Last year, my first year home from the World Race, was the worst year of my life. However, it’s so crazy how good this year has been compared to last year. How much difference God makes and how much difference only 1 year can make. My purpose in writing this is to praise Jesus for his restoration/renewal, to shine a light on mental health issues, and to show that even if things are so bad and so hard, there’s ALWAYS hope. Even if things seem impossible, you HAVE to hold on and know that things can and will get better (even if it takes longer than a year). Life has a pattern of producing glory after suffering.
“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” -2 Corinthians 1:8-11
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I came across the above Scripture during the beyond difficult times of last year because it related so much to what was going on, and it was exactly what I needed to hear. I read and wrote it many times as a reminder that God had delivered my family and I from hard times in the past and that he would deliver us again. He did indeed deliver us again from a deadly peril so that we could rely on him and not ourselves, and now others can give thanks for the blessing granted to us through their prayers.
My family is very loyal, loving, and close-knit, and we’re all Christ-followers. There’s a lot of mental issues that my family deals with or has dealt with including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, suicide, and OCD. It’s hard because I feel that there’s a stigma behind mental issues that makes it feel shameful to talk about, so it’s really hard to navigate through it, and the silence makes it worse. Even with all the mental issues in my family, I would’ve never guessed in a million years that my younger sister would fall into a deep depression and become suicidal that winter. She had never personally dealt with any mental issues before, and she always got good grades, was never in trouble, and was a runner in high school/college. It was very crazy how fast everything happened and that it did happen.
My younger sister is so beautiful, caring, smart, talented, ambitious, strong, funny, and loyal and everyone who knows her knows that she’s an absolutely amazing person. She is one of my best friends and is a blessing to me and so many others. She had just graduated from college and had a ton of student loans and she didn’t see a way she could ever get a good job to pay off her loans and be on her own with the major she chose, and this was the main trigger that led her into a severe depression. It’s a lot to take in and easy to criticize yourself when you realize you signed away thousands of dollars when you were 18 because you were given the impression that you were going to get a good job and pay them off right away. At the same time, it was evident that she had a distorted view of reality because as much as we told her that she had just graduated so she had to give it time and relax and that our family had enough to pay for all her loans if need be, the loans were just the trigger and it wasn’t even about them anymore. It had developed into much more than that.
Before this all started, I got my first full-time teaching job and moved into an apartment with my twin sister. I had just came back from the World Race, and I was very excited about having new job and a new apartment. It quickly got very hard and stressful. I knew it was only my first year, but I didn’t feel very competent or supported, and the the work load was really intense. I also felt very overwhelmed when I thought about my student loans that I needed to keep paying off and wondering how many years it would take me. I also dealt with severe back/leg pain to the point where I couldn’t stand some days, and also a bus hit my parked car that year (No one was in it, and it was just a small fender-bender, but still ha). However, these problems were were secondary to knowing that my younger sister was struggling. It isn’t lost on me that this all occurred the year after I was on a mission trip as I feel that sometimes Satan can try to attack people who are doing God’s mission.
At first my younger sister was anxious and crying a lot and later she couldn’t sleep, lost weight, was incredibly self-critical, and incredibly unmotivated. She stopped running, stopped talking to her friends, stopped singing which she used to do non-stop, and stopped taking care of herself. She started and quit 3 jobs in just a couple of months which was very uncharacteristic of her. She wrongly evaluated her life and could only see her mistakes and selfishness. It kept getting worse, and later it seemed that the crying stopped and she just began to take on the identity that she was an evil person. It seemed that Satan was telling her lies and she was believing them. She didn’t think she had depression, but that it was just her personality when it so clearly was not. I really like this quote that goes “A true friend knows the song of your heart and sings it back to you when you’ve forgotten the words.” I felt that we had to sing the words of her heart back to her so she’d remember them. I remember the countless conversations we had with her to try to “fix” her and tell her the truth about herself, how God and we incredibly loved her, how much she meant to us and has blessed us and others, and anything that she thought that she did that was bad was completely forgiven. We also told her that she had just graduated and that everything would be ok, but it just seemed we were talking in circles over and over again because she couldn’t accept what we were saying. All we could do was trust God.
She ended up needing to be in and out of 3 different hospitals in the span of 5 months. She also went to intensive therapies. She moved in with my twin sister and I, and our family monitored her closely. Looking back, I see how scary consequences of scary things were prevented, and I can’t help but think that God was protecting her and leading her into healing. The best way that I can describe those 5 months is that my heart was shattered into a million pieces and that it was a living nightmare. The fact that my sister felt about herself the way she did and didn’t know how special and loved she was and the fact that I was scared for her life and couldn’t fully trust her was heart-shattering.
After dealing with the different hospitals and clinics, I realized that there really needs to be more resources, education, and awareness about mental health issues in the state of Minnesota. I’m incredibly grateful for the good doctors and care that she did receive, but during that time in Minnesota, it was really hard to find a “bed” (spot) in a mental health unit, and there was long waiting lists. When you’re in a mental health crisis, you shouldn’t have to be on a waiting list. It was a struggle to get a hold of a psychiatrist because you had to go through the staff and nurses first. It was also frustrating because it seemed there was a lot of non-communication or miscommunication between the hospital staff, and we would be told different things. Another struggle was that they want patients with mental health issues to have rights (which is good), but it can end up making families have to jump through hoops just to advocate for what’s best for their family member. I feel that one of the reasons why my younger sister was able to recover and recover so well was because she had her family advocating for and supporting her so much. I really don’t know what happens to people who don’t have anyone to advocate for them, and I know the outlook must be really bad because many times in a mental health crisis it’s critical that someone is able to advocate for the patient because many times patients don’t think they need help or they refuse help when they obviously desperately need it. I’ve seen on the news recently that they’re actually trying to improve the mental health system in MN which is great.
Like I said, our whole family really worked together to offer a lot of help and support and her friends supported her too, and I personally spent a lot of time in the hospital advocating for her, and it was a lot of pressure. Even though I felt so incredibly confused and scared, I had this constant hope and peace that transcends all understanding. I just knew she would get better, and I feel God had placed that in my heart. I had this rock and foundation in Christ that I had developed through my relationship with Him and through previous trials. Had I not had the foundation in Christ, I don’t know how I would’ve been. I remember thinking that we just had to get through winter and get to spring/summer. I also had this “knowing” that if we could just get her over this episode that we wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore and that she would be cured.
Something memorable that happened one night at a hospital was that I had been praying to God to heal my younger sister and for good doctors and nurses for her. This nurse who was from Azerbaijan asked my younger sister something about her faith.The nurse then told us that she usually didn’t work on our floor, but she got changed to our floor and she was wondering if it was for a reason. She said that she had been praying and thought that God wanted her to change floors for a reason that night. I saw it as an answered prayer. She began praying with and for my younger sister and us and it was so powerful. She was encouraging her and really fighting for her through prayer and praying that she would find her identity in Christ. I remember I was crying and praising God a lot that night. My younger sister started to feel really good that night. She did feel really good that night, but when she woke up she was back to being depressed. Even though, it was disappointing that she wasn’t instantly healed, it offered hope that God was going to keep healing her. It seemed that had happened a few times throughout the whole thing- that we’d see glimpses of her seeming like her normal self again and that she had “snapped out of it”, but then the next day she’d be depressed again. For the next couple of months she appeared to be getting progressively better, but she was still off and things were up and down.
In the beginning of May 2015, at the last hospital she had to go to, I remember my younger sister, twin sister, and I praying to God on the hospital bed. A date popped into my head while we were praying. It was the same date a year from then plus one day- a day in May 2016. I felt like God put this date into my head and said that we would be amazed at how well our younger sister was doing on that day which would be about a year later. I remember telling my sisters this as well- that I felt that’s what God was saying to me while we prayed. Kinda a peculiar and optimistic statement when you’re sitting in a hospital bed at a mental health facility.
After she left that hospital in May 2015, it seemed she had turned over a new leaf. After a 5-month journey much prayer, medication adjustments, therapy, and God’s divine protection, things were finally helping and were looking just up instead of up and down and she was getting healed. She seemed like she was getting to be more like herself again and less self-critical and more hopeful and motivated. She started to gain hope again. She started doing some volunteer work, continued weekly therapy, and we started doing a Bible study together which was great because we had never done that before. We also had family meetings to check in on everyone which was nice. It ended up being a great summer, and she was back to herself again and even better. I also called my younger sister every night to pray with her and check-in for 1 year starting in May 2015. It was nice to see how such a horrible thing could cause some good things to come out of it.
May 2016 came and God was so right and faithful. When we look back to last year, it’s amazing how well she is doing now. Everything that happened seems like a dream (nightmare) sometimes and it’s like, “Was that really only 1 year ago????” My younger sister is her beautiful self again and even stronger. She sleeps normally, is at a healthy weight, talks with her friends again, is super motivated, is singing constantly again, has a healthy self-image, has hope, loves herself, takes care of herself, and I can trust her again. She admits that she had depression now and wasn’t just a bad person. She completed a half-marathon (talk about motivation) in May 2016 and graduated from her therapy program. She’s been working full time for a year at a job she really likes and also started her own videography business using her major which has been flourishing. She’s so incredibly talented and has booked 15 weddings this year to film/edit just through word-of-mouth. The videos are such a service and blessing to others and to generations to come, and I think she could do this full time in the future. And here she thought she’d never use her major. PRAISE TO THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY!!!!!!!!!! HE HAS DELIVERED US FROM THE STORM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a “knowing” that she was cured by God and that we won’t have to worry about this again. Obviously it’s something to aways be aware of and cautious of, but I just have this feeling that she’s going to be fine now. I am so incredibly grateful to have my younger sister in my life and she brings me joy. If I ever start to feel ungrateful, I remember how grateful I should be that God healed her. So yeah, this year was soooooooooooooooooooooo much better than last year!!! My life isn’t perfect, but my younger sister is doing great, my position in my teaching job changed and I actually love it and feel very competent and supported now, and I had back surgery in September and since have had no back problems.
God has put together my shattered heart and has healed it. It still hurts in some places if I press on it, but it reminds me how much God has healed all of us. I’m overwhelmed with how God has delivered us from this storm and I have confidence that he is watching out for my family and even though we have had many trials, God has delivered us from them all and I praise him and love him so much.
To anyone out there who struggles with self-worth or hope: You matter. You are good enough. You are loved. You were made with purpose to do purposeful things. You are so special- no one on this earth is the same as you. Ask for help. Don’t give up if you try a few things that don’t help- something will help. You will be stronger after this and there’s probably a reason for this that you don’t see right now. There are people who can relate to exactly what you’re going through. You have been given so much, and there’s always things to be grateful for. In the hard times, it can be so hard to think that things will ever get better, but things can and will get better. There is A LOT of grace. There’s ALWAYS hope.
