Anxiety: struggle-->teaching-->hope

Someone asked me a question last week that I had a little bit of trouble answering: Do you wish you never struggled with anxiety?  Panic disorder absolutely sucks.  I wouldn’t wish my episodes of sheer terror, breathlessness, screaming, and self-harm on anyone.  Their unpredictable nature has caused me to avoid countless classes, social functions, and other events that I would have rather attended, and snowballed into fears of things I used to enjoy: driving, being alone, physical exercise, and just sitting in silence.  Panic attacks made me afraid of my own mind, because I knew that whenever I got stuck alone with my mind, it would take the wheel, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it from spiraling into a cycle of negativity and paralyzing fear, where the only way to make sure I was still alive was to over stimulate my senses through my own screaming, or self-inflicted physical pain.  Isn’t that what toddlers do when they’re frustrated and starved for attention?  Why was I experiencing these things for the first time as an adult?

Struggling with a sick mind after living for 19 years in a family that judged everyone based on appearance and composure taught me that mental illness is not a choice.  I didn’t want to have panic attacks.  If I could, I would have stopped them before they started.  I felt so alone, and like no one understood that.  That was when I learned what empathy was.  Whenever I saw someone who was obviously struggling with something, my initial reaction, instead of “why can’t you pull yourself together, because you’re upsetting me”, became “I’m sorry you’re struggling right now, and it hurts to see another person go through this, because I know how painful it is.  I wish I could help you.”  Little by little, I’m learning to reach out to these people.  Initially, there was a lot of fear of saying the wrong thing, but through trying to navigate my own brain with multiple doctors, therapists, counselors, and mentors, I’ve learned that the best teacher is experience—the people who have been the most helpful in terms of helping me understand and cope with what is going on have been those who have actually been there and know the beast, not necessarily those who have acquired multiple degrees and pieces of paper after studying it in theory for decades.  So, if you’ve been there, your voice is inherently valuable, and it becomes your responsibility to use it wisely, for the purposes of building up others. 

This led into me looking to understand how family brokenness and generational sin manifest themselves in so many different ways in individuals, and how difficult it can be to break those cycles.  I noticed patterns in my own family of pride and judgment, and realized that they had worked their way into my own mannerisms without me even realizing, or worse, under my full realization, but without any comprehension of how bad it was.  By no means was the brokenness in my own family the worst that I had heard of, but it still often left me craving a time of grief for what was lost in my childhood and would never be, and made me scared of the life that I was going to live and the bad choices I was going to make if I didn’t break free.  It wasn’t easy to dig back to the roots of these problems, seeing exactly how they had embedded themselves into my daily life.  I often realized that they had hurt others, and needed to apologize for this thing that I previously didn’t even know was a problem I was supposed to keep in-check.  Sometimes I felt hopeless, like I was just destined to make the same mistakes as my parents and grandparents, and nothing would ever be different because I was bound to their sin—and then I would remember that that is an insult to God.  He builds us the way we are for a reason, and if there are sin patterns that survive into our own lives from our parents, he has something for us to learn from that, even though it is his hope that we will eventually come close enough to him to truly understand that we are not bound to the sin of our earthly families, because God has adopted us into his family (read Ephesians 1, it’s really good!).

It’s probably also prudent to mention that if it wasn’t for anxiety, I never would’ve met Jesus.  If that demon hadn’t broken me down to the point of needing to ask for help and seek out a supportive community, and literally, divine intervention, I would’ve continued down the path of self-serving ambition, worshiping my own uniqueness, and finding pride in my own accomplishments (which, by the way, only were possible through the gifts God had given me, and the privilege of being born into a family that could afford to put me in sports and music lessons).  As soon as I realized that my entire life had been a shrine to my own gifts and uniqueness, I lost passion for a lot of those things—sports, violin, kinesiology, geek culture…I wanted people to look and my life and see what God was capable of—what he had done and was doing, and not the walls that I had built up and worshiped as divisions to separate me from the rest of the flock.  No one was good at or passionate about the same combination of things that I was, and that was an excuse for me to be indifferent, and not get to know and love other people.  My own selfishness told me that I was beyond comprehension of other human beings, above them, and that I would never be understood by anyone else, so I’d better know myself inside and out, become about things, make them my everything, and show that externally so that people would know I was about something that they didn’t know about, and would leave me alone because they couldn’t relate.  It was my way of differentiating and making an idol out of myself, and it wasn’t okay.  After encountering God, realizing that this lifestyle was bad, and seeing it show up in other people, I realized how damaging it was, both to the person who lives it, and those around them.  I absolutely don’t believe that change for these people can come from the outside.  For sure, other people can point it out, but narcissists generally don’t react well to other people identifying their flaws.  It has to come from a deep realization and acknowledgement that something is wrong, and a desire to change.  My struggle with anxiety brought my identity issues to the forefront, and other people in community pointed them out to me (which I didn’t enjoy, but realized was necessary).  I eventually realized that I had a sin pattern of grabbing onto things, becoming all about them, and refusing to let them go because they were such a huge part of my identity.  That’s not God’s hope for his children either—it sounds something more like this: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. – Romans 12:2, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. – 2 Corinthians 5:17

Someone else asked me yesterday what I thought my greatest moments were of this school year.  It didn’t even take long for me to come up with the answer: the times that I absolutely struggled inconsolably with anxiety.  Morbid, right?  Hear me out.  During each one of these times, God was able to show me a different aspect of who he is, and how he loves me in a really tangible way.  That makes me turn to him, accept his comfort, peace, and love, and reminds me that he does in fact have purpose for all of this, and has already made me aware of positive changes that have been made as a result of the different exposures that anxiety has necessitated.  As I already mentioned, I totally and utterly loathe these attacks while they are happening, and wouldn’t wish anxiety the way I experience it on anyone, but I know that God is absolutely in control of the intensity of every panic attack, never lets me bear more than I can handle, and uses each one as a teaching moment later on when my mind is clear.  Stories are how I understand and best explain things, so here’s a really strong example of that from this year:

Over Christmas break I went to a conference run by IVCF called Kingdom Calling, the theme of which was to discern with God what it looks like to continue following him after graduation and work for the furtherance of the kingdom, vocationally and otherwise.  One of the days was entitled “The Day of Discernment”, during which there were no formal structured activities, and we were expected to spend some significant time alone with God in prayer.  I did this on three separate occasions that day, taking my journal to the empty ballroom of the Royal York, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and listening for the Lord.  You can see the decline in my attitude in the journal entries as the day went on; in the morning I was very gung-ho and excited for the day, by the afternoon I was getting a little tired, and in the evening I was just angry and frustrated at some of the things that had come up (or not come up) as I had been praying.  At about 11:00 at night, I went by myself with my backpack to the mezzanine of the hotel.  I didn’t really want to be alone, but figured that everyone was as tired and frustrated as I was after such a long day, and didn’t want to hang out and listen to me externally process how upset I was.  The emotions associated with that anger and aggravation escalated into a panic attack.  I was crying and shaking really badly.  There was no consoling me, and no one was around.  I couldn’t bear the focus on my lack of emotional control anymore, and though I thought my self-harming days had ended months before, I broke and couldn’t handle it anymore: I started violently scratching and bruising my wrists until they were purple and started to bleed.  I knew that hurting myself hurt God, and I was glad—he had hurt me that day by bringing up painful stuff from my past and not giving me the kind of plan for the future with which I was hoping to exit the day.  I wanted him to know that I was hurting, and I wanted other people to know that I was hurting, too. I was hopeless, unloved, and unwanted, and physical pain was quicker and easier to deal with than that emotional pain—but bruising wasn’t enough.  I reached into my bag and found what I was looking for: a pocket knife.  I opened the blade, and as I stared down at it, my vision disappeared—I could see shapes and colours, but not make out objects or faces.  I froze.  I couldn’t move.  I was paralyzed, still holding the open knife.  There wasn’t any other explanation; I knew that this was God protecting me from myself, and in that I was able to find calmness.  I was so calm as I sat there, basking in my own shame of how I had hurt God as he spoke to me, so gently, words that he spoke to me so often:

“you are mine, and I love you.

You are Mine, and I Love You.

YOU are MINE.” 

It was true.  I was his.  He was in control.  He did love me.  He loved me enough to stop that cycle of self-inflicted pain, and let me sit in that shame, paralyzed, and unable to be distracted for long enough for the message to sink in.  This time, I was the sheep who had wandered off from the flock, and wouldn’t come back unless Jesus, the good shepherd, came and found me, broke my legs, and carried me back.  My legs were broken, and sore, and served as a reminder of what happens when I take matters into my own hands, thinking I can handle life without God.  I sat paralyzed, unable to see properly for about half an hour, until a friend who was at the conference randomly called me and asked to hang out.  I broke down on the phone with him, and the two of us and another friend got together and prayed.  The next day, after another carefully-crafted series of events, I was able to acknowledge that anxiety, as I saw it, played an unhealthy role in my identity, and handed that piece of myself over to God, asking him to fill those empty spaces with himself.  That was a turning point.  I’ve had struggles with anxiety since then, but with each one, the turnaround time becomes less, and God is able to show me a new piece of who he is, and how he still loves me criminal amounts even though I have disobeyed, insulted, and hurt him immensely.  He shows me areas of my character that I need to work on, and ways that I can love other people well, particularly those who have hurt me. He is the ultimate vinegrower, pruning off the branches that were barren, or bearing bad fruit—the pruning hurts, and sometimes the vine doesn’t bear full fruit for a few seasons afterwards as it recovers and regroups, but the vinegrower’s ultimate hope, plan, and dream for the vine is that it bears good, plentiful, quality fruit, and he will not do anything to put that plan off-track.  The enormity of goodness in that message is impossible to comprehend.  Seriously.  It is GOOD.  Amen.

The call is that we love our neighbour, bless those who curse us, turn the other cheek, humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, and find the plank in our own eye before we point out the speck in our neighbour’s, among other things.  God has used anxiety, and other painful situations in my life that were intended for evil, to teach me about these things, and allow me to grow into an individual who is more in line with his character.  That is a gift that I am thankful for every day.

From life's first cry to final breath...

When I first told my Oma (German for Grandmother) that I had decided to follow Jesus about a year ago, she responded with “yes! He is the way, the truth, and the life!”  I was kind of amazed to hear those words come out of her mouth—she had been in decline over the last few years and her dementia had progressed to a point where she didn’t often remember my name when I would come visit.  It was so remarkable to see how even though she seemed perpetually confused in the whirlwind blur of the world around her, God had maintained himself as the firm foundation, the ROCK of her life, and she was still able to know him and turn to him.

God called her home to be with him last week.  The 5 days in between her death and the funeral were really difficult in a lot of ways.  With a death like hers, in a way it is a relief, because she had been suffering and hadn’t been herself for quite some time, but it is still very saddening, and a time for grieving.

Recently, God and others had been bringing up a lot about my issues with pride, selfishness, and narcissism.  I beat myself up a bit over the last visit I had with my Oma.  It was Christmas day, and I was having a panic attack and didn’t want to go visit her.  I ended up going in the room for about 30 seconds, giving her a hug and saying “Merry Christmas”, promptly followed by “can we go now?!”, which wasn’t met with any verbal response, so I just left on my own.  Really, I couldn’t have stuck it out for five minutes to spend time with my ailing grandmother?  Everything was about me.  I had no clue how to love people—especially those who had loved me.

At her funeral service, my dad read some scripture: John 14:1-6.  He made it through verses 1-5 no problem, and then, as soon as “I am the way, the truth, and the life” crossed his lips, I could see him beginning to break down.  If that was one of Oma’s favourite passages of scripture, or at least significant enough for her to remember in her final years, he no doubt had a myriad of memories with her associated with this particular scripture.  He paused to collect himself, and I could see him fighting back tears.  I hadn’t ever seen him cry before.  I wanted to jump out of my seat, give him the biggest hug, and make him cry, and comfort him, and love him.  I can’t remember ever feeling that way about my father.  God had been moving in me, and I knew it was good.  Dad rolled “no one comes to the father, except through me” off his tongue and returned to his seat as fast as he could.  Oma knew Jesus.  She was with him and the father in heaven.  I wanted to make that known to my dad, somehow.

At the reception following the service, I paid particular attention to my Opa.  He had loved his wife more deeply than any other man I had ever seen, and it was so weird and sad to see him without her, by himself.  At one point I looked over to where he was sitting and saw him smiling, holding my cousin’s 5-week-old baby boy as someone was snapping photos.  There was the full circle.  I was then reminded of the words: “from life’s first cry, to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny… No power of hell, nor scheme of man could ever pluck me from his hand…” Something clicked in me, that I knew God had been trying to express for a long while: I belong to God (I am HIS), and even though I have been fighting so hard against him in a lot of instances, trying to do things my own way, he hasn’t ever left, and won’t ever leave, and has known my every thought and move since the beginning of time—known that I would sin and betray and choose against him, in full knowledge of what was right and wrong, and still, he stands by me, jealous for me to choose him!  He does this with every single one of us, knowing that many will never choose him, but still showing them a profound, unconditional love and acceptance that the world can try to imitate at best.  I’m so happy that God gave us Oma as an example of what he does and how he provides when we do choose him.  She lived through circumstances of war, poverty, immigration, and being the mother of 7 boys, which I can scarcely imagine.  Her faith got her through, and God provided for and loved her until the very end and beyond.  He loved and provided for her so abundantly that she was able to pay it forward, and love and provide for us, her family, and also neighbours, friends, and strangers, taking nothing extra for herself.

After the guests had gone, and only immediate family was left, Opa and I had a conversation.  We talked about Jesus, and how awesome he is.  Opa was describing to me how Oma lived every day by faith in what she had not seen, and now, after 89 years of living in that faith, she was finally able to see what she had been believing in!  I had expected him to be sad at the loss of his wife of 62+ years, but instead he was the most joyful and relieved I’d ever seen him.  “She finished the race!” he told me, “It was long and hard, but she did it, and she is no longer suffering. I am so happy for her!” Wow.  Just, wow.  A living example of the faith God wants us to have, right in my own family.  I was awestruck and overjoyed.  Yes, she is home with her father in heaven, and we will all be there together again someday.  God is so freaking good!

*   *   *   *   *

I’m in my final semester of my undergraduate degree, and the burning question on everyone’s lips right now seems to be “what next?” Hearing the story of my grandparents’ faith only underlined for me what I had already known to be true: the greatest thing I could possibly do with my life is to follow Jesus, and obediently go where he leads.  Over the last few months, God has grown my heart immensely for church ministry, and has made it clear to me that this is an area where he would like to use me, and a direction he wants me to take.  I feel so blessed to have heard this from him so clearly, and to have had my peers, mentors, and parents, people who I respect and look up to, bless me into this decision.  So, after some time off after graduation to get to know and love the people of the world (I’ve had intentional mission in the workplace suggested to me, and I kind of really like the idea), it’s off to seminary!

God has done some amazing work in me over these four years at Western, when I arrived with my only intentions being to “get drunk and have fun”.  Never in a million years would I have imagined that I would choose this path for myself, but our God transforms hearts and minds so radically when we choose him, that now I can’t imagine my life any other way than with him.  You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to choose anything else.

Till he returns, or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.

The Christmas Miracle

Christmas hurts.  When I was a kid, even though my parents didn’t have much money, they always tried so hard to give us a nice Christmas.  Christmas was always a magical time full of family, food, and festivities, and it was a time of year that I always looked forward to.  I never understood why so many people associated such a joyful time of year with stress, anger, and loss.

Now, I dread it.  I began to notice when I left home that in my family, I seemed to be the only one keeping the magic of Christmas alive.  The house would not be decorated, and no tree would be cut until I came home after exams somewhere around the 20^th of December, and even then this would only happen after a few fights with my mother, with me doing all the work of cleaning, digging boxes out of the overcrowded basement, and decorating.  Whenever I came home for the holidays, the first words my dad would speak to me on my first morning back were “why don’t you make yourself useful and bake something today…”  I didn’t really mind this too much at first, because baking meant eating (which is something I enjoy), but after a while I began to notice that this was something I always did alone, which I didn’t enjoy.  No one else in my family cared to undertake either of these tasks, and had I not have been there to do them, I know they wouldn’t have been done.  After last year, both sides of the family decided to move on from Christmas get-togethers.  The message being sent was that both families have matured and need to move on from such childish frivolity.  Christmas didn’t matter.  As a born-again Christian, I was really hurt by that.  I know that neither family has a really strong faith background, especially in my generation, but to say that the birth of Christ, or even the season need not be celebrated by a gathering and meal-sharing of close relatives who seldom get to see each other really upset me.  Further to this, my mom called me up a few weeks before Christmas to say that there would be no decorations or tree at our house this year, and very minimal exchanging of gifts.  Celebration was frivolous.  Decorating was too much work (even though I would have been the one to do it).

My immediate reaction was to not go home for Christmas at all.  If I was going to be alone and miserable in my room over the holidays, I could do that just as well in London as in Markham—and more comfortably, seeing as I don’t have a bed in my parents’ house.  I didn’t see the point of making my own Christmas at their house when they had made it clear that they didn’t want to celebrate.

But after some spiritual consultation, and a lot of prayer, I realized that it was important to go home and be with family—God was going to show me something great if I did.  So I went home on December 21^st, after my last day of work, and only planned to stay until the 27^th, knowing that if this proved to be too long, I could always crash at a friend’s place. 

The first couple of days were kind of a “honeymoon phase”, where everything was great, and we were tolerant of each other’s quirks, seeing as we hadn’t all been together for that length of time since the summer.  Things started to go downhill on Christmas Eve, which is understandable with stress building as final Christmas preparations were being made—we were cooking everything but the turkey for a turkey dinner on Christmas day, which was to be transported to my Gramma’s house an hour away, and the kitchen in my parents’ house is not well-designed, and about the size of the head of a pin…

Then we went to church for the Christmas Eve service.  I’m not a big fan of my parents’ church.  It’s an old church in an affluent neighborhood with an old congregation, being kept alive by old money.  I haven’t really experienced God in that place before, but I was determined to get something out of that service in some way, so I went with an open heart and mind.  The service itself was nothing special, and there was nothing wrong with that.  What really irked me was during the sermon, the pastor was talking about “Christmas-and-Easter-Christians”, saying that there was absolutely nothing wrong with them.  Now, I’ll agree that it isn’t very diplomatic or loving to be condescending and give these types of Christians the idea that those who go to church more often are better than them, because it simply isn’t true.  There are plenty of people who go to church every week and don’t follow Jesus, and there are plenty of perfectly good, well-meaning people who haven’t ever darkened the door of a church.  The problem I had with this message, was that it seemed to give an “everything’s okay” impression.  It’s okay if you only come to church twice a year, which can be interpreted as:

a)      we’re happy as a church community with the people we have, and aren’t interested in getting to know you

b)      you don’t need to go to church/be in community to follow Jesus

c)      you should be spiritually satisfied with what comes out of attending church twice a year

It’s okay.

It’s not okay.  These things are just plain wrong.  If anything, I’ve got a problem with the church that isn’t bold enough to say “Jesus is in this place, we know we’re doing a good thing here, and we want you to come sit with us around God’s table as his family—all the time!” If there’s anything I’ve learned about Jesus in the last year and a bit that I didn’t know before, he was a bold dude, and he calls us to be bold as we share his truth—the gospel.  That’s something I know a lot of churches in the western world are missing.

So I left a bit disappointed, but looking forward to Christmas morning.  It came and went—nothing special, about 4 small gifts per person scattered around a 45cm tall cheap, fiber-optic, plastic tree.  The Christmas spirit wasn’t in our house, but we had to go bring it to the grandparents somehow.  I developed a bad headache in the car, but figured it was just because I was hungry, and would go away once I was able to eat.  We stopped at the nursing home where my dad’s parents lived, and I had been guilt tripped (with my brother) to play some German Christmas carols for them.  I got in the door and couldn’t move.  My head was killing me, I couldn’t see straight, I was nauseous, and every fiber of my being was holding me back.  I sat down and cried.  I had no idea what was going on.  I hadn’t had a panic attack in months, why was I having one now—on Christmas, of all days, when I was supposed to be bringing joy to people who had otherwise lost the will to live.  I was incredibly frustrated, and my family members seemed totally indifferent to my situation, wondering “what the hell [was] wrong with [me]” and why I couldn’t just go do what I had to do.  I couldn’t do it.  I have no idea why.  I became the jerk in that situation then, as a result of my inability to function.  That hurt.

We returned to my Gramma’s apartment.  I sat on the couch most of the time until someone made me “make [myself] useful and make the gravy”, which I did mainly just to keep the peace, not because I wanted to.  I ate about as much as a normal person would at a regular dinner (I’ve been told I eat about as much as a five-year-old), while the others stuffed their faces (as one should do at a turkey dinner).  My brother ate (and drank) so much that he started throwing up, which wasn’t super good for my headache + nausea + pathological fear of vomit.  I refused to sit in the back seat with him on the way home, but instead sat in the front and thought over what a horrible day it had been.  Then another panic attack hit, and I cried—like, bawled, with my whole family in the car—for about 45 minutes.  No one said anything, or did anything.  The thought just kept returning to my mind, that this was actually the worst Christmas ever.

The panic ebbed and flowed until we arrived home, and I stormed up to my room and shut the door, eager to cry myself to sleep and forget this day.  I started questioning God; why would he bring me here only to suffer—exactly what I wanted to avoid.  Then I remembered something that my mom had said when she was trying to persuade me to come home for the holiday: don’t shut out your family; they are the only ones who will love you at your worst and be there for you, regardless of your situation.  “She failed that test today”, I thought.  Then I remembered, I’m part of another family, before any human one, with a father who loves me so deeply that he would send his son down to earth to live among us, to know pain and suffering much greater than I have experienced, and to be killed by the same people he came to serve, so that anyone, regardless of past, gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status… the list goes on… can be born again and live with God our Father in heaven forever.

I have a family of brothers and sisters in Christ as well, and God has placed each of them into my life at exactly the right time.  When we fellowship together in community with one another, I get a sense of belonging that I’ve never felt with any other group of people—it’s the most amazing, indescribable thing that I hope for everyone, especially my biological family.  Even if that day isn’t soon, it’s going to happen, because God wants his people to be reconciled.

God turned my “worst Christmas ever” into the best one yet, just by reminding me of who he is, who he has put in my life, and how his love and grace are limitless.  He has adopted me into the best family that anyone could ever ask to be a part of.  That’s worth celebrating.

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).  

The Shift.

We’re ramping up into exam season once again, and as I find my brain functioning at a higher level intellectually, I’m beginning to notice that some things are different from usual this time around.  I’m in overdrive mode; I’m studying hard, putting more soul than usual into my creative projects, and everything that I’m doing in between is perfectly detailed, and examined with a more meticulous eye.  These things are nothing new, but the way I feel about them has radically changed; in the past, exam season has been a 24/7 exposure session of my insecurities, shortcomings, and failures.  I would feel like I knew nothing for a class, wouldn’t bother studying much, thinking “it is what it is”, not do very well on a test or paper, get discouraged, turn to music, get upset when I couldn’t verbally express myself and had to do so enigmatically through an instrument, get depressed, blame everything on myself for not “getting it” or trying hard enough, and continue through this endless downward spiral.

This time, something is different.  I feel this joy and peace in my heart that cannot be quenched.  It’s as if all of those messages I’ve been receiving for years about being a child of the God of love are finally starting to sink in.  This didn’t just happen overnight.  I have done a TON of work this month (on my own, and with countless brothers and sisters whom I love SO MUCH and will never be able to thank enough) with God to get to the very root of my being, peeling back all the layers of dirt and grime that had been left caked on; after years of being ignored and left to sit and accumulate, this dirt had become part of me and how I saw myself—I didn’t even think it was possible for it to be wiped away to reveal me for who I really was: a child of God.  It hasn’t been an easy process, there have been times where the enemy has lied and deceived and I’ve wanted to submit and return to my miserable, albeit predictable, old life.  He has seen each tear that has fallen and heard every time I have called out to Him—and now I recognize this as truth.  I know it’s going to take lifelong vigilance, prayer, and re-examination, but if what I’m seeing and feeling right now is any indication of God’s intention for my spirit, it’s going to be totally worth it. 

And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. – Philippians 1:6

To everyone who has been part of this journey, prayed for me, cooked for me, cleaned for me, sat with me, stood with me, listened to me, talked with me, answered my questions, encouraged me, held me, visited me, picked me up, dropped me off, gone to class for me, gone to work for me, cast out demons with me, and treated me as a sister and an equal, I wish there was a more eloquent way to say it, but THANK YOU.  You have all impacted me very deeply, and built me up to beyond what I could have ever imagined.  Thank you for looking deeper than the surface, seeing beyond the deficiencies that had wrongfully become my focus, and lovingly slapping me in the face with the hand of God, showing me who He really is through your actions and words.  God knew what He was doing when He put all of us together into community—I’ve certainly seen that in the way you’ve all been there for me, and I hope I can be there for you as someone to talk to, a shoulder to cry on, or whatever the case may be.  I’m praying for nothing but abundant blessings for all of you folks, and thanking God for bringing us all together.

This is just the beginning.

Withdrawal: A True Test of Faith

I’m not much of a thinker.  I prefer to let others do my thinking for me while I use my energy for other things (like feeling, and emotionally processing).  Very often, I find myself feeling a certain way without knowing why I feel the way I do, or what it is that’s causing me to feel that way.  So, naturally, when I manage to find someone who just seems to understand what I’m going through without me having to explain myself, it’s kind of a big deal (when they can explain to me what I’m going through, that’s a bonus).  Lately, I’ve been caught in the downward spiral of being an adult living at my parents’ house for financial convenience while trying to make my way in the world—it’s taken me a few years to come to the conclusion that, at least in my situation, it just doesn’t work, and it won’t ever work.

The amount of transformation that God has performed in my life this year has been absolutely incredible, particularly while on mission to Bangladesh a few months ago.  I acknowledged this transformation as it was happening, and began to think of how challenging it would be to return home to my family and the same old same old after everything I had learned and experienced.  I prayed that God would also be working in the hearts of my family members as He was in mine, but, as we know, our desires and God’s don’t always line up.  When I came home, God really began to stretch and grow my character and ability to extend grace to my family members, and others who just didn’t understand who I was or where I was coming from.  This was fine for a while, but it did start to get old and incredibly frustrating as my patience wore thin.

When I had been back for about a month, I began to wean myself off of the prescription antidepressant drugs I had been taking for almost two years to treat my panic disorder and agoraphobia.  I was to gradually reduce the dosage over the course of two weeks from the maximum safe dosage (I find it kind of concerning that this was the minimum effective dosage for me, as a relatively small female person) to zero.  I did this, and felt totally fine—zero side effects—until after about a week of no medication.  I started to get severe migraine headaches, tingling spells, panic attacks, and I experienced prolonged episodes of heightened emotions and crying.  From everything I had read, these were all normal withdrawal symptoms that would go away in a few weeks.  I knew that God must’ve been on my side for this—the entire time I’d known Him I had depended on these drugs, but now I knew that freedom and peace could be found in God, and didn’t have to be sought in a chemical pill.  It really hurts when other people don’t understand that.  I’m a scientist—I get that modern medicine is an absolute miracle, and many things actually require pharmaceutical intervention, but isn’t there something else to be said about the Great Physician and Healer?  I have experienced supernatural peace in the midst of panic that has come from God; He has brought me out of incredibly dangerous, desperate situations—taking away my anxiety is peanuts to Him.  God is all powerful and does this kind of thing all the time, on a daily basis—I am no exception.  Still, my faith is tested every time the symptoms persist longer than I feel they should, and whenever I have a panic attack—where is God?

I came across a quote yesterday that I feel is one of the most truthful statements that can be made about my life and my walk with God; I suspect that others will also find it quite applicable.  Here it is:

“Sometimes god lets you hit rock bottom so that you will discover that he is the rock at the bottom” – Tony Evans

For me, this is truer than true.  I had plenty of opportunities to accept God into my life for years before I actually did.  It took more than a few nights of staying up all night worrying about every aspect of the day to come before I found God at rock bottom.  I would worry about what I would eat and at what time so that my blood sugar levels would stay constant and I wouldn’t pass out—but more importantly so that I didn’t get fat.  I would worry about school, marks, getting into grad school, and finding a job in the future.  I would worry about my finances and how long my money would last since I was unable to hold a job in my condition.  I would worry about whether I would be able to a) get out of the house in the morning b) get on the bus and survive the 15 minute bus ride to campus c) sit through class while sort of paying attention without fidgeting and drawing too much attention to myself, and d) get back on the bus and make it home without incident (all of these things occurring on the same day was extremely rare).  I would use and abuse drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of uncertainty, until I became a shadow staring into space, just waiting for time to pass.  One of my favourite things to do was to cry myself to sleep, since crying was a way to get out all of the emotions that I couldn’t express in words, and because sleep was the only freedom that I had from this life where I was suffocating, and couldn’t be trusted with my life in my own hands.

Only after I had tried everything else that I had access to as a human being in the western world did I attempt to seek God in this dark place.  I had never felt His presence ever in my life, despite being dragged to church every week by my parents for 18 years, but now that I was ready to seek Him and see what He had to offer me, I found Him.  He had been waiting for me for such a long time and He let me know through a number of different ways that I was in the right place in His arms.  No, my symptoms did not instantly go away, but little by little, God started to build me up from the rock at the bottom (not the sand at the bottom. Remember that story from Sunday school? Sand house guy’s house sunk and fell down, but rock house guy had a solid house…).  Coming off the meds was a huge leap of faith, and as much of a slap in the face as it was, it made me realize that I had more faith in that little white pill than I did God, the rock underneath me.

Yes, sometimes God will let us fall; even face-first into a rock, but that rock will always catch us and provide a firm foundation for building upon when the time is right.  I’ll take that over a soft landing in the sand where I can sink away and be forgotten, any day. 

The Bangladesh Diaries: Love and Grace

And just like that, it’s the middle of June.  I’ve been back from Bangladesh for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve needed all the time I can get to think and process and grow from everything that I saw and did and learned there.  The past two weeks have been particularly emotionally and spiritually challenging for a number of reasons, but the Bangladesh GUP was undoubtedly the best thing that God could have done to grow my weaknesses and give me the support system and the faith that have carried me through these struggles.

To put things plainly, I haven’t had an easy life.  I was emotionally hurt pretty deeply when I was a kid, but didn’t have an outlet to express that pain, so it just kept being suppressed and building up.  As I got older, my methods of dealing with this pain became more radical, and I was caught in a downward spiral of self-destruction.  Miraculously, when I was 18, I realized that this wasn’t how I was wanting to spend my life; I didn’t necessarily want more for myself, but I just felt that someone, somewhere, had something better in mind for me.  I withdrew completely from a lot of people to try and become a new person.  Then the anxiety took hold not long afterwards, and I withdrew even further.  When I was 20, I met Jesus.  It was He who saved me from my reckless lifestyle and put me on the path to freedom and righteousness.  In time, I was able to forgive myself for all the irresponsible behaviour and self-loathing—but I still had contempt for those who had hurt me.

This is where Bangladesh comes in.

One of the first nights in the country, we were studying scripture.  It was a fairly quiet evening aside from the normal traffic and hustle and bustle of Dhaka.  Suddenly, we heard a loud “bang”, like a firework, or a gunshot, that must’ve been really nearby.  All of a sudden, everything came flooding back to me—how I had been hurt so badly to the point where I came really close to losing my life at my own hands and became trapped by my own insecurities and shortcomings because they were all that were ever emphasized.  I was so angry.  I broke down, told a couple of teammates the whole story in confidence, and just wept.  I hadn’t ever had the opportunity to do that before, but here God had provided me with the support that I needed, and the opportunity to get 11 years of hurt and pain and suppressed emotions off my chest and into a loving, caring, and compassionate community.

Over the course of the month, God showed me ways that would change my way of thinking around love, community, and brotherhood (or in my and half of the rest of the world’s case, sisterhood).  Every morning, we would go to our different placements around Dhaka.  I, and 5 of my incredible sisters of the Lord, went to CUP (children’s uplift program).  It was essentially a daycare for children of destitute women, or children whose mothers were being rehabilitated out of the sex trade.  There was also a program for the mothers of these children, called Basha, where the women learned how to sew and make jewelry and other handicrafts as well as business skills, with the goal of getting them off the streets and into the workforce so that they could make better lives for themselves and their children.  When we arrived at placement every morning, we would do devotions with the women.  The sisterhood and camaraderie that exists between these women was truly something wondrous to behold; they have all experienced so much hurt, pain and marginalization under horrifying circumstances, but when they come together under God there is this unbreakable bond that is formed.  These women unite and share and learn and grow and build each other up as the body of Christ knowing that He wants something better for them and their families, and they are going to support each other, walking hand-in-hand together as they follow Him to freedom and righteousness.

Working with the children of these women was also incredible.  Their little bodies and brains had seen, heard, and experienced some really tough things that we, as middle-class Canadians, could scarcely imagine.  Still, every day they were overjoyed to see us, and loved to create artwork, play games, and sing songs with us.  During the short month we were there, we formed really profound bonds that we and these children (the older ones anyway) will really remember.  It was extremely hard to leave these kids at the end of the month—there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  It was really difficult to grasp that we might never know what happens to these kids or how their lives turn out.  I think one of my sisters said it best: “we are very sad to leave, but at the same time, we know that Jesus is here in this place”—exactly.  Growing up in so much turbulence and uncertainty, and then being brought into the presence of this ministry, these kids are learning to depend on Jesus for their every need and concern.  As long as they can remember to turn to Him in all circumstances, they will all certainly live full and rich lives rooted in Christ.  All that we can do from here to support this is pray; pray for these women and children that they might never lose sight of Jesus, and of the community that He has provided them with at this mission.  Pray that they realize that God is in control of their situations, and even when the outcome looks bleak, we cannot take matters into our own hands, for God’s plan is supreme, and He truly does have our best interests at heart.

It was through witnessing all of this love and compassion between members of our team and between the women and children at CUP that I learned how to love.  As a child, although I was loved very much, it was never expressed in a tangible way to me, but negativity was.  I felt rejected and abandoned because I didn’t feel loved, and this translated into self-loathing over my many insecurities that I was constantly being reminded of.  It was having this love that I had so desperately craved for so long be demonstrated to me by teammates I had never met a few months before, and women and children that I might only ever interact with for five mornings a week for a month that I learned the value and importance of expressing love.

God was also very much at work in this situation as well.  During our final week at placement, we were traveling there by rickshaw through the crowded streets of Dhaka when our rickshaw hit another rickshaw.  My foot was caught between the fenders of the two rickshaws.  I screamed and we were thrown from the rickshaw into the middle of the road.  My foot was a mangled, bloody mess and I was so shaken up that I just wanted to go home and cry.  We got back on the rickshaw and I burst into tears, not understanding why God kept putting these obstacles of anxiety and physical illness and now traumatic injury in my way of serving Him.  When we got to placement, my cuts were cleaned and my foot was bandaged.  I was just so overwhelmed by the whole situation that I just didn’t want to be there.  I wanted to go back to Grace House and lie on my bed in the dark and cry myself to sleep, but God had other plans.  A couple of women and children came into the room I was in and saw me crying.  I had been so caught up in my own misery that I had forgotten about these beautiful human beings that I loved so much, and how I wanted to be strong and supportive for them.  I had trouble walking, but I went upstairs to the daycare and as soon as I hobbled in the door, a little person with a glowing smile ran up to me and hugged my thighs, nearly knocking me over.  I picked the boy up, looked into his dark, hopeful eyes, and forgot all about the accident.  Seeing God in these kids’ faces was my motivation.  They had such a hunger for God and a thirst for love that I had to do my best to quench, and they, albeit unknowingly, did the same for me.

I was able to escape that accident with nothing more than a broken toe that will eventually heal—it could’ve been much worse.  Similarly, I was able to escape my childhood with my life; I was insecure and broken, but by God’s grace I found Jesus and was saved from all the hurt and pain and anger that plagued my life before.  Although it’s not always easy to love those who have hurt us, we can remember the grace that God has extended to us, even though our sin has hurt Him deeply.  As it says in Ephesians 4:31-32: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”