To Whom it May Concern

I’ve gotten to the place where I will hit skip if, the ever popular song, Oceans comes on a shuffle list. It’s not that I don’t appreciate that song, I just get over songs, eventually. Today, I let it play.

This song is powerfully written, it beckons the heart to go deeper, but if you listen to the lyrics they are really intense. 

Your grace abounds in deepest waters…
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the water
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior

I remember how ardently I would sing those lyrics, pouring my heart out to God in a desire to be on that water with Him no matter what. Come to find out I don’t love being on deep waters, but I need is grace so much that I actually find myself chasing its abundance and as that lyric says…it abounds in deepest waters. 

I don’t mean it to sound so terrible, I am loving being out here on the road, telling people about Jesus. I like the adventure of not knowing what each day fully holds and leaving room for the Holy Spirit to move and use me.

What I will say is this: I have half-assed my faith when it comes to coming out on deep waters. I pridefully and somewhat ignorantly figured I could muscle through and God would get the glory. What I have PAINFULLY learned is that you cannot walk out on deeper water without drawing closer because it requires faith and the presence of God to sustain you on that water. Even if you can keep your head above water, maybe even waist deep, you’re still going to drown eventually. It’s exhausting trying to do something so supernatural in a natural capacity. 

I am learning the first decades of my faith walk of following the ways of Jesus was deeply milky in sustainability. As long as the majority of my circumstances lined up, I had adequate bible teaching in church, and powerful corporate worship experiences that would sustain me in the deeper waters. None of these will keep you atop of the waves. I have found it is done in the privacy of my own heart before the Lord, allowing him to strip you little by little to look more like him.

I didn’t sell all my things in one day, I didn’t move to Guatemala over night, I didn’t come back in one fail swoop, and I didn’t heal all the broken parts that disillusionment, church hurt, and ministry isolation through my own strength. Accepting a missions call in my native country was a slow yes.

He’s so good, but I am a witness to you that it takes every bit of surrender and then repentance to start all over again the next day. New mercies and grace to start over from where I held on to my own ways, my own thoughts, ideals, presuppositions, or opinions that are contrary to what the scriptures say and what time in his presence can do. Don’t get crazy now, I am lazy, I wallow, I live a life that looks financially stupid, and I KNOW this ain’t for everyone. But it’s my deep waters. It’s where my faith is stretched and refreshed. It is in the deep waters I meet a face of Jesus I haven’t met before and each time reveals so much more of his greater plans, purpose, and beauty. 

So to whom this one may concern, I wanted to share with you to risk the depths to access his abundance of grace. If you don’t understand what the means, I encourage you just to ask him to show you who he is. This is my one promise…I have never sought him and not found him. He is faithful to all things and that one you can take to the bank! 

To Whom it May Concern

I didn’t know a “nervous breakdown” was your nervous system breaking down and not being able to function as intended.. I didn’t know that eventually those things you muscle through  will show themselves. It’s been two years since the initial “breaking,” and it still surprises me that there are days when I don’t want to be here anymore.It's not a desire to die, per se, or even a lack of a will to live. It's more so a feeling of "I don't know how to do this anymore, and I would rather not be here anymore.". The more honest I’ve gotten with others about this feeling, the more I am hearing that the feeling is understood. Is this a normal thought in other people?  Or is this something of a plague we agree with and figure, “It’s ok we will just get through it?”

In experiencing my lowest days, I realized that when my nervous system is most stressed I start to get fuzzy-brained and do weird things. On one of those days, I left my iPad in the Denver airport bathroom, wrecked a rental car before I even got it out of the parking lot, and saw a project I’d dedicated my whole life to for two years go up in flames during  a three hour flight. I remember crying over how dark the day was. I had no idea how to manage all I was facing and telling my friend that I saw no tomorrows. 

I don’t feel like that today, thankfully. I think I am to the place where I know there are tomorrows no matter how dark today. I do feel deeply at times that I have very little worth to add to the world. It’s a very strong feeling that leaves me feeling loose and shaking all within my core. 

I really thought I was immune from mental health struggles, but I know that we are all the same. I know these things make it more relatable but being in the midst of days where I have to ask for help to hold myself together is very humbling. So humbling, I ALMOST don’t want to tell anyone, but the fear of keeping that in feels greater so I humble myself. I’ll be transparent…I don’t understand the purpose of this season I’m walking out, what I did or didn’t do to bring it on or exacerbate it, why I know He’s a real God but I also feel like He’s this distant judge and I just have to muscle through. My mind knows that He is not attached to how these relationships and circumstances diminish my sense of worth and life attribution, but my heart and my emptiness feels like it is. The “muscle through” doesn’t work, I’m fairly sedentary these days, and I want sustainable mental and physical health. 

So cheers to those whom it may concern, regarding our mental health and the battles we rage against and within. I’m asking for help, I’m being honest, and I’m full of faith (even if it’s a habit of faith) that nothing lasts forever and this too shall pass. You can join me, thankfully we aren’t alone. 

To Whom it May Concern

I had a very close friend for a season in my life who battled deep clinical depression. The kind there I would have to go over to her house and get her to simply take a shower. I would coax her for about 40 minutes to get up by starting with simply sitting up. It was something I didn’t understand, but I could see this weight on her and wanted to help lift its gravity off her if just through a clean PJ set. I learned a lot in that time, and it made me far more compassionate to those who battle different forms of depression. 

In 2009, I opted for a double lumbar fusion surgery in my lower back to have a chance at a less painful life. Thankfully, it brought great healing to my body at the cost of great illness to my brain. The anesthesia and drugs changed my brain chemistry sending me into an overwhelming depression. I thought I was under spiritual attack (I know it was and continues to be but there also is a definite chemical illness happening) if I’m transparent; I asked a pastor at church about it and she advised that she thought I was depressed. I had no frame of reference for identification it. 

Life continues to happen. As I pen this I am reflecting on the journey…that bout had me deeply anxious and paranoid where I only felt safe in my car. I spent weeks parking in large parking lots like Home Depot or Lowe’s, reading a book in my car all day long. I didn’t feel safe anywhere outside of that car. It was a strange time. 

In 2011 my spiritual father passed from cancer and I had an excruciatingly challenging job at the time. I found myself in the parking lot of work more than once hyperventilating and crying. I was barely sleeping and felt like I was coming undone. This time I went to a doctor and they advised I was depressed but it presented itself as anxiety. I was prescribed Xanax; that was a God send in that time and I finally started sleeping again. 

In 2019 after years of learning to manage anxiety, feeling that my bouts of melancholy were because I was a writer and it’s how artists are; I found myself getting through each day thinking that surely tomorrow would have to be better. The thing is, my tomorrows were not getting better. Then we have a global pandemic which changed all of us, maybe fundamentally.  Then, I graduate from graduate school and feel like I should move to Guatemala to serve for a year as a full time missionary. Couple that with a deep spiritual crisis over church, pastor behavior and treatment, and something stirring deeply within me calling me to bring change without specifics.

I packed all that together in three suitcase full of hope that I would arrive at the end of whatever this was I felt inside once I got to Guatemala. Let me tell ya, my whole world unraveled further. Three and a half years later, I feel like I’m still walking up sand dunes that give way regressing my progress to upward movement. I am still trodding along. Next is learning not to “muscle through” my long-suffering with the Lord. Cause honestly, I just bulk up and keep on trudging, but I’m getting tired on these dunes, y’all. Anyone else now what I mean?

To Whom it May Concern

To whom it May Concern:

Just because it doesn’t look like what you think it’s supposed to look like doesn’t mean it’s not exactly what it is supposed to be like. We align our lives to scripture and in doing that we offer our best yes and let it take us where it goes. The full Bible is truth or it is not, and if it is our steps are ordered, His plans are perfect, we will suffer for this gospel life we lead, and regardless of our opinion of presupposition it will also look like Glory that is to God, not to us. His glory is our glory and that is enough when we bend our knee. 

To Whom it May Concern

I can remember the first time I came into a larger chunk of money. I was balanced, had cash at the ready, and felt as if I had arrived and would never need money again. There was this arrogant naïveté in my thinking that I would always have an influx of money; not learning yet, that much like all things there are tides in life that ebb and wane. I am finding that my encounters and revelations of God are much the same. From mountaintop moments I will burst from within my heart thinking I will never be the same again. Though this is true, proximity of time changes the shine of high moments.

When I was younger still, I would chase the highs of God. I wanted dramatic supernatural moments that made me feel so good in a way I only feel in those moments. It was and still is the best high I’ve ever felt. But therein lies the issues; we must guard ourselves from chasing those highs. Frustratingly, I must admit, my greatest growth and maturation comes in the lows when I’m processing the highs, and sitting in whatever abide the highs have given birth to. 

I am learning, God never reveals himself just to show us Himself simply for the heck of it. He does it for myriads of reasons and the longer I sit in the stays,  I am finding how He deepens the relationships between He and I. The earlier highs were beautiful, but these new highs are deeper and more hard fought for. Not because He’s a God who doesn’t want to be with us, but because He’s a good Father who is in the process of making us into who we were designed to be. It’s not easy, but it’s a good leading. He’s faithful, he’s good, and he’s just as profound and elevating in valleys as He is atop the mountain.