Labor day weekend in 2010 I visited a tiny country church in south Georgia with my mother and grandparents.  My grandparents were trying out a smaller church closer to their home instead of driving an hour to the bigger church they had attended for years in the closest city.  It was your typical white church in a farming community with a gravel road and red velvet pews.

I had come to visit because I canceled my beach plans in Charleston with girlfriends. It was just the beginning of my journey with anxiety and I had no clue what was happening inside my head or heart. Embarrassment was an understatement of my feelings and I didn’t want my friends to see what was really happening to me. This is clinically called isolation but to me it was called self-preservation.

At this point my prayer life had kicked it up a thousand notches as I pleaded with God to take away the mental unrest by asking for forgiveness for anything and everything I thought was my fault. I wasn’t sure that my self-condemnation wasn’t the Holy Spirit convicting me for something. Basically I was a mess and my understanding of the Bible and God was majorly twisted.  Anxiety is so fun.

The preacher shouted his message while simultaneously sweating and asking his parishioners to turn from their ways towards Christ. I sat there sweating too and nervously looking around at the people.  As he began to close the sermon he asked for people to come up front to the altar for prayer. This was not a new concept for I had grown up in a church where the elders laid hands on the sick or needy. I knew I needed prayer and stood with my mom to go forward. As I bowed my head my mind began to think this was it, my moment. Healing was mine soon and I could go back to being the old Kate, you know the one that didn’t have crazy thoughts, slept all night, and ate pizza. The preacher asked us at the altar to grab a kleenex and scrunch it up in our hands and then throw it down. He said this symbolized our giving up of our burdens/sins and that we were new creations now. A fresh start.

I threw my balled up sweaty kleenex down and opened my eyes feeling nothing. My mom smiled and we made our way back to our seats and eventually back home to my grandparents farm. The next morning we left to drive back to Atlanta and my chest hurt so bad from the anxiety that I laid my seat back and tried to apply pressure to my own chest.  I remember telling my mom that something was very wrong with me. My mom said it was over now and that we had prayed. I had given my anxiety over to God and that he had it now, not me.  I cannot explain how it felt in this moment adequately because it was as if everything I had known about God didn’t make sense anymore. To me he didn’t have it and I wasn’t sure why I still felt horrible. Where was God….where was I?

I look back on that moment 7 years later and my heart breaks for myself and the countless other Christian women and men who wonder where God is amidst mental anguish. Why it’s difficult to understand that you don’t feel better after reciting your favorite verse or praying to let it go. Why sometimes it takes medicine to start to see a little light and the draining of your savings to a counselor and very expensive doctor. And why sometimes it takes thinking God has abandoned you to begin to really understand him at all.

I guess my ticket for the crazy train planted a seed in me for others like me and that has led to some incredible conversations and a heart for this blog. There is hope. More to come!

**Please also know that my mother had no clue how to help me and has since learned volumes about anxiety and loving her daughter a different way. She was my best friend on a tough journey and still today is my best prayer warrior.