A few days ago I had the beginnings of a panic attack.
I was in my car, driving home from work in traffic, and I felt sick. I was nauseated and weak and just trying to make it home, but before I knew it, my legs were tensing up and I was violently shaking. And my first thought wasn’t even of my own survival but, “I am failing.”
I felt like I was failing at living as a healed person. I was relapsing. It was my fault.
And it was in that moment that I realized the lie I had believed all along, that my mental health was something I could change. That if I prayed enough, believed enough, and walked well enough, I could be healed. And if I wasn’t healed, well, that just meant I was doing something wrong.
I did not develop this viewpoint from the world. I developed it from the church. I met people who time and time again would discourage me from using the words “depressed” or “anxious.” Some meant well and actually helped me, because there was a part of me that believed that those labels were who I was. That I’d always be that way. That nothing would change. And that isn’t true. But also, on the flipside, it’s not a good idea to deny what’s currently happening or soften it. But that’s what I internalized from some of the Christian world.
The church doesn’t deal well with dissonance.
If you’re a Christian, you have to appear 100% well at all times and you can only solve your problems through prayer. If you express tension or heartache or sickness, you’re immediately met with, “Well, why don’t you pray? With Jesus, you shouldn’t need or do XYZ.”
It reminds me of this parable that tells a story of a man drowning. He prays to God, “Save me!” and a boat drives by and the man refuses it, saying, “God will save me.” And then a helicopter comes and the man refuses it in the same way. And he does this over and over again until he finally drowns. When he gets to Heaven, he asks God, “Why didn’t you save me?” And God says, “I sent you a boat and a helicopter and million other things, why didn’t you use them?”
Many times in life, God gives us resources or ways beyond situations, and people shrug them off because they’re looking for the spontaneous miracle. They don’t want to use the boat to get across the water; they’d rather walk on it or fly or somehow magically appear on the other side. I guess it’s because the practical, in-front-of-your-face miracles aren’t quite as sexy as the law-defying miracles. But honestly, all miracles are beautiful.
And with my mental health, I have found healing in a practical way, through medicine. Of course, it’s only part of the tapestry of my treatment, but it’s an important part.
Yet, I let the influence of other Christians who have gotten off meds make me insecure. I thought maybe I was supposed to be so healed that I didn’t need meds anymore. And in that insecurity, I decided to stop taking one of my meds last week just to see. I take two pills every morning and decided to skip one of them for a few days.
This turned out to be a terrible idea. I felt like garbage physically. I had horrible headaches, the beginnings of pretty bad nausea, and jitters. I decided to finally call my mom just to make sure I was okay and also to let her know since she’s a pharmacist and my main medical advisor. She was not happy, to say the least. She informed me of the physical dangers of just stopping an SSRI medication that I didn’t know about. So then, I went into my bathroom and took my medicine for the first time in three days. And with the mother of all headaches, I went to church, sat on the concrete floor, and cried. I opened my hands and didn’t sing for half the worship set. I just let myself be in God’s presence. I decided to stop simply acting on information in my brain and listen. I didn’t hear too much in that moment, but I did feel a lot better.
And now, as I’ve sat and waited on God, I have found that the issue all along was never should I take the pills or not. It was my mindset of being my own savior and “measuring up” to the Christians around me. I felt all this pressure to “remain healed” and not slip up, not ruin my testimony. But it’s not my job to heal myself, and I am not meant to be just like everyone else.
I am not a failure when I have a moment of darkness. If anything, those are the moments where I see my successes all the more clearly. I see the tools God has birthed in me being used. I know how to breathe deep, how to worship when my body’s spinning out of control, how to trust when I’m seemingly drowning. Maybe the miracle isn’t in the physical. Maybe the miracle is in my spirit. That now, no matter what is thrown my way, I know my worth and I know who He is. I know that even if I lose the battle, I am sure as hell winning the war.
No longer am I measuring my progress by “I haven’t had a panic attack in X amount of months.” Now I am measuring it by how I deal with my moments. Recently, I told someone who knows a lot of my story about my panic attack and you know what he said? “You’re an inspiration. A Godly woman.”
And he’s right. No matter the perceived inadequacies on my part, I am His. And nothing that ever happens can take that away.
