The crash

I’m approaching the 6 year anniversary of when my life crashed.

It was the Fall of 2018.

I was a new social worker a year out of grad school working in an incredibly stressful job. I had a big heart but no boundaries. I didn’t know how to set limits with myself or others. I didn’t know how to say “no.”

The population I was working with — abuse and neglect — wore on me. I started to feel crushed by the weight of the stories I’d hear but I didn’t know how to care for myself. All I knew was productivity and pressure and performance.

I didn’t listen to the warning signs of stress. I kept pushing.

Forging a new way

To top it off, I was also in the early stages of a long and messy breakup with psychiatry. To address the lingering depression and anxiety associated with my highly stressful job, my psychiatrist at the time wrote me a prescription for an antipsychotic on top of another medication I was already on. “Is this really what I’m destined to?,” I’d wonder. “Fixing things with more pills?”

After almost 10 years of going this route, I decided against filling the prescription and was determined to forge a new way.

[Note: Transitioning away from psychiatric medications was one of the hardest endeavors I’ve ever undertaken, and one I don’t recommend for everyone. Medications can and are a very wonderful thing. But for me, they were not addressing the underlying sources of my distress and pain, and were even masking certain symptoms that needed to be followed and heard. For some, weaning off may not be possible, and I do support the use of medications when absolutely needed.]

My path out of psychiatry

So, thus began a two year journey of my body undergoing some messy withdrawals, triggering brutal insomnia and extreme dysregulation for over a year. My mind was constantly at war within itself and my spirit plunged into a darkness I’d never known.

I found myself in a hole so deep, tortured by the war within. I couldn’t quite understand why God would let me fall so hard. I thought He would have caught me before I went that far. Like a parent pulls their child away from a hot stove, or a busy road, why didn’t He, too, pull me back sooner? Oh, how I felt the burn of the stove and the whirl of the cars.

I was so, so afraid.

Looking back, I see exactly where He caught me, where He shielded me from darkness’ lure. What happened next was a slow and steady (and still messy) climb out of the hole:

The climb

Through this process, and with the help of some highly skilled functional medicine providers, I uncovered an autoimmune disorder lurking under the surface. I started receiving treatment for this and over time certain symptoms improved. I learned to listen to the voice of my body and started honoring its cues and signs of distress. I even started to rest which was a new and foreign concept for me. 🙂

I started to take better care of this beautiful and holy place God calls good and allows His spirit to dwell.

I left that stressful job and found another one that gave me the space to recover (it was quite boring at times but in this case boring was good). I took up the practice of mindfulness and studied the art of focused attention, open awareness, and kind intention. I learned how to meditate; how to allow and accept without fighting my experiences and judging myself so harshly.

I opened myself up to community, letting others see my big, messy cries while listening to the hope they had for me that I had lost long ago. I let them envision a new way for me when I couldn’t see past my own shadow.

I learned that the only antidote to my own shame is the Father’s sweet love. His grace is the song that lifted me out of the hole, with the help of his people.

In this season I felt like God had left me. And then I got to the point when I doubted if He was even there. In the early hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep, I’d pace around my backyard pleading for Him to show Himself to me.

But what I’ve come to realize is that He was always there.

He was with me in many ways, in part through His people.

He showed up in the hands that touched me during healing prayers, in the arms that hugged me and pulled me up when I fell down, in the feet that walked with me on countless hikes through Harbison State Forest, in the ears that listened to my story and didn’t leave or judge, in the eyes that saw me and envisioned a future for me I couldn’t see at the time.

He was always there. And now I see.

The body of Christ is a beautiful thing.

Suffering is always a season

I just celebrated my daughter’s second birthday. Six years ago, I never would’ve believed I’d see this. Life was so bleak. I didn’t even want kids at the time and I didn’t even know if my body could make them. If only I knew back then how much beauty and goodness would be on the other side…

We appreciate the light so much more when it comes after the dark. We appreciate the Spring after the Winter, the sun after the rain, the healing after the sting of the wound.

We then get to walk others through the darkness because we now know the way.

There is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

A clearing at the end of the forest.

And people who can take you there, if you let them.

Just keep going. don’t stop.

I promise, it’s worth it.