Not Alone

I woke up squinting just as the sun was beginning to stream through my bedroom window. Still exhausted from a restless night of sleep, I rolled over and looked at my phone to realize that I had slept in later than I meant to. I sat up slowly and waited a moment to let my blood pressure rise before pulling my legs off of the bed, one at a time. After pausing another few seconds, I transferred into my wheelchair and headed to the shower, grabbing a towel on the way.

I opened my iPhone’s music library and scrolled through until I found an upbeat playlist. Turning up the volume, I set it on a ledge next to the shampoo, just out of the water’s reach, and turned on the shower. I aimed the water against the wall, waiting for it to warm up, and sat with my arms crossed and head lowered. Despite the uplifting music and rising steam that offered to lift my spirits, I couldn’t shake the heavy feeling that I had gone to sleep and woken up with. 

The last six months have been some of the most difficult I’ve lived since my injury. They’ve been full of firsts in the wheelchair, something that always tends to bring up grief for me. Since May, I moved out on my own, got a puppy, enrolled back in fall semester, and started dating more. Progress in these areas is worth celebration, but each came with major challenges that wouldn’t exist were I not paralyzed. I don’t want to have to worry about finding an accessible apartment building, or train a puppy from a wheelchair, and I don’t want to deal with the insecurities of having a disability in the context of a relationship.

As I sat in the shower with the warm water running over the back of my head and shoulders, my mind was filled with thoughts of wanting an easier life, a “normal” life. When will this stop being so difficult? When will I stop grieving? I shut off the water, and reached outside the shower curtain for my towel. I leaned forward to dry my legs off, and as I did so my feet slipped and I fell forward onto the wet bathroom floor. This is the second time I’ve fallen in a month, and I almost never fall.  

I grabbed my towel and pulled it under me before disentangling my legs from the footplate of the shower chair. Finally freed, I sat with my legs in front of me, sopping wet, with Lindsey Stirling’s “Crystallize” blaring from my now out-of-reach phone. I felt my face warm as I became overwhelmed by a combination of self-pity and disgust. There could have been no better image that represented how I felt about life at that moment, than a cold, dripping Carson, sitting naked and paralyzed on the bathroom floor. Filled with rage and pain, I leaned forward onto my elbows and sobbed. 

After a few minutes of trying to collect myself, I pushed my wheelchair out of the bathroom ahead of me, scooted across the carpet, and transferred up onto my bed. I dried myself off of the cold beads of water that clung to my goose-bumped skin, and began dressing while a stream of angry tears ran down my face. “This is pathetic," I thought over and over.

The last few months have brought me into such a turbulent emotional space that I’ve questioned whether or not I actually possess the resilience necessary to overcome my challenges. I’ve felt pushed to my absolute limit, and it’s been sobering and terrifying. I’ve found myself earnestly asking, “How can I make it through these challenges? How can I endure this pain?” 

Not knowing how, or perhaps not trusting my own strength, I’ve turned to others. My dear older brother received several texts a day for many weeks. Messages like,  “Braun, I’m reaching out, I’m struggling”, or “My heart feels so heavy, I don’t know if I can do this”, and sometimes, “I know you’re busy, but can I call you when you have a moment?” From giving me ideas to reduce my anxiety, to offering wise relationship advice, he made himself available to support me. Every time he messaged back, he reassured me that I was never a burden, asked questions to better understand the situation, and expressed love.

The night of the same day that I fell in the shower, I was supposed to meet up with two friends. When I expressed to them that I wasn’t feeling up to making the trip into Salt Lake, they insisted that they come to my apartment, sensing I needed support but not knowing what had transpired that day. I sat cross-legged under my softest blanket on the couch across from them as they listened with concern written on their faces. “You can talk about this as often as you need to”, was their response as I hesitated to share the struggles they’ve heard so many times.

Asking for help isn’t easy for me. It’s especially difficult when I have to ask for support more than once on the same issue, but the other option is that I fight my battles alone. I’ve realized that my response to “How can I make it through these challenges? How can I endure this pain?” is “I can’t on my own.” In my darkest moments, it is always another human being that reminds me that I’m loved, that I can make it through another day, or that I’m doing a good job with what life has given me. It is always another person that gives me hope, or reminds me that I still have what matters most in life. It has been humbling to realize that I’m not as strong as I thought I was, that there are some challenges that I can’t take on alone. But now I know that I don’t have to fight my battles by myself as long as I’m willing to reach out and ask for help.

Faith: Everything I Don't Know

At the church I attend, there is an opportunity for the members of the congregation to stand up at the pulpit to share convictions and testimonies of faith faith. It is called a testimony meeting. 

I have been struggling with my faith in a significant way for the last several years, and each time this meeting arrives, I sit and listen, but usually find myself realizing that I “know” less and less. Within my faith culture, faithfulness and obedience are both highly prized and rewarded. We frequently tell stories of the most faithful, the most obedient, and the strongest, most dedicated saints. We also hear warnings of the teachings of the world, or the dangers of questioning one’s faith. If these messages aren’t explicitly stated, they are strongly implied. But, you know, I understand why this happens in some faith cultures. Painting a picture of faith in only black and white, and good and bad eliminates uncertainly, which is a feeling that we all try to avoid. It gives us the idea that there are solutions and answers to the struggles and difficulties we face. Ultimately, we turn faith into something it is not. We turn it into something certain.

This is a topic that I have wanted to write about for a long time, and yesterday, I sat at that pulpit in front of the whole congregation, and told them everything I didn’t know about my faith. 

The new year always brings with it the sense of a new beginning and an opportunity to change, so naturally I have been thinking about what I want to change in 2017. “Courage” is a word that has defined my journey, not because it is an attribute I possess in abundance, but because every step I take seems to require more of it. According to researcher Brené Brown, The latin root of courage is “cor”, meaning heart. The word “courage” originally meant to tell one’s story by speaking all one’s heart. Essentially, it means to live and practice authenticity.

As I sat in front of the congregation, I told them that courage for me meant saying, “I don’t know” when it came to my faith. My whole life I have believed that faith is knowing something. There is a song that the children sing that states, “Faith is knowing the sun will rise, lighting each new day”. It’s a beautiful song. One of the hardest moments of my life was the moment I realized that faith is not knowing the sun will rise, it is believing the sun will rise. Faith is a choice, and is, by definition, not knowing.

This faith transition was painful because my life suddenly became filled with uncertainty. At first, this transition felt like an absolute crisis, an existential meltdown. At moments, I felt great fear and even despair as I courageously said to myself, “I don’t know”. This was during the early stages of my spinal cord injury when questioning my faith felt like a death threat to the last thing I had to hold on to: hope. Hope for a better outcome, hope for a miracle, hope that there is a life without pain. I spent hours consulting with friends, mentors, and wise therapists about the complexity of the realizations I was having. I counted on their strength for a long time.

As time marched along, hope crept back into my life and I found a form of spiritual faith and divine connection that currently supports me (by “faith”, I literally mean faith, as opposed to religion). I’ve slowly come to realize the strength and utility this type of faith has brought into my life. I now see life experiences in shades and hues of gray, and rarely in blacks and whites. This has made such a realistic space for a kind of diversity and experience that my past faith didn’t have room for. This kind of faith has made me far more compassionate, authentic, and open to the differences of others.

Yesterday in church I expressed that I think that church is for people like me, people who question, people who don’t always know what/if they believe. My story is as real as the story of those who have never questioned. There is room at the table for all of us, hopefully without shame or exclusion. This is what Christ taught, and it is how he lived his life.

I have a lot to figure out and the list of things I know is getting shorter and shorter. But for now, this is my testimony: I know that we are here to connect to each other, and bear each other’s burdens. I know that we need to belong and feel loved in order to thrive. I know that I am happiest when I am living courageously and owning my story, even though it’s hard and even when I wish it were different. And that’s about it for now. It’s not terribly religious, and that’s okay.  I’m owning that.