The Story

This is something I’ve wanted to share for a long time.  I’ve had a bunch of reservations and thoughts against doing it, but ultimately I’ve realized that bringing glory to God is infinitely more important than my image, how other people perceive me or my family, and my fear of upsetting people.

When I was growing up, only two things were articulated to me by adults outside my immediate family:

1)      some kind of praise for being “so smart” or playing the violin “so beautifully”

2)      “What’s wrong? Why don’t you ever smile?”

Most people might receive the first one graciously, with a smile, but it just made me so angry whenever I heard it.  That was all anyone ever said to me; it made me feel like a robot—just a brain and a body.  No soul.  Then when the second question would cross someone’s lips, I would become furious.  Why didn’t I ever smile?  What did I have to smile about, when all that I was ever valued for was so superficial?  What value did I hold—to others, or myself, or God?

I had a pretty decent childhood for the first 10 years, growing up in a small town where everybody knew their neighbours.  I was a bit of an intellectual, which made it challenging for me to make friends, but that wasn’t the end of the world, and I eventually did find my niche among my peers.

When I was 10, a major bombshell was dropped: my mom left.  She didn’t just pick up and leave, she went back to school so that she could have a better career and earn a better living for our family after staying at home with me and my brother for 10 years.  That was her story anyway, and my dad’s story.  I didn’t dare question it to their faces, and I wasn’t given an opportunity to voice my opinion, but in my mind, my mother was running away from me.  I was a screw-up.  The bulk of our last four years together had been spent learning to play the violin, and nearly every practice session that we had together ended with us screaming at each other and me in tears, wondering why she thought so lowly of me, when not another adult in the world had anything bad to say about me.  I was just a kid—I couldn’t articulate that, nor was I given the space to.  

Her absence was hard on all of us.  My brother was just starting school full time, and my dad seemed vested in facilitating that transition.  I was an afterthought.  My dad was obviously stressed, and, understandably so, but that translated into him being very short with me.  All of a sudden, I was too fat, my clothes were too tight, I had too much acne, my hair was too greasy, and I was dumb for not being able to fit in at school and be normal.  The words hurt, but my thoughts hurt even more; with every negative comment directed at me, the hole in my heart that began to form when my mom left got even bigger. It felt like I was being stabbed in the chest.  Sometimes it physically hurt to breathe.  I was so angry, it hurt.  That was a clear sign to me: if my life is this painful, I must not be meant to live.  At the age of 10, I became suicidal.

It started out with small things: cutting and bruising.  These weren’t such a big deal—I knew there were other people who did them.  A couple of times, things got really bad.  I twisted my bedsheet into a rope and thought of where I might tie it up.  The ceiling fan in my room would surely break under my weight, and I wouldn’t be able to make it to the unfinished basement to tie it off on a pipe or a truss without being seen.  I just tied it around my neck and choked myself, crying the whole time, letting out all the pain until I passed out.  When I came to a few moments later, I was embarrassed—ashamed at what I had just done, and angry and grateful at the same time to still be alive.  I sat in the silence for a long time thinking everything over.  What had just happened?  I didn’t dare move, for fear that I would lose the moment.  As well as I understood that people shouldn’t romanticize suffering, it just felt natural to me, and, in a way, it was comforting.  Despite this terrible war that I was caught up in, something in me wasn’t ready to give up just yet—but what was that, and why did it matter?

My mom came back home to stay two years later.  Although things had settled down, they weren’t the same.  She was a different person than when she left, and so was I; we had grown apart, but that was the way things were.  The depression and suicidal thoughts continued on and off through high school.  Despite my best efforts to close that chapter of my life for good, things started ramping up toward the end of grade 11 and into grade 12.  I became so consumed by my own negative thoughts that I couldn’t function.  I would go days without eating and spend entire weekends locked in my room to avoid contact with anyone.  When I could, I’d sneak down to my parents’ liquor cabinet and drink whatever was there, just to numb my mind enough to forget why I was so upset and angry.  Later on, prescription drugs became my weapon of choice to combat this pain.  Some days I felt like a shadow of what I was meant to be; I had a feeling that someone, somewhere, even if it wasn’t me, wanted something better for me, and I was just letting them down by not getting my shit together, sucking it up, and living that life.  On other days, I felt like a zombie: already dead, not in control of my mind, and not understanding why my body was still in the land of the living when my soul was clearly not.  My body felt like a hindrance to my spirit, and the lies continued to be planted in my head that my physical and spiritual bodies needed to be separated so that my spirit could be free; I was incapable of being a productive member of society, and didn’t deserve to live.

It was after my first year of university that I realized that something needed to change.  I had left home for school thinking that I was going to make the best friends of my life, who understood me for me, and we’d get along famously, never leaving each other’s sides as we drank ourselves stupid.  Things didn’t quite happen that way.  No matter how hard I tried to fit in, I was still different; I realized how superficial, empty, and insincere the lifestyle was that I was trying to live.  I just stopped.  I withdrew and shut down.  Being alone was nothing new for me; it seemed something that I was engineered for, and as much as that thought upset me, I accepted it as truth.  I didn’t deserve to be happy.  I started popping prescription painkillers like candy, just because I could.  My life became all about the pursuit of numbness and apathy.  I avoided everyone and everything to get lost inside my own mind and wait for time to pass, naively hoping that when I awoke from this state, everything would be better.

I was in a low place, and thought things could only get better.  Instead, they got worse.  In second year I began having severe panic attacks—episodes of intense, irrational fear where I firmly believed I was going to die.  I didn’t tell many people about what was happening to me.  I was really ashamed at the fact that I just couldn’t seem to pull myself together, and I had zero idea of why any of this was happening.  Sure, maybe I had been a little high-strung and worried about stuff before, but never to the point where I would lose control of my mind and body and freak out like a crazy person.  The knee-jerk reaction of the medical system was to throw a pill at it and see what would happen.  First came the sedatives.  I loved those—so much that within about a month I reached a state of addiction where I needed the maximum safe dosage just to make it through the day, and if I felt like I needed more, I took more, so I could make myself sleep and forget about the world when I wanted to.  Then some doctor (rightfully so) decided that I needed something else to help my mood, and prescribed antidepressants.  Within two days I was in the ER with very adverse side effects, and ended up being committed.  That hurt.  A lot.  I had been labeled clinically insane, incapable of caring for myself—in the words I’d been brought up with which to classify these types of people: stupid, dumb, incompetent.  I stayed locked in the psychiatric ward in perpetual fear for two days until I was able to put on enough of an “everything’s okay” façade to be discharged.  They wanted to keep me there for 6-8 weeks, but I wouldn’t have any of that; I had classes to attend and exams to write.  I couldn’t be in the hospital.  I refused to admit that I had lost that much control over my own life. 

The months following that were very difficult.  My mom had to come to London and live with me for the remaining month of school before Christmas because I was incapable of taking care of myself.  She drove me to all my classes and exams because I couldn’t get on the bus due to the fear of having another panic attack.  I spent the Christmas holidays that year getting used to a new medication and all its side effects: insomnia, nausea, anorexia, migraines, and severe muscle spasms.  My family made fun of me because the medication caused me to shake uncontrollably.  If I didn’t feel stupid, rejected, and abandoned before, I did now.  The following semester, I led a very simple life: I woke up, went to school, came home from school, and did absolutely nothing—on a significant portion of the days, I just skipped the whole school part and stayed in bed the whole day.  God didn’t cross my mind much, but somewhere deep down I had this idea that maybe someone, somewhere, wanted something better for me in this life—I knew I sure didn’t deserve it, but if someone wanted to give it to me as a gift, I would accept it.

After several months of seeing numerous doctors and therapists, trying various holistic methods, and going on all kinds of diets to try and wipe out my anxiety, nothing was working.  I was hopeless, a lost cause, damaged goods, my life was ruined and would never amount to anything.

Growing up, my family went to church.  I sort of knew who God was, and heard people talk about him, but no one ever asked me how I felt about him, pushed me to learn more, or dedicate my life to him in any way.  I was uninspired.  I was jealous of people who knew God, envious of functional families who could talk about God and pray together—and love each other.  I’d heard stories of Jesus bringing people out of really dark situations.  My absolute last hope was that maybe, despite my horrendous sins, self-loathing, brokenness, and hopelessness—maybe Jesus would have something different to say about me; maybe he would bring me through this storm.

In September 2012, I got connected with IVCF.  These Christians weren’t like the ones I had known; they weren’t conceited or judgmental.  Right from my first altercations with these people, I felt a really profound authenticity and love just radiate.  I felt things that I didn’t even know I had been missing.  I hadn’t ever paid much attention to love before, it was just another thing I felt like I didn’t deserve to receive or give, because I was so damaged.  Lies from the pit of hell, I would later learn.

Less than a month into this venture, I was hit by another major blow: I had had a jaw surgery earlier in the summer, and the surgical area had become infected.  After numerous x-rays and examinations, it was apparent that the hardware used in the surgery had failed, and I booked an appointment to have everything ripped out that was put in.  I was pretty devastated, as this was only the second in a long line of surgeries to replace a congenitally missing tooth and finally give me a mouth full of teeth for the first time in my life (maybe give me something to smile about).  My mom was more upset than I was (somehow), and wasn’t speaking to anyone, which made me feel like even more of a burden and a failure, even though this defect was purely genetic, not my fault.  My dad pulled me aside, away from her, and said to me something along the lines of “Your mom likes to worry a lot, but you don’t have to.  Put this on God’s shoulders.  He’s got big shoulders.”  I was floored.  This man, my father, who had the hardest heart of anyone I’d ever known, had just told me to give my burdens up to God.  So I did, and I had people pray over me that I would be healed of this infection.  A couple of weeks later, when I went in for the operation to have everything removed, the surgeon took a look, and saw no sign of an infection ever being there.  There was no need to operate.  God was slowly revealing himself to me, one situation at a time.

In January, after a few months of learning and growing in Christ, God asked me to take a leap of faith bigger than I’d ever dreamed of, and called me to mission with IVCF in Bangladesh.  People in the community had been dropping hints and trying to persuade me that this was something I should be doing for a number of weeks, but I had shot them down; they didn’t know about this mental illness that I suffered from that severely impaired my ability to function.  There was no way I would be able to get on a plane and go to the other side of the world and spread the gospel, which I was barely familiar with at that point—but God had other plans.  3 days before the deadline to apply for the trip, I was stuck in the mindset of “this sounds cool, but it’s something I would never do”, when God flipped my perspective upside-down yet again.  I was having a panic attack in a crowded room with no way to escape discreetly, wanting to pray to God to make himself known to me in this situation and provide peace and calm, but scared to do that, knowing that if he did take the anxiety away, he would be showing me that he had domain over this anxiety that was standing in between me and Bangladesh.  And I fought against the notion of prayer so hard, but God’s will was so much stronger than mine.  The second I bowed my head, I stopped shaking and became still, and a wave of calm came over me; I felt an indescribable peace I’d never felt—like God was telling me that everything was going to be ok.  I believed it.  Tears started rolling down my face and I continued to pray, out loud, praising God for this amazing thing, knowing that this was his way of telling me that this anxiety wasn’t going to prevent me from following him to Bangladesh.  So after a weekend of prayer and discernment, I decided to follow God on this mission, despite everything all the other voices were telling me about how I shouldn’t and couldn’t do it.

The trip itself was a remarkable experience in so many ways, as you can imagine.  I could spend quite a great length of time talking about any one aspect of the Bengali culture, food, poverty, lifestyle, or hospitality, but what really stuck with me was something much deeper: love.  This was my first extended time spent living and working with people who were supposed to become like my family.  I wasn’t expecting to reveal to them as much as I did, and for us to leave genuinely caring so deeply for each other.  My only experience with family had been my own, and to me that meant coming home every day and locking myself in my room to avoid being seen so I wouldn’t have to be ridiculed, insulted, or ordered around—it was like I wasn’t human to them.  I didn’t have feelings and I didn’t matter—they were my human masters that I was built to serve, not God.  I had a fair bit of anxiety in Bangladesh, but this was the first time anyone had ever asked me what they could do to help me when I was feeling that way, without just making small talk.  There were people on the team who held me, talked to me, massaged me, sat with me, stayed up with me, listened to me, read to me, and were screamed at by me, all in the name of keeping me calm, cool and collected.

It wasn’t just my teammates showing me love either.  In the mornings, five other women from the team and I would go to volunteer at a daycare centre/rehabilitation centre for destitute women and their families.  These women and children, despite the horrific things they had been through to land up in this place, were the bearers of such an incredible, authentic love and care.  On more than one occasion, I had to leave whatever room we were in and try and collect myself during a panic attack.  More often than not, a kid or a woman or two would follow me out, asking in Bengali if I was ok, and I’d say (in broken Bengali) that I was, trying to get them to go away—I didn’t want them to see me like this.  I was the missionary here, I was supposed to be the one totally put together and unphased by anything, called here to bring the gospel to these people because God had found me worthy of that calling… but these women and kids were smarter than I thought.  They totally didn’t buy that I was ok, and after a couple of vain attempts of saying something to me in Bengali (which I didn’t understand—but was probably something like, is there anything I can do for you?) they just stared at me.  This was something I wasn’t totally used to, since in Canadian culture we make a point of looking like we’re NOT staring when someone is obviously different.  Things were quite the opposite here—almost like they made a point of staring to make me realize that they really did genuinely care about me, and because of the language barrier they couldn’t know what I needed, so they just watched me like hawks.  It was their way of making sure I was ok.  That was like seeing the face of God.  Every single time, that was enough for me to get back in there and engage with these people.

Following Jesus, to non-believers (or at least to me as a non-believer), often seems like an easy way out—like using Jesus as a scapegoat and an excuse to not work hard or conform to the ideals of the secular world.  I’d be lying if I said that following Jesus wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  If God was the genie that a lot of people, Christian and non-Christian, seem to think he is, everybody would pray all the time and get exactly what they wanted, there would be no war, no suffering… but God doesn’t work like that.  

Nowhere, ever, in the Bible or anywhere, does it say that following Jesus will be easy.  But having someone to take up your burdens, love you unconditionally, forgive you of your sins, help you forgive those who have wronged you, comfort you in trouble—and oh yeah, to die on the cross so that you may be saved and have eternal life in heaven with this awesome dude—THAT is SO worth it.

That being said, my life on this side of the grass is nowhere near perfect.  My relationship with my parents is still really broken.  Although I’ve been able to forgive them for their wrongdoings against me (Eph. 4:31-32), I still don’t believe they understand the magnitude of how damaging these actions and words were.  They are only human, like me, and have made mistakes trying to do the best they knew how to do when the pressure was on.  That happens to the best of us.  Even so, I still long for them to get to know God in the same way that I do, and I’ve been praying that someday we’ll all be able to be reconciled by the love of Jesus.  That time hasn’t come yet, God is still getting us all ready—but when it does happen, it’ll be so amazing… In the meantime, though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me. Psalm 27:10

My mental illness is by no means gone.  I’ve only recently been cleared of all prescription medications.  With Jesus, I’ve been able to kick my addiction to sedatives, but that didn’t magically make my anxiety go away.  Coming off the antidepressants was a huge test of my faith.  This drug had sheltered me from feeling a multitude of emotions that I was too weak and bewildered to process alone.  After about a week of zero medication, I began having crazy withdrawal symptoms: a really bad headache that felt like someone was physically shaking my head, rattling my brain around in my skull, and prolonged episodes of heightened emotions and crying.  I thought I had experienced some intense emotional stuff since beginning to be vulnerable with God, but this was on a whole other scale.  I went through (and am continuing to go through) situations where I chose to ignore God, knowing that choosing in to whatever he had in front of me would cause me to feel these really intense emotions of sadness, regret, hopelessness, and fear, and I had reached the point of mental burnout where I knew that feeling or processing more emotions was redundant.  Gradually, I’m learning to trust that what God has for me is good, and that he will never give me more than I can handle with him.  Being mindful of this isn’t always easy (actually, it’s usually pretty hard), but every time it comes more quickly, and I spend less time worrying about what might happen, and am able to focus more readily on where God wants me to be and what he wants me to do. 

As recently as a few weeks ago I’ve had suicidal thoughts and have self-harmed simply because that physical pain is quicker and easier to deal with than the complex emotions that lead me to it.  God’s had some pretty awful stuff to say about this, but he’s also placed me in such a loving, caring community where I can feel safe and supported raising these issues, and feel loved as I work to the roots of these issues and invite God into that space where he has the final word, and by his grace and his grace alone I can be forgiven for these sins.  These same people have also lovingly kicked me in the butt to get the psychological help that I need for this, which I never would have been able to do alone.

I’m an extremely broken person.  I’m not the type of Christian that sees myself as “holier-than-thou”—I have merely chosen to accept and choose in to this grace of unfathomable abundance that God has extended to us humans through the death of his only son, Jesus Christ, on the cross.  Consciously doing this all the time on a minute-by-minute basis is absolutely the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but in addition to grace, our God is also abundant in peace, love, and hope (1 Tim. 1:14), all of which he has shown me at exactly the right time.  The greatest thing that I can do with my life is to share this incredible truth of our abundant, faithful, unfaltering God, and I want nothing more than to serve him by living out and proclaiming this gospel.  That’s how crazy this is.  Our God can turn a suicidal drug addict into…me, his faithful servant.  My story is still being written (Phil. 1:6).  I know that there will be more struggle and hardship, maybe worse than what I’ve already been through, since as my faith gets stronger, the enemy is just going to fight back harder—but there’s no one I would rather go through it with than our strong and mighty God.  Also, as I mentioned earlier, the reward for that is pretty great (James 1:12, Matt 25:21, 1 Cor. 2:9, Rev. 2:10).