When I think about the new year coming, I have butterflies. Good, happy, cute little butterflies. I look back at the last 12 months or so and am so amazed that I could be so excited for something after a year like 2014 that brought me to my knees.
I can honestly say that this has been the worst year of my life. I would not wish it on anyone nor do I ever hope to repeat it. But I also dare say that I am glad it happened.
I think back to the person I was a year ago and she is gone. She was in love with her new house, she was excited and hopeful for all the fun that a new home brings and happy to be in a new neighborhood, meeting new people and finding a place in a new community. She was anxiously anticipating her 5 year old's first year of school and was trying to figure out how to manage a 1.5 (but totally already 3) year old who had just discovered he had opinions and could actually make his OWN choices, much to her dismay. She had a picture in her mind of what the days would be like in this place, how she would function here as a wife and mother of two....this felt like a new start to her. The beginning of the next chapter. She was 60 pounds lighter, she wore cute clothes and she loved it. She loved God and knew He loved her. She worried about what others thought of her and hoped never to make anyone mad or say the wrong things, and when she thought she might have been guilty of such, she worried herself into a frenzy. But she was happy. Mostly.
Then like a hurricane, the year swooped in and tossed her plans to the wind. Here I find it hard to even describe how things turned upside down, but looking back it feels like one minute I was okay, and the next I was not. One minute I was planning how to decorate our rooms, and the next I was worried (frantically and desperately so) that our house was built on a sinkhole that would at any minute collapse into a marsh of water. One minute I was picking out a table for our kitchen and the next I was panicked that our house was most definitely filled with deadly mold and we would go bankrupt and homeless trying to remedy it. One minute I was watching a nice movie after the boys went to bed and the next I was sobbing uncontrollably over my certainty that we would all die of radiation poisoning. My mind rolled with insane possibilities.
Our crawl spaces (all nearly 2000 sq. ft of them) turning to swimming pools, our sky lights leaking, our flooded patio and yard with water seeping in the basement corners...all these things were real. The mice who died and smelled up the wall, the broken piping and the garage roof leaking and all the other little things...they all happened. But as these events unfolded, something in my mind clicked and a small little spot of darkness that I had always suspected was there started to grow.
Growing up I had always been a nervous kid...always scared of everything and all the potential awful things that could happen (but rarely actually ever did). There were a few instances when I was younger where I feared that there might actually be something wrong with me...times when my fears and anxiety was so out of control that I worried I may never get a handle on it again. But things always calmed down, I always talked myself back into reality and was able to recognize the truth of my fear at the time. Because of my family history, this was worrisome to me but because I felt mostly in control of things as I got older, I never really put much attention into it.
This past year was like my brain was making up for the last 15 or so years of mostly calmness. I remember one night, laying in bed crying, thinking, 'this is what it feels like to be crazy! I am crazy.' And the next thought, 'what if I never get better and I am like this the rest of my life?!!'. And then the panic would come. The heart racing and the stomach turning and the sweating and crying and shaking. I have never in my life felt such a total loss of control. There aren't even words I can type here to make you understand that feeling unless you have felt it yourself. It is a feeling of utter and total helplessness. A feeling so incredibly sickening and dark that, I am ashamed to admit, led me to even consider the possibility of just swallowing all the pills I had in the bathroom (which at the time was a good number; I had sought help from a psychiatrist and we were trying to figure out what would help) and being done with it. And then being terrified by the feeling of total relief that idea brought to me. I can't describe this to you...I was in a pit of darkness. It was the lowest I have ever been and ever hope to be.
This year I battled something that many people fight. It is a battle that someone in my life who I love very much fights every day. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the anxiety that it breeds is not a joke or something that one can easily remedy or treat. It is something that can be all consuming, terrifying, depressing and debilitating. It is life altering and scary. It is a part of me and always will be...my brain is wired that way.
All of that said...I am glad this year happened. (WHAT?? I know, right?) While it might have been the most absolutely awful year, it was also the most defining. The most reflective and refining. When you have been through torment and suffering you often learn the most about yourself. About the people around you. And for me, about my God. He is my God!!! I have loved Him for a long time and I know He has always loved me...but this year, I learned who He truly is. He saved my life...He gave me strength when I was so weak I didn't think I would make it through. He gave me friends who heard my pain and would literally hang up on me to drive to my house and read me scripture and prayed with me, just so I could get through the day. He gave me my doctors, who were able to find physical means of treatment that have made a world of difference. He gave me my husband, who if you know him you know how hard this kind of thing would be for him to help me with, but who managed to hold me and reassure me and take care of me, despite my driving him nuts asking him the same questions repeatedly day in and day out. He gave me prayer warriors who sent me messages at the exact moments they were needed most. He gave me a pastor who was able to speak truth to me in a way that resonated more than he will ever know...speaking words that to this day I repeat that uplift me and encourage me so so much. As bad as this year and all of it's discoveries was, it allowed me to start a process of treatment and of enlightenment so powerful that I am fully and entirely altered by it.
Not that God just showed up and snapped His mighty fingers and fixed my brain. This is an ongoing, never-ending process that takes work. It takes my effort and time and my desire to BE better. It takes prayer, and counseling and self-reflection and medication and thought process changes and all kinds of hard work. But I called to Him and He answered in all those ways. In so many ways I could go on forever. I remember several times walking into our prayer meetings at church just leveled by fear and worry and obsessive craziness and I would sit and cry and write and write and write...prayers to God, questions, spilling my heart out. And a feeling of relief would start to cover me. A feeling of hope...something that I had been without for a long time. Here someone would come to pray with me, miraculously knowing just the right words despite knowing nothing of my struggle. Here would come a breathtakingly gorgeous sunset appearing as I walked to my car. These are the things my God gave to me...these are the things that saved me.
So yes, the girl I was a year ago is gone. She is now new and she is hopeful. She is not afraid because she knows there is a purpose for her, a future full of hope. She is SO incredibly thankful for all her blessings, even (and especially) the house her family calls home. She is confident in herself and who she is and she is not worried about what others may think of her. She is not ashamed of her illness but excited at the opportunity to share and grow and educate. She loves her husband and her kids to death and knows life isn't easy but is proud that she is their mother and his wife. She is 60 pounds heavier now but she loves herself more than she ever has. She is not fooled into thinking that everything will always be okay, but instead knows that no matter what comes He is there. She is a daughter of the one true King and has a relationship that a year ago, she would never have imagined.
The dread, fear and sadness that hung over this past year is gone. I feel excitement again. I feel butterflies! (happy ones!!) I am hopeful and I am confident. I am strong, I am unapologetic, I am incredibly blessed and I am happy. I am so unequivocally unbelievably thankful. I'm thankful for it all. I am so excited for this new year. The best is yet to come!!
