Here’s a question: How would you define me? As a matter of fact, how would you define yourself? What makes us, us? I know, this looks like things are about to get really deep. But, honestly, I want to tell you what defines me. I want to tell you my story.
I was so beyond blessed to be born into a Christian household. My parents are both amazing followers of God, and they have been since before I was born. Growing up in my house meant that I spent a lot of time singing in front of the church, listening to the Donut Man and Psalty the Psalm Book, and every Sunday morning my sister and I would be dressed up and ready for church. During those first few years of my life, I loved God and that was that.
But around the time I turned four years old, something else crept into my mind. It was fear. I was obsessively afraid of germs for a while. I wouldn’t eat unless I had washed my hands (or at least used hand sanitizer), and I would walk around with my hands in the air, refusing to touch anything, and, if I did, I would run to the sink to wash away the germs. It got to the point that my hands were raw from washing them so much.
Eventually, the germophobia became a thing of the past, but fear remained in the back of my mind. I struggled to sleep because my mind wouldn’t stop moving, and anything that had scared me during the day came into my mind’s eye in the dark.
When I was six, there was a tornado warning in my community. Now that I’m older, I understand that tornadoes do not get very powerful at all in this kind of hilly landscape, but, when I was so young, all I knew is that a tornado could take my house away from above me as I hid in the basement. After that day I would get extremely anxious every time the clouds got dark, to the point where I would cry at school because I didn’t know if I would ever see my family again.
As I got older and understood how the world around me worked, fear began to lose its grip on me. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, on the other hand, did not.
OCD is often blamed when people are organized, neat-freaks, or generally clean people. But it is so much more beyond cleanliness. In fact, that has nothing to do with it. OCD is characterized by two things: obsessions, which are things that you can’t get out of your mind no matter how hard you try, and compulsions, which are actions meant to alleviate the obsessions. The symptoms are usually things like anxiety, paranoia, and panic attacks.
Middle school is when these things really started to take hold. I was obsessed with dogs. They were my favorite animal, and I couldn’t take my mind off of them. My school projects and all of my spare time were focused on canines (dorky, I know). Meanwhile, I developed a compulsion called Trichotillomania. I would pull out my own hair without thinking about it, usually when my mind wandered or when anxiety got out of hand. I ended up with a thinning strip of hair down the middle of my head, bald spots in my eyebrows, and hardly any eyelashes at all. One of my teachers noticed, and I was sent to the school counsellor, who simply told me to ‘stop’, rather than looking into it and seeing if there was something else wrong. I was so embarrassed that I forced myself to quit.
Even when I had recovered from pulling out my own hair, the OCD did not stop. As I started high school, I became obsessed with a boy, which was distracting and caused more anxiety than ever. I remember being very paranoid and coming close to a panic attack every single time the bell rang in school because I didn’t want to disappoint him by not having that 30-second window to see him between classes. I became an idolator.
Things could only worsen after a really bad breakup. I remember realizing how badly I needed help after one certain evening, when I broke down and fell to the floor crying because I couldn’t get my toast out of the toaster. It had gotten out of hand.
One day, I heard my dad talking about how he would be going to a leadership training Bible study at our new youth pastor’s house. Something inside of me was nudging me, saying “you want to go, too!” So I asked my dad if he could bring me along, and I went.
This wasn’t a normal Bible study. We had long, intense nights of worship after fasting for the whole day. I was suddenly reminded of how much God loves me, of how much I could do for Him, and how much He could change me.
Freedom doesn’t come overnight, or without a struggle, but the next few years led to a HUGE amount of progress for me. I joined a ministry college, where God taught me how to get along with other kinds of personalities, deal with uncertainty (especially when it comes to scheduling), and have a good attitude about everything. I then went into Youth With A Mission, where all of those lessons were reinforced, and I also learned to love people before judging them.
God doesn’t define me by the thoughts that I think, or even by the things that I do. He defines me by the potential that He created me with. His original design wasn’t for me to be fearful or anxious, but for me to live freely in His love, spreading His word wherever I go.
I don’t regret any part of my past. As Rafiki says in The Lion King: “Yes, the past can hurt, sometimes. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it.” Without the storms that I went through, I would never have learned to depend on God for peace throughout the day. I would not have changed the way that I did over the last few years. I would not be who I am today.
Who are you? How has your past changed you? What amazing things has God done in your life that you can use to encourage others? What should you praise Him for? How would God define you?
His answer is the only one that matters.
