Depression

Being alone in a Dark Place

Do you remember a time when you were in a dark place?

Dark PlaceDid you have anyone you could really talk to about the truth?

I have had dark days, maybe even a dark week or two…but 2013-14 were probably 2 of my darkest years.

Here are 2 of my status from this date in 2013

 

“I covet your prayers. The past 2 months have finally caught up to me.  To tell you how bad it has been…. I still have wet clothes sitting in a broken down washing machine, my oil change was due over 6 thousand miles ago…. And I am the person that as soon as I hit 5 thousand I get my oil changed. Then to top it off we got hit with another doozie yesterday….  And we also have to be out of our office by Thursday…I know the verses “all things work together for the good…..”and resting in the fact that Satan had to get permission before any of this happened.  I wish I had a crystal ball to see the end, but right now I feel I have nothing left to give.  Thank you for your prayers.”

“You know you must be bad if the technician at Jiffy Lube asked if you were ok”

These statuses were 10 months into owning a restaurant that we bought for the sole purpose of helping people get back on their feet.

We did not buy it to become a huge corporation and make lots of money, we used it as a training site so people who were reentering the workforce could have a safe place to learn things like integrity, perseverance, reliability etc…

Here is the reasoning behind that dark time.

We surely thought that there would be many on board to support the restaurant because we were helping people to get back on their feet and become productive members of society.

Well unfortunately this was farthest from the truth.

We did not gain business that we thought would be a no brainer.  Some of the reasoning’s were we could not beat the fast food pizza prices and also because we sold beer.

We were also told by people because we had “those” people working for us they would never come back. And they didn’t.  They would park in front of our store every week and walk to the Chinese restaurant.

We also did field trips and because we had “felons” work for us this certain group that took federal funding could not come back ever. Really?

Then when we did raise our prices to cover the rising cost of food, people got even more upset.

Let me give you one example.  Cheese.  When we started a box of cheese cost $50/ box, by the time we sold it, the same box of cheese cost $90/box.  And that was just one item, but it goes on EVERY pizza.

And to top it off, the ministry lost 30% of its funding.

During this time, I was alone and needed support.

There were days where I could have given up, driving home I would think “just run the van into this ditch, or this pole… No one would care and I will be out of this darkness.”

This was a dark time, but when you do ministry you cannot be honest. You have to smile and make believe everything is amazing and greaYou OK?t.

I am grateful that I did not allow satan to win. I am grateful I am on this side of that darkness. Many unfortunately do not make it to this side of the darkness. Please be in tuned to those ministry leaders you support. To those people you call friends. Watch for warnings of darkness, burn out and compassion fatigue. Be a true friend and don’t accept their answer of “I’ll be ok” or “it’ll be ok.”

If you are a ministry leader and have never heard of compassion fatigue, please look into it. Here is a link to a test by the  Compassion Fatigue Awareness Project ©

**if you are in ministry and don’t feel you have any one to talk to please reach out to someone**

If you are a Ministry Leader and would like my husband and I to pray for you please fill out this form.

 

Traditions and trip ups- Not allowing PTSD, anxiety and depression dictate your holiday.

There was a couple who had recently gotten married and were celebrating their first holiday by having everyone over for dinner.

As she was preparing the ham she cut off the ends and placed it in the pan to cook. Her husband walked in and saw the ends sitting there, he asked: “why did you cut the ends off?”

“I don’t know, it’s just the way my mom always did it.”

As the ham was cooking the young wife calls her mother, to ask why she cut off the ends of the ham.

Her mother chuckles, and says, “because I didn’t have a pan big enough to cook the ham”.

Traditions and trip ups- Not allowing PTSD, anxiety and depression dictate your holiday.

 

In 2011 I was the target of a gang attack. As a result of the attack, I was offered counseling, and therapy.  During this time, I was diagnosed with PTSD, but I was also opening lots of worms from my childhood and the abuse I endured as a teenager.

Through all of this, I realized that I was allowing traditions to trip up my holidays by triggering my PTSD, anxiety and depression.

So where did this start:

Growing up I used to love Christmas. Christmas was filled with snow, lots of it.

It was filled with a fresh tree and lots of homemade sugar cookies with homemade frosting.

It also was more importantly filled with Grandma, Grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins.

You would wake up to see what Santa brought you, then rush to grandmas house.

There was piano playing, singing and the cousins would get our ice skates and head to the swamp to skate on the pond.

There were no cell phones or technology just the outdoors and a “be home by dusk”.

The evening was finished with homemade chocolate malts.

Then my childhood as I loved, came to a crashing  HALT!

My mom and dad got divorced, my mom remarried and my grandmother (who I did EVERYTHING with) at age 55 was diagnosed and died of leukemia in less than a month.

Now, Christmas looked like this:

No laughter, No one hurrying to grandmas, and to top it off pack your bags before we go because your dad is coming to get you.

It went from bad to worse….fast forward to my getting married and moving 600 plus miles away.

We went home once and never went back. I couldn’t explain it, but I had no desire to be pulled here and there.

Now that I have kids who have kids, I so badly wanted to replicate my memories of the “Norman Rockwell” Christmas traditions that I grew up with, but that came at a price…my anxiety and depression were at an all time high and worse yet, I could not wait for January 1st so this “Scrooge like” person would go away.

Epic fail every year. Again not knowing that I was allowing my yearning for a tradition to trip up my holidays by triggering my PTSD, anxiety and depression.

So what started the change was 3 years ago…. We finally decided to go home for Christmas.  The kids all had places to go and be so we went home to Michigan.

On the drive back  home to Tennessee,  I told my husband we can go home again, but NOT during the holiday season. That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks.  As I was trying to recreate traditions and make everyone happy during the holiday, I was made painfully aware that I CANT do that for my own well-being.  And I have to be OK with NOT being at every family function or worse yet trying to recreate the tradition.

Two years ago, we became empty-nesters, and I had to make a conscious decision to no longer allow the traditions to trip me up, become full of anxiety, fall into deep depression and a SCROOGE.

I had to give myself permission to start over with NEW TRADITIONS.

So here are a few ideas I have come up with:

Don’t keep yourself so busy that you don’t have to think about the holiday

Do come up with new things for you and your family to do

Acknowledge the holidays, but be OK with the change that you want to do

Don’t feel guilty for NOT doing a tradition; especially if that tradition creates a trigger for your PTSD, anxiety and or depression.

Realizing that boundaries are a key part of keeping your sanity

Learning what your triggers are and saying “NO” to those things that flare up your anxiety, PTSD etc

Start NEW traditions.

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As a woman who speaks life into women all day, why can we advise, instruct others to change and live life free, but we have a hard time granting ourselves the same freedom?

 

 

Surviving Church with PTSD and Anxiety

The last month or so I have left church with almost this panic attack, anxiety feeling.

My inner most being has said “suck it up cupcake, it’s church you are secure.”

Even as I am writing this the tears are flowing and the anxiety I feel is about a 9.5 on a 10 scale and I have been home from church for an hour.

I don’t like feeling like this~ the girl who loves serving~ who loves to teach~ is floundering trying to figure out how to get involved and subside this emotional roller coaster of anxiety and panic attacks.

As I talked with my amazing husband, we decided we would first try a different service time. The 9am service is not as packed and maybe the overflowing service has triggered something. So today we attended the 9am service. I did well, but as the service let out, and we were leaving the anxiety started to fill me again.

We head home,but first we need to stop at Kroger. My husband realizes that my arms are folded and I am walking with much more of a purpose. “I’m fine”, is my reply. All the while my inner being is saying: “as long as you don’t say much, keep busy, you won’t lose it.”

Yeah, I make it through Kroger. Now home. My husband comes over to me, wraps his loving arms around me and starts to pray, I start to cry.

I am so tired of feeling like this. This cloud. This anxiety. This very easy could become a dark depression if I let it.

So I sit down and start writing, the tears flowing as I pray “God, something’s gotta give, and I am afraid it’s going to be me.”

I start to let my mind wander.

These are the words I come up with:

The accident

The man who didn’t fit in

The bathroom

No more happy place

So the first word: Accident (totaling the motorcycle on June 28)

Adding additional Trauma to someone who already deals with PTSD, and their go to behavior is to stay busy so you don’t have to feel…is not a recipe for a beautiful wedding cake, but a recipe for disaster.image

I have realized that growing up, when things were bad at home, I kept myself busy. I figured if I just locked myself in my room, the bad would happen, and I would just walk out when things were done blowing up. Again not a healthy way to cope with real life and feelings.

Second word was: Man who didn’t fit in

Right aconquering PTSDfter the accident and right after the Chattanooga shootings, there was a gentleman who came to our church services. I did not recognize him. His clothing choices, did not fit the 90 degree weather we were having, and seeing we are in the suburbs, having this person being someone of the homeless population that I minister to in the Nashville area, wasn’t even on my radar. The whole service long my anxiety was heightened, again to the panic attack mode. I wasn’t even safe in the church building, was my thought.

During this time, I had started using a different set of bathrooms that were off the beaten path. There was never a waiting line before or after church. Here is where the issue was, this was the bathroom, in which right after the attack (January 2011) I found myself in when I started bleeding from my nose and it was so bad that we had to call the doctor to make sure everything was ok. So, now every time I walked into this bathroom, I immediately went back to that night, which went back to the attack.

And then my happy place.

My happy place was destroyed through words of discouragement.

So why did I write about this. First because my therapy is writing. It may not fix all my anxiety and panic attacks today but getting it out and verbalizing it allows for satan to not take up any more residence in my thoughts.

Secondly, I know I am not the only person who deals with PTSD, anxiety and panic attacks. Not everyone has such an amazing spouse who is in-tune to your feelings and can give you a safe place to think, vent and strategize. If you are that person who does not have a special someone where your feelings are safe, please do not let this anxiety, panic attacks become a deep dark depression please, please talk to someone. Don’t let it engulf you.

And thirdly, even though church is supposed to be a safe place, it can also hold a lot of triggers for people.
My question to myself is how am I going to work through this? How am I going to control it verses letting it control me?

You see having these issues don’t define you unless you give them permission to.

“I’m Fine” Famous last words….

If you know me, then you know for the past few years I have run myself ragged all in the name of ministry.

I put everyone else’s  needs above myself and I don’t mean the needs of my children and husband.  All the while if asked; my answer would be “I am fine” or “I’ll figure it out”.

God did call me into full time stateside ministry in 2003 but at that same time He did not call me to neglect myself.

12 years of stateside mission work has had its ups and its downs.  Since 2011, though, it has been one downward thing after another.

This was originally the picture from the hospital.

In 2011, I was attacked in broad daylight.  I can describe him only as a medium built African American male who was approximately 5’11 or so.  He had on a black and green racing jacket and other than that no other distinguishing marks.

I was generously donated counseling sessions and EMDR sessions.  I was diagnosed with PTSD , the feeling on the right side of my face has never come back and my life changed but I refused to believe it.  I still had the attitude that “I am fine”, or “I’ll figure it out”.

 

Later that year, my body also decided that it did not like food anymore and in less than 24 hours my eating habits had to change drastically or I would not be walking.

Fast forward 2 years, the opportunity to further the ministry by buying a Pizza Place was placed in our laps.  imageWith “some” prayer but more importantly statements like this: “Lets just walk and if God does not want us to do it…..” and yes I am being facetious when I said “but more importantly…”

Now it is 2015 and I can honestly say ” I am very grateful everyday to be alive”.

The years 2013 and 2014 held some very dark times for me.  I have written about some of them previously.  But God… He had a different ending for me.  In February 2015, He allowed us to sell the restaurant.  We are now at the end of April and I can feel my body starting to heal.  Part of my healing though, was to admit that I had a problem.  And that problem was the attitude of “I am fine” or “I’ll figure it out”.

I can honestly say “I am NOT fine” and “I CAN’T figure it out”… BUT God”.

This past week God took me back to Psalms 69.

Save me, God, for the water has risen to my neck.  I have sunk in deep mud, and there is no footing; I have come into deep waters, and a flood sweeps over me. I am weary from my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God

Most people read these verses and get the idea of what the picture the writer of Psalms is trying to portray.

Until you have been there and have come out the other side you don’t realize just how much these 3 verses become your prayer.

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Over and over and over when I was in my darkest time I would cry out “Save me, God! The water has risen and I am sinking… the mud has me stuck and its pulling me out further and further. I am so tired of crying and my throat hurts from screaming and Lord I do not see You… are You even there? Do You even care?”  

Because I don’t let people into my life, I keep people at bay, and when asked “How are you” I give them my go to answer of  ” I am fine” or “I’ll figure it out”; this is where it could end badly for most.

I am very fortunate that I have a husband, who may not always be in-tuned to everything all the time… but when it counts God does prompt him to take control and get to the bottom of the issue.  That was this day.  He falsely got me into the van and drove me straight to our Pastors office.  I was on the brink of an emotional breakdown and so stuck in this helpless feeling that driving my van off the roadway was looking like the most plausible answer.

As I sat on the couch I cried uncontrollably.

My natural tendency is to be a caregiver, but with PTSD, I can’t always go and do what I did prior to the attack and with that comes a feeling of not being whole.

This not feeling whole creates a helpless, hopeless feeling which because depression is very common with PTSD, just creates a deeper helpless, hopeless feeling.  I then got caught up into this cycle and by the time I reached the couch of our Pastors office I was a basket case.

I felt helpless.

I felt hopeless.

I felt like I was a bad Christian.

I felt like I was a bad missionary.

I had all these thoughts filtering into my head… I did not need Satan’s help, I was sabotaging myself real well, because I kept hearing “you are in full time ministry suck it up and act as if nothing is wrong”, which just added to the hopeless, helpless feeling.

What I learned sitting on that couch was that David, a man after Gods own heart… struggled just as much, if not more than I.

So where did I go from here.

First I realized that it is OK, NOT to be everything for everyone all the time.

Boundaries is a word that I had to learn and am still learning.

I realized that I needed to take care of myself.

I  learned to speak up for myself.  Telling my husband how I truly felt so he was not blindsided when I was crying uncontrollably.

I am learning how to control the PTSD and not let it control me. ( I am still working on this one. It is a process because for many years I have said “I am fine”, “I’ll figure it out”.)

But the most important thing is knowing that even the greats in the Bible dealt with this and they knew that even though they did not feel God right then and there… they knew His promises were the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. They knew He was true to His word.

P1000058I lift my eyes toward the mountains. Where will my help come from?  My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalms 121

Because of the LORD’s faithful love we do not perish, for His mercies never end.
 They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!
                      I say: The LORD is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in Him ~  Lamentations 3sunrise