As I searched my little medicine shoebox tonight for allergy pills, my fingers ran across an old friend. She’d managed to stay loyal and close by, for 8 1/2 years, through six moves and two states.
This bottle represents a period of my life when I questioned my calling and the motives of my heart to such an obsessive degree that depression took over. My mind and body warred with my spirit for months.
Anxiety, with its parasitic hunger attacked with no warning in public places like the church lobby and the Starbucks line where I’d stand there motionless, wondering if anyone around me could tell.
This bottle represents fear. It’d whisper, “what if it ever happens again?” and taunt, “would you dare throw me out…now?” My answer back was the “no-action no”. You know, the answer that cowards you call friends give when you desperately ask for support or money.
No, I didn’t have the courage nor the faith to answer back, “so what if it does? I’ll pray.” and follow through with a “hell yes, I’m throwing you out along with the lies I believed about myself.”
What’s silly is that I probably only took 10 pills. I was never addicted or bound. But that’s just it. I was bound. Not by the medication. But by the lies I believed when I took it and for the many years to follow: “I won’t fully recover. I’m not fully healed of this. God is punishing me for my pride by allowing me this affliction. Statistics on depression are reliable. Anxiety and panic are recidivistic.”
And the big one: “These pills are more trustworthy than the healing power of God.”
But tonight, May 2nd, 2014, I renounce them all. I state with resoluteness and conviction that my caring God healed me the day I vacuumed my apartment in a worship whirlwind to hymns on a spinning Crystal Lewis CD, seven weeks after I fell into the hole.
This bottle is going in my trash tonight. Sealed tight with every one of those lies. And I will fall asleep with this smile, a direct result in the truth I’ve come to know. He’s always been there. He’s always more powerful than a man-made drug, as helpful as it was in those seven weeks. And this Prince of Peace has always cared about my peace of mind.
Good night.
Chelan 