My Blankie, My Comfort
When I was young I had a big, white, and soooo soft “blankie.” However, it was only at my Grandmother’s house when I would visit. It was my comfort while I was there. But one day I came for a visit, and my blankie turned into a big, yellow, and not so soft blankie. What happened?!!! According to my grandmother, it had become so worn out and holey that she “fixed it up a bit.” Right… nice try Grandma. I knew she threw my blankie away, and I was devastated.
Fast forward to my first pregnancy. I was determined that my children would not feel the devastating loss of a beloved blankie so I invested in multiple white birdseye cloths. They were soft and lightweight. Easy to carry around. Not bulky. AND I had multiple ones!! My child would not experience the same loss I did.
When my son was born I set my plan in motion. I started using the cloths while breastfeeding and then when he got a little bit older I would leave one in the crib with him. It worked! While sucking his thumb, he carried that little blankie everywhere, and in his eyes, it was always there. (Thank you multiples!)
My daughter on the other hand never took to my purple-dyed birdseye cloths, instead liked her hair better. She would twirl her hair and suck on her little two fingers, and never really attached to an object. At least her hair would not get lost!
Both children, in their own time, stopped sucking their thumb or fingers and stopped needing the blankie. I eventually stopped needing my blankie and stopped sucking my thumb. Did we stop because we no longer needed comfort? Nope.
We stopped because it became socially unacceptable to suck our thumb or carry around a blankie at school. And let’s just say a nasty ointment helped me stop sucking my thumb! Yuck!
From day one, even within the womb, there is a natural need to suck our thumbs or fingers because it helps to regulate our emotions. Dr. Susan Heitler in her article “Lessons from Thumbsucking, the Earliest Addiction,” mentioned a study of premature infants, and it was discovered that “sucking actually re-optimized the heartbeats and breathing patterns of upset babies, slowing them and regularizing the rhythms.”
When our first coping mechanism is taken away, there is still a need for comfort and soothing. That need just doesn’t just go away and other means of coping need to replace the thumb sucking and blankies. As a result, children need the help of their parents to help them regulate their overwhelming emotions and learn new coping strategies.
I know as a parent, I didn’t always do a great job of this. I tended to say, “Quick get up! You’re ok!” when they fell down in the hopes of bypassing the crying. I could go on about what I could have done better in my parenting but this is not what this blog is about.
It’s about our need as adults for comfort. That need has always been and will always be there, and we can’t carry around our blankies anymore.
We are 100% guaranteed to deal with difficult situations in life, but sometimes we are not emotionally equipped to deal with them. Whether there was a lack of comfort in our lives or we never learned how to bounce back well from adversity, we get stuck. We don’t know what to do with the hard emotions swirling around us, so we end up stuffing them, denying them, or medicating them. Anything to keep us from having to deal with them.
Katie M. McLaughlin in her blog, mentions a train analogy that says,
“Difficult feelings are tunnels, and we are trains traveling through them.”
The premise is that we have to go through the dark to get to the light at the end of the tunnel. I have heard of this saying before, but I never looked at the dark tunnel as my emotions. I always saw the tunnel as representing the dark and difficult times in my life, and I just had to keep moving forward to get to the light.
But let’s apply this to our emotions instead. In her blog, Katie tells a story of her son having a huge tantrum and how she sat with him during the tough emotions. She let him travel through the dark emotions.
Feel them.
Experience them.
Once he traveled through the emotional tunnel, he came out into a place of calm and had built resiliency in the process.
Somewhere along the way, we have learned to avoid the tunnel of emotions. We deny its very existence. We find other things or people to make us feel better, and keep us from traveling into the tunnel. Ice cream. Shopping. Relationships. Chocolate. Alcohol. Just enough to numb those emotional tunnels.
Or, we let the tunnel sweep us up. We stop in the middle. Stuck. Unsure which way to go. Back to the way things were? Or, move to the light, knowing it may get darker before we see the light? Or, just stay where we are at, stuck in the dark, immobilized, rusting up in the damp coldness?
I have found myself at various times in my life stuck in the middle of the tunnel. Unsure of what to do. Overwhelmed by the emotions. Frozen in fear. I look back and only see darkness. Not an option. Looking forward I see a faint light, but I’m weary and overwhelmed. I don’t know how to move forward.
I want my blankie.
I curl up in a ball. Scared. Unsure. I close my eyes hoping it will all go away.
But then, in a soft, soothing breeze, comes a whisper to my heart.
“You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light.” 2 Samuel 22:29
I open my eyes and there is Jesus. Glowing in the darkness. My Lamp. And dressed in a soft white, flowing dress gown. Just like my blankie. He reaches out his hand. Pulls me up from the filth. And together, we walk towards the light.
Lord, thank you for being my comfort. My blankie. May my friends hear your sweet whisper of love, hold out their hands to you, and follow you into the light. Amen.
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