My room is bright, the sun thrusting through the white eyelet without caring whether I wish it to be so assertive. My bed is unmade, the worn down blanket a white tangle around my feet. I lift my hand, gazing between my fingers towards the light that now blurs. My eyes water and I press into the discomfort, holding my eyes open, allowing them to loose focus and drift. A tear slips down my face and finally I blink. Like sandpaper they fold down and back up. I roll my lip between my teeth and gather up a handful of the sheets.

Outwardly all is well. Calmness envelops my house, my children well fed, their hands busy with paper and pencils. My husband is hundreds of miles away from me, and he too is well.

Everyone is well.

I am not well.

I am floundering.

My mind is chaos.

Confusion swirls through my brain like a thick mist. My ocean is boiling. No where is safe. Another tear slides down my cheek, this one has nothing to do with the light. I close my eyes tight, looking inwardly, now staring hard at the battle happening right before me.

I see a cliff, a girl at the edge, flirting with the sharp corner that drops into a dizzying height. I am standing there. I am hovering, waiting, but on what? I strain my eyes, “don’t fall” I gasp as I watch my foot slipping, my hands by my side. No fear on my face. I scream for myself to get back.

My eyes chill me, they are clear, my face free and happy. I see myself lean forward, the knife scraping softly up the inside of my wrist. My cliff is tall, my knife is sharp. This can be the end, and I am brave enough.

The bed shakes as a very small person clambers up beside me. I grab her and bury my face in her neck as my heart races with the missed opportunity. I am no longer brave enough.

I am outside, sitting on the ground clutching a flower pot. I take handfuls of dirt and rub it deep into the skin of my arms, my legs and even my face. I massage it in, rubbing hard. I can’t feel pain, so I rub harder. My husband shakes my shoulder, but I can’t hear him over the screaming in my head. “God, let me die, please”.

My life rose and fell, my ocean waves reassuring with regularity and occasional brushes of happiness. The hair on my husband’s arm, his strong brown hand on my knee, pressing from each side, squeezing my heart back to his. “Come back to me” he murmurs.

I drift back, slowly, the darkness empty and deep and so, so soft. I could fall into the darkness. My knees must give, and I must fold. My brokenness is less broken in the darkness. It seeps into the cracks of my needs, falling down over the shards like warm wax.

A tiny hand grasps at my shirt.

I look down.

His little face searches mine, his eyes piercing through the thick slough of my inertia. I pull his body to mine, molding him across my chest. He relaxes and sleeps. He is safe, his mother has him.

But his mother is not ok.

No one knows how not ok.

She is on the verge of death. Her spirit is gasping on the land, her ocean receding further away every minute.

For six years I fought the demon of depression.

My mind somehow broken with the hormonal ebb and flow of 4 pregnancies, 8 miscarriages, and overwhelming personal stress, cracked under the pressure.

The simple sound of a spoon falling to the floor sounded like a gunshot in my head. My reality was miserable, and pain filled. I held my ears during the singing at church so my brain wouldn’t seep out my ears. I was too weak spiritually to do anything but accuse God of leaving me. In the fog of my misery, I shouted to him “where are you, why won’t you heal me?”

“Where are my crumbs from the table?”

I don’t know whether God spoke during this time or not. I wasn’t listening.

Alcoholism slid to its feet, sauntered to my table and presented me with a convincing argument. “I can help you feel again”, his breath was oily, his tongue slithering over his lips. Through my pain filled gaze he was beautiful. I could not smell the stench of death that he could not hide in his wake.

“Its ok” he whispered at lunch time, “have a little drink to tide you over until your husband comes home”.

My husband had become my god, my crutch. He heard me, he was with me, he was helpless in the face of the storm. All he could do was hold us tightly together and not let go. He was there, and I could not see God. I replaced God with a human man. The burden was too heavy for him to bear.

My attachment to him was unhealthy.

I added Opiods to the mix, washing them down with alcohol. As the drugs hit my brain, I could finally feel again. I spent hours crying over my sin, begging God to kill me, begging God to release me to kill myself. The idea of death was like a cold drink of water. Finally there would be relief. My family could move on, my husband could find a woman that would do him good and not be the shattered mess I was. She would cook him nourishing meals, raise his children with joy, and be a trustworthy wife to him. It was selfish of me to not do what must be done to give my family the best.

I was the only thing standing between them and happiness.

My mind was completely broken.

Joy no longer existed. Only numb, unending darkness and pain. Brief moments of happiness like a sunbeam through a boarded up window. I feasted on those stray sunbeams. I held them so tightly, they shattered and ran out of my fingers like water, slipping down through the cracks in the floor to soak into the parched earth and be gone.

Around two years in, I no longer slept at night. I lay beside my sleeping husband and waited, but it didn’t come for me. Sleep had forgotten about me, and only by stacking heavier and heavier sleeping pills was I finally able to fall asleep for a few hours, only to wake up miserably hung over, feeling worse than before. I became a chemist with my mixtures. I stacked this Ambian crumb with this pill, and this pill, washing it down with alcohol. Ambien to put me to sleep, this pill to keep me under, and this pill to extend my under for at least 4 hours. It got to the point that all I could think about was sleeping pills. Ambien was my saviour. I went nowhere without it. Where was my last crumb of Ambien? I panicked. Had I run out? I knew my doctor wouldn’t give me more. He recognized a crutch.

I tried antidepressants. My doctor wouldn’t give me any. I had to go to a nurse practitioner for those. I felt ashamed of myself and sneaky. Why bother going to the doctor if I don’t follow his advice? I knew he wanted healing for me, not a bandaid or a crutch.

They helped though, like a little bulldozer pushing out the negativity and chaos in my mind. I was able to take a nap during the day, and I could feel my children again. My precious children who I adored more than anything on this earth. I lay on the couch in a stupor letting them climb over me, and lay on me. I felt peace and love once again. Except for the side affects. They weren’t my answer because of the side affects. After a month the side affects were too hard to bear, and I knew why my doctor would not give them to me. Painfully I stepped away again.

That little break in the chaos allowed me to think clearly enough that I realized how I was misappropriating my husband, and how out of control my crutches had become. “I want to be healed” I told God, “show me the way, and I will wait on you”.

The darkness rushed back quickly. Within a month it was worse than ever. I no longer self medicated with anything but sleeping pills. I gritted my teeth and bore it, slowly, tentatively pressing back into my creator. Bursting into tears when a loud noise happened, falling into bed the minute my husband got home every night. I mothered my children, hiding my storm as well as I could.

But they knew.

Their hands on my shoulders let me know that they knew.

The wordless hugs from my oldest let me know that he knew.

My toddlers would come up to me, look deep into my eyes and then squeeze me with all the strength in them.

They knew, and that made me so sad.

“I want to be a vibrant mother to my children, please give me wisdom, lead me, Father PLEASE, I want healing and I will do anything for it.” This prayer always ended on a violent note. I was no longer knocking on the door. I was pounding on it with my fists and screaming.

My oldest and dearest friend came to visit me during this time. Her visit was a spot of pure joy in the darkness. We talked about depressed christians, and how God feels about them. Her words were like balm, and looking back, I see that as a turning point. Before she left, she pressed $60 into my hand for my birthday. “Buy that bike” she told me. My parents gave me $40 for my birthday. My husband paid the rest on a little travel size incumbent bike.

Every single day except Sunday, in obedience, I got on that bike. For the first week only 5 minutes a day. For the second week 10 minutes a day, until I was spending 75 minutes a day working myself out as hard as possible. I bought a membership to Planet Fitness in Danville Virginia and started to go at night after my husband and children were in bed. It was the only possible chance for me to go. I worked out for two hours, three days a week. I fought anxiety that was so vicious, it sometimes took me 10 minutes to peel myself off a machine and go to the locker room. I carried a gun concealed in my waistband, and a knife in my pocket. I was willing to do anything for healing. I always arrived back to the camper around midnight, my arms and legs shaking, and dripping sweat.

Life was so much better! Every minute I worked out, the next two days would be that much brighter. I valiantly fought the darkness back.

Until I got pregnant.

I could no longer work out. It became a full time job laying on the couch just trying not to puke. The darkness washed back into the void, but it was too late. I had a taste of how things could be, and I didn’t care how long it took, I now knew the difference between how I felt and reality.

I was going to find healing. Total healing.

And finally God opened the door.

I barely recognized it.

Someone I had never met before, but was friends with online messaged me about a supplement that her husband had used to heal from depression. It wasn’t MLM. It was just a straight up website. It was expensive, and we were poor. That night I showed it to my husband. “Order it” he said, “I will do whatever I have to so we can afford it”.

It came quickly, that innocuous little bottle of Olive Leaf from True Hope.

I immediately started taking it.

I became violently ill.

For a week I lay in bed chilling, sweating, nauseous, my entire body hurt. I took detox baths and drank copious amounts of water. “Even my hair hurts” I told my husband who was in Florida working.

Nothing else existed.

My children brought me cups of bone broth, kept the little ones fed, the laundry caught up, and checked me almost around the clock to make sure I had not died.

After a week I started to feel better. Not just a little better. A LOT better!

After two weeks I was a new person.

I got into my car to run a little errand. Perhaps to pick up milk for the baby, or drop a check off at the bank, who can know? I remember turning onto our little road in my car, and the full force of the spring colors hit me right in the face.

“Have trees always been this green?”

I started to cry.

“Where did those flowers come from?”

“The rain washed road is the most amazing granite color”

My skin was covered in goosebumps. Pleasure washed over me. Pure, unadulterated pleasure. Even my skin felt the pleasure.

I told a friend,“I can see in color again, my world is no longer grey”.

I pulled away from my husband during this time, and turned to God again. He became my all. My husband was free to be “just” my husband again. Our relationship strengthened and became strong and healthy. I fell deeply into love with him once again. I started waking up early to read copious amounts of scripture, washing my brain from the inside out with the healing water of his words. During the day I listened to scripture on audio. Every step away from the darkness was painful. It clung to my arms and legs like threads tangled all around me.

I was like Peter on the water when he saw Jesus. “Let me come to you” I cried out. “Come” he said. I looked at him, and I took one faltering step at a time, not daring to look at the water. Sometimes I looked at the water. Those days I sank down so deep, it sometimes took weeks to get my footing again. Even in the water I found Jesus. He was there all along. I shouted at him for abandoning me, but he had not. He was right beside me the whole time, with his hand out. I was too busy looking at the water to see his hand. I refused to hear his words over the storm. I learned to see his hand, and hear his words.

A few of my friends knew what I really went through. Not all of them, only a few.

I marveled over my children’s hair, like honey dripping down over the winter dark strands. My baby was so soft and squishy. I reveled in feeling everything. I gorged myself on colors and the pleasure of living again. I thanked God every day for opening the door.

When I meet others in that dark place, I thank God for having allowed me to have experienced that. I simply would have no frame of reference, had I not walked it.

To be continued …….