When my brain broke, I thought that was the end. My life as a writer was over. I couldn't write. It was hard to speak. I barely could think to drive. I had a massive head injury. I'd never thought I'd ever be able to put a sentence together again.
And it was so incredibly hard to get people to understand the severity head hole I was feeling. I didn't have a lot of capacity to explain it. But I would keep saying my brain is open, and somehow Philip understood.
It took a year to start repairing, a year of feeling like I might have just lost everything that was uniquely mine to give. And that was the dark that was hard to move away from my head. That made it very difficult to pull my head from the pillow and wash my hair. And even in the year that followed it felt like I was stumbling around trying to recover from paralysis and inch by inch start walking and writing again.
I'm sure many know this feeling yet I know many more have and would have said, "What the crud, you have two legs and arms, just trust God ... pick up your bed and walk." But my story wasn't the instant rice kind of well-packaged miracle. In fact, it rarely is.
It was walking through it and the patience of my husband and family understanding and picking up the slack in the pretense I WAS recovering from a massive car accident. Because to me, in my mind ever part of my body had water poured on my electrical circuits. I would literally touch my skull at times for the simple reassurance that my brains weren't visible through my hair, because God knows that was physically how I felt.
But I realized God took that time to help me recover from this tsunami of my life journey. And it wasn't my the hopeless end, even though it did take about almost a year before I could write.
And I wonder at the scars and symptoms every day. There are big black holes of memory loss from that time—but I believe sometimes that's the grace of God because you don't need to be reminded of "what you've done." Yes, I have to take medicine to relieve symptoms. But God certainly knows that I never want to be that toxic sick again. I have an aversion to the standard-issue, burgundy psych ward attire and in there you meet some pretty colorful characters, which you have to eventually admit struggle with your same issues.
However, I didn't see the rainbow of promise that it will never rain in my world again. But even in this, I realize I walked through that once, and God was with me, and He'd do the Thelma and Louise all over again. You see the rainbow of promise is in the promise that I'll always have that he walks with me through the fire, He is present in my crazy, and He hangs out in my pits of my despair and stays there and attends to me until I can pull up.
He gives me the hope that maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, this too will pass. And I will be faithful to the heart He's given me to paint the beautiful things of His making through the journey of whatever may be in the whatever may come because I may travel through this, but I never journey on my own. Journey On! #sisterhoodoftheshortyellowpencils #mentalhealthawarenessmonth