I don’t want this to be a blog about my mental health.

There are too many other big and beautiful and wonderful parts of my life I want to tell you about instead.

“I’m sad when you’re sad,” my daughter says.

Most of the time my kids don’t see and they don’t know, but sometimes they do.

Kind of like everyone else.

I talk openly about the struggles I experience as someone with OCD, but talking about it and being seen in it are separate. I can usually keep them apart with the skill of a craftsman.

It’s one thing to tell someone about it. It’s another to let them see.

While usually being around people and out of the house brings me out of my own head enough to “snap out of it,” recently, that has begun to change.

Shame stays close when I’m like this, reminding me that my life has never, ever been more beautiful.

My children are thriving. Healthy and happy and the absolute joys of my life.

My husband is loving and supportive and kind and understanding.

Staying home with my kids is a privilege and we painted the town red all summer – two a days at the park, basically living in the AC of the library, and putting miles on the double stroller.

How dare I struggle so significantly when my life is richly and abundantly blessed?

Yet, it has been absolutely brutal as my mind wages war against me, sending relentless waves of panic and fear through my body.

The never-ending obsessive doubt that tells me it’s too much and I can’t bear it unless I can get the certainty I crave.

The panic turns to despair as I weep, feeling so afraid and so uncertain and so full of guilt.

Guilt that isn’t mine to carry, but assigned to me by my mind regardless.

An unending loop of every mistake and uncertainty and decision and fear and regret and possibility over and over. The thoughts are like a movie someone is making me watch, holding my eyes open to a world of catastrophic possibilities or worst case scenarios- usually with me to blame.

The thoughts that question everything from my morality to health to safety to my past and to my future. Nothing is off limits. Around and around they loop.

The thing about OCD is that it lies. Sometimes partly, sometimes wholly, but always to get you to take action. To urgently seek the certainty you crave, for a shot of relief and reassurance that hits like a drug. But unfortunately, with how the brain works, the more you actually do that, the worse the disorder gets.

So you resist the urge to check, ask, confess, investigate, ruminate,

Even though it feels in your entire body as if it is completely irresponsible and everything hangs on you “just making sure,” you resist. Because if you don’t, it gets worse.

Because of this, OCD is a very very lonely disorder. Sharing the content of my obsessions is usually a compulsion geared to make me feel better. I can watch your reaction, read your face, hang on your every word. So I don’t. I try not to with everything in me I suffer. By not confessing, ruminating, investigating, at least I am suffering in the right direction. It passes, like my husband and my mom said it would.

The thoughts and obsessions are brutal, and so is the resisting.

It feels like your house is on fire and you are just sitting there, watching it burn down around you because you have to somehow know the flames aren’t real.

But I see the fire and I smell the smoke and this time has to be the one that really burns it all to ashes.

1,000 houses have burnt down. 1,000 emergencies that needed my immediate attention. Yet each new one feels just as real, just as intense, just as wild.

Brutal. Not just for me, but those who have to see me when the lies are so loud, and they know they can’t give me the quick-fix reassurance I think I need, because it is so detrimental to me.

The past 2 months have been brutal, but they have also been beautiful.

Such is the dichotomy of living with mental illness. While there are certainly times where it is all consuming, most of the time living with mental illness means suffering while life happens and still trying to live in a beautiful and meaningful way. Moments of joy, hours of pain, a good day, a disastrous one.

Sometimes I feel panic so sudden and intense it makes me feel like I have left my body.

But there is dancing on the kitchen rug after breakfast with my sweet kids, smiles wide as they beg me to pick them up and spin them.

I have thoughts that are dark, that tell me lies and doubts about myself and others that make me want to plug my ears and scream.

But there is fresh popcorn with White Cheddar seasoning on the couch with my husband, watching reruns after bedtime.

The dread and despair sometimes force me to crawl into bed and pray to sleep for a break from my own brain.

But there are first days of pre-school and my children playing together and a sip of a hot cup of coffee.

The smell of wet, fall leaves and the long awaited chill in the air.

Taking the time to memorize my son’s long, long eyelashes.

Hearing the sound of his bare feet smacking the concrete as he runs.

The artwork my daughter displays all around our house.

Jumping into a pile of pillows and blankets in the basement and squeals of delight.

Beautiful.

I texted a friend this past weekend to thank her for her relentless encouragement to get us to attend our church (if you’re local, Chapel Pointe Byron Center). I was reluctant for to try it, but she continued to “encourage” us to give it a chance every time we talked about our church search.

I texted her this weekend because while I know our church is not perfect, I had seen its people support and love me so well that day.

After having to leave in the middle of the service due to an OCD episode, a friend met me in the prayer room and covered me in prayer as I wept. A pastor came in quickly after and did the same thing over me and Max.

Later in the day, during small group, after enchiladas and queso, 13 other people saw my pain and my tears and laid their hands on me, with tears of their own, as they pleaded for my freedom.

I told her about the way our church has loved me. “Brutal and beautiful” is how she described it.

It has been brutal and beautiful, indeed.

In my deepest suffering, God has been near. His people have been near.

The beautiful moments are even more beautiful when you’re convinced you will never have them again, and suddenly have the gift of a sound mind again and the feeling of joy. Maybe for an hour, maybe a day, but at least for that moment. Joy.

I hate that this blog is about mental health right now. It is embarrassing to be so self focused and struggling, but this is the affliction I am currently experiencing.

While I feel like my life is currently so focused on self as I make it through this intense flare up, perhaps others are also walking through their own journey of the Brutal and the Beautiful and can be encouraged by mine.

Thank you Lord, that you will use the Brutal for my good and your glory, and that every glimpse of the Beautiful is a gift from you.

*If you want to learn more about OCD, one of the best books I have ever read it called, “A Quiet Mind to Suffer With: Mental Illness, Trauma, and the Death of Christ.” by John Andrew Bryant, a fellow believer and someone with OCD. (I bought it on Amazon.)

Some Beautiful :