Tag: god

GOD GIVES US TOOLS

Published on by Aimee Eddy4 Comments

God works miracles in people’s lives every day. People survive horrific accidents, they are miraculously healed of illnesses, they find a long lost love, or they find money when they are down on their luck. God is awesome, but he doesn’t always perform miracles. Sometimes he provides tools to help us get through illnesses and hard times.

I have heard from Christians throughout my struggles with mental illness say, “Give it to God and he will take your mental illness away.” It’s not that easy. God sometimes works miracles, but other times he provides us tools to help ourselves. It would be easy for him to click his fingers and our mental illness goes away, but what is he teaching us by making life easy? We learn when we help ourselves by using the tools God give us.

Just think of what a miracle it is for therapists and psychiatrists to have the knowledge and compassion to work with us to navigate our way through mental illness. Then God gives some people the knowledge to create medications that balance the chemicals in our brains to manage the symptoms of our illness. To other people God gave the ability to come up with coping techniques for us to handle hard times.

God worked a miracle in my life and gave me tools to help myself in my struggles with mental illness. In college I was at the bottom of my dark hole. I was suicidal and self-injuring, and I wasn’t sleeping. I took a year off from college to take care of myself. My mom went to a hospital in another state to find me help. They gave us information about a therapist who let me pay what I could afford since I had no insurance. The therapist set me up with a psychiatrist that used programs to help me get my medication for free. I saw the therapist each week and she taught me coping techniques. In time I started feeling the best I have ever felt. My therapist took me off my medication and told me in a few years my illness would return.

After I discontinued therapy and antidepressants, I started living the life I always wanted. I had lots of friends, I got together with a group of co-workers to go bowling until 2:00 AM, and I started dating. In a year I went back to college.

When I was getting ready to graduate, I went to my therapist’s office to give her an invitation to my graduation, but her office was empty. When I asked someone who had an office in the same building, he told me that my therapist’s office had been empty for a very long time, and there had never been a therapist in there. God gave me an angel to get better so I could live life and graduate from college. The therapist angel was right, though. A year or so after college I fell down that hole again.

celestial angel in the sky sits on cloud

I will admit I have had to search for the right therapist and psychiatrist to help me, but God did provide me with the ones I needed. After my abusive ex threw me out, my whole life seemed like a hopeless wreck. I started seeing a therapist who told me to watch a funny movie. I was unhappy with her, so I went to a program through my work that helped me find a new therapist. The new therapist knew I was a writer, so she had me journal out my feelings, and we worked on them in our sessions. She gave me homework, she taught me how to notice my unhealthy thinking techniques and change them, she taught me coping techniques, and she helped me learn to love myself.

When I met my husband, she did couple therapy with us to teach my husband how to handle my illness. She helped me stop injuring, find recovery, and start a new life. My therapist became like a friend to me. I miss talking to her. She is a tool God provided me to help me get better.

When I went to visit my husband’s uncle and aunt in Georgia, his uncle, a psychologist, noticed my hands shaking. He sat me down and asked me a series of questions; one of them was what medications I was taking. He told me my medication was causing the trembling. When I returned home, I told my psychiatrist. He took me off all my medication and I went into withdrawal. A friend told me about another psychiatrist who was good. I contacted him and he tried me on different medications, and when they didn’t work, he carefully weaned me off. I still see this psychiatrist every three months, and he has me on the right amount of medication to keep me in recovery. My husband’s uncle and the new psychiatrist are tools God gave me to help take care of my mental illness.

God has also provided me friends, family, and a husband to be a part of my support team. God didn’t cure me, but he gave me tools to help me reach recovery. I had to do a lot of work to get to recovery, and I had the right tools to help me get there. He continues to provide me tools to stay in recovery.

God does work miracles, but some of his miracles are in the form of tools to help us work through our mental illness. God gave therapists and psychiatrists the ability to obtain the knowledge to help us get through our illness. He also carries us in our struggle to reach recovery. By fighting this illness with God’s help, we learn to fight for ourselves, to take care of ourselves, and to ask for help. If God cured every illness, we would never learn lessons about life and ourselves.

Each day I use the tools God gave me to stay in recovery. I take my medication, I lean on my support team, and I use coping techniques to help me stand strong in the light of recovery.

THE LITTLE THINGS

Published on by Aimee Eddy2 Comments

God looks down on us and sees we are struggling or need guidance. He provides for us through little things and thoughts in our minds. It’s easy to miss these little things while we are struggling. When mental illness clouds our minds, it is simple to blame God and to hate him for what we are going through. We may lose our faith and miss the little things God’s doing to take care of us.

When I was at my worst, I stopped going to church and I lost my faith in God. In spite of this, he gave me a wonderful mom who went to great extents to find me help. He gave me a therapist who helped me reach recovery long enough to live a life I didn’t get to as a teen and to graduate from college. When I moved in with an abusive boyfriend and hit rock bottom of my illness, God gave me a friend to support me and save my life.

When I had turned away from God, he gave me a special friend to invite me to her church and a Bible study she led. In time she sat with me in a sanctuary, and we prayed together asking God to come into my life. I had traveled miles away from home to a writing conference to meet her and find out she lived in my area. God works in mysterious ways.

When I was living with my ex-boyfriend, he took in a stray dog named Daisy. I didn’t want anything to do with Daisy, but she was determined to win me over. She nudged my hand until I pet her. When I went to bed at night, she slept right beside me and when I felt like giving up, she cuddled with me. God gave her to me to get through the abuse and the illness that I struggled with. From that time on, every dog I have ever gotten I’ve heard a voice inside my mind say, “That dog is the one for you.” Each one of my dogs provided comfort to me through different stages of my illness. I know that God is the one who led me to each of the fur babies I had throughout the years.

When I had given up on men and dating, God gave me a friend to set me up on a date and other friends to encourage me to go on that date. That guy turned out to be the love of my life. He is my husband and my everything. He encourages me, he supports me, he takes care of me, and he gets me through the hard times. I have never had a man treat me as good as he does, and he knows how to handle my bad days. He is the reason I’m in recovery. He is truly from God.

When I was working on publishing my book, God gave me two fellow authors who are also editors to edit my manuscript for free. He gave me another author to create my cover. Step by step God led me through writing my book and publishing it. He gave me a wonderful husband to comfort me when I cried after reliving the emotions of the past and to encourage me when I felt like giving up. God wanted me to tell my story. God has given me the strength to speak at many events to spread the awareness about bullying and how it can bring on mental illness.

When I was going through breast cancer and grieving after a bilateral mastectomy, I met Alexander Kovarovic through a Facebook support group, and he asked me to be part of his nonprofit. Five years later I am his assistant overseeing Advocacy and Education for his nonprofit One Life Project. God put him in my life so I can help young people with mental illness and hopefully prevent youth and young adults from suffering like I did.

Saturday, I got out of work at 2:30 PM. My husband and I went for a ride and stopped at a secondhand store. I walked past this rack of puppets and then I turned around, walked back over to them and I looked them over. Then I walked away. A voice inside me, God’s voice ,told me to buy one. I looked at my husband and said, “I think I should get one of those puppets.” He encouraged me to buy one, so I did. Then a name came to me, “Lucy.” My puppet’s name is Lucy. I know God was talking to me.

I will practice making her talk without moving my lips. I plan to use Lucy to talk to young children about bullying. I handed out my information to Girl Scout and Brownie leaders selling cookies at my store. Hopefully one will call or email me so Lucy and I can tell our story. We have a lot to tell young kids about how bad and hurtful bullying is. I know God will provide me the opportunity to do this.

Look for the small God things in your life. He is helping you through rough times without you even knowing it. Open your eyes to the tools and people he is providing you to get through your mental illness. You might think he is punishing you, but he’s not. He’s carrying you and taking care of you. Think about the things and people in your life that are helping you through this struggle. They are not there by coincidence. God is providing them for you.

God gave me special people and tools to guide me to and to keep me in recovery. God is walking beside me in the light of recovery.

I THOUGHT I WAS WATCHING SOMEONE DIE

Published on by Aimee Eddy2 Comments

Today seemed like a normal day, but it wasn’t. A man stood inches from me, his eyes rolled back, his body unable to move, and his legs buckling. I called for help. Help came and they moved him into a chair, but suddenly his face went white, and someone said he was not breathing. They moved him to the floor and started CPR. He lay still with all the life drawn from his face. My hands shook and I silently asked God, “Please don’t let him die.” He looked like he had already died. I thought he was gone. I thought I was watching a man die today.

When I looked at the man lying nearly lifeless on the floor, I thought about how precious life is and how fleeting it is. It’s easy to give up on living when depression clouds the mind. It’s hard to think straight, to see past the deep darkness inside, and to see that your life is special. I know because I was there at the breaking edge, ready to throw away the life God gave me because I couldn’t see past my inner agony. I thought everyone’s life would be better without me in it, I thought there was no way out of my darkness, and I thought I was doomed to a life of agonizing inner pain.

I took a bottle of pills. I felt dizzy and sick. Some how I drove to college and back in a snowstorm. I had no idea how. I didn’t even remember driving. I just knew I got there and back. It took me years to realize God was at the wheel of my car that night. It was then that I realized how important my life is and how foolish it was of me to try and end it.

I thought about how important that guy’s life was as I watched a woman breathe air into the guy who lay so lifeless. I felt my body tremble and my heart race as I watched them struggle to save a stranger’s life. If I had gotten into an accident after taking those pills, how many people would have struggled to save my life? How would they feel watching the life drain from me? Would they have been traumatized? What if my grandparents had found me dead from taking all those pills? Would they have been crying endlessly? Trying whatever they could to save me? Would their hearts be torn from their chests and their tears be endless? Would they be traumatized for life? How would they have told my parents that their daughter  had committed suicide in their home?

I saw the man’s eyes open. The people talked to him while paramedics put oxygen on him. They loaded him on a stretcher and took him away. I went on with my day wondering if he lived or died. Then I thought about how if I had succeeded at taking my life how many strangers who tried to save my life would be left disheartened and broken.  I thought about how many of my own family members’ lives would have been ruined because I took away what God gave me. In that moment I thanked God for my precious life and for allowing me to live when I wanted to die.

Later that day I heard the man I saw nearly die in front of me was seen out and about. He lived. I thought I was watching him die, yet God choose for him to live. Just like he chose for me to live the day I went to college in a snowstorm after taking a bottle of pills. God had a purpose for that man to survive just like he had a reason for me to live. If I had died, I would have never gotten to see my nieces and nephews grow up and some of them have children of their own. I would have never fallen in love with the man of my dreams and created many wonderful memories with him. I would have never written my book to help others with bullying. I wouldn’t be writing this blog. I wouldn’t have been able to help my siblings surprise my parents with a fiftieth anniversary party. There is so much more I would have missed out on if I had taken my life.

I thought I was watching a man die today, but he lived. It was a reminder of how precious life is and how important it is to fight for it. Live for the future that awaits you. Live for a chance to reach recovery. Live to make your dreams come true. Live to watch your family members grow and change. Live to create beautiful memories. Put those pills away, put that knife down, and put that gun aside. Look beyond your pain and see how precious your life is. God gave you life for a purpose; live so you can find the purpose.

This scary experience woke me up and reminded me why God chose for me to live so many years ago. God gives us little reminders of how important we are to him. His reminder shook me up pretty good but showed me how special life is. I live to fulfill God’s purpose and I fight my illness to stand in the light of recovery.