The excerpt below was extracted with permission from Shona’s Refresh book
In the months leading up to my shipwreck, I felt completely exhausted and lost my appetite altogether, I just didn’t want to eat. One night I was trying to rest and read a book when, suddenly, I felt an inner panic, as if something terrible was going to happen, my heart started beating for no apparent reason and I couldn’t calm down. repeated several times over the next few weeks.
- I was very sad and crying for no apparent reason.
- I felt alone even when I was surrounded by people who loved me.
- I started having obsessive thoughts and sometimes I spent hours thinking about sad events.
- Moments of panic started attacking me more often and I was constantly terrified My heart was beating the heat?Sometimes for hours.
- It seems that the best strategy was to distract me.
- So to get away from those horrible and strange sensations.
- I tried to be always busy.
- But also because there was so much to do.
I wasn’t excited anymore. Changing diapers, cooking, shopping, raising two children alive, caring for a restless baby and waiting for another baby along the way have become terrifying realities. I was terrified in the morning and wanted to hide under the blankets; but the clear perception that people needed me was what gave me the strength to go on. Weeks passed, I could barely sleep and I was crying more and more, I wasn’t interested in anything. I felt like a bad mother, a bad wife, a bad girl and a bad Christian, did I feel guilty about countless tasks I couldn’t perform or that, by my standards, were neglected?And I was drowning. Even though I was driving at full speed, I never got to see the finish line.
Concentrating on my moments of devotion was becoming increasingly difficult and I felt that the Lord was far away, I was captivated by mental exhaustion. There was a night when I tried to pray, but I forgot all along what I was thinking or saying. I began to feel like I was falling off a cliff; It fell more and more and there was no bottom. My whole emotional world collapsed. Throughout the night I slept and woke up again and again, the most terrible images and thoughts about God flooded my mind as if coming from an infinite source, I responded with verses of known psalms, which I repeated.
constantly, in a desperate attempt to trust god and his promises, I cried and cried out to the Lord, but the darkness of despair loa over me Like a little boat lost in a terrible storm after losing the rudder, my mind broke, my emotions were undermined, and the waves of despair mercilessly drowned me.
Throughout this dark period, I slept exhausted, but I woke up immediately, a few minutes later, without being able to stop the mental torment, so I came to the conclusion that I had been delivered by the Lord to the devil, that I could not. To be a Christian, and that all I had to do was be thrown into hell. Long before my watch woke up in the morning, I would wake up suddenly, like a frightened bird. While everyone was sleeping in the house, I had to get to escape the pain that was invading me. I found myself in the clutches of waves of thoughts hitting the beach in my heart. “What will happen to my children on the path of eternity?What tragedy with immeasurable consequences: a mother who has lost her mind and soul. You’re going to have to live with that reality, and what about David, who realizes there’s something wrong with me, but he can’t understand?What will happen to the baby?carry, for whom I still do not feel any emotional attachment?
With fierce intensity, I tried to focus on the biblical verses that speak of comfort, but the more I did, the more obsessive I became, I turned every word of encouragement in the Bible into a statement against me and applied every word of condemnation to What also Contributing to the mental exhaustion was the fact that I had started reading some books that I thought would save me from the deep darkness in which I found myself; books like Grace abound for The Chief Sinner, by John Bunyan; The Christian in Full Armor, by William Gurnall; and Spiritual Depression, by Martin Lloyd Jones. I was able to tap into some of the truths in these books, which helped keep me hopeful, but it was all too intense and exhausting.
There were flashes of reality, but these were casual and momentary. The Lord certainly said, “I will not leave you under any circumstances, will I never leave you?(He 13. 5). He calmed the storm for the disciples. He would never do it. throwing anyone who really followed him, what was the meaning of the last 25 years of my Christian life?He never saves and then leaves. That was my daily debate. But every time I was able to establish myself in reality, misleading thoughts, subjective feelings and lies came immediately to destroy all hope.
The beautiful sun and birdsong in the spring were an agony to me. The beauty of the night sky and all these stars, who testified of a faithful Creator, only served to break my heart even more. Have I begun to remember childhood?from the moment I sat outside my home in the Scottish Highlands, looking up at the sky and singing the words of Psalms 8. 3-4:
When I contemplate your heavens, the work of your fingers
and the moon and the stars you established, which is man, that you remember him.
And the son of the man, who visits him?
As a family doctor, I had already treated many people in similar situations and, if I had listened to my own story in a consultation, I would have objectively made the following diagnosis: “Mental overload and severe depression. “However, my subjective side is Much more convincing and persistent?He convinced me that my problem was spiritual, unwilling, or spiritually confident. If I could have more faith in God, then everything would be fine. After all, “Can I do everything in one that strengthens me?”(Fp 4. 13). But I was in the eye of the storm and I felt weak and disoriented. This is not the best place to perform accurate analysis.
When I finally sank into the rocks in March 2003, David and I decided to call my father, a pastor with fifty years of experience who could certainly diagnose my spiritual problem, however, when he heard my story, he became convinced that it was not so much a spiritual problem, it was a mental and physical problem with spiritual consequences, he said that due to many factors , including exhaustion and prolonged stress, my body was exhausted and my mind overloaded, normal physical and mental processes had ceased and, as a result, the most precious thing in my life was profoundly affected: my relationship with the Lord. It was a turning point for me and David as it opened the door to a wonderful recovery and a beautiful renewal of my life. that’s what I want to talk to you about in the rest of this book.
Although their story is not as serious or as severe as mine, my subsequent experience of meeting other women to advise them has convinced me that many Christians are trying to do the same thing that almost destroys me, that is, lead an overburdened life in a terrible and unbearable rhythm, although not everyone ends up like me, writhing on the ground , thinking that you are about to die, many of you have a variation in the following spectrum:
stressed?> anxious?> overwhelmed?> exhausted
Sadly depressed to consider suicide
By the grace of God, my journey didn’t end like this, and yours doesn’t have to end either. Join Refresh Academy and show me how to live life to the rhythm of grace in a rapidly changing world.