I am redecorating the new classroom I moved into for the upcoming school year. It’s a pretty normal thing to do. Today I went to Home Depot to get some dark blue paint samples for my accent wall. It’s a pretty normal thing to do. Then I went to JoAnn Fabrics to look at some possible options for covering my bulletin boards. It’s a pretty normal thing to do. Then, I spent about 6 hours panicking over what would happen if I pick the wrong shade of blue and what if the gold stars I want to paint on my accent wall look bad, and also what if I decide on the wrong fabric or the wrong curtain for my window and mess up the contact paper for my shelves and my desk and what if my decorations look bad and nothing matches and everything looks terrible and what a waste of money that would be and why am I terrible at everything? This is not a normal thing to do, and yes, I realize this was a terrible run-on sentence.
My brain lives on run-on sentences like the one above and they are not normal, though to be fair “normal” is not real anyway (but that is a subject for another post!). There are many things about my brain I only discovered in recent years are not normal. For example, during my first year of college, I discovered it did not take most people over an hour to fall asleep every night. I also learned most people do not plan every outfit they are going to wear a week in advance, with back-up options because of Colorado’s unpredictable weather. For the past year I have been going to the same church and I still get nervous before going in, as if it’s my first time there. This was also the case with my Cru weekly meetings during college; almost 4 years’ worth. Definitely not normal.
I have other examples of strange happenings in my brain, such as the time it took me over 30 minutes to experience Taco Bell for the first time via a Doritos Locos Taco because I was so worried about not liking it, or the times as a child (we’re talking starting around age 6) where I would panic – tears and everything, anytime I was running late. My senior year of high school, I was in AP Psychology and we all took an anxiety assessment used by psychologists and I got one of the highest scores in the entire class – a 29, 12 was the average. I could go on, but you get the idea. None of this is normal, unless you have an anxiety disorder, which I do. My counselor who I have been seeing for the last year confirmed these suspicions and also believes I have depression and a “mild” form of PTSD.
I know my examples of the way my anxiety manifests in me are silly, plenty of people have laughed at me over the years during these moments. I am aware the shade of blue I pick will not ruin my classroom, and regardless of my classroom’s aesthetics, my students will learn just fine. I know redecorating should just be fun. Knowing I get worked up over such “trivial” matters makes it worse because I experience a lot of shame when it happens and when I am unable to stop it. Lots of well-intentioned Christians I know and Christian authors I don’t know say worrying and anxiety is a sin because it represents a lack of trust in God. They bring up the words used repetitively in the Bible “Be not afraid” or the ever so famous passage in 1 Peter 5:7
“Cast all your anxiety on Him [God] because He cares for you.”
People are quick to say we need to erase the stigma around mental illness and how important it is to love those who are struggling with mental health, but many of those same people are also quick to say people like me are trapped in this “sin” and if we would just trust God, we’d have peace in our hearts or something similar. But it is more difficult than that. My brain is overproducing or underproducing some sort of chemical. I go to counseling. I do things despite my fears – I am always outside my comfort zone. And I love God and I do trust Him and have shown this because I have followed Him and His desires for me and all the while felt afraid. And I always will because there is no cure for my disorder. It will be with me until I die.
A lifetime of mental illness (and other life struggles I will not be getting into at this time) takes its toll on a person. There were times where I wanted to make some irreversible decisions because it felt like this would be the only way to get my brain to stop making run-on sentences. But I never went through with it. 21 Pilots recently came out with a song called “Redecorate” and the chorus explains how I felt during the lowest points of my life quite well and why I didn’t go through with anything bad. Give it a listen sometime.
I am in a much better place now though, primarily thanks to God and the joy He brings even from bad things as I continue to put my trust in Him. The Harry Potter series also gets a huge shoutout, a few months back I even got the Hogwarts skyline tattooed on my arm with a semi-colon to represent what that series has gotten me through. Everyone who has cared for me over the years and my counselor have also been helpful. And my time teaching is continuing to be used by God to bring lots of joy into my life by helping others too.
It hasn’t exactly been a secret that I have anxiety, though this is the most I’ve really publicly shared, but I felt it was time. Lots of other people struggle with mental health and my hope is that this can provide some acknowledgement of that and maybe even help in removing part of the stigma. My hope is to also kindly remind people that mental illness is not a sin, in fact I and others like myself are actively choosing to follow God in spite of our untypical brain chemistry. I am a sinner, we all are sinners, but mental illnesses such as anxiety should not be the thing people point to as sin. There are plenty of other things I do that you can call out in my life as sin. Sin is a choice; a mental illness is not. Certainly, people should not use a disorder as an excuse for bad behaviors, however, the disorder itself is not a sin. Mental illness is stigmatized enough already; please don’t add to this, or better yet, see what you can do to help combat the stigma.
If you’re intrigued by this post and looking forward to what I’ll write about in the future, you can expect a new post at some point in the future. Also, if you feel inclined, feel free to leave a comment below about what you think. Thanks for all your support and I hope you’ll come back the next time I post. Stay Amazing!