“Everything’s good but my brain. The usual,” I told my friend when she asked how I was doing this week in our Mom group chat.

“I think this is just how my life is going to be now,” I said.

Hopelessness wasn’t the right word for this sentiment. It was more of a sad resolve.

I wish I had a different answer for when people ask how I am truly doing.

The way mental illness has shown up in my life the last year is different than any time in the previous 33. Previously, I was Jenna, and then would have the occasional episode that was debilitating but short lasting. The meds would change or I would work through it, or I would get some sleep and settle back into myself. Life would go on as usual. There was much more of a separation between the me that battled mental illness episodes and the me that presented myself to the world once I made it out of them.

The past year has been different. The settling back into myself isn’t happening. It’s wave after wave after wave, with glimpses of me peeking through and visiting, but the storm comes back before I’ve barely been up for air. 

Is there anyone left to settle into? Is this who I am now? 

Who I am now and who I was then feels more blurred, as the two try to come together. 

Who am I when it doesn’t ever get fully better? 

The suffering is something I fight through in my daily life, exhausting myself to present as normal and functioning. It surprises many to hear of the depth of my illness, but those close to me see it.

I’m in and out. One of my friends tells me she can measure how bad it is by the way my eyes look.

They know when I text that I need them to come over this morning, they come.

How long? I wonder. How long will the mental torment continue? As I do the right therapies and pray for healing and see specialists for the correct medication combo – How long? Is this as better as it gets?

Does anyone really see this pain?

A few weeks ago I was at the park with my husband and kids. Like a lot of days, I was going through the motions, fighting for moments and hours of joy while my brain took me to places far away and tried to keep me there.

Engage in the present moment.

 Push my daughter on the swing with slow breaths. Bring the panic down.

 Kiss my son’s cheek and try not to wince as urgent and distressing thoughts play in my mind simultaneously. This is what I do.

The exhausting work of living with mental illness but still fighting hard against it when everything in me wants to crumple and let it win.

While I was on the swings with my daughter, the cycle began. The thought, the overwhelming physiological response, the immediate panic and urgent need to make it all better.

“Thought number one million,” the lady says on the Podcast when I listen to it again. This is OCD. Let it pass like all the others.

The enduring and the waiting as the emotions take me over exhausts me in a way I can hardly describe.

A few minutes later, the kids were playing on the slide and I melted into my husband. I was so, so tired. 

I cried into him because I don’t want my life to be so beautiful on the outside and so tormented on the inside. 

My life is so absolutely blessed beyond anything I could ever imagine or dream, yet I live often in waves of torment.

Everything’s good but my brain.

At that moment, I realized a woman was standing behind me, and I turned around, embarrassed to be caught crying and wiped away my tears. She stood there, almost trembling, with a bouquet of flowers in her hand.

“I don’t know if you’re Christians,” she started, and the weight of this moment hung in the air as we both realized the impeccable timing. She had no idea I was fighting off an episode crying into my husband’s arms, but when I turned around, she saw.

“Before I came to the park, God told me to put together a bouquet of flowers. There would be a woman there to give them to.”

She had thumbed through some Scripture cards and chose one to tie with twine around the mouth of the vase, packed it in her van, and went to the park with her kids.

“Look to the east,” she felt God say to her.

And there I was.

We talked and we cried as I shared with her what was going on.

The exhaustion, the defeat, the discouragement. 

“God sees you.” she told me before she left.

The implications of this moment felt huge as I sat and processed what had just happened.

Do I truly believe God SEES me and KNOWS me and LOVES me?

This God that I spend my entire life trying to get others to experience; am I slowing down enough to experience Him myself?

Do I really believe he knows the intricate details of my suffering and is near, even if He doesn’t take it away?

What would change about my life, my home, my mental health, my ministry, if I truly lived like God loves me the way I tell others he does?

I was processing this at small group later that evening as I shared the story with them. As I recited the verse from the flowers, I told them I didn’t want to miss this message. I knew it was important.

When it was time to leave, my friend grabbed me and put a small bag containing a gold necklace into my hand.

“This is yours,” she told me.

Looking down at the necklace, I see it,

 46:10.

The same verse that was wrapped around the flowers given to me at the park earlier in the day.

Psalm 46:10 

Be still and know that I am God.

Her precious mother in law had recently passed away, and they had gone through her jewelry some weeks before. My friend Kayla had taken a handful of things home with her, but for some reason, this necklace stayed in her car for weeks.

 She didn’t know why she never brought it out of her car like the rest.

But as soon as I shared the story, she did.

We hugged as I praised God for the obedience and courage of these two women to follow the urging and prompting of the Holy Spirit to meet me in my pain.

Do I believe He sees me? Do I actually allow the truth to sink in? 

That there is a God who created the universe and wants to love me this personally and this specifically?

How would that change how I suffer?

How would that change how I tell others about the love of Jesus Christ?

If I could not just know of this love, but experience this love?

The context of this Psalm isn’t necessarily telling the reader (it was written for the Israelites most likely in battle) to sit and be quiet. (although that would likely solve 60% of my problems).

It’s the being still and knowing who God is.

 “Know that I am God.”

Some translations say to “cease striving” or “stop fighting” because the war is in the hands of God.

I don’t simply want to know about God – I want to know His love for me in an authentic way. That He truly fights for me.

That He sees me.

He saw me at the park that Sunday, and he sees me in every appointment.

He sees every tear I cry and every dark day.

How would my life change if I let that truth sink in and not just pass over me like a platitude on a coffee mug.

A few weeks later, I ran into Crystal, the woman from the park, at a Women’s Conference.

“Are you here??” I messaged her on Facebook when I thought I saw her there.

She doesn’t attend our church but came to the conference and when we saw each other, we embraced and couldn’t believe it.

But also, we could.

He is in every detail

As I was eating lunch with one of my dearest and closest friends, Crystal came over with her friend and the 4 of us were able to talk more about what God is doing in our lives. 

What kind of God arranges a lunch date like this?

Psalm 46:10 hung around my neck as we ate sandwiches and chips and I felt seen and known and loved.

A month or so before all of this happened, I had shared after a meeting with some lovely women at church that I am stuck and struggling with having so much head knowledge about God, but feeling like my heart is so disconnected from it.

A friend came up to me after the meeting and told me,

“You need an experience of God’s love.”

Yes, I said. I do.

Weeks later, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon at the park, I had one.

Later in the quiet moment in a living room, holding the necklace, I had another.

Around the circle lunch table in a church foyer with the woman who’s obedience started to melt my heart, it can’t be questioned that He sought me out in this specific and tangible way.

I may not experience the healing so many pray for with desperation, but I will walk with Jesus through it.

Like Peter said in the gospel of John, when Jesus asked the disciples if they were going to leave too. 

“Lord, To whom would I go?” (John 6:68)

There is no God like this.

As the emotions of this incredible experience die down, the real work begins of clinging to my refuge when the waters roar and foam and the mountains tremble.

And thankfully, when my grip is weak and shaky and it feels as though there’s not a way to keep clinging, I know He is really the one holding onto me- and He will not let me go.

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Psalm 46 

God is our refuge and strength,
    a very present[b] help in trouble. 

Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
    though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam,
    though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah 

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
    the holy habitation of the Most High.

God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
    God will help her when morning dawns.
The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
    he utters his voice, the earth melts.

The Lord of hosts is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

Come, behold the works of the Lord,
    how he has brought desolations on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
    he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the chariots with fire.

“Be still, and know that I am God.
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth!”

The Lord of hosts is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our fortress.

And lastly, this song.