Have you ever endured a challenge that turned out to be the greatest blessing in your life?
My daughter is 16, and about seven years ago she was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. A couple of years after that, depression started. The last several years have been difficult, and though this last year she’s been in a really great place, this season has taken a toll on me emotionally and physically. I’m her “person,” and I’m in the trenches with her. It’s not easy.
These mental health challenges run in my family. Like heart disease, high cholesterol, and cancer, some people are simply genetically predisposed to it. Thankfully, I knew how to recognize it. My daughter was an extremely challenging toddler with sensory processing disorder and a very strong will. In the third grade, she started going almost daily to the nurse’s office at school for a stomachache and dizziness. Fast-forward through a lot of specialist appointments, lab work, and counseling, and we finally discovered it was anxiety. She was having panic attacks (disguised as overwhelming stomachache and dizziness), and we were able to get her the help she needed.
Then puberty kickstarted her depression, and it was touch and go for a couple of years.
Today she’s thriving in her faith, extremely mature, and a great student attending a virtual charter school. While she has not perfectly mastered managing her moods, she certainly knows how to do so better than I did at her age.
Walking through her mental health journey wasn’t easy for her. It also wasn’t easy for me, for my marriage, and for our whole family, but we committed to fighting through and we’re on the other side now.
Getting to the other side took learning and relearning so many critical lessons and skills, such as listening, healthy boundaries, and the importance of structure and self-care. It took rereading the Bible through the lens of mental health. It also took phenomenal doctors, counselors, and Christian mentors.
Now I’m so grateful I was able to walk through this journey with her because it taught me so much as a person and as a mother.
It also taught me a ton about God’s incredible love for us. Not only do we have the gift of salvation, but we also have a personal savior—a savior who’s not just there for the big stuff but the difficult everyday moments, too. He’s there in our grief and our pain, our depression and our heartbreak, our good times and our bad times.
He might not take that grief or pain or sickness away, but he’s there with us, walking right next to us. There, right there, in the trenches with us.
During the hardest moments of our family’s mental health journey, I didn’t always “feel God” right there with me every step of the way, but I trusted that he was there. I also knew he spoke and cared through the people he sent to help us through. And looking back, I saw the evidence.
That’s how it is for so many of us. Most of us have experienced struggles in our life, but often it’s only later, when we look back, that we can often see God’s hand clearly.
As Hebrews 4:13 tells us, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (NIV).
And as 1 Peter 5:6-7 says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
Sometimes we go through situations and we’re so grateful to be done with them that we don’t look back. We think we got through because of “luck” or our own hard work. But consider today the beautiful, personal, and sometimes intimate ways God speaks to us and walks with us through our most painful moments.
If you are in the middle of a difficult season right now and you doubt God’s walking beside you, thinking you’re maybe in all of this alone, pause. Breathe. Take a look around. Ask him to speak to you or show you a sign.
Then watch as his love comes to life.
Amen. Thanks be to God.
A prayer: Lord, thank you that you care for me so personally. Even in those times I can’t see you or feel you, help me remember that you are there. Amen.
Get to Know Jessica Brodie:
Jessica is an award-winning Christian journalist, author, blogger, and editor. She is the editor of the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate, the oldest newspaper in Methodism, which has won more than 118 journalism awards during her tenure. She is the author of two devotionals, Feed My Sheep (2019) and More Like Jesus (2018), and editor of Stories of Racial Awakening (2018) and Called by God (2020), all from her newspaper’s Advocate Press.
She also writes fiction, represented by Bob Hostetler of The Steve Laube Agency, and her novel The Memory Garden won the 2018 Genesis contest for unpublished contemporary fiction from the American Christian Fiction Writers. A speaker and contributor to Crosswalk, Christianity.com, and the United Methodist News Service, she has a faith blog at JessicaBrodie.com. Subscribe to Jessica’s YouTube Channel HERE.
