I first felt the darkness in college. I couldn’t think clearly. My brain felt foggy. Decisions were difficult and I cried a lot. I met with an on campus counselor a few times, received a prescription and felt better in a few months.
I suffered again after my baby boy was born. Year after year of moving, births, financial stress, loneliness, unresolved relationship wounds, and instability had taken the toll. And when Jack was mysteriously crippled and the diagnosis took months, I felt the darkness creep in. It was almost like the beginning of a migraine, the way my peripheral vision disappears into a halo of misty shadows.
My best friend could sense my broken apart heart and she flew me to Scotland for a twelve day reprieve. She helped me think through some life skills- how to get myself organized and more routine, menu planning and cleaning schedules, encouraging me to make time to walk and sleep and be quiet and rest. Those days were filled with beauty and friendship, honesty and prayer. I left home lost and came home feeling found.
Eventually my little Jack found treatment and after years of medication, he was healed.
The heavy clouds dissipated and I could see again.
But a few years later, I was slammed with the sadness. I disappeared into a hole, was swallowed up whole. I managed through each day, but I felt dead inside. Empty. Alone. Every day I spent tending little people but never felt like I was seeing them.
I reached a day that getting out of bed was too difficult. I cried. I asked my friends to pray for me, desperate to feel something again. Gently, they urged me to see a doctor, see a therapist, take medicine, take care.
There are so many details in between the days, the hours, the minutes. I can not catalog all the ways I was rescued and relieved. I can say that God whispered to me in the night. That His voice came in a thunderstorm and told me that I was loved. He reminded me that I was given a name, Amy, meaning beloved.
Years later, I met an Australian poet and over coffee I told him the of my story of this broken apart heart. This is the gift he gave me in return and the work I had to do to step fully in to the light.