One year ago plus a few months, I found myself at my very bottom. It was a scary place to be, but there was no avoiding it. All my coping mechanisms had failed, and I was mentally/physically/spiritually exhausted. There was nothing left to fight with...so I guess you could say that I finally surrendered to my bottom. Finally allowed myself to let go of fighting it. Perhaps that is the place we all have to hit in order to finally allow a deeper work to happen in our lives. I imagine it's what an alcoholic must come to in order to finally admit they need help and begin the long hard recovery process. So long as we can keep fighting against the bottom and avoid going there, we will. No one in their "right" mind will choose the bottom as long as they believe they don't have to. So long as we think we can figure the way out, we will keep figuring our way out. But eventually, some of us will hit the bottom. The dark, scary, low place where we have been avoiding all these years. And once we've hit it, the only way forward is to embrace what the bottom has to teach us.
When I was on my fast landslide down I was in full panic mode. Reaching out to everyone I knew to pray for me, shield me from my bottom. I didn't want to go down. I wanted to go up. But all my efforts to go up were only taking me a little further down. What had worked for years before was not working anymore. In a way I knew that I was heading down. A good friend of mine that I've known since my seminary days (15 years now!!) Skyped with me once a week. There were several weeks when I didn't want to talk because I knew that I was just going to do "more of the same"...meaning sob. Big weepy sobbing. It was scary. It was messy. It was not pretty.
But she stayed. She insisted that we Skype. She insisted on being there even if all I could do was say a few words through my snotty nosed sobs. She was there for me, helping me see that I was not alone. That she would stick it out to the bitter descent to the bottom. On one of these calls I expressed a deep fear..."I feel like I'm going to end up in the mental hospital!" And instead of gasping in horror or shock, she assured me that she had known good women who had been in the mental hospital, and that it had been okay. While I was still horrified to think of myself going to a mental hospital, somehow knowing that my friend would not stigmatize me or look at me with anything but love...it lost some of its FEAR factor. Even my worst fear would be okay.
In the end, I did not end up at the mental hospital. But I don't really say that to boast. I actually am quite humbled that I didn't end up there. But I was close. The doctor started me on anti-anxiety meds to help me deal with the state of anxiety I was stuck in. These meds started to bring immediate relief, though they were not the answer. They were merely the ticket to begin to step away from the edge of the cliff. I was able to sleep again. But the hard journey was yet before me...
For the next two months I spent hours just being. Journaling, resting, being still. Meditating. Finding my Center (for me God is that center). I went on daily walks. EVERY THING I DID was with the hope of finding peace. My thoughts were consumed with how I would get out of this dark low place. How I would overcome the anxiety. How I would climb up the tall mountain looming before me.
I still remember one day when I went for a walk and the whole way home thoughts of wanting to die loomed in my head. It was SCARY. I was afraid of this desire to not be alive. I had to fight for my life because I had two boys who needed a mom. When I got home I immediately started texting any friend I could think of who would lovingly respond to me in my time of need. PRAY FOR ME!!! I texted. I knew I could not fight this darkness alone. I needed friends to pray for me and fight for me.
During this time I found a verse that said "I will fight for you, you need only to be still." The idea of God fighting for me was novel. I had tried to fight against the anxiety for so long, and I was exhausted. And I knew that there was nothing in me to muster up and pretend that I knew how to fight the anxiety.
Surrender was the invitation. It continues to be the invitation in my life.
I'm not really sure what has inspired me to share all of this today, but in the last month I am finding myself in a very different place. A place where I do not feel threatened to think about the dark pit of one year ago. I am no longer standing on quicksand. I can sense a firm ground beneath my feet. Perhaps I sense that God is with me, allowing me to look at that place and see where he has brought me up and out of.
And what is interesting to me is that I know that my story is not merely my own story...it is our story. We are all interconnected (whether we want to be or not). And so I do not think that what I have learned from this past year is only for me. It has deepened me, changed me, done something in my very being. I am not the same person. And I believe that this work is God's work in my life. And it's the kind of work he wants to do in each and every one of our lives. Your bottom doesn't look like my bottom. In that way our stories are different. But we all have those places of darkness. Some of us have met those places already. We have encountered those places and discovered the treasures that lie in the muck of surrendering to His work in our lives. Or perhaps you are IN that place of darkness right now, still wondering what the path up and out will be. Some of you have not encountered the darkness, or perhaps you are avoiding it.
But I feel like my life is a testimony to the truth that the fear of the darkness is much scarier than the actual darkness itself. And as we let go of all our own attempts at saving ourselves--in this act of surrender--we will find that true life is there waiting for us. And God will fight for you...you need only to be still. Peace be with you!
