The Gift of Crisis. Bridgitte Jackon Buckley
entire exchange of information in Spanish, another child had thrown a bottle which hit Greyson on his lip. My Spanish was still intact, but imagine me standing in her living room/bedroom, holding Greyson, trying to stay calm, mentally translating what she was saying to me while trying to find the right words in Spanish to relay how angry I was. I took the rest of the week off from work and found a preschool that would accept Greyson immediately.
Preschool was an adjustment. Greyson had to get used to being around many different types of children and to the rules in a new setting, and I had to get used to the $775 monthly tuition payment for a child who could feed himself. After the experience with the sister-in-law, what choice did I have? Now, three years after the birth of Greyson, his sister was due the next day.
“Dennis,” I call out. He has dozed off on the Lazy Boy with a pencil and the Contraction Count Card in his hands. “How many minutes ago was the last contraction?” I ask him. He has been timing the space between the contractions since this morning. The contractions haven’t gotten any closer than an hour apart. Other than the sharp pain in my lower back earlier this evening, while we were out having dinner, and my protruding belly, there is no sign of her arrival. Then, all of a sudden, and I mean out of nowhere, I have to go to the restroom immediately! I quickly scoot to the edge of the sofa, brace my arms for support and push myself up. I make it into the bathroom just fine. However, as I finish using the bathroom and stand to straighten my clothes, a stabbing pain simultaneously shoots through the front of my uterus and lower back. The pain is so intense my knees buckle, and I fall down onto the floor! It feels like a sharp object has been lodged in my lower back. I try to catch my breath, but with continuous pain it is difficult to breathe. I reach up to grab the doorknob. Thank goodness I didn’t lock it. I pull down on the doorknob. The door opens just enough to bump the top of my head. “Dennis!” A few feet away in the family room, he quickly comes around the corner and carefully squeezes through the bathroom door opening. “Is the baby coming? Can you stand? Did the water break?” he asks without pause. I can’t answer. I grab onto his arm to try to get up when another jolt of pain stabs at my uterus. It is unbelievable. It’s almost 11:00 p.m., the contractions are rapidly intensifying, and it is clear she is coming. Dennis pulls me up off the floor, and I take three steps before another jolt of pain hits again. Each time I have a contraction, I do the one thing you are advised not to do. I tighten e—v—e—r—y single muscle in my body. The Lamaze breathing techniques I practiced during my first pregnancy are difficult to remember, due to the shock of how quickly this is happening. Dennis calls out to my mother while holding me up to keep me from falling back to the floor. It takes fifteen minutes for Dennis and my mother to get me less than fifty feet, from the bathroom to Dennis’ truck parked outside in the driveway. Once I am seated in the truck, Dennis runs around to the driver’s side, jumps in, and quickly starts the engine. My mother gets into her car with Greyson and my brother, Christopher. The hospital is a ten-minute drive from my parents’ house. My mother and Dennis carefully bypass red and green lights. I hold onto the door handle and squeeze so tightly my hand is numb. As soon as I catch my breath, another contraction. The contractions that were practically non-existent less than forty-five minutes ago are now less than five minutes apart and relentless. Finally, both cars come to a screeching halt at the Emergency Department entrance. Dennis jumps out of the car and runs inside to get a wheelchair. It’s 11:35 p.m. I am immediately wheeled into a private room to get into a hospital gown. I can’t tell what is going on with the nursing staff, but they are moving incredibly slowly. After several minutes, I am wheeled into a delivery room for the doctor’s exam to determine the cervical dilation. At 11:50 p.m., the doctor lifts the sheet that covers me from the waist down. This time all thoughts of clarity and “clear beginnings” are out the door. I beg for the epidural. The pain is unbearable! The doctor quickly covers me back up with the sheet and responds, “You’re way beyond medicine now!” The next thing I know, the nurses are scurrying around the room in preparation for an immediate delivery. The reason the pain is more intense this time is because she is already coming out! I’m not merely having contractions, my body is holding her inside! At 12:01 a.m. on March 30th, the exact day she is due, the doctor says, “Alright, Bridgitte! I need you to push as hard as you can and don’t stop!” For the second time, I bear down with my remaining strength and push! At 12:10 a.m., Mckenna, our second child, is born.
After not wanting to leave Greyson, trying to find quality childcare that wasn’t equivalent to the cost of a mortgage, and dealing with the discomfort of leaving a baby with someone in whom I did not have implicit trust, I decided to remain at home with my daughter instead of returning to work.
When I made this decision, the teacher shortage in California was beginning to wind down. Teachers who were employed on Emergency Teaching Credentials were being laid off. I was one of those teachers. After six years of teaching at the elementary level, I received my layoff notice two months after Mckenna was born. This meant I was eligible for unemployment benefits. With the little money I had saved while teaching, the unemployment benefits that would hopefully stretch out for six months or more, and Dennis securing more home improvement work projects, I felt optimistic. It appeared the stay-at-home situation with Mckenna might actually work. We didn’t have a strong financial safety net in place, but, as I was able to identify potential income streams, I was determined to make it happen.
In a disturbing turn of events, two years later, Dennis was hospitalized due to the onset of symptoms for a stroke. He was thirty-three years old. When Dennis was admitted to the hospital, this completely changed the course of our lives. Every wheel that was turning forward stopped. In every way imaginable, we were unprepared to deal with the long-term effects of the mental, emotional, and financial challenges that lay ahead. The combination of financial distress, parental responsibilities, health crises, unexamined emotional wounds, blame, resentment, fear, and anger unearthed elements of our psyches that nearly destroyed us and our marriage. The loss of his ability to work propelled us into the beginning stage of what became the most prolonged and difficult period of our lives. For the next several years, we experienced the devastating loss of our home through foreclosure, ruptured familial relationships, job loss, and the steady decline of our marriage.
Throughout this period, there were repeated times when I thought I would not be able to go on; when I simply could not endure another minute of the mental and emotional despair in which I lived. For so long I believed myself to be the victim of these unwanted circumstances; that I was somehow being punished for past behaviors. It never occurred to me that the abysmal circumstances provided an invitation to move toward growth that can be garnered through challenge. It wasn’t until I began sincere self-examination and contemplation, meditation, and prayer, all of which were encouraged in the self-help books I read, that I was ready to understand my role in creating crisis. You might be thinking, “It doesn’t take a genius to realize the role one plays in creating problems in life.” And you’re right, it doesn’t take a genius to identify where some problems stem from. However, there is a deeper side to perpetual problems, chaos, and crisis. There is a deeper, unconscious part of ourselves that heavily influences our choices, behaviors, beliefs, and feelings. The unexamined and unresolved aspects of the subconscious influence who we are and what we do. Meditation helped to clear the mental pathway for the issues to come into my awareness, into my conscious mind. As I sank deeper into prayer, meditation, surrender, and seeking clarity through asking for guidance, the light within the darkness slowly began to emerge.
“When the heart is ready for a fresh beginning, unforeseen things can emerge. And in a sense, this is exactly what a beginning does. It is an opening for surprises. Surrounding the intention and the act of beginning, there are always exciting possibilities. Such beginnings have their own mind, and they invite and unveil new gifts and arrivals in one’s life. Beginnings are new horizons that want to be seen; they are not regressions or repetitions. Somehow they win clearance and become fiercely free of the grip of the past. What is the new horizon in you that wants to be seen?”
—John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
When I was a child, my mother and I attended a Baptist church. I spent many Sunday afternoons sitting on an uncomfortable wooden pew, listening to sermons about the strong possibility of my going to hell. At twelve years old, I even had a traditional water baptism. However, despite a religious background, at some point during the trying times of my