The Need for Grace during the Healing Journey

In my last entry I wrote about how I have to carry my girls through many parts of our marriage while they are healing. Maybe this should go without saying, but there’s a definite need for me to quietly and often invisibly offer my wife and the girls grace during this time.

Since the inside girls have entered our family life, many, many things have had to be changed. It’s really not any different than when children enter the family except that those children happen to be living in the body of my adult wife and they need extra grace while they heal from major emotional trauma.

I understand that I would expect a normal child to do chores around the house and clean up after him/herself. But right now I have put a premium on filling the inside girls’ wounded spirit(s) with love and joy. So I overlook many things that I wouldn’t if these girls were outside daughters. So a lot of my day I spend acting like a butler and cleaning up after them or running petty errands for them.

But this has created a corresponding dynamic with my son. As I’ve said before he is wonderful with Alleylieu and Amy, but he gets a little frustrated with the fact that they don’t help more around the house. So I’ve also had to extend grace to him concerning chores and responsibilities. I have a hard time demanding him to help me more around the house when his mother does so little. Right now our household operates on the principle of taking care of the necessities and many other things we just don’t worry about.

Another thing I have had to do is learn to extend grace to Karen. And sometimes this is the hardest because I want and need her to “act” like an adult, but as she told me one day, with Amy, Alleylieu, Sophia and the others so close to the surface nowadays, they are playing havoc with her personality and emotions. Right now she literally cannot act like an adult most of the time. I wish it were otherwise, but to demand it of her would be to demand the impossible.

Currently everything is all stirred up inside and the girls and Karen are swirling, bumping, churning, grinding, and mixing together like a tornado. The floodgates have been opened wide, and everything that used to be “neatly” kept separate is being shoved back together. There’s a lot going on, and though I so deeply miss the adult companionship of my wife, I have to view this as a time of convalescence just as if she had been in a major car accident or had a major fight with cancer and was incapacitated for months or maybe a year or two.

One definition of grace says it is generosity of spirit, a capacity to tolerate, accommodate, or forgive people. I think that’s a good definition. Everyone has his or her pet peeves about how a household should be run. But if you’re going to create a safe and loving environment conducive for healing to someone with DID, you definitely will need to graciously overlook many things that you would normally find annoying and intolerable. You will need to become a person full of grace.

Blessings.

Sam, I Am.