Blogger and former psychiatrist Adrian Warnock is hosting a “broad conversation about faith and mental illness” and last week I responded to his question about the way my own faith community has historically viewed mental illness, and how my own faith shapes my views of it. This week Warnock touches on the very sensitive subject of suicide.

Research suggests that religious faith protects against suicide. Why do you think that is in light of how your community responds to suicide? How can we tread the fine line of discouraging suicide while not making the grief of family members worse?

In my 20+ years as a believer, I have found it very difficult to nail down what Christians truly believe about salvation, let alone suicide. There are Christians who believe in “once saved always saved” theology – there is nothing you can do to lose your salvation, short of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and even fewer Christians seem to know what that means. There is another set of Christians who believe that if you renounce your faith and walk away from God, you absolutely can lose your faith. I can only assume that ending your life – which, if you believe in Christ, is no longer yours but His – would fit into the category of renouncing your faith and walking away from God to this particular group of Christians.

I don’t believe religious faith protects against suicide in every case. Certainly, for many it does. But mental illness isn’t really about faith, and that’s why this conversation is happening and why this blog exists in the first place. Wow, don’t you wish you could just believe yourself out of faulty brain? Lots of people seem to think you can – ha, if only!

My official stance on this issue is simple: I’d rather not find out. But God knows the difference between someone who just decides to abandon Truth and someone who is truly afflicted with mental illness and can’t choose.

Here in Christian America, we love telling people that God has a “wonderful purpose” for their lives.
We gloss over the parts of the Bible where it says, “Things on earth are going to be really crappy. Hang in there.” It’s easier to witness to people that way. People want to hear how wonderful things are going to be. It’s harder to win souls by saying, “You will be miserable sometimes, and God doesn’t always seem to answer prayer, but He loves you so much.” So we highlight the balloons and rainbows and pretend everything is great, until reality happens. Then we struggle with a good answer because we insisted on giving a bogus one at the beginning.

On my deepest, darkest days I have never wanted a slap on the back and a promise that God has great things for me.
I want acknowledgement that things suck. I want someone to admit they don’t have the answers to my questions. It doesn’t make life seem hopeless to me, it makes it seem tangible. It lets me know that I am not alone and that I am not the only person who is not pooping Skittles right now. I want to hear “I love you” and I want someone to sit with me in the quiet. Paint a picture for me of how lives would change for the worse if I took my own. Make me laugh. Read the Word to me. God never promised an easy life, but there are so many beautiful promises in that book. Remind me of them.

That’s how you discourage suicide AND comfort a grieving family.
And you tell those people that God knows… God knows a broken mind and a troubled heart, and His grace is big enough to cover and forgive both.

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When I told my parents that I’d been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, I knew it wasn’t going to go well. I knew the conversation was going to tank. I thought about not telling them at all, but it seemed like such a big thing to skip over. I didn’t want one of them to read about it before I told them about it, either. As I expected, they didn’t believe it at first. They didn’t even believe that BP was a real disease. You pulled yourself up by the bootstraps and dealt with life, you didn’t give it a scientific-sounding name and take a pill for it – that was for weaklings! For years, the topic would never have come up had I not brought it up myself, and when I did, my mother did everything she could to steer the conversation in another direction.

I’ve never wanted to be a mental health evangelist, believe it or not. I believe the Lord tried very hard for many years to get me to write and speak about it, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I especially didn’t want to be the mental health evangelist in my family because it was so frustrating and disheartening. I just wanted my family to understand it and have my back, and I wasn’t sure that would ever happen. Ah, but relationships are about compromise, aren’t they? If you go into any relationship thinking you can change somebody, you will be sorely disappointed.

Sometimes, you have to trade understanding for acceptance. That’s what has happened in my family. I’m not holding out for my 70-something parents to become mental health experts. I know that when my mother hears depression in my voice, she’s going to tell me to smile and “cheer up” even though I can’t. It’s irritating sometimes, but I can handle it because they don’t pretend that nothing is wrong anymore. They actually use the words “Bipolar Disorder” now. It’s not just “my problem” or “my ups and downs.” No more arguments over the necessity of medication, either.

I’m sure so many of you have been in my position – you have a family that doesn’t get it and I’m sure a lot of them have no intention of opening their minds. That sucks, and I understand how you feel. I want to encourage you to be brave and to be willing to talk about your illness, but I also understand that sometimes it’s too exhausting. Being misunderstood and dismissed doesn’t help mental illness. So, if you’re in a good place and you’re feeling strong enough, be open about your struggles. Consider acceptance a blessing, and don’t plunge yourself into a darker place by insisting that everyone understand it as well as you do.

If there are people in your life who refuse to open their minds, don’t lose yours trying to convert them. Your prayers are stronger than your words, and sometimes the best way to drive home the point that you are legitimately ill is to back away during “sick times.”

As I get older, I realize more and more that the word “family” has many definitions. Sometimes you must build your own. You must find people that rally around you and embrace you for every bit of who you are. It’s not about your loved ones “getting it” – it’s about their willingness to try to.

Incidentally, that’s what I want for the Church, too. Churches doesn’t have to be full-service psychiatric care centers, they just have to be filled with people who are trying to understand and want to make a difference.

Find a group of caring, open ears and be honest about who you are.
If you don’t find it on the first try, pack up and set your circus down elsewhere. God will never leave you an orphan.

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The post covers:

Spiritual Stigma
unfortunately, pastoral staff members grow frustrated when they don’t understand why their ministry methods are not working.  In response, they unknowingly go into “religious default” mode, which places the blame on the individual, rather than the ministry. Like Job’s friends, it’s assumed that this hardship/ problem is due to the individual’s sin, weak faith, or demonic oppression.  Then, the church often backs away.  One pastor was dealing with a person diagnosed with a mood disorder.  When the pastor didn’t see it go away, he said, “It’s because the sin issues of his youth are finally catching up with him … he just needs to will himself into better choices.”

This is the “biggie” that so many of us deal with. Sometimes it prevents us from seeking help because we already know what the reaction from others is going to be. In my case, these were things I believed about myself, but I didn’t realize other Christians would accuse me of them. How I was naive enough not to think that I will never understand. I have come to realize that I was never accused of deliberate sin or of being a bad person; when someone takes this angle with me, it implies that I have not surrendered my all to God. There is something I must be holding back from Him, and that is why I continue to struggle with emotional problems.

Spiritual Fix or Miracles … often times pastoral support will prescribe biblical counseling and intense discipleship to “overcome” or see “breakthrough”. Some will even insist on “deliverance” ministry or an intensive “inner-healing” ministry designed for immediate breakthrough. The idea is to have the individual do more constructive bible study, prayer, and intensive ministry for an immediate “breakthrough” to “overcome” … to “fix” everything. It forces the individual to “pray” or “believe” harder for a miracle breakthrough. We believe God can do the impossible, not us. For many this method doesn’t work and, in fact, it can make things worse. I helped one person with a debilitating anxiety disorder move away from a popular devotional that implied working hard to “overcome” would fix problems and produce positive results.  The devotional warned, “If you fret you deserve what you get”.

This is where the author of this post and I part ways in our beliefs, albeit momentarily.
Inner-healing ministries can be incredibly effective tools for helping someone with emotional problems. Here is my reasoning:

1. You can be mentally ill and have other issues that need to be addressed. A broken or abused childhood, family addiction, lies you have come to believe about yourself (i.e., you are worthless, hopeless, beyond God’s redemption), and those are things that can sometimes be remedied through the help of these types of ministries.

2. The Bible tells us to pray for healing, to believe in healing, and pray without ceasing. We must be careful not to assume that if God doesn’t cure us of mental illness that our prayers are ineffective. We must also be careful not to merely survive with mental illness without seeking or hoping for God’s healing.

3. Just like people with mental illness can greatly benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy – which essentially teaches you how to retrain your thoughts and react to things in a healthier way – these ministries can help people retrain their thoughts on God, on who they are IN God, and can give them to tools to respond in a more God-honoring way to temptation and stimuli.

Warning: It’s really important for people who support someone with mental illness to make sure they are entering the right type of ministry and that they are working with the right types of people. Our church, for example, runs an inner-healing ministry, but it acknowledges mental illness and the importance of proper medication management and professional mental health support. Run, do not walk, the person away from a ministry that does not. Similarly, we need to be wary of ministry leaders who themselves encourage others to stop following doctor’s orders when it comes to mental health treatment. That is a disaster (and a lawsuit) waiting to happen.

Spiritual Steps … along the spiritual fix and miracles it is often viewed that this can be accomplished by a series of ministry “steps”. These are excellent ministry tools to address many emotional issues, BUT with someone with a mental health difficulty dealing with intense symptoms, unfortunately these inner-healing, or counseling, “steps” bring more confusion coupled with self-doubt. Many are left feeling they have failed the church and God. I’ve heard this from many, “I’m so frustrated with my church and God, I’m thinking of completely giving up on both”.

Again, this is why we have to be careful about ministry leaders. Celebrate Recovery – a Christian 12-step recovery group I have mentioned here before – utilizes “spiritual steps” but the ministry itself also acknowledged mental illness and the importance of correct treatment. Rick Warren, one of the group’s founders, lost a son to mental illness recently and would tell you himself how important it is to connect the two. But CR doesn’t really keep tabs on their leaders, per-se’, so the wrong leader with the wrong ideas can easily lead members down the wrong path. Having said that, someone who is confident in the fact that mental illness is really an illness and not a spiritual or personality flaw that needs to be fixed can get a great deal of useful information and support from these ministries.

REST vs. WORKS … instead of looking for fault and prescribing lots of work, let’s lead struggling individuals to rest. It is out of REST that we find comfort and strength. It is from REST we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, not vice versa (Philippians 4.13). We focus on validating their condition and take a simple approach that affirms their identity and recognizes key characteristics of God’s comfort and compassion. When we suffer, God doesn’t say, “Work harder and try to find Me … and if you do enough I will come to you”. Jesus came to us and He says, “Come to me … I will give you REST for your soul” all the while reaffirming gentleness and ease (Matthew 11.28-30).

But let us also support those who WANT to take steps to find out if this is really ALL mental illness, or if there are other issues at work that need to be resolved. We must be ready to support AND guide those we love who have mental illness in their journey, whatever that might look like. We must never assume that because God has not healed something now, that means he doesn’t want to heal it in the future.

What are your thoughts? Drop me an email or discuss on Twitter.

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From blogger and former psychiatrist Adrian Warnock:

The people who run Patheos have asked me to host a broad conversation about Mental Health including bloggers from across Patheos and beyond. You are invited to contribute by answering the question below any time this week. There are also two more questions which will follow.

Bloggers are asked to join in the discussion and answer the questions as they are posted. The first question is:

How has your religious community historically seen mental illness? – And how does your faith, today, shape the way you see mental illness?

Christians don’t have a good track record when it comes to mental illness. We used to assume that mental illness was nothing more than demon possession, and we banned people from church attendance and treated them like the devil itself. In all fairness, humanity, in general, does not have a great track record when it comes to mental illness. People fear what they don’t understand. But the fact that Christians’ reaction to people exhibiting confusing behavior was to treat them like yesterday’s trash is heart-wrenching and pathetic.

Understanding and acceptance has been a slow process for the Christian church. It still seems that while there have been major steps forward in most of society, the church continues to lag behind. Old habits die hard, old fears even harder. There are concepts in the Bible that have been twisted used to push mentally ill believers away (driving a herd of demon-filled pigs off of a cliff does not mean that’s how we should all respond to people with schizophrenia, and hopefully if you’re reading this you don’t believe that.)

My own church is a wonderful place that is on-board with modern-day medicine. They run a theophostic prayer ministry that I attended for some time, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover they believed not only in the existence of mental illness, but in treatment. No pigs careening off a cliff for me. My church believes in the healing power of the Holy Spirit, but also believe that healing takes many forms.

This, of course, does not mean that every single member of the congregation falls in line. There is still backwards thinking and there are still people who are afraid to let go of their death-grip on the belief that a saved heart is a perpetually happy heart, and that anyone who lacks joy or self-control is a spiritual weenie. They mean well, they’re just wrong. That’s the problem with churches – there’s always someone around to make it imperfect. I’m hoping that years from now, those people will really be the exception and not the rule. I’m praying that enough of us will speak up and insist on education and understanding that we will start driving those ideas out of the pews. Rome wasn’t build in a day, though.

But those people were not the reason I accepted Jesus as my Savior. It was the persistent kindness of Christians who loved me that drew me in and convinced me that this Christ was good and loving, never harsh or demanding. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned those people ran a ministry for people with mental illness, but when I found out it said so much to me… That was how Jesus was, and that’s how I wanted to be.

I am a woman who has made many mistakes in life, some of them because of my Bipolar Disorder. I never sensed that God got impatient with me, or was ready to give up on me because I couldn’t be happy enough, or because I was manic and couldn’t always think sensibly. What kind of God tells His believers that if they don’t hurry up and be happy, He’s leaving? We’re not toddlers sitting in front of a pile of green beans that we refuse to eat.

The God I serve sometimes heals the sick and other times sustains them, but there is nowhere in the Bible where He holds a disease against one of His children. He lifts them up with gentleness and mercy. That’s exactly what I believe that we, as Christians, need to do for people with mental illness. So I suppose my view of a gentle Jesus has given me a gentle view of mental illness, and suffering with mental illness has given me a gentle view of Jesus.

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Sorry for the week-long break, guys. I was not feeling well most of last week, so a hope round-up is a great way to start a fresh blogging cycle! First up…

Study: Believing in God Helps Treat Mental Health Disorders
I love it when science proves something I already know. A study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders says that people who believe in a “higher power” were more likely to see positive results from treatment. Researchers studied people with depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and other disorders and found that “those who expressed believing in God between “moderate” and “high” had better chances of responding well to treatment, while those who said the do not believe in God or only believe in him slightly had a doubled risk of not responding to treatment.”

The Bible’s Keys to Mental Health
A concise look at what personality traits best help us to overcome and avoid common conditions like depression and anxiety, and exactly how and where the Bible speaks to each of these issues. This is too simplistic a view on mental health.

Many mental illnesses can be prevented, and the Bible provides helpful information to that end. After all, it is a handbook from God on what we should think and how our minds should work. Among other things, the Bible tells us how to relieve stress and the kind of stimuli we should allow into our minds. Here are some crucial biblical keys to mental health.

Being positive doesn’t always prevent someone from developing mental illness. But if you can get past that lack of understanding, it really is a great article about how purposely aligning our minds with Christ can sometimes prevent a downward spiral, and can give us the spiritual muscles to endure mental disorders with our faith intact.

How Churches can Respond to Mental IllnessEd Stetzer is president of LifeWay Research and I was excited to see his oped on CNN.com. I have written for various LifeWay publications over the years and have always found them to be a wonderful company to work with. They are, however, notoriously conservative on many issues, which is why I was joyfully surprised to see a LifeWay head honcho speaking out on this topic. Stetzer’s article gives specifics about what churches need to do to embrace people with mental illness, and addresses the sad state that most churches are in right now.

First, people with mental illness are often attracted to religion and the church, either to receive help in a safe environment or to live out the worst impulses of their mental illness.

Second, most congregations, sadly, have few resources for help.

If you have something you’d like to see posted on a Wednesday Round-Up, drop me a line. And while you’re at it, check out the blog’s Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, peruse my personal blog, and check out my book. Till next time…

As you may know, Rick Warren’s son, Matthew, committed suicide on April 5 after a long battle with mental illness. Anytime someone uses their personal pain to ease the pain of others, its a reason to celebrate and have hope.

My favorite part of this petition is that it includes church congregations. We all know the government and healthcare professionals need this wake-up call. This might just be the first time a major voice has specifically called on people of faith to act.

Earlier in the week, before evil struck the Boston Marathon, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that depression was a result of unresolved issues from the past, and that medication wasn’t the answer… or so I thought. She’d hit “post” before completing her thought. She’s a counselor and I never knew her to believe that, so I was glad when she added context and explained what she meant. There are times when medication is appropriate.

The heartbreaking part, however, was how many of her friends agreed with her original sentiments before hearing the rest.
Hopefully, if Rick speaks the truth, many more people will be willing to hear the message.

Got your back on this one, Rick.

Pretty please:
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Me, Linda (my friend & Shaunti’s staff director), and Shaunti

Keep reading – I’m giving someone a free copy of For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn at the end of this post.

It has been almost ten years now since I met Shaunti Feldhahn.

It sticks out in my mind because we met during one of the most tumultuous times in my life. I was a 24-year-old newlywed with newly diagnosed bipolar disorder and lots of baggage from a rough childhood. I had just gotten fired from my job and was about to be evicted from the house my husband and I were renting. I was babysitting my nephew five days a week and got bored when he took naps, so I picked up her novel The Lights of Tenth Street so I would have something to do. It turned out to be a good book. I could relate to one of the characters in the story, so I dropped Shaunti a line to let her know it registered with me. She wrote back. Then I wrote back. We wrote back and forth a lot after that.

It had to be a “God thing” because I was this needy young woman, still in the partying phase of her life, dumping my life story on this random author in Georgia, and somehow we became good friends through it. The emails turned into phone calls, and eventually visits.  I’ll tell you unashamedly that I love Shaunti something fierce. Any friend that sticks with a bipolar person when they decide to stop taking their meds is worth their weight in gold, agreed?

There’s a good chance I wouldn’t be married right now were it not for Shaunti. She was in the middle of writing For Women Only when we met, and I was a struggling wife with unresolved issues who simply didn’t know how to be a good partner. Shaunti started sending me snippets of the book as she wrote it, and imagine my surprise when I applied her words and they actually worked! I have to level with you – I was skeptical. Self-help books? Nah, I didn’t think that would do me any good. (I later went on to write one of my own in 2005 – and yes, this is a shameless plug.)

The great thing about For Women Only is that it’s not just some author telling you how to live your life. It’s not a psychology professor giving you textbook relationship answers. This book – and its counterpart, For Men Only - is based on thousands of interviews with regular women and men about the way they think. FWO and FMO help you get into the minds of the opposite sex, so you can understand where they’re coming from and what they need.

That’s what *I* needed – I needed to understand my husband. I needed to understand myself (the books will help you do that, too!) I sort of felt like maybe I was married to a space alien or something, because I just couldn’t figure him out. FWO helped me figure him out. My 13th wedding anniversary is coming up this fall and even though it hasn’t always been easy, I have a great marriage, and I feel like I have the tools to tackle life’s problems as they come to us. My husband – who prefers Playstation over blogging – would tell you that he learned much from reading FMO.

I’m starting to feel like I’m in a ShamWOW! commercial or something.

I have an extra copy of For Women Only sitting here. It’s fresh and new – I haven’t even allowed the cat to sleep on it. Who wants it?? Get educated, uplifted, keep your coffee table from getting rings, and prop your bed up all in one shot! The third person to email me and MENTION SHAUNTI in the subject line will get it.

Follow me on Twitter and check out the Amazed By Grace Facebook page to connect with others who read this blog and get what we’re going through.

Blessings!

I’ve decided to start a weekly list of helpful and encouraging links, and since it’s Wednesday and that’s as good a day as any to make a list, I’m going to call it Wednesday’s Hope Round-Up! This first list is a great one, I have to say.

Christians Can’t Ignore the Uncomfortable Reality of Mental Illness
I am just starting to get to know Amy Simpson, who is an editor at Christianity Today and the author of, among other titles, Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission. Amy grew up with a mother who struggled with schizophrenia and understands what it’s like live with someone dealing with mental illness on a daily basis. She knows how hard it is to make sense of someone who cannot even make sense of themselves.  Like me – and so many others – the death of Rick Warren’s son was a very jarring piece of news to receive. Amy and I agree that Christians can no longer hide from this issue, and the health and survival of too many people are on the line to strike out. This article very succinctly lays out what we often do wrong in relating to people with mental illness, and gives specific guidance on how we can do better.

What Christians Need to Know About Mental Health
Those of you who are familiar with Women of Faith might be familiar with the name Ann Voskamp. I had heard the name but was not terribly familiar with her writings until my friend, Linda, sent me a link to this blog post. I am Ann’s newest fan. I love how she writes so poetically. I wish I wrote like that. I also think she has a slammin’ haircut.

Broken Believers
Bryan Lowe is the real deal. He’s a pastor who has mental illness, including bipolar disorder, and he’s not afraid to talk about it. If you want encouragement, understanding, and tender insight, I suggest you fix yourself a cup of coffee and spend a little time looking around BB.

Tears to Joy
Natalie Flake’s husband, Michael, was a man of God who loved his wife, his little girl, and ministering to others. He was also tortured by bipolar disorder, and often refused to take his medication as prescribed, and eventually succumbed to his disease by committing suicide. Natalie’s story is one of hope, healing, rebirth, and Tears To Joy provides practical advice on how to love a hurting person as Jesus would.

Tomorrow I’m going to be blogging about my relationship with Shaunti Feldhahn, and how her book For Women Only transformed my marriage. I’ll also be giving away a FREE newly updated copy to one of my readers.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter, visit the Amazed By Grace page on Facebook, and for humor and other insights (but mostly humor!), check out my blog.

Be blessed!

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This afternoon I found out that Pastor Rick Warren’s youngest son committed suicide and my heart just broke. (Rick Warren is one of the founders of Celebrate Recovery, a Christ-centered 12-step group I mentioned in my last post.) I was struck by the contrast between the joy I felt earlier in the day and the despair that young man must have felt in his last moments.

I’d just gotten home from the gym, where I was on the treadmill listening to one of my favorite worship songs, when I found out. I was overcome with emotion as I exercised and listened to the song. I texted a friend while I was cooling down to tell her how strongly I felt God’s grace. “I’m so glad God didn’t let me self-destruct,” I texted. “Me too,” she replied.

When I heard about Rick Warren’s son, I felt sort of…guilty. After all, it’s not ever God’s plan for someone to end their own life. At the same time, I credit God with my stability.

Did God let Matthew Warren self-destruct? No, I don’t believe that. Mental illness is so hard to navigate and make sense of. If there’s one thing I want to shout from the rooftops, it’s that mental illness is treatable, and yet sometimes people die. I don’t know anything about Matthew Warren’s battle. I don’t know if he faithfully followed the doctor’s orders, or what his relationship with God was like. Just like I don’t understand why I am doing well, while so many others are dying of depression and bipolar disorder. Let’s not forget that depression is a disease, and people die from diseases all the time. I’ve always heard that “suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” When you’re constantly haunted by despair, depression hardly seems temporary. A lifetime doesn’t feel temporary.

The one thing that is not temporary is God. He is bigger than our pain, even in those moments where it feels like our hearts are being squeezed of all life and hope. I realize that not everyone reading this blog believes in God or Jesus, but I do, and I believe that God put us here for a reason. It may not be the easiest path, but we are not alone on the journey. We are always loved and valued. Our trouble does not go unnoticed by God.

We are never alone. If you feel like you’ve reached the end, reach out and reach up. Don’t give up.

I know that the day may come when I’m not this stable. It could happen tomorrow. Bipolar disorder always leaves me guessing. Maybe there is a little part of me that is writing this and imploring all of you to hang on when it would be easiest to let go because I know that day – and I’ve had so many in the past – might come around again and I don’t want to be a hypocrite. Sometimes it’s easier to dig your heels in when you’ve challenged others to do the same.

I hope – no, I trust – that God is going to use this story for good, and to pull others away from the razor’s edge before it’s too late. If you’re the praying type, join me in praying for Rick and his family. I can’t imagine going through a tragedy like this at all, and I suspect it will be even harder having to do it in such a public way.

Hold tight, friends, no matter what.

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Everyone found out about the sexual abuse on my birthday.

A handful of energetic fifth-graders had gathered at my house for a slumber party. Man, my parents always hated those. Probably every parent who has ever experienced a sleep-over can understand why. The rented movies went unwatched; the girls were more interested in playing Truth or Dare. At some point, my mother said it was time to be quiet and go to sleep, but we never did that. We just giggled as quietly as we could inside our sleeping bags.

You know how there’s always that one friend… The one who couldn’t keep her mouth shut during an assembly, who always got you in trouble for talking in class. That friend decided to go snooping around my house while we weren’t looking, and my parents were watching television in another room. She started rooting through my bedroom and she found a note. I thought I was a genius for stashing it in a little pink locker with a padlock, but a simple paperclip was all that was needed to pry it open.

The note was written by me to a neighbor who had been sexually abusing me for years, telling him I wanted him to stop. My friend thought it was hilarious, stashed it away in her stuff, and the next morning she hopped on my bicycle and showed it to anyone she could find, including the other neighbors. My father stood in the front doorway watching the commotion as I screamed and cried and pleaded with him to get the letter. He was dazed, as I’m sure I would have been. Finally, my friend’s dad pulled into our driveway to pick her up, and she threw the note in our front yard and laughed as the car slowly rolled down the street. My dad grabbed the letter and opened it.

My neighbor never laid a hand on me again after that.

But this is not the happy ending of the story, just the start of the real nightmare.
I was told never to speak of it again. It was over and done with, and I was supposed to just move on, but I couldn’t. Guilt left me unable to sleep or focus in class. It was the talk of the school and the few friends I had disappeared. Many parents didn’t let their children play with me anymore. I guess they were afraid I’d molest their kids or otherwise negatively influence them. I spent a lot of time kneeling alongside my bed, asking God to take my life because I was too afraid to take it myself.

As a teenager, I cut myself, attempted suicide three times, was obsessed with sex, and I often felt like I didn’t know how to be normal. I didn’t know what a normal friendship looked like, or what it meant to “feel normal.” Obviously, praying for death wasn’t normal by the standards of a healthy human being, but I never knew what it was like to have an average day free of gut-wrenching guilt and incomprehensible sadness. I created what I referred to as “me time,” a chunk of 15 minutes when I first climbed into bed when I could ruminate about the things that were bothering me, and at the end of that 15 minutes, I forced myself to think about other things to help me fall asleep.

When I was 15, I had to start dealing with the past. I didn’t have a choice, because I was failing the 10th grade, and my behavior had driven my family to the edge of a full-blown crisis. Other adults that God had placed in my life went to my parents and explained to them that if I didn’t get help, I would self-destruct. I was on my way to becoming some sort of statistic – another teenager found hanging in her parents’ basement, or a drug addict riddled with needle marks in the street, or a pregnant adolescent with no prospects.

So I went to see an emotionally distant shrink, who largely ignored me, except to prescribe me Zoloft. I took the pills and I felt a little better, but I didn’t start to feel alive and learn a little bit about who I was until I started going to a support group for teen girls who had been sexually abused.  It was a life-changer for me. No one avoided me because my past made me weird, and no one was prohibited from talking to me. Those girls became my sisters. The circumstances surrounding our experiences were different, but we all felt the same guilt and shame. We all blindly felt our way through life, trying to be normal, whole…

I have dealt with my past sexual abuse and I can tell you that, a month from my 34th birthday, I have been set free from it. I can think about what took place with no emotion, and I am even able to drive by the house where it occurred without any trauma. About a year ago, I started watching a TV show that had a character that looked like the person that abused me, and in the past it would have turned me off to the show completely, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. I’ve been healed of the direct effects of sexual abuse.

I always wonder if I would have developed bipolar disorder even if I hadn’t been abused. After all, sexual abuse has been shown to trigger mental illness. I’ll never know what could have been, but that doesn’t bother me too much anymore, either. God has restored me and He is using the path I am on to help others on their own paths, and that’s what is important. I know I would be in far worse mental health if I had not dealt with my painful childhood. I would be taking medication not only to treat a mental disorder, but to throw dirt on something ugly to pretend it doesn’t exist.

I think it’s interesting that the Bible doesn’t tell us to ignore the devil. It tells us to resist him, and to tell him to leave us alone, but it never tells us to pretend he’s not there. You can’t command something out of your life without acknowledging that it exists, and confronting it. Don’t throw out your pills, friends, that’s not the point here. (Please, for God’s sake, don’t throw out your pills.) But if you have pain lingering in your past, turn around and look it in the eye. Acknowledge it’s there, face the ugliness, and take back your power  – accept the Holy Spirit’s power – to leave it in the dust. Because you deserve it, and your health depends on it.

I know there are a lot of you reading this that are just like me. Maybe it’s not sexual abuse, but there is something in the past that is keeping you from living a full life. It’s not fair, and it doesn’t have to be this way forever. I was blessed with a fantastic counselor; I know they exist. Another great place to turn is Celebrate Recovery. It’s a Christ-centered, 12-step recovery group for any “hurt, habit, or hang-up.” I have found support there for various things in my life. You can find a list of meetings around the country on the website.

Don’t just medicate, heal.

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