Mental Illness & Following Jesus
It was one of my goals in 2019 to be more open. It was also one of my goals to get back to making these blog posts. So in light of Bell Let’s Talk, I’ve decided to do just those two things.
I’m not sure exactly where to start, but I know I cannot be the only Christian who is confused and tired by the way many believers approach mental health. I tend to get two overarching reactions when talking about mental health (as I do quite often as a psych undergrad student); one response entails speculation of dark powers driving the mental health issues in the people who have them, which usually comes with comments about praying for their problems, or demons, to go away. The other reactions tend to be ones of disbelief that it's really an illness, getting comments like “they just need to shake it off.” And even though as a Christian I do believe in an enemy at work, and I do believe in the power of prayer, I've come to realize that mental health, just like physical health, is not necessarily something we all will live without. I’m also very aware, and pleased to know, that people, Christian or not, are becoming more informed of what’s the deal behind mental health, and doing what they can to break the stigma. And to that, I say thank you! But this blog is being posted for those still on the fence. This isn’t a post to start a theological debate about mental health or argue whether a Christian should be healthy and prosperous all the time if they just have enough faith. This is to share my journey with mental health, as a Christian, and to share how good God is in all my messiness.
So to start, let me tell you about my imperfect self. A part of me who I just opened up about to my fiancé, my family, and some of my friends in the last two years, because before that it was regularly suggested to me to “just be thankful”, “pray for God to take it away” and not to share my struggles when sharing my story, because people will think I’m “looking for attention”.
P.S.: I still have a loud voice inside me telling me people will think I’m looking for attention, but I have a louder voice telling me I can’t hold back what God has done for me in my life.
My mental struggles, as far as I can remember, started when I was about 11. I dealt with the (sadly) common struggles most 11-year-olds deal with. Body issues. My body was beginning to change out of my lanky child figure, and I have pretty heartbreaking memories of being a young girl, not yet in high school, pinching my fat and bawling my eyes out alone in my basement on a weekly basis. Fast forward to age 15, being in high school, starting to take an interest in pimpled ridden, voice cracked, hormone surged 15-year-old boys. Something in me switched at that age. I went from being sad about my chub to obsessing over taking control over it. Hence, the bulimia started. Purging was something I planned to do only temporarily until the weight came off. The sad part of an eating disorder is the weight really isn’t the problem. At 16 I weighed 125 pounds at 5 foot 6 and was obsessed with losing more weight. The goal was always 99 pounds, and I only got to 117. So, year 16 and 17 of my life was P90X and purging on a daily basis.
We’ll come back to the eating disorder later because at 17 another wave hit me. Anxiety. It’s funny because all my life I would say “wow I’m feeling so anxious right now” or “that gives me so much anxiety” lightly until the anxiety actually came. It started in grade 11, I lost a lot of my high school friends (a lot of whom I’ve reconnected with and love more than ever today, thank God). I would cry almost every night thinking about my next day at school and the feelings of loneliness. I would often find myself in the girls' washroom hyperventilating. The anxiety carried into every aspect of my life, often manifesting into full-blown panic attacks; curled up in a ball, on the ground, seemingly out of nowhere, unable to catch my breath, sometimes for up to 15 minutes. After a pretty rough breakup, things got exponentially worse. For about 6 months I was getting about 2-3 hours of sleep a day, a great side effect of anxiety called insomnia, and I felt like I was drowning in fears, hopelessness and thoughts of suicide.
It was when I was 17 I first started seeing a psychologist. Fast forward another two years, and I’m doing better. I’ve learned how to manage the panic attacks, I dealt with the anxiety, and I was sleeping much better. What I didn’t know at nineteen, and which I know now, is I was still dealing with what I’ve been dealing with from the beginning. Depression. It’s kind of weird, but as I write that word, I have a smile on my face. We’ll get to why in a second.
At 19, as many of you know, and the reason this blog even exists, I went to L.A. to serve with Youth with a Mission Los Angeles. While I was there I shared my testimony countless times, often talking about anxiety, but avoiding depression and especially avoiding my past with an eating disorder, mostly because I became very close with girls who had eating disorders, and I got it into my mind that because I wasn’t institutionalized for it, it wasn’t really a problem and I shouldn’t bring it up. It was in Barcelona that year that I gave my life to Christ (yes, I was raised in the church. No, I didn’t know Jesus until I was 20). I came back for the summer, started dating my now fiancé, and went back for another few months where I grew so much more in my faith. It was some of the best times of my life.
I really believed everything that was ever wrong with me, everything messy in my life, was behind me. After growing so much in that year, surrounded by amazing people who were growing beside me, I felt free. The kicker is that I came home, started studying psychology (typical, a girl with mental issues goes on to study mental issues, isn’t that most of our stories?), and my “messy past” caught up to me eventually.
This past year I really faced my mental health, afraid, but head first. I realized a few things. One was that I have control issues. Many people who know and love me know that I get really, unwarrantedly upset if I get a grade below A. Sometimes they laugh until they see or hear how much I obsessed and beat myself up for not getting a perfect score. I work really hard to get the grades I do, and it’s looking like I’m going to graduate with somewhere between a 3.9-4.0 GPA, but I also have had a 2-year struggle of hating myself and ripping myself apart for not being absolutely perfect in everything I do. This mentality led to me trying to gain control and be “perfect” in other areas of my life. Yes, you guessed it, the purging began. At the beginning of 2018, I found myself back into my high school habits, and thank God I have a fiancé who was always there to listen and help me through it this time around. The depression also continued and still continues, although it comes more in waves nowadays and not a constant tug.
So, where am I going with this? I really hope you’ve read until this far because all this background story is just noise compared to the real point I’m trying to make. This year, despite my battle with mental illness, has been one of the best years of my life, and I can tell you why in five words: Christ is enough for me. Yes, you might have heard the song, but those words have never rung truer in my life. Maybe you’ve walked into a church that told you if you pray enough and if you believe enough, all your problems, physical, mental, financial, will go away. I know for a fact that isn’t true. We live in a really, really messed up, fallen world. We’re riddled with diseases, heartbreak, selfishness, pride, and battles we have to face every day. But one thing I know to be absolutely true is in the face of it all, Christ is enough. This year, learning to lean into the grace of God more and more each day, I discovered the awesome truth that I’m never going to be perfect, and it’s in my imperfections, my depression, my anxiety, that God gets to be glorified. I get to wake up knowing that there is a perfect God who has a plan for me. In the midst of my depression, I don’t feel hopeless anymore, because I know God will use me to reach and empathize with others struggling on a whole other level. When I’m feeling most anxious, my nervous system on fire, not able to sleep because I’m thinking of life and marriage and grad school, I’m also feeling the most peace I’ve ever felt, knowing that God is so much bigger than the battle in front of me. I realized this year, something I spoke about to so many women while in L.A., Mexico, Switzerland and Spain, that the goal was never to be perfect, the goal was never to be illness free. If it happens that I don’t have to deal with depression or anxiety one day, amen! But until then, the healing, peaceful, protective, full power of Christ is enough to carry me through. It’s in my weakness that God can shine, can be given the glory for why I wake up every day with a purpose, a light, and with hope. What I’m trying to say is summarized pretty well in the word of God, as it always is:
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. - 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’m really not that great without Christ. I’m broken, I’m selfish, I fear, I fret, I want complete control. It’s only through knowing, seeking, loving and following Christ that I can live free, in my flawed body and spirit, I can trust in God’s promise that his power will be made perfect in my weakness and I can rest easy knowing God has such an incredible plan for my life.
It’s been on my heart to share this part of me for 3 years now, and I hope someone out there reading this is affected by my words. Maybe you’re dealing with mental illness, and you’ve been scared to open up about it to your family, friends or church. To you, I say that God’s perfection can’t be made whole if we’re too scared to show our weakness. A fundamental element of believing in Jesus is admitting we’re broken, and still believing He is so so good. If you’re someone who doesn’t deal with mental illness (first of all, thank you, Jesus, for that, cause that’s awesome and becoming more and more rare), maybe my words broke down a bit of the stigma around this topic. I hope you exit this page rethinking the way you see things like depression and anxiety. I’m not trying to make a point that we shouldn’t pray for healing in these areas, because I believe God can give us healing, but just as there are people who are bound to wheelchairs, who will never walk again, and who still praise and give glory to God, I believe we should open up about what binds our minds, even if we can never “shake it off” and still praise and give glory to God. We should be looking forward to the day we are united with Him, in our new bodies and mind, but until then allowing ourselves to be made perfect through His perfection, and not through striving for our own.
As a last note, because I know some will worry, through opening up to my family and diving deep with God into the body image issues behind it, I have been able to fight a good fight against my eating disorder, and I’ve been doing much better the last 8 months. My anxiety comes and goes, but that’s something I’ve been able to manage the best, thanks to lots of prayers, some cardio and good old deep breathing techniques! And the depression comes and goes in waves, but I’m no longer hopeless, which is a huge step forward.
I wish everyone reading this the absolute best, and know that I’m always here to talk (as a friend, as someone who’s been there, and as someone who happens to be studying this stuff and knows quite a bit on mental health, not just Jesus, haha). And I'm always open to talk about Christ if this is your first time reading about Jesus in this way. I'm an open book.
Thanks for listening, Anna.
Links
List of listening services in Quebec & Canada
List of suicide prevention lines worldwide
Online, anonymous emotional support
The only thing that really keeps me going