Repentance & Rest

About a month ago, our church announced that they were starting a new sermon series about slowing down the pace of life. I leaned over to Josh and whispered, “And I’m preaching every sermon.” 😊

But seriously. I could. (If I liked public speaking.)

One of the most life-changing realizations I’ve had over the past couple of years is how to rest, and how incredibly awful I’ve been at it my entire life. At first when my depression started, I was certain it was simply physical and hormonal. I even went to my counselor with the idea in mind that I’d just check that off the list – there was nothing going on beneath the surface that needed worked on. My soul was just fine.

Well, obviously not, as it turns out. First of all, out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks…and the mind reflects. Clearly, I had some work to do there since I often had to apologize for my words and my temper, and words of self-hatred were constantly rolling around in my head. Obviously something was going on underneath the surface.

Beyond that though, God kept calling a specific verse to mind:

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.” – Isaiah 30:15

This verse resonated with me, and it became clear that this was more than just an inspirational verse that was designed to bring me comfort. Instead, it was something God was calling me to. Understanding this verse and applying it to my life became an act of obedience, and eventually, it completely changed the way I functioned on a day-to-day basis.

Let me give you a little background here. I grew up as the grandchild of farmers on both sides of the family. Although my parents didn’t pursue farming as a profession, we did keep a few cattle and the occasional pig or horse (unfortunately, I never got very good at riding either one of them). We had a big vegetable garden. I mowed the lawn. I had a bucket calf one year for 4-H (and while trying to train it he dragged me around for quite a while before I realized that letting go of the rope would solve most of my problems). I drove the hay truck once or twice at Grandad’s farm. I was definitely not a farm girl, but I did learn some important lessons in the value of hard work from the example of my parents and grandparents, as well as the responsibilities they gave me. And those lessons have definitely served me well. I became a hard worker in every area of life: I had good grades, I turned in my assignments on time, I did my chores, and I served at my church.

However, I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I tend to carry things a little further than needed (Enneagram 1, for those who haven’t guessed that yet). When I failed in any of those areas, I would wallow in self-hatred for a while, then evaluate what went wrong and work hard to correct the character flaw/lack of information/selfish motivation/sinful decision/simple mistake so the error would not happen again. Not because I wanted to be perfect – but because I was compelled by some sinful need or desire to be self-sufficient and…ok…maybe I did want to be perfect. 😊

Well, obviously this is not healthy. And despite my parents’ best efforts to teach me that I didn’t need to be perfect, it was so deeply ingrained in my character that it was going to take some major shifting to fix. Many years ago, I actually had some counseling that helped me dig into some of this. A lot of the heart issues and faulty thinking that went along with this were addressed, and we made some great progress. However, there were still some driving forces that were at work, and it was time to peel the next layer off as the ramifications of an unhealthy pace of life came to a head.

Enter the year 2018, when I was raising three school-age kids and working part-time in a family ministry position at our church. I had been working in this role for several years, and it had been a great fit for me. I worked more hours during the school year and less during the summer – it was ideal. I loved what I was doing – working alongside the children’s and youth ministry teams to help provide opportunities for families to grow together. It meshed all my worlds and interests, and I loved it. However, it was a big job. And I didn’t let it stay small. I kept adding to the things we needed to do. And I didn’t want to place the burden of responsibility on anyone else, so I tried to take on as many of the tasks for myself as I could. I had this picture of an ideal family ministry in mind, and I had a hard time settling for anything less.

The only problem was there was a limit to the number of hours a week I could work. Over the years we added more hours to my schedule, but at some point, I hit the limit of the hours per week I wanted to work. I still had responsibilities at home and in my volunteer positions. As any mom knows, taking care of the MASSIVE to-do list every day is a huge undertaking in itself. So instead of working more hours, I just worked faster. I am the queen of efficiency, and it’s already been established that I’m a perfectionistic hard worker, so I continued to pile more responsibilities on myself and managed to get them done in (almost) the same amount of time. I ate lunch at my desk, worked until the last possible second, and every moment was hectic and frantic. I always wore a scrunched up “work face” that people liked to make fun of because I was so focused on all the things I needed to get done. (In my new job, one of my favorite things is that my desk faces a wall, so no one walks by and takes a picture of my intense facial expression to share in an all-staff email. 😊) Home wasn’t much better. I was always trying to get the to-do list done, and I snapped at my kids far more often than I would like to admit. I was in a constant state of stress.

Ironically, Josh and I had long been major proponents of taking a Sabbath every week. Mondays were our day off, and we’d use that time to go to lunch and rest for a few hours while the kids were at school. We’d also made a habit at one point of trying to not work in the evenings after the kids went to bed, so several evenings a week we had an hour or so to just rest and watch TV. So it wasn’t as if I wasn’t getting some rest in. But every other second of my life was frantic. I was always rushing from one thing to another, both at work and at home. And honestly, it had been that way since I had started college, and continued to get worse as more and more layers were added to my life.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one with a story like this. I’m sure my reasons are unique to me in some ways, but our culture as a whole works at a frantic pace. Sports and kids’ activities alone can overwhelm a family very quickly. Work expectations and pressure are incredibly real. Simply sorting through the take-home papers and emails from school is a major task. Helping kids with homework, planning meals, purchasing groceries, scheduling doctor’s appointments, making sure there are clean undies and a ready supply of toilet paper – all of this adds to the stress of everyday life.

My problem is that I lived with this heightened sense of stress so long that my body finally crashed. I said earlier that I thought my depression was primarily hormonal – and I suppose that was true in some ways. Because as I found out later, my constant, hyper-stressed mindset messed up some of my major hormones – cortisol being one of them – and my body could no longer manage stress the way it was supposed to. Cortisol is your body’s main stress hormone, and it helps to control your mood, among many other things. Some later medical tests revealed my cortisol levels to be pretty much tanked. There were quite a few other things going on with me medically, and I’ll save that for another day. But suffice it to say that our bodies are not designed to live with a constant, frantic, elevated level of stress. Even a break for a once-a-week Sabbath isn’t going to make up for the abuse it is sustaining during the remainder of the week. And a result of this is that I sank into a pretty severe depression.

As I said before, a verse God called me to obey in this time was this:

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.” – Isaiah 30:15

One thing I’ve come to learn on this journey is that REST = TRUST. In this passage, Isaiah is talking to the nation of Israel. They were at a point in their history where they were facing annihilation by the nation of Assyria. In their fear, they frantically turned for help from Egypt, forming an alliance. They sealed this alliance with a large amount of money paid to Egypt. In the end, however, their money was wasted, because God is the one who came in and saved the day by destroying the Assyrian army.

Had the Israelites simply trusted God, they could have rested in an assurance of His protection. Had they not run around frantically looking for solutions to the problems facing them, they could have truly witnessed and understood the depth of God coming through for them in their trials. Had they repented of their self-sufficiency, they could have simply stood and watched the Lord fight for them.

In the same way, if I truly trust God, it means I do not lead a frantic lifestyle, running from one responsibility to the next. It means I do not reject moments of quiet rest, shoving them aside because of a false belief that if I don’t keep juggling ALL THE THINGS, then my whole world might collapse. If I truly trust God, I learn to restructure the way I’ve always functioned and submit that to Him.

In my next blog post I’ll get deeper into this idea of rest and (practically speaking) what that meant for my healing. In the meantime, will you take some time to reflect on this verse with me? What does rest look like for you, and what is God calling you to? Is there a sense of quietness and trust in your life? In what ways have you rejected any of these gifts He’s freely given you? In what ways is He calling you to a deeper relationship with Him?

Please let me know if there’s a way I can be praying for you. Thanks for reading – it means a lot to me.

Also, here’s the aforementioned picture that was circulated in a staff email at my old job – for your viewing pleasure. 😊

My “work face” – with laser eyes added for effect. 🙂

Feeble Hands & Shaky Knees

“Strengthen the feeble hands,
   steady the knees that give way,
say to those with fearful hearts,
   'Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
   He will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
   He will come to save you.'"
            -Isaiah 35:3-4

For quite some time, I’ve felt God calling me to this idea – “strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way.” I’ve had quite a bit of experience with my own feeble hands and shaky knees over the past several years as I’ve gone through a long, hard battle with depression. In many ways, I’m (mostly) on the other side of this battle. I’ve experienced a lot of healing and growth, though I definitely still feel very fragile in some ways, and even recently have had some pretty awful days. But because I know I’m not alone in this battle with depression, I want to offer my story to you, if you care to hear it. If not – I won’t be offended. I can be kind of wordy at times. And after all, talking about depression can be a bit…depressing. 😊 (See what I did there?)

I wish I could easily sum up the story of what the past two and a half years have been like for me. However, as I am a person who very easily gets bogged down in details, I don’t think that can happen. I want you to know each heartache, each victory, each epiphany and paradigm shift – but that would require you to simply live those years with me all over again. And although it’s an excruciatingly beautiful journey – it should only be walked once. To go back and resurrect each detail might provide a bit more understanding, but it would mean retracing steps, instead of moving forward along the next part of the path God has placed in front of me. A path that others may need me to walk with them, drawing from all my experience of the terrain I have already covered before them.

So if my path intersects or converges with yours, let me just say there is HOPE. Some of the darkest times of my life have happened in the past two-and-a-half years. I’ve had moments where I’ve cried uncontrollably, screamed at my children, irrationally raged at my husband, and fought off literal waves of sadness that plagued me moment after moment. I’ve been so incredibly tired, hurt, ashamed, angry, and hopeless that I’ve fought desires to injure myself or end my life. I’ve had weeks of an uneasy sense of feeling almost “normal” again, only to be overcome by that awful feeling of knowing that my depression was back in full force, ready to annihilate me yet again me and bring me to my knees. I’ve been on countless medications of varying dosages – spending months to find the one that would actually alleviate some of my symptoms without leaving me with unbearable side effects.

But as I said, there is HOPE. Because my world was so dark, light was ever so much brighter. In some ways it’s hard to make sense of that. There were many times the darkness didn’t become any less dark. It was still awful and painful and overwhelming. But Jesus and my friends walked alongside me, and though the brightness of their light did not diminish my darkness, it made it bearable because I was not alone. As I look back, some of my darkest times were actually the most filled with hope, because I saw God fight for me, teach me, and rescue me in those moments.

Again, I wish I could tell you every detail. It’s a pretty amazing story. Friends who cried with me and offered wise counsel, a husband who held me through the worst of it, family who prayed diligently for me, children who watched me fight hard battles and loved me through it. I have stories of times when God clearly answered prayers that I didn’t even know were being prayed – answered prayers that helped calm my raging mind and simply fall asleep. Medically speaking, I learned a lot about the impact years of stress had on my body, mind, and emotions, and how healing came in unexpected ways. I spent several days in the mountains of Colorado, and the healing God did there in my soul is a precious story in and of itself. A wise counselor and friend taught me how to truly rest, helping me completely restructure the way I think about my work life. I could tell you how some things were lost and sacrificed along the way, including a job I loved. I could also tell you how God provided in amazing and humbling ways in the midst of a year off of work, and has provided again in giving me a job that fits exactly what I need right now. I could tell you of new friendships created and old friendships deepened. Of a life recreated and a spirit renewed.

But I’ve already said enough for today. I’ll get into some of those details and stories down the road. But the reason I am writing this today is because I want you to know what God can do. That you’re not alone. That someone else has walked this road.

Recently a mom in our community – a mom of three boys, just like me – died by suicide. From what I understand, many of those around her were shocked. They hadn’t known she was struggling. Many cannot understand what she was going through that would lead her to such a point because (thankfully) they’ve never experienced that before.

But I can understand it. And maybe you can too. And if you are feeling hopeless, please know you are not alone. I say these words to you that God laid on my heart at a very dark time:

"Be strong, do not fear;
   your God will come,
He will come with vengeance;
   with divine retribution
He will come to save you."
          -Isaiah 35:3-4

If you are struggling, please reach out. And not just to one person – allow God to fight for you through multiple people. Honestly, the struggle is too big for just one friend. It took a village of people and the God of the universe to pull me out of a really dark place. I am willing to be one of the people in your village if you need that, and I’d love to help you learn more about the mighty God who is fighting for you. Through this blog, I plan to share more about what I have learned spiritually, mentally, and physically. I am not a therapist or a counselor, but I do feel that I can share what God has taught me on this journey. Feel free to ask me any questions – for the most part, I’m pretty open about this. Or I’m happy to keep my mouth shut and just listen (as hard as that is for me – as you can see I’m quite wordy even when I’m trying not to be).

I hope the words God speaks through me here bring you hope and healing and the knowledge that you’re not alone. Your hands may be feeble, and your knees may be giving way, but God is coming to save you. In fact, He’s already here, walking with you and weeping with you.