Category: depression

A Soapbox on Anxiety

~ Cati Grape ~ Leave a comment

ANXIETY IS NOT A SIN.

Can we stop perpetuating this idea that experiencing anxiety means we are doing something wrong, whether unintentionally or knowingly? Can we stop labeling things like anxiety and depression as ungodly emotions?

I realize now that what I experienced as a child (and have continued to experience throughout my entire life) is anxiety—and whether this is a result of a neurological defect, a personality difference, something spiritual, or a combination of all three, I have no idea. Regardless, anxiety has been a life-long foe. Yet, I have watched the progression throughout my life.

As a child, my difficulty in social situations was merely labeled as ‘shyness’ and was always something I would outgrow. By the time I was a teenager, though, shyness was no longer something semi-cute—it became anxiety that caused meltdowns before and after social situations, that left me sitting quietly away from groups rather than interacting, that left me constantly on edge in relationships, that made me feel absolutely crazy. Suddenly, my internal chaos wasn’t so easily stuffed into a box of childhood shyness. In the realm of church, it was labeled wrong and sinful, and it meant I wasn’t trusting God and that I didn’t read my Bible enough and pray enough.

So please tell me: how is it that experiencing anxiety as a child is ‘acceptable’ to a degree and only mildly concerning, but when you turn 13, it becomes a sin? And when you are an adult, it becomes a sign that you aren’t actually a follower of Jesus? Church, we can do better. So much better.

Anxiety comes at me from all angles at any given moment. Back in August, I was standing in the grocery store getting milk, of all things, and in a moment, my heart was racing, and I couldn’t breathe. There was no imminent threat. My brain was just overwhelmed by the lights and the other people and not being safe at home, and the way that my body typically translates that overwhelm is into panic. Was I sinning in that moment? Was I disobeying God? Was I experiencing something ungodly? Or is it just a way that my brain chooses to respond in its most foundational, human form?

I could be washing dishes and the panic comes; or driving into church, and there’s the panic again. I could be making a grocery list or answering emails. It really doesn’t matter when or where. And, if we are talking socialization, most of my in-person conversations involve me stumbling over words, despite the fact that I teach English for a living, and trying to stay calm while my heart races. Over the last year, I have learned tools for better managing anxiety and for staring it in the face and not letting it win. But it’s still there, ya’ll. It’s still there.

Is this because I don’t trust God enough? Gosh, I’ve never trusted God more—I trust Him to see me through THIS. I trust Him that there’s better to come. I trust Him that HE IS GOOD. I trust Him that one day, He is going to redeem all of this and set me free. I trust Him that, no matter what happens this side of heaven, HE IS WITH ME. And I’ll be honest, anxiety has let me see a lot of God lately because when I have nothing to give, He shows up and does something I know I could never have done or orchestrated myself.

Could anxiety cause me to behave poorly? Sure. If my anxiety is under-managed or stuffed, it has caused me to lose my cool and say things to my children, my spouse, or a friend that are not kind. That is wrong. Anxiety can lead me to isolate, and that is not healthy. Anxiety has caused me to attempt to control situations or people, when I need to surrender those to the Lord. But, at its root, I don’t know how it is that we can continue to say that the experience of anxiety is sin, and that people who struggle with it are not strong enough Christians who don’t have enough faith.

I think sometimes we are afraid to let anxiety off the hook because then we might be giving people permission to use anxiety as an ‘excuse’ to behave poorly. But, we could do that with just about anything, right? Instead, I think that if we could acknowledge anxiety for what it is and give people who struggle in silence a voice, we could begin to step on the Enemy’s toes and find some victory in this. We would begin to see people who have been drowning in anxiety rise up with courage because they could believe that God still has a place and a purpose for them. We would begin to see chains broken and people set free because they’d realize that God is for them, not mad at them because their brains enjoy being chaotic.

There is so much to this conversation, and I am only getting started. I have gotten so many answers in the last year, answers that I have been searching for since I was in elementary school. What I know for sure is that we can’t keep generalizing the topic and bemoaning that “anxiety and depression are on the rise” (that’s a whole other soapbox which I vehemently disagree with); we can’t keep blaming things like screen time and social media; and we can keep offering ‘churchy’ answers, as if reading my Bible 10 more minutes a day would totally make this disappear. Dealing with anxiety from a healthy perspective is multi-faceted and requires a variety of tools and management plans to be successful.

Whether you are 7 or 37 or 77, if you have ever struggled with anxiety or continue to, please know that you are not broken, you are not worthless, and you are not beyond hope. On behalf of anyone who has ever told you that you are not a strong enough Christian or that something is deeply wrong with you or that you need to change in order to have a purposeful life, I am so very sorry. I’ll tell you what I’ve found this year because for the first time in EVER, I fully believe it: Friend who struggles with anxiety, GOD IS FOR YOU and HE HAS GOOD THINGS FOR YOU.

In Prison

~ Cati Grape ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve written here.

The summer, as is usual, has less of a routine, less of the predictable spaces I have carved out in my life, and more of a sense of floating at random, doing all of the fun things and traveling and seeing friends more times in three months than we might see them the rest of the school year combined.

In reality, however, I can’t blame summer for not being here. Rather, writing has felt less enjoyable, mostly because I have spent a significant part of the last few months arguing with God about how much I don’t want this space, this place anymore. I don’t want to sit in the dark places; I don’t want to know the shadowed lands of depression any longer; I don’t want to find Jesus’ compassion in this place so that I can give it to others; I don’t want to walk the often long path that is healing; I don’t want to surrender myself into the unknown. I don’t want to know Jesus’ strength in my weakness. I don’t want to understand this any longer.

I’d like to be anywhere but here, I tell myself. Just take me somewhere else, Jesus.

The other day, I was reading the story of Joseph. I grew up in church, so I have heard this story countless times before. As I read, though, one particular phrase really struck me. Joseph had been sold into slavery by his brothers and eventually wound up in Egypt. There, he gained the favor of Potiphar, “an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard.” 1Joseph was a successful man and became Potiphar’s personal attendant. “The Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house because of Joseph. The Lord’s blessing was on all that he owned, in his house and in his fields.”2 Joseph’s life had made a turn around and seemed to be headed in a great direction!

And then, Potiphar’s wife wanted Joseph to sleep with her. When he wouldn’t, she wrongly accused him of trying to start the affair, and Joseph was thrown into prison.

Uhhhhhhh . . .

Finally, things had been starting to look up after he had been sold into slavery, by his brothers, taking him away from everything he had ever known. Finally, Joseph had become successful and was doing well. But here he was again, tossed into a pit. His life had not, in any way, gone according to “plan.”

If I were Joseph, I would certainly have been questioning everything about my existence, my purpose, and the dreams I had believed God had given me. Were those just my imagination? Was I just making something up to make myself feel good or give myself false hope?

I’ll admit: I have had a few moments this summer when it felt like God was playing a joke on me—like maybe this entire thing called life is just one giant joke, and God is sitting up there in heaven laughing at me while I stumble and struggle through each day. I’ve struggled at large with cynicism, a deep mistrust of others and of God—that everyone’s motives are selfish; and that nothing can ever possibly change. So, what’s even the point?

And I wonder if Joseph ever struggled with those thoughts himself. Is it possible to be human, thrown in prison for something you didn’t even do, and not at least question a few things? Did he look back on the scope of his life and wonder what had gone wrong? Had he had a misstep? Had he disobeyed God? Had he heard wrong? He had just been unlucky? What was the point?

Yet, Scripture tells us something important. There, in prison, “the Lord was with Joseph.”3 In a low place; in a lonely place; in a place that he didn’t deserve; in a place that he didn’t expect; in a dark place; in an uncomfortable place; in a place where perhaps Joseph felt forgotten, unseen, and unheard; in a place of questions; in a place of uncertainty; in a place where perhaps Joseph wondered what the future could possibly hold; in a place that didn’t make sense; in a place that Joseph would never have chosen for himself.

In this place, the Lord was with Joseph, extending kindness to him and showing him favor.

Please tell me that I am not the only one who assumes that any difficult, painful, unfair, or challenging circumstance is a sign that God has forgotten me or that I have done something wrong. I have walked around this circle dozens of times over the last many years: “Just tell me what I am doing wrong, God, so that I can fix it!” Why is it so easy to assume that anything that is hard or uncomfortable is a sign that I am doing something wrong? Then I work myself in a tangle trying to fix it, fix myself, and get myself out of the circumstance.

Interestingly, Joseph wasn’t in prison because he had done anything wrong. He hadn’t disobeyed God. He hadn’t been worshiping idols. He hadn’t slept with Potiphar’s wife—in fact, he recognized that it was wrong and tried to run away. Joseph was just living his life, doing his job—and WHAM—in a moment, everything changed.

But the Lord was with Joseph. The fact that Joseph was in prison didn’t change the fact that God was with him, giving him favor, or working everything for good. The fact that Joseph was in prison didn’t mean that God had left him or forgotten him. The fact that Joseph was in prison didn’t mean that God was done with him—in fact, God was only getting started with what he was going to do through Joseph’s life. The fact that Joseph was in prison for several years did not change that God was kind, good, or faithful.

I don’t know what your “place” is—it probably isn’t a literal prison, but maybe, some days, it feels like it. From the stage on Sunday morning, we sing songs about promises—about God setting the captives free, about Him handing us the prison keys. But on Monday morning, when we aren’t seeing those promises play out the way we thought they would or WHEN we thought they would, it is so easy to grow cynical, to start questioning and doubting, to grow weary and want to quit. (Just me?) Maybe we aren’t walking free yet; maybe that day isn’t coming for many more years. But, what if we could be faithful there, in the prison? What if we could see that the Lord was with us, and choose to honor Him, even in a place we’d rather not be? What then could God do in our lives, in our stories?

Today, I am praying that God would help me to be faithful, help me to be obedient, help me to honor and trust Him—in the exact place I find myself, rather than asking for a way out, asking for anywhere but here. I am praying that God would help me to know peace and hope, even in the places that don’t make sense and don’t feel good and don’t look like He is doing anything. It’s so hard, isn’t it? I get it wrong far more often than I get it right. I grumble a lot and argue a lot and look for the easy way out a lot, a lot. And He knows. So I am also praying that God would show me His kindness, because it’s the only way I can stay in this place without giving up. The amazing thing? I know He will—even in prison.

  1. Genesis 39:1 ↩︎
  2. Genesis 39:5-6 ↩︎
  3. Genesis 39:21 ↩︎

Fighting Words

~ Cati Grape ~ Leave a comment

I am a firm believer in employing practical methods for combating mental chaos. Getting enough good sleep most nights of the year is imperative for me. Watching my caffeine intake, exercising, drinking plenty of water, eating well, breathing fresh air, getting sunshine, staying warm, doing activities I love, and having people to process and pray with are also important weapons in my arsenal.

That said, there comes a point when we have to admit that what is happening in our minds is an actual spiritual battle. And yes, sometimes, all you need is a nap. But sometimes, you need a whole lot more.

From the very beginning, our enemy has been a liar. He twisted what God said, and Eve fell for it. (We all do.) From the very beginning, our enemy has been seeking to steal, kill, and destroy. He continues that objective to this day.

At times, the very reality that the enemy lies to us can feel hopelessly overwhelming. I know I have been there more than a time or two. The lies are so loud, they are literally screaming in my mind. I am in darkness and can’t see my way to the right or left and all I hear are these lies in my head, telling me the most awful and horrible things.

Last fall, I attended our church’s women’s night, and the theme was Fighting Words. I don’t think I knew then how much I needed that. Our pastor gave out these necklaces as gifts for each woman. The necklace has two small rectangles hanging from the gold chain—one says “fighting” and the other “words.” I liked the concept and have been wearing the necklace every day since.

Then last week, with lies raging in my mind, I realized: it’s battle time. I have got to get some fighting words. If I want to see victory, I’ve got to fight, and I will fight with my words. It’s not enough just to fight back with my mind. It’s not enough just to pray for the enemy to be disarmed. It’s not enough just to write in a journal. It’s not enough even just to ask other people to pray. I’ve got to get me some fighting words, and I’ve got to start speaking them just like Jesus did in the wilderness when the enemy tempted him with words from SCRIPTURE.

I love, love, LOVE the first episode of The Chosen, when Mary Magdalene, tormented by demons, speaks aloud Isaiah 43. And after Jesus has set her free, He speaks those very words to her, in person.

The Word of God is powerful! I don’t know why, somewhere along the line, the Bible has just become a nice little Sunday School thing. We know the stories, we memorize a few Scriptures, we put the nice ones on t-shirts and coffee mugs and adult coloring pages. Maybe we use the Word of God as a guide to a moral life, a little pick-me-up on sad days. I know I’ve done all of these things and more.

But do we realize the power of the Word of God? Really, if I am being honest, I know that I don’t. The Bible says that it is living and active. I have been praying for revival in my soul because I don’t want to merely live a moral life. That’s not what I signed up for when I said I’d follow Jesus. I was all in, and I am still all in. I want to see the move of God, miracles with my own eyes, my own freedom and deliverance from what torments me.

Which means, THERE WILL BE LIES. Anyone who told you that following Jesus meant you’d be heaving tea in a bed of wildflowers was lying. Anyone who told you it would be comfortable either didn’t really know or didn’t want to say how hard it would be. We have an enemy, that enemy is real, and he wants to destroy your life, my life. He wants to get us so wrapped up in the lies that we never follow Jesus, that we never obey Jesus, that we never step into what God has for us. There is a real spiritual battle happening—maybe you feel it the way I do.

Dear friend, please rise up and fight. Ask God to give you the fighting words YOU need from His word. I am collecting mine on my phone so that at any moment, I can pull open the note file and speak those words out loud over and over and over again until the darkness flees.

I think there has been a tendency in Christian circles to avoid doing this whole speaking business because we don’t want to abuse the concept. We don’t want to tell people they can start speaking big houses and fancy cars into existence. We don’t want to preach the health and wealth message, so we put the Word into a neat little Sunday box or even a “I read one chapter today, and I’m good,” box. But what if speaking the Word wasn’t about getting what we wanted? Rather, what if speaking the Word of God was about disarming the enemy so that God can do what He wants in and through our lives? What if speaking the Word of God was about bringing light into the darkness that surrounds us and often seems as if it will defeat us?

If you find yourself feeling like you are in a war today, a war of your soul and mind and heart and very being, you are not alone, friend. It’s heavy some days—maybe more days than not; it’s dark—I know that; it’s lonely—yes, it is; it’s confusing—most certainly. The desire to hide may be strong. The desire to quit may seem overpowering. But you are NOT ALONE. You are not the only person facing a battle. And there is nothing wrong with you because of the battle. Facing the darkness does not mean you have done something wrong. It does not mean you are a failure. Most importantly, remember that He is with you in the war.

He doesn’t say that we will never walk through the waters or the fire (gosh, my comfort-loving soul wishes He did!). But He does promise that the waters will not overwhelm us, that the fire will not burn us. With Him by our side, we cannot be defeated. So, let’s find our FIGHTING WORDS and begin speaking them out loud, in the shadows, in the silence, in the darkness. He will bring us into the light, and we WILL TRIUMPH over our enemy.

Awakened

~ Cati Grape ~ Leave a comment

Not again, I plead, as an incoming wave takes my breath away. Depression becomes, yet again, so acute, almost all-encompassing. I’m not as frightened by this as I used to be, and I know that if I keep going, putting one foot in front of the other, a moment will come when I will feel alive again.

Maybe it is coming off an illness—and being sick several times over in the last few months—that knocked me completely off my feet. The kids got sick too, and our oldest literally slept for three days straight on the couch and still managed to sleep through the night. I didn’t get as much sleep during the time of illness—because, you know, MOM—so perhaps my body is still trying to catch up from that. Either way, I wake up and feel perpetually tired, as if I didn’t sleep a wink.

My brain is in that blank space of survival. I cannot have an intelligible conversation and putting words to anything is a feat which leaves my mind exhausted. I’m in a familiar place where I don’t seem to feel anything, a place of weary body, mind, and soul. Everything on my to-do list feels painfully impossible because energy and brain space is non-existent.

It’s not really new. I’m not looking for sympathy. I have learned how to get through these times. I’m not lying on the couch, staring out the window, doing nothing. The dishes still get done. I put food on the dinner table. We go to the library. I do a load of laundry. Work emails get answered, the budget is finished. It isn’t as if the wave ceases my physical existence.

Yet it feels almost like being on the outside looking in, a thick wall of glass separating me from others so that I can see everything they do and enjoy but I cannot speak to them, I cannot hear them, and I cannot access the life that they live. In a way, I’m on the outside looking in at my own life—I can see it, but I can’t experience it. Or I guess I experience it, but I don’t feel a thing. I’m numb.

The darkness grows because as I look around, I realize that a lot of other people cannot relate and cannot understand. I feel increasingly alienated from society, as people pass me by with their dreams and their goals and their energy and joy—and I begin to wonder what I did to deserve this type of existence. With each day, week, month, and year that passes, I wonder what is so wrong with me that I cannot snap out of it.

And as the wave lingers, depression becomes a haunting feeling of lack of compatibility with life, and although it breaks my heart to say that I understand what could propel a local woman to jump off the side of a bridge a few days ago, I do. On a good day, I think that could never, would never be me—the only problem is that I have groped my way through too many dark days to say I can’t understand it even a little bit.

For me, this is my “thorn in the flesh.” And like Paul, I have “pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.”1 Yet, it is through this regularly occurring experience of depression that my faith has been strengthened more than anything else. It is where I have discovered that His grace is, in fact, sufficient—even though I never wanted to know that truth in this way. It is where I have experienced His comfort, His presence—and I know I wouldn’t have been able to experience those if I never needed Him.

And so I find myself of late praying for God to wake up my soul to His presence, to His nearness. I wish it were as simple as “think positive thoughts” or “just snap out of it,” but that really isn’t the case. I breathe. I do the next thing. I wake up for another day and go through the motions. All while I pray that God would give me the grace I need to walk in this moment, to not give up, and to know that He hears me.

Like a breath of fresh air, a moment comes. It’s almost as if a light switches on. Finally. Something jolts me to the present, to the realization of God’s nearness. It catches me off guard and brings tears to my eyes—I’m alive, and I’m breathing and feeling and living. The beauty is so shocking, it awakens my senses and reminds me of God’s faithfulness and goodness. Today it was a song that I haven’t heard probably in years that gripped my soul with both hands and reminded me that God hears me and He has never left me and He never will.

I don’t know what you are facing today, but I know how easy it is to begin to grow weary. We pray for the miracle, for the healing, for everything to be set right this side of heaven, yet we wonder, if that doesn’t happen, how long can I keep going? The thought of bearing such a weight for weeks, months, years . . . a lifetime . . . seems suffocating, impossible. Even for the cheeriest of hearts, weariness begins to set in and we might wonder where joy has gone. We begin to feel numb, and we easily forget. Oh, how easily we forget.

Today, I encourage you to ask God to give you a tangible reminder of who He is and of His presence, a reminder that He is the God who sees and the God who hears. And even if you don’t feel like looking, keep looking. Even if you think you have no more energy to keep going, to keep seeking, to keeping knocking, don’t give up. We don’t need to know how we will keep going tomorrow or a year from now—just keep drinking deep His grace for THIS moment, and ask for it as much as you need. His provision never runs dry.

In an unsuspecting moment, I pray that your spirit would be enlivened by the breath of God, that your soul would be awakened to His beauty and goodness, that your heart would be filled with courage to keep going another day. He is good, friends, and He is worth it all.

Footnotes
  1. 1 Corinthians 12:7-9 ↩︎

Writer’s Block

~ Cati Grape ~ Leave a comment

“Writer’s block is life block.”

Last weekend, I listened to a recent podcast episode of That Sounds Fun with Annie F. Downs. The interview1 was with author, speaker, and coach Ally Fallon, and I have to say that, as a writer, this was one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard. (If you’re a writer or want to be a writer or just want to write something, I highly recommend listening, then downloading the 37 pages of show notes and sifting through them a few times to absorb it all. Don’t ask me how I know.)

Ally said, “Writer’s block is life block,” and this struck me in a different way than anything else I’ve ever heard about writing. We tend to hear that writer’s block occurs when we don’t have anything to write about, when the inspiration runs dry, maybe when we’re physically tired or our minds are weary.

(Funny thing is, for these very excuses, I haven’t written here in two weeks and not because I don’t have things to write about but because it felt hard to start, and it felt like it would take so much time. The problem is, I made a goal to write here once a week, and while I know that no one else is holding me to that and that there is nothing wrong with cutting myself a little slack, I know how easy it is to skip one week and then another and then another and before you know it, years go by and you realize you haven’t been pursuing the things God has placed in your heart. So, I knew today was the DAY to write. I sat down this morning while my son was at tutoring, tapped one sentence into my phone, and within 30 minutes, the rest of this all came together. Writer’s block LIES – the first step is always the hardest. Just get started.)

So I think there’s really something to all of the writers who say they write something every day no matter what. It’s too easy to say, “I’ve run out of things to write about” or “I’m just too tired to write today” or maybe more like “I’m so busy. I don’t have time to write . . . ” when in reality it’s more like we know that writing is going to require effort and maybe even take us places we don’t want to go. And honestly, I’ve found this to be true whether I’m writing personal thoughts in my journal that no one will ever read, writing for my blog or a social media post, writing thoughts that may one day resemble a book, or writing curriculum for work. Sometimes, avoiding it just feels so much better.

So I avoid writing and blame it on writer’s block instead of being honest about the fact that writing takes energy and faith, and exploratory writing often leads me to places I never thought I’d go or wanted to go.

At large, I’ve seen this whole avoidance thing in myself a lot this past year. I see how I avoid things that I know are going to require emotional and/or mental investment, and I think that’s part of the struggle I’ve had with depression especially. Getting into the ring to fight is hard. Like it-is-the-very-last-thing-I-want-to-do HARD. As wild as it seems, it’s easier to stay in the pit sometimes than to put forth the “Herculean effort needed to make mental corrections.”2 It’s easier to avoid than to face what’s really there, especially when you aren’t sure what you’ll find and you’ve no interested in being exposed. Or when you know what’s there, and you know how much work it’s going to take to deal with it all, and work or not, you really just don’t want to get into the mess.

If y’all have been around the church block even once recently, you’ve surely heard about The Chosen. For its popularity, I was against it at first because sometimes I’m stupidly stubborn like that. But I also knew that visually experiencing the life of Jesus would be emotionally challenging, exhausting honestly. Of all the goals I could set for myself, maybe watching a show doesn’t seem that important. But I recently made a decision to sit with the show after several people recommended specific episodes to me. I watched the first episode of Season 1 last week, and I wasn’t wrong about why I was avoiding it. Episode 1 was gutting, though not for any ways I thought. I won’t spoil it for you here in case you’ve not watched it, but let’s just say, it felt like watching my life on the screen, and I cried ugly tears. It was easy to avoid watching this show and just chalk it up to me being stubborn about popular things; it was a lot harder to watch the show and realize that what I’d been avoiding are some of the very things I’ve needed for my healing.

At some point in our lives, I think we all hit a block of some form or another. And it’s easy to excuse that away by saying we’re tired or we just don’t want to deal with it or it’s not that big of a problem or even a problem at all. But when Jesus calls, when His whisper gets too much to ignore, it’s time to step into those waters and find out what’s there.

We don’t necessarily have to pick apart every part of our lives and (over) analyze them. (l will do that for you for free. You’re welcome.) But maybe there’s a point where we have to get at the roots of our anger, our short temper, our fear, our panic, our resentment, our obsession with independence or our overt dependence, our lack of effort or motivation, our stubbornness, our need to control our children/spouse/environment and other people, our tendency to laugh things off or make everything “no big deal,” etc. If we’re going to grow, we have to be willing to push into that block and find out what’s behind it all.

Or maybe the block is because Jesus is calling you to something, and you’ve got every excuse in the book about why you can’t, why you don’t want to, why you won’t, why now isn’t a good time, why you don’t have the resources, why you’ll maybe think about it . . . in a few years. (Oh man, I’ve been there before. That makes me think of another story for another day.)

Surface level existence or relationship is one thing. I’ve lived there long enough. But I’m finding that Jesus wants to take us so much deeper, if only we are willing. Turns out,  it’s not as scary as I thought it would be but it sure is uncomfortable and it takes a level of courage and commitment far different from what I expected. To go deeper, we’ve got to stop blaming the block on other things and stare it in the face for what it is: my unwillingness to get into the mess or discomfort I already know is there or that I might find.

Are you willing to face your life block today? It probably (almost definitely, sorry) won’t feel like how you want for a while, but there’s SO MUCH GOODNESS on the other side. I promise.

Footnotes
  1. “When You Want to Write a Book with Ally Fallon – Episode 892.” That Sounds Fun, 6 June 2024, https://www.anniefdowns.com/podcast/when-you-want-to-write-a-book-with-ally-fallon-episode-892/.
    ↩︎
  2. Welch, Edward T. Depression – The Way Up When You Are Down. P & R Publishing Company, 2000. pg. 10. ↩︎

Layers

~ Cati Grape ~ Leave a comment

I think the realization that there was a tremendous lot of “stuff” lurking under the surface began the day I bumped the front corner of my car into the backside of another mom’s mini-van in the playground parking lot. I was knee-deep in parenting three little ones under the age of who knows what, absolutely exhausted, and totally terrified by the volcanic explosion of emotions that, looking back, I now see had been buried for a really long time. The anger was the most confusing and heartbreaking, and I felt more like a monster than a mother. I didn’t expect, though, to get out of my car and start sobbing and suffocating in front of a complete stranger who couldn’t understand why I was so incredibly shaken by leaving a small scrape on her already scraped up minivan. She joked about it with grace. But for me, there was a whole lot more going on.

It was only a scrape, I told myself. No big deal. But of course, what was going on inside of me went much deeper, and it festered. Sometimes, I seemed to be able to manage it, even to ignore it. Sometimes, I convinced myself that everything was fine. But then, suddenly, in moments that smacked painfully, the wound was ripped open again, and again.

With gaping wound last year, grasping at straws in every area of my life, I stepped onto the path of healing in full belief that all I needed help with was managing stress. A few changes to my schedule, some social outlets, a hobby, a few chiropractic adjustments, and maybe a few counseling sessions—that’s all I needed.

And while I suppose that stress was the first layer, I peeled that back and found a whole lot more . . . Year and years’ worth of undealt with stuff. I wasn’t at all shocked by the exhaustion I found, by the weight of the world, by the impossible burden of perfectionism I’d been carrying. I wasn’t really surprised by the resentment or by the frustration or even the anger. And although I was shaken by the anxiety and depression that continued to scream in my ear, I’d known them as (unnamed) foes for my entire life. I worked through some things, I saw a bit of growth. Maybe that was all I needed.

I have seen progress, but I KNOW there is more. So I’ve kept digging.

Goodness, I thought the healing process would be gentle. I thought it would feel so inviting, so rewarding. But really? I’m at this point where my arms are aching tired and I’m dripping in sweat. I’m dirty, my hair is a mess, and I’ve got bug bites that are driving me crazy (southern mosquitoes, y’all—they are the WORST). My excitement about the process has most definitely waned but I’ve dug up so much by this point that there is really no turning back. I’d do anything to just be inside reading a book and sipping iced coffee right now. But I’m out here in the unrelenting summer sun digging around anxiety and depression until the process makes me want to run away from the literal world.

While digging a few weeks ago, my shovel hit something hard, something that took the breath right out of me. I hit SHAME.

Just typing that word makes the tears sting my eyes.

I had thought shame was for people who had done something wrong or had something wrong done to them. I thought shame was for miserably poor people or for prostitutes. I thought shame was for drug addicts. I thought shame was for people who had been abused. I thought shame was for people who stole, for people who drank, for people who looked at inappropriate photos online.

But there I was, a church girl who grew up in a safe and loving environment, the girl who basically lived under a rock half of her life and still doesn’t know the popular music and is so hyper-sensitive that she can’t watch movies rated PG-13 without hiding behind a pillow. Yeah, that girl—drowning in shame that I had taken on for myself and shame that other people had poured on to me. And I realized that, quite the opposite, shame is an experience that anyone can have because shame says, “You are bad.” Shame says that there is something wrong with you, that you are an outcast, that you are worthless, that you are beyond repair, beyond hope, beyond love—because of some way that you are, some thing you have done, or some thing you have had done to you.

Shame is the Enemy’s tactic, and he can and will whisper it into the ear of anyone.

As I’ve peeled back the layers, I see shame woven through the threads of my life, shame that began when I was a young girl trying to make sense of my quiet personality, my tendency toward tears, my many irrational fears, and the dark crevices of my chaotic, overwhelming, and unpredictable mind; shame that has increased with every wave of depression, with every suicidal thought, with the people I reached out to in desperation who told me that I was in sin or that I wasn’t actually a Christian at all, with every attempt to get up earlier, pray harder, do more only to still be staring mental illness in the face. The shame has increased layer over layer and become mangled into a mess of anger and exhaustion all of which landed me on the precipice of hopelessness last year.

The pieces are starting to fit together, a little bit.

Studies of the brain show that it reacts to shame as if it is confronting physical danger. Shame evokes a physical response, a desire to run, a need to hide. Shame produces an exhausting race of self-preservation, a race against the potential of being exposed or the potential of hurting others. As Welch writes, “Shame has a natural affinity with self-protection and unbelief. It hides from others, feels undeserving of anything good, and believes it will contaminate whatever comes close.”1

As I look back, I see how I have furthered the distance between myself and the possibility of healing or freedom because of shame. I have built walls between myself and others but mostly between myself and God. In shame, I found myself asking, “Is there a place in the Kingdom of God for me?” If I’m only going to contaminate others and/or disappoint God, maybe walls a million miles high are the way to go. But although isolation may feel safe, it is actually the nightmare of shame – the realization that I am so broken, contaminated, and worthless that I am all alone.

Although so much is beginning to make sense, and I think maybe there are things that have been so dead inside of me that are starting to come alive, I know the process is ongoing. I’m currently, daily, taking a sledgehammer to those walls—and allowing Jesus to dismantle all of Shame’s lies. And I just want to say, at the moment, these three things:

  • Friends, if you are in a process of healing, of dealing with pain—keep going. I know it isn’t easy, I know it probably doesn’t look like what you thought it would or how you want it to, but it IS producing good things, maybe things that you don’t even know and likely things you can’t even imagine. Keep digging. Keep asking questions. Keep hanging on because GOD IS WORKING, and He isn’t finished with you yet.
  • If you are asking God for more, keep asking. Believe and speak this: “Jesus is far better than I think He is or could ever imagine.” I’m doing the same. I know it’s not easy, it doesn’t come naturally, and everything within us wants to protect ourselves by believing that really, God can’t be that good, and at the very least, He can’t be that good to me. But keep asking for the more because if nothing else, what I have seen this year, is that HE KEEPS SHOWING UP AND BLOWING MY MIND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, and I’m no longer chalking that up to random coincidence or good luck. He HEARS you and He SEES you.
  • If the experience of shame resonates with you, name it for yourself and speak it to someone you can trust. My pastor said to me recently, “The enemy’s power is dispelled when we don’t allow shame to isolate us.” Seek help, wisdom, counsel, and encouragement from people who will cover you and support you, and, most importantly, help you take that shame to the feet of Jesus, the One who can and will bring you the healing and hope you need.
Footnotes
  1. Welch, Edward T. Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness & Rejection. New Growth Press, 2012. p.137 ↩︎

The Wave

~ Cati Grape ~ 2 Comments

There I was, standing in the library, blinking back the tears while reading a picture book. I mean, when I tell you Jesus meets me in the most unexpected places, I’m not kidding. A picture book? For real?

The Wave by Tyler Charlton1 put into pictures and (simple, straightforward) words an experience I have had over and over again in my life. Several years ago, I heard someone describe episodes of depression as waves, and it felt so fitting at the time. Seeing another writer put it into words—for young hearts and older ones—really hit home.

Something important I have learned over the last few years is to pay attention to and be curious about what I am thinking and feeling (ignoring and trying to run doesn’t help and is actually quite counter-productive). I have found that seasons of anxiety and depression tend to come in waves, which may last but a day or a week, sometimes several weeks, though I’m learning how to find my way out of the waves more quickly these days, I think.

I’m not entirely sure what brings this about, it’s just the pattern I’ve noticed.

The challenge is that I’m not talking about gentle, lapping waves that tickle your toes. I’m talking about the massive, astonishing waves of an incoming hurricane, the ones that pound the shore all the way up the beach.

In Charlton’s book, the story goes, “I don’t see [the Wave] coming. I never do. And here I go . . . again. It makes me mad and sad all at the same time and I want to run away . . . but you can’t outrun a wave.”

And that’s exactly it—I never see the Wave coming. No matter how many times the Wave comes, I seem to be as shocked as ever. And I’m most definitely mad and sad that I wasn’t prepared and that here I am again, Lord. And even if I were becoming more adept at expecting the Wave, the impact is no less brutal. If anything, with each one, the waves feel more and more exhausting as I wonder, how long can I keep doing this?

Honestly, I’ve always been quite uncomfortable with the ocean. It is beautiful, no doubt. But it is formidable and unpredictable. I’d rather watch the waves from a very safe distance than risk putting my toes in the water and being pulled under. I’m not a great swimmer and know that I wouldn’t stand a chance in a wave of any significance.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem so easy to keep a safe distance from the waves of anxiety and depression. They come, regularly and unwanted, formidable and unpredictable in all of their wild glory. “Sometimes, I feel all alone. I miss my joy.”

I used to hope that maybe the waves would just disappear. Maybe my life could just become a walk along the calm and quiet of a lake. (Lord, why couldn’t I just be a lake person? Or a stream person? Or maybe just a puddle person?! Puddles are fun to splash in.) But the reality I’m facing is that these waves come and may very well continue to come, and it has become my responsibility to learn how to ride the waves, to remember what I’ve learned: “that the water will eventually calm . . . I will feel better eventually.”

Following the story, Charlton makes a note of some of the things he has learned over the years, things I work hard to remember myself. He encourages readers to “have a soft heart.” This is perhaps the newest skill I am learning because shutting down and isolating or being angry while I’m in the wave may feel good at the moment but ultimately hurts other people and hurts myself. Instead, I’m learning to tell people that “I’m in the Wave and I’m stuck. I’ve found that people care and will help or wait patiently for me to feel better. We are not alone.”

Another book I am reading echoes this point: “Our King has been pleased to have you walk together in our struggles. That is the way he designed his kingdom. So continue your protest against shame. Shame says, ‘You are alone; don’t tell anyone.’ In protest, believe that the King is with you and that he brings you into community. As one expression of your newfound radiance, you could say to a friend, ‘Help. Could you pray for me?’”2

I don’t like the Wave. Actually, I really really really hate it. I despise it. Sometimes, I’m scared of it—still. But, I have found and continue to find that, God’s “grace abounds in deepest waters// Your sovereign hand will be my guide // Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me // You’ve never failed and You won’t start now.”3

As I notice the waves and keep a soft heart, I also continue to “look for the shore” and “keep moving.” For those of us who experience the Wave more than a few times, we can remind ourselves that “it’s happened before and didn’t last forever.” Through the process, I trust that Jesus is the one who stills the storm to a murmur and hushes the waves of the sea4; that He is the one who “rules over the surging seas5;” that when I pass through the waters, He will be with me . . . and the waters will not sweep over me6; that He will lead me beside still waters.7

Footnotes
  1. Charlton, Tyler. The Wave. Roaring Brook Press, 2023. ↩︎
  2. Welch, Edward T. Shame Interrupted-How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection. New Growth Press, 2012. ↩︎
  3. Hillsong UNITED. “Oceans.” Zion, 2013. ↩︎
  4. Psalm 107:29 ↩︎
  5. Psalm 89:9 ↩︎
  6. Isaiah 43:2 ↩︎
  7. Psalm 23:2 ↩︎

Showing Up

~ Cati Grape ~ Leave a comment

Lore Wilbert1 is one of my new favorite authors, and not because I always agree with what she writes about. In fact, her work is very challenging to me, in both good ways and ways that are much harder to handle. What I love about her work, though, is that she writes with a gut level of honesty that brings the case for humanity to the table while pushing back against mainstream arguments.

I’m not sure how or when I stumbled across her work. It was a few years ago and somehow, I found myself on her website which, at the time, had a free book of hers available for download. I read that little pdf in a single night and was hooked. Someone who wasn’t afraid to put into words real emotions and experiences without trying to sugarcoat them with Christian platitudes? Yes, please.

In one of her recent pieces2 discussing the launch of her newest book, she concluded with the following.

“Releasing a book into the world is a huge act of vulnerability. Maybe some people do it and feel like patting themselves on the back for it, but I mostly feel like crawling into bed and pulling the covers over my head for the foreseeable future. To show up and continue to show up takes almost every ounce of my energy. I want to believe that my showing up matters not just to you and you and you, but also to me and to God because it is how I grow and mature and change and become more of who I am actually created to be.”

And honestly, it’s so good to hear someone else say that. I feel every bit of this, and not just in my writing. I’ve found that most of my life has really been a daily war between wanting to hide under the covers and needing to show up.

I guess I kind of thought that the older I got, the more energized I’d be about life. Instead, getting older has felt a bit more like grief, because while other people seem to be excited about what lies ahead, I have to choose each day to keep showing up. Sometimes it’s rather wearying to think about doing this for another few decades. (Not to say that there isn’t also goodness and mercy and blessing with each passing year; I’m finding eyes to see that much more clearly too.) But I’m finding that showing up for life takes a serious amount of defiance.

And if you’re a person like me for whom depression has been a near constant acquaintance, one of the most important things you can do is to show up every single day and defiantly refuse to give the Enemy the opportunity to let you quit. If we can be honest, showing up for life and seeking the good, the true, and the beautiful is “hard as hell sometimes,” as Sarah Clarkson recently put it, “because it is precisely a pressing back agaisnt the gates of Hell itself.”3 We don’t need to sugarcoat the reality that we are in a war “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”4

The unfortunate part of all of this is that when showing up is hard, either one of two extremes seems to be favored. The one approach is to say, “get it together.” This approach insists that depression is a sin and that real Christians are tough and always smiling (because Jesus, of course). This approach assumes the underlying perspective that tough times indicate that you are doing something wrong, and if only you’d do XYZ, you’d be happy, energized, and motivated. You definitely wouldn’t be struggling.

The other approach is the extreme opposite in which feelings dictate our every move, and we are permitted to be victims of our emotions. Hiding under the covers becomes totally acceptable as is spewing our inner chaos all over everyone because “I’m just being real.”

I like to think that honest, mature showing up lies somewhere in the middle, that God invites us to bring Him all of our humanity, including doubts, uncertainties, grief, tiredness, even anger, while also kindly but persistently leading us into hope and perseverance.

It takes courage to show up every day for a life that you didn’t expect. We don’t need to sugarcoat that either. What does that look like for you? Maybe it’s an unexpected disease; maybe it’s watching a spouse or child suffer; maybe it’s heartache and betrayal by people you trusted; maybe it’s pain in important relationships; maybe it’s the fact that this parenting gig is way harder than you ever thought; maybe it’s not anything ‘major’ but just the fact that some seasons of life are more exhausting than others; maybe, as for me, it’s facing down the reality of depression, anxiety, and physical pain as possible lifelong foes. It takes courage to show up for reality, for this messy thing called humanity in a broken world.

The beautiful thing I’m finding is that when I show up, God shows up. And yes, God fights for us, but not in the sense that we get to lie in bed while He does all the work. We have to join Him in that work. When we do, victories are won; territories are reclaimed; growth happens, even if it seems small. But let’s be honest. Sometimes, we show up and it seems like nothing happens, which means showing up is going to take courage. It’s going to take defiance. It’s going to be hard as hell. Why do we insist otherwise?!

Showing up means you take care of yourself, even when it’s hard, when you don’t want to, when you don’t enjoy it, when you’re embarrassed or ashamed that it feels so hard. (I saw a remarkable post by Elyse Myers5 this morning which really struck me. She talks about how taking care of yourself doesn’t always feel good and might not even always be something you are immediately glad you did; but we can still take care of ourselves to help ourselves feel a little more human and “get back to the starting line.” So many things to unpack there, woah.)

Showing up means calling your people and asking them to pray for and encourage you, no matter how uncomfortable that makes you or how much you think that you shouldn’t need to ask or how ashamed asking for help makes you feel. (This is a really tough one for me for so many reasons, but I also realize that asking for help is, first and foremost, my responsibility. I can appreciate when people offer help unasked, but ultimately, if I don’t ask for help, I can’t blame anyone else when I don’t receive it.)

Showing up means accepting emotions as a part of humanity and learning how to process those emotions in a healthy way. (Let’s start with this: emotions such as anger, frustration, or fear are not BAD, they are part of being human. But our thoughts are what drive our emotions, and we don’t have to be a victim to emotions. It takes practice-like a LOT of practice-but we can learn to pay attention to what we think about in order to walk in a healthier emotional state, and we can learn how to experience and process “negative” emotions without them overtaking our lives.)

Showing up means learning how to rest, surrendering the belief that we are on our own, that the burden is all on our shoulders. It means learning what actual rest is, i.e. not necessarily just a nap. (This may be my least favorite one, I have to admit. Avoiding rest for me has, over time, become a means of self-preservation. That’s also a whole other post to unpack.)

Showing up means doing what God has given you to do, faithfully, daily, when you’re tired and when you’re not, when the tears sting your eyes or when you feel on top of the world. It means, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.” It means that we “bless God in the sanctuary, . . . in the fields of plenty, . . . in the darkest valley, . . . when my hands are empty, . . . with a praise that costs me, . . . when nobody’s watching, . . . when the weapon’s forming, . . . when the walls are falling.”6

I grow in hope and perseverance as I show up because when my foundation is Jesus, I know that my house stands7, that with the Lord, I can “attack a barrier and . . . leap over a wall.”8 I have courage to participate in the battle because I have “the promise that heaven is waiting for me.”9 Some days, that’s all that keeps me moving forward, and that’s okay too.

Footnotes
  1. Sayable, https://lorewilbert.com/. ↩︎
  2. Wilbert, Lore. “The Impossible Work of Being Here.” Sayable, 1 May 2024, https://lorewilbert.com/p/the-impossible-work-of-being-here. ↩︎
  3. Clarkson, Sarah. Facebook Post, 9 May 2024, https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=882427800562911&set=a.176543481151350. ↩︎
  4. Ephesians 6:12, King James Version. ↩︎
  5. Myers, Elyse. Facebook Post. 20 May 2024, https://fb.watch/sbi5WBD8qz/. ↩︎
  6. Ligertwood, Brooke. “Bless God.” Eight, 20 October 2023. ↩︎
  7. Matthew 7:24-25. ↩︎
  8. Psalm 18:29, Holman Christian Standard Bible. ↩︎
  9. Wickham, Phil. “Reason I Sing.” Hymn of Heaven, 25 June 2021. ↩︎

I’ve Got a Testimony

~ Cati Grape ~ Leave a comment

“Your testimony isn’t dramatic enough.”

I’ll never forget being told that as a 17-year-old on a mission trip. Our team had written and rehearsed our testimonies before the trip, but when we got there and met up with other teams from around the country and the organization, mine apparently didn’t make the cut.

Looking back, I guess most of our testimonies probably didn’t measure up. In reality, the majority of us were church kids with relatively uneventful backstories, and more still, we were all teenagers . . . we hadn’t exactly lived a whole lot of life.

But I got the point: they were looking for miraculous transformation stories that brought home the point that Jesus can change anything. One day, you’re living one way, and the next, your life is radically transformed and totally different.

We all love those stories. I get it.

And, if I’m being honest, I really wish that were my story. I like to think about looking someone in the face or writing here and saying, “I experienced anxiety and depression, but I’ve been set free and it’s gone forever.”

Instead, my story goes more like this . . . “I grew up in the church. I had a lovely childhood. I gave my life to Jesus when I was nine years old. Still, I’ve experienced anxiety and depression for almost 30 years. Almost on the daily, my mind is plagued by all manner of chaotic, intrusive, and unwanted thoughts. Some periods of my life have been extremely dark, and I’ve experienced suicidal ideation more than once.

BUT GOD HAS SHOWN UP EVERY SINGLE TIME. God has kept me and continues to keep me when I can’t keep myself.”

So far, that’s my testimony. Maybe it’s not powerfully convincing, maybe it’s not the overnight miracle we all want, but it’s the story of my path.

Immediate miracles are incredible and very real. I can’t deny that. But what about when our miracle looks like bread from heaven every day for 40 years in the wilderness (Exodus 16)? What about when our miracle looks like showing up every morning to gather and receive that bread from heaven rather than being angry that God hasn’t shown up in the big way (the one time and it’s over way?) we’d hoped He would have?

I think that when we only look for the momentous, single-time, swift miracles, we rob God of the honor He’s due, for being the faithful God who shows up every single day in the wilderness and meets all of our needs (even when we complain).

I think saying that God is a God of miracles while placing Him in a box that defines miracles as only astonishing one-time transformations also diminishes our ability to see God’s movement in our lives and the world around us. The stories He is writing are not often black-and-white, yet such stories are no less valuable because the journey seems a lot more like faithfulness and obedience and trust than a miracle.

Recently, I was talking to a woman who is very dear to me,  and she said, “When I read your work, I always think that people are being healed little by little by your words.” That idea of little-by-little healing struck me. It’s not that I show up once to work or write, and call it good. My obedience to walk in the path God has called me (whether that is teaching or writing or being a mom or any number of other things) requires daily and long-haul obedience, and He can use that to work out the little-by-little healing of people’s souls.

The whole idea got me to thinking. (That’s what we writers do best: think and then think some more and then overthink everything. Yay.) I have experienced this very thing myself, quite tangibly in the last year.

For one, my journey picked up with a visit to the chiropractor last February. And although I had desperately hoped it would be a one-time adjustment, reality hit hard. My body needed a lot of attention. I would even have been okay with going for three months and having success. The process, rather, has been a slow, every-three-weeks plus every-day-at-home kind of healing with plenty of setbacks in between.

Not long after this visit to the chiropractor when the need for wide sweeping healing became evidently apparent, we set foot in church for the first time in five years. I was bitter and bruised, angry and cynical, full of doubts and surrounded in emotional armor. I can still vividly recall walking in the door with a deer-in-the-headlights look and totally unable to breathe and being rescued by a complete stranger who helped us figure out how to check the kids into their classrooms.

This stranger-turned-friend? I have never met anyone like her. Every interaction with her makes me feel like the most important, valued, and loved person in the entire world, and that says absolutely nothing about me and everything about the way this woman loves people. God has given her an incredible heart for people, and I know I’m not the only person who has been touched by the level of love that pours out of her.

But I was thinking the other day that I didn’t become a new person overnight simply by meeting her. Instead, over the course of the last year, every interaction I’ve had with her (whether through a text message, a hug in the church lobby, or sitting across from her over coffee) has brought healing to my soul. (Honestly, it’s a healing I didn’t go looking for and haven’t asked for, a healing that has surprised me and undone me.) It is this woman’s day-in and day-out faithfulness to the gifts God has given her and the call He has placed on her life, not a single transformational moment, that God has used to touch deep and painful parts of my heart.

Couldn’t this, just maybe, be what actually makes up our testimonies? Meeting Jesus is a monumental, life-changing thing, but it is really just the start. It is then, the meeting with Him day after day that transforms us and restores our souls. What if we began to see all the places and spaces God shows up in our lives, all of the (seemingly little) ways He meets us and loves us and heals us day after day, year after year? (And the ways He uses us to do the same in the lives of other people?) And then tell those stories?

I do think that as we follow Jesus, we will get to experience and receive one-time miracles that are powerfully transformational. But I pray that we’d also have the eyes to see all of the little miracles we are given each day, all of the daily gifts of healing and wholeness God delivers straight from heaven morning by morning. If we have decided to follow Jesus, our testimonies will never only be a single moment. They will be made up of a lifetime of showing up, more importantly a lifetime of seeing God show up, a lifetime of choosing faithfulness and receiving God’s faithfulness in spite of all of our lack. And maybe this doesn’t seem dramatic or powerful or transformative enough, but it’s still a testimony and one worth sharing.

This Is Faith

~ Cati Grape ~ Leave a comment

I have sat down to write so many times this week and grown incredibly frustrated—because I can’t give solid answers. Because everything I write comes out making no sense, like the swirling mass of thoughts in my brain. Because I can’t tie everything together nicely in the end.

As an English teacher for the better part of the last fifteen years, I have gotten really good at understanding the mechanics of a sound academic paper: there is a beginning with a clearly stated main idea (the ubiquitous thesis, anyone?); the middle portion of support and defense; and the end, in which all things are brought together in a way that creates a cohesive whole.

Exploratory writing about challenging topics seems to be quite the opposite, however, and I find myself spilling thousands of words onto the page and coming up, somehow still, with literally nothing.

I find that the best words and ideas also like to leap into my brain at 11 PM when I am supposed to be going to sleep—most definitely not helpful. And somehow, those wonderfully worded sentences I worked out on my pillow are nowhere to be found when I sit at my laptop the following day. Then, my brain is blank. My fingers fly but very little of it makes sense, nothing works together in a way that screams “blog post” or “book chapter,” and I’ve got no nice sentiment to top the whole thing off.

It just feels like a mess . . .

I think there is this very weird thing about walking out healing in real time. I am not writing from a place that I can say, “This is all in the past, and I don’t struggle anymore. If you follow my twelve-step program, you too can be free.” I am writing from a place of war and a place of deep faith.

But that brings up a whole other point, this whole topic of faith. There seems to be this idea that real faith is something that eliminates struggle, grief, tiredness . . . and most definitely doubt. I can’t count the number of times I have been informed that depression is a lack of faith, that anxiety means I don’t trust God enough. Au contraire, faith is defined as trust, hope, reliance, dependence—and those are all things I actually need to stare depression and anxiety in the face on the daily.

I guess I wish I could say that I had this permanently optimistic type of faith that says, “I believe God can do anything, and I am so happy all the time, and I never struggle.” Conversely, my faith is more like a “death grip until my hands are raw and bleeding.” (So lovely, right?) It is the kind of faith that produces desperate reliance on God because He is my literal only hope, and I am counting on Him to come through because I’ve got nothing else.

Is it just me or is that type of faith not very marketable? That type of faith doesn’t sell books or programs or churches. That type of faith sounds hard and really, rather, quite uncomfortable. We like to talk about the kind of faith that gives us energy and motivation; we like to talk about faith in terms of “positive vibes.” We don’t like to talk about the kind of faith we must have when there is no energy or motivation left, when all the positive thinking in the world doesn’t make a difference in the reality of suffering or grief, in the ache of longing for how God intended life to be.

But if this isn’t faith, then what is? Is faith only this idea that if we trust God, we won’t suffer? Is faith, “I trust God, so of course, I don’t struggle”? Or is faith, “I trust God even when I do struggle.” I am finding it difficult to articulate my thoughts on the subject, but let me say this: I trust God that no matter how much my brain screams at me about my worthlessness that His Word says that He is for me, that He loves me, that He sings over me. I trust God that no matter how dark the day or how hard I find it to breathe that He promises He will never leave me nor forsake me. I trust God that at the end of this road of humanity, heaven is waiting for me, and that one day, I will be made whole—body, mind, and soul.

But this trust, this faith—it doesn’t come easily. It’s a daily war, of reminding myself of what is true. It is being willing to get up every day and fight. I think if we are all willing to be honest, following God in the long haul requires a deep sense of faith, and not the kind that sells t-shirts and coffee mugs.

My confidence is in a God who shows up in the literal trenches, not in the absence of trenches. My faith is in a God who shows up when things are a mess not once I’ve cleaned up all of the mess. My hope is in a God who is bigger than the brokenness of the world, of your body, of my mind, not in a God who we can only say is bigger when everything is going well.

Like I said, there’s no way to tie this up because this is an ongoing process for me. I realize that part of the reason I have ignored writing for so long is because I have known how messy the process is and how much I cannot offer pithy answers. I cannot pretend like I have it all figured out. For a long time, ignoring has been easier than writing, easier than digging, easier than feeling anything, easier than staring sorrow in the face. But I feel this urge, this need to write—for myself, and for the people who wake up each day to a battle and are convinced that it is because they lack faith.

If you’re in the trenches, for whatever reasons that is, know that I am there too. And more, know that God is there with you. He sees you. He doesn’t condemn you. He doesn’t belittle you. He doesn’t call you weak or worthless or faithless. In fact, He meets you there. He fights for you. He gives strength when you have nothing left. He binds your wounds. He heals your soul. He covers you, protects you, comforts you.

He is for you. He is with you. He goes before you and behind you. He surrounds you. He is faithful. He is good. He is kind. His promises are yes and amen.

I’m preaching to myself. This is faith.