My Inside Story

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by your name;

You are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.

For I am the Lord your God, your Savior.

Isaiah 43

  

A blog or so back, I told my story of rebellion against God and His grace and rescue, but the end of that blog post was not the end of the story. Here’s an embarrassing admission; sometimes I wonder if people look at me and think I have it all, because I do – I have a wonderful husband, two adorable (and mostly well-behaved) children, a great job in a profession I love and have always wanted to practise. I have so many amazing friends and an extended family that are all still together and successful themselves. I don’t seem to struggle with my weight and am often complimented on my clothes or my hair. (Are you puking yet?) Hold on though, this is just my objective assessment of what my life may look like from the outside. But I’m going to tell you the inside, and it’s not pretty.

Last July, I was diagnosed with depression. This is my story.

Since our twins were born, I have had difficulty sleeping. I have a great doctor who has been walking me through this struggle and so when I came into his office and told him that I thought I may be suffering from depression, he took the time to ask me again my responses to a series of questions.  When he got to the one that asked, “do you feel others would be better off without you?”, I paused, thought of my sweet boys and my gentle husband and sobbed as I answered, yes.

I will never forget that moment. It was the answer I was so afraid to admit because I genuinely believed it was true. You see, I didn’t know I was depressed. My depression didn’t look like what I thought depression would look like. I didn’t have trouble getting out of bed or rendered unable to try. Not at all. I was DRIVEN. Hounded, trying, striving, working, desperately attempting to PROVE that I was not the things that I felt – a failure, disgusting, full of guilt and shame, a person that others would be better off without.

So, I WORKED. I worked so hard: at housework, because I messy house screamed the truth at me – that I was a failure. I (tried to) accomplish: at work, at home, at church, anywhere I could. Because tallying up what I had gotten done that day meant that I had some value. I was desperately beating back that thing that tormented me. This tormentor that beat me down, that kicked my legs out from under me every time I tried to get up and get away from these awful accusations that I couldn’t face because I was convinced were true.

This has a happy ending, so stay with me.

Now that I am on a medication that is working, I can see more clearly now than I ever have. I can see that I have suffered with this since my mid-teens. For me, it played out as a cycle: I would be ok (even good!), and then start to spiral down. I can’t tell you what would trigger the spiral but it would start as discouragement at the bottom I would be in despair. Do you know what despair is? It’s beyond feeling “down”, it means the complete loss or absence of hope. Hope is a powerful thing and to be without it is powerless.

My saving grace was always God. No matter how far I was from Him, whatever way I was living (aka sinning), I can see now that He has always been with me. About every 6 months, I would crash at the bottom of my “cycle”, I would beg God not to forget me. I knew I wasn’t ready to return to Him, but I still asked Him not to let me go. He never did.

I can see that it was His grace that would let me crawl up and out and away from my tormentor and then (unfortunately) I would carry on in my own way, self-medicating with a new relationship, a new experience, a new job, new friends, a new place to live. All of these were distractions that would fill me with the positive chemicals my brain so desperately needed, at least until the next crash.

The turning point in my life was a night that I was so hopeless that I didn’t want to live anymore. This was before I started back on my road as a Believer, trusting and obeying God. But I did still talk to Him. I had always believed that suicide was wrong, because I believe that life and death are in God’s hands (side note, I do not believe that people who commit suicide are lost to heaven). But that belief kept me from attempting to take my own life. So that night after balling my eyes out and ugly-crying in despair, I said to God, “if there’s really no hope for me, if I am lost to You forever, please just don’t let me wake up in the morning.” And I went to sleep in peace, because I trusted that He would do as I asked, and that if I woke up, there was hope.

Obviously, I woke up. And I woke into a new hope. That was the beginning of my return to Jesus. From that time, my depression cycle began to change. I still struggled with self-medicating with sin, but more and more I found my hope and healing in Him. Consequently, my despair cycle also began to change. I would be ok for a while, start to get discouraged, and, if I left it long enough without reaching out to Him, or if it was strong enough, I would again end in despair. But He ALWAYS showed up, and with Him came release and more healing of my deep wounds that were propelling the cycle in the first place. I got stronger.

Then, I got married. To a wonderful man that I love and knew that God had chosen for me. But it was a tough adjustment for both of us, and then, just a few months into our marriage, we got pregnant with twins. It was a very difficult pregnancy, and I struggled emotionally and physically. I had always used accomplishments and the affirmation of others as a salve against the constant refrain of “failure” and “loser” and all the other the harbingers of despair I would experience. Suddenly, I could accomplish nothing and went from being fit to a person with a body completely wrecked and totally weakened.

After the boys were born, I definitely had post-partum depression. It went undiagnosed because again, I thought depression looked a certain way. Instead, I was constantly trying to push back the “truth” of my being. That I was alone, that I was disgusting, that I was unlovable, that I was a failure.

I’d get really bad, and then cry out to God and He would pick me back up. But I kept falling, deeper and deeper each time, until last summer, I couldn’t get back up. I was calling out to God and even though He was talking to me, and carrying me, and showing me His love and forgiveness, it wasn’t having the same length of effect. The time between my moments (or days or weeks) of despair came closer and close, one after another.

I was always stressed out. Trying SO hard to be a gentle and kind mother and wife, when all I felt like was that there was this monster inside of me, trying to claw its way out of my body. I can still remember the physical feeling of something trying to claw its way out of my throat. I was constantly irritable; feeling like the next thing to go wrong was the thing that was going to break me (although I could not have told you that’s how I felt at the time, I thought I was stressed, but still normal and rational). So, the dishes in the sink, something falling on the floor, the boys doing something that might end in a mess that I wouldn’t have the strength to clean up, all of these simple things felt like monumental tasks to overcome. “Just let the house be messy,” you say? Well I couldn’t, remember? A mess screamed at me, tormenting me that I really was all those things: a failure, a disgusting maggot, a loser. And I COULD NOT handle that it was true. So, I kept working, I kept trying, I kept striving; thrashing out against my demon.

I took most of it out on Mitch. I could not punish my innocent boys for needing me, but he was an adult and he would have to take it. It actually wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I didn’t yell, I never name-called, I actually tried really hard to do all the outward things that a nice wife should do. But I would get snappy and cold-angry.  I was trying so hard to be the person I sensed that I really was, but who was always out of reach.

I read through my journal of those days and I see over and over Jesus coming to me and comforting me, and walking with me and sometimes just sitting with me. His tenderness and faithfulness in the face of my everything amazes me.

Eventually I started to realize that this may be bigger than me. I had talked to a friend who told me a similar story of her experience and how she went on medication and she was doing so much better. I have other friends who have been so open and vulnerable with me about their journeys struggling with anxiety.

But I was afraid. I didn’t really understand medication for something like this and I thought what a lot of people think – that these kinds of medication are “happy pills” and I was worried. My need for God was so strong and it kept me close to Him. If this is what I looked like with Him, I didn’t need to imagine myself without Him. I thought, if I took the pills, I would be transported into some unconnected bliss where I would completely ignore God because things were so good? and I know I can be that sort of follower.

But I was also desperate. And I prayed about it. And I felt like God was saying, go do this. Let’s get you to a place where we can walk into places together that you can’t handle right now, so that I can bring you into healing. So, I did, and He is.

Thankfully I kept notes of the effects of coming out of this dark place. The first few days I felt nauseous and I slept a lot. But I also found myself just sitting. Resting. I could never do that before. I mean, I DID sit. I would sit with my kids because that’s what a good mother does, but I would be mad-distracted by all the things I should be doing and so my “rest” was all a mirage. Now, it was deep and quiet. Not a haze, just a quietness of that moment. I started to see myself shrug off those little inconveniences, or even big ones. I started to be lighter, and happier and more relaxed.

My marriage got better. I was laughing and was organically the person that I always sensed I was. God started showing me things about myself that when I believed I was a maggoty-loser, would only have reinforced that image, but now, I could see these things I did for what they were. Not proof I was a loser, but baggage that I needed to acknowledge, confess, seek forgiveness for and receive healing. Whoa!!! Mind blowing.

I saw the effect on my kids too. One of our sons is a bit more prone to seriousness than the other. He is very sensitive to my expectations and moods, although I never knew how much until I saw him laugh. It makes me cry with happiness and relief to think of it now. But one day, I saw him laugh a huge belly-laugh, mouth wide open. I had never seen him do that before. He was relaxed because I was relaxed. Praise Jesus. That moment was worth all the pills I’ll ever have to take!

It’s been about 6 months and my life is not a blissful existence where my problems and stressor slip around me, unnoticed. I get stressed and annoyed and even P.O.’d. I also get moments where I feel those same feelings in my gut that I would get when I felt those awful “truths”. But I know they aren’t true, and I am able to go to the Lord for my truth and those lies fall away in the face of His strength.

I don’t understand the connection between spiritual reality and medication. This is what I believe: I think that the physical, mental and spiritual parts of us are so intertwined, that one affects the others. I think that as we are wounded spiritually and emotionally, especially as children, and if those wounds go unhealed, they will go on to affect us physically – chemically.  I think that’s what happened to me. I had deep hurts that instead of taking them to the Healer, to Jesus, I hid from them and they festered. They birthed a monster inside of me that happily fed on the infections of my heart, digesting it all into lies. Lies that told me that I was a monster. That I was disgusting. That I was unlovable and unpleasant. And slowly, they all had an effect physically – in my brain. So now my brain can’t produce the proper chemicals that it should to keep me from depression. And that’s why pills work.

Except they don’t work forever. If I just rely on the pills, eventually I will have to increase the dose or try a new kind. BUT if I take this respite to connect with Jesus, to bring Him the hurts that everyday bumping and bruising awakens, He WILL heal those dark places of bondage and pain, and dispel the lies that those place ooze into my psyche. And I believe that spiritual and emotional healing will translate into physical healing. That my brain will recover and make new pathways and release the chemicals that right now I get from medication.

This is NOT to say that if I am on medication for my life-time, I am a failure. It’s just to say that my God IS Healer and I trust Him.

And that’s where I’m at. This took a lot of words to tell because the concepts are still tough for me to put into words. I am still processing and finding ways to explain what happened. But if you have made it to the end, please know, I just want to live transparently because that’s where the Glory is. For Him. Anything good you see is Him, not me. And I’m totally cool with that.