This post is a little different than what I usually write about, usually preferring to keep the religious aspect of my posts to a minimum for my own comfort. However, this is one I've been thinking about for a while and I felt it was important as it was a step in my own personal journey.
God. Religion. Faith.
If you pray hard enough and keep believing - God will heal you. I've heard it thousands of times, I've seen the people who have been healed, and I've seen the people who haven't. I've seen people who understood that sometimes a situation or an illness in life can be given a purpose and a meaning, and I have seen people who have spiraled down, disappointed and angry and frustrated with God and themselves for not being healed.
I myself fall into several of those categories. For the most part, I don't always speak about what I believe as I find that it is very personal to me. Quick run-down... I consider myself a Christian and I do believe in God, and I do believe that He has the power to heal and the power to comfort.
A few years ago, I was going through a difficult episode; aside from cat-naps I hadn't slept for weeks. I was depressed and suicidal, my husband was at his wits end with me, and I couldn't even function around the kids. At one point I went out walking at night, it was early winter and I walked from one end of town (where I lived) out to the gas station at the far end of town. Sitting on the concrete retaining wall outside the gas station I was contemplating ending my life by continuing down the main road that I was on, down to the highway overpass and jumping.
As I was sitting there I saw several police cars pull into the gas station, the officers getting their coffee and I sat silently there in the dark, in the middle of the night waiting for them to leave. I didn't want anyone nearby to stop me. As I sat waiting though, I felt something slither across my hand and when I loooked down was surprised to see dozens of worms crawling across the very wall that that I was sitting on. I have a strange fear of worms and all things similar (caterpillars, snakes, etc...) I remember panicking, jumping down off of the wall and taking several steps away. Looking at the wall it was now completely covered in worms and as I glanced around me I noticed the ground now was as well. I was getting shaken up and suddenly all I wanted to do was get back home. I had no wallet on me or money to call a cab and so I began the walk back home, hearing the slithering of snakes in the frost covered grass on all sides of me and practically dancing my way down the sidewalk to avoid stepping on the slimey worms. Suddenly I was standing in front of the Tim Hortons, and as the snow started falling heavily around me I stopped walking and closed my eyes, squeezing them together as tightly as possible.
This couldn't be real. It was the moment I realised that I was far enough gone that I had been hallucinating this whole time. Opening my eyes back up I looked down the road and I saw the gas station I had been sitting outside, the lights off and closed down and not a car (police or otherwise) in sight. Looking down at the ground I could see a fine layer of snow under my feet, but not a worm or a snake in the vicinity.
This was also the moment I began to feel the cold, seeping in through my clothes and causing me to shake. I spent the next few minutes digging through my pockets, looking for change and I found what I thought was enough so I went inside the coffee shop and ordered a small tea, something to take the chill out and give me time to collect myself. I remember I was five or ten cents short and the girl at the counter gave me my drink anyways. Sitting down at a table in the corner I wrapped my hands around the paper cup and put my head down. I was suddenly exhausted and although I had been diagnosed with a mild case of depression a few months earlier, I knew that this was something more. And for the first time in a long time, I prayed.
That night I made it home, but not without further hallucinating during part of the walk and the possibility that I had been approached by a man in a van who continued to circle and try to pick me up for "fun" (I'm still not sure whether or not that was a hallucination or it really happened). For the next weeks and months I prayed alot. I spent time with my Bible and I fought hard against what I didn't really understand. I attended church and I read online blogs and stories and believed that I would simply get better. I put everything in my prayers and begged God to 'fix me' or 'take me'.
Instead I got worse and a few months later, after another period with no sleep and all-encompassing depression, I ended up in the hospital because of an overdose on sleeping pills. I had been desperate for sleep at the time and I didn't care if I lived or died any longer. Early one morning, I parked in our church parking lot where I took dozens of sleeping pills and blacked out for the majority of the day. When the police found me that night, I had been wandering down the highway, my body aching and my mind completely out of it. I have only slices of memory from that day and for the most part they involve me stumbling down the road, into traffic and through town, at one point I remember a car nearly hitting me, swerving and barely missing me - it could be real, or again, it could be something my mind made up.
It wasn't until more anti-depressants and several doctor's appointments with my family doctor and the psychiatrist at the hospital that the Bipolar diagnosis was finally made and the pieces began to fit together.
That was also when I truly began to find my Faith. My prayers began to change, my heart and my mind more aware and more willing to accept what I now believed. Although I knew for sure (and still do believe) that God has the power to heal people fully, he didn't heal me and there are many others out there that won't be healed either, despite their desperate prayers and their complete faith. Why? Because as my husband reminds me, simply put - we live in a broken world. I don't always understand the 'why', and I don't always want to believe that there's a chance that I might always suffer. Personally, I have shifted thinking and I believe that God uses people in all different ways - in my case, the doctors that have treated me, the counselors who have helped me to understand and even everyday people that I come into contact with. My prayers are different now too, when I pray for myself or others I pray for peace and comfort and understanding and I would never encourage someone to only pray for complete healing. For me, God is still there, by my side - watching over me and maybe even intervening in some cases - perhaps the car that swerved should have hit me, perhaps he used my hallucinations (although part of my disorder), to actually save my life - I never ended up jumping from an overpass, and perhaps He was with the officer that gripping me as I jumped from the cliff at the waterfall last November, reaching out and grabbing me just as I let go.
The truth is, I have my Faith and I know what I believe. But I don't know the details and I don't know the whys... I doubt I ever will and that doesn't bother me. So when I think about where God fits in to my illness, I know I have the answer that I need - He is where He is and I'm okay with that.
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