A big sigh escapes my lips as I sit here three years later preparing to reflect back on January 2019.
It wasn't my best of months.
Probably not my very worst, praise God. But there were moments when it came close.
As I mentioned at the end of my previous blog post, several of us (I think primarily from the Portland side of things) decided that I would return to Portland for five final weeks after spending Christmas with my family. During that time, I would finish out the Portland portion of Servant Teams, see the team off to Rwanda, and complete the Genesis Process study with a local church group.
Spoiler alert! I sabotaged myself and didn't get the opportunity to do those things the way I wanted to.
I flew to the Northwest on January 5, and initially things went well. I reunited with the church family I had become a temporary part of, with my Servant Teams and Lahash community, and with the small Genesis Process group.
The trouble started on Friday evening, January 11.
I was focusing on the fact that the other five gals on the team I had been part of were excited about completing their final preparations for leaving on their trip. And that was a good thing!! But every comment and brainstorm was like a pin prick in my sore heart - sore that my plan on getting back to East Africa had utterly fallen apart. I was trying hard to not stuff my emotions, but rather to bring them out into the light and process them.
But that made me spiral down.
Yevette, one of my team leaders, came back to my host mom's house with me to hang out and spend the night. I tried to talk things through with her ... but instead the problem started compounding. I barely slept a wink that night, despite taking medication and trying all my normal solutions for insomnia.
The next day, I felt utterly hollow and emotionally paralyzed, my stomach was tied in knots (I couldn't eat), and I couldn't set myself to anything. Yevette and Mandee and I went back and forth on solutions; they urged me to call some of my community members there and spend time with people rather than alone. But I didn't want anyone else to see me like that - numb and listless. So, Mandee and Yevette made a decision for me. Instead of staying until after the team was gone, I would leave the following Tuesday - before they left.
I stared at my computer screen for a long, long time, accomplishing nothing, before I finally put in that flight change.
Three days later I was headed back to Dallas, after lots of packing help from Mandee. {It's hard to believe that was only three years ago - so much has happened and changed since then!}
But first, God graciously gave me a good last day with Servant Teams & Lahash, at the gals' official goodbye dinner where they recognized me too. Additionally, the Lahash director gave me a very generous two-month stipend from the Servant Teams funds that I had helped raise. Both of those things were such huge gifts!
Back in Dallas, I did pretty well and worked on some projects such as updating my LinkedIn page for the inevitable job hunt. But on the 21st, the team left Portland without me ... and that was hard.
Then the 24th rolled around - the one-year anniversary of my breakdown in Uganda.
That evening, I was supposed to housesit for a friend from church. But I was *not* doing well emotionally in the morning, and so after beating around the bush and trying to think of ways to make it work, I finally called her and backed out.
And then my mom drove me up to see my new psychiatrist, an appointment I must have had booked for at least a week. God's impeccable timing!!!
I was brutally honest with him about what I was dealing with, and how exhausted I was from the wrestling fight with the "demons" I was facing.
Honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised if he had sent me back into a psychiatric ward.
But he didn't. Instead, he did what no one had tried yet - a drastic change of 2/3 of my medications.
His response gave me *courage* and something else I hadn't had for quite some time: hope.
By that evening, I was much more normalized again and thoroughly enjoying playing games with my parents and a friend who had been planning to hang out with me at the house sitting location.
And that is what started the upswing as year one of my struggle with mental health issues came to a close.
I've been planning this post for a long time, and I knew this is the song I wanted to put with it! I believe I first heard it in July 2018 at a church my brother Nathan was attending in North Dakota - and shortly afterward I bought an mp3 version of it!
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