggling with alcohol abuse, contemplating running away, or even suicide. At the therapist’s recommendation, we signed her up for a wilderness program. This was the first stage of what would be an 18-month recovery program.
Because of the speed of the initial decision-making process, we didn’t have time to feel shame or guilt until after Sophia was in the wilderness program. But once she was gone, we started to question ourselves as parents. Our family and friends started to ask questions, too. Sophia wasn’t exhibiting overt signs of trouble. But inside, she was suffering from intense pain. Many of our friends and family couldn’t see that from the outside. They felt that we were overreacting by sending Sophia to a wilderness therapy program so suddenly. Naturally, that led us to begin to question ourselves as parents. We began to wonder if we were, in fact, doing the right thing.
That’s when the feelings of shame and guilt began to build up in our lives. “As a father, you feel like you want to protect your daughter and be with her to help her go through this troubling time,” John said. “Part of my own belief system very much was that I should be able to handle it myself. If I was a strong father, I could just handle anything on my own.”
“Deep down, we knew we were doing the right thing,” Amy remembers. “We were seeking truth and were actively praying about the decision, and we both came to the same realization about what needed to be done.” But even so, it was hard not to second-guess ourselves.
“The hard part for me,” John recalled several years later, “was reconciling the diagnosis of attachment issues with the idea of sending her away to the wilderness. It seemed counter-intuitive.” It wasn’t until the therapist asked him to reflect on how the situation with his daughter was affecting his relationship with his wife that things began to make sense. “That really hit home with me,” John recalled, “because it really was affecting how Amy and I were getting along. And it wasn’t positive all the time.”
The same therapist helped Amy to overcome her feelings of shame. “She asked me if I could continue through this for the next 6 or 8 weeks, or even longer, living the way we were. And I said, absolutely not.” So, we had to make a deliberate effort to do what we knew was right for Sophia, and not let it be about us. Everything we were doing, we had to do for Sophia’s healing. “I knew,” Amy said, “that to stay strong I needed to let go of guilt and shame. Maybe people wouldn’t understand. But it’s OK, because we were doing the right thing for Sophia.” Once we were able to let go of the shame and guilt, we suddenly had the freedom to be able to help Sophia because we could focus on her, instead of on ourselves.
Rather than hiding behind our feelings of shame, we began telling our story to other people. This turned out to be an immense help to us. We never hid behind the shame. We knew that in the struggle we were going through, we needed our Christian friends and family and our church to be behind us. “As we started to be more vulnerable,” Amy explained, “the shame just automatically started to give over to love.” People loved that we were opening up to them. And we were surprised at what happened next. Other people started sharing their stories with us, wanting to feel that same release from the shame and guilt that had been holding them down before.
John put it this way: “There’s strength in being vulnerable. And I’m talking about positive vulnerability. There’s such strength and compassion and togetherness when you can be vulnerable.”
“I had to accept that there were things I could have done better,” Amy cautions. “This wasn’t all Sophia. It was a family thing.” But once we both owned that, it started to lift some of the shame. We gave it to the Lord and shared it with friends. We were vulnerable, admitting our flaws and failings. That’s what really helped us. By being vulnerable, we no longer had anything to hide.
And for the last three years now, we’ve continued to share our story, and in that time, we’ve seen so many people hand their feelings of shame over to the Lord. We know now that if we hide behind our shame and lament about the decisions we made, we are modeling to our other children that shame isn’t something you give up to the Lord. Instead, it’s something that keeps you trapped in an endless cycle of guilt and regret.
Sophia’s journey, just like ours, continues. The wilderness therapy program was a huge part of that journey. It continues to be a major part of Sophia’s life, and all of our lives. A situation like this can either pull a family together or pull it apart. God brings struggles into our lives for a purpose. And this struggle has brought our entire family full circle and brought us closer together. We had to become so vulnerable with one another that we had to really cement our communication skills and active listening skills. But mostly, we learned we were never meant to do struggles like this on our own. We’re not meant to do life on our own. God has used this experience to show us what that really looks like. So, it’s changed us all. Completely changed us.
The audio version of Dean’s interview with John and Amy is embedded below, courtesy of SoundCloud. If you are reading this post from a feed reader or an e-mail, you can find the audio version of the interview online here.