Life's a Gift. Open It.

Imagine a chemist in a lab, surrounded by shelves of beakers and jars, each neatly labeled and corked. 

Imagine him gathering supplies. Ominously colored jugs of unseen battles and silent struggles. He turns a handle, initiating a slow drip from a bucket on a high shelf: the pain of feeling alone. He sets the drip to increase as the mixture brews, like intravenous misery, and reaches for a beaker filled with the black sludge of invisible pain and mental health stigma. The tang of bitterness fills the room as the brew begins to boil.

But what if the chemist is life? And what if we are...what if I am...the vile concoction created?

If you've been with me for any length of time, you probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that there's a lot of focus on mental health awareness in my life. I grew up largely invisible in a noisy world, feeling unseen and unheard. Everyone I knew was broken on some level, burdened with the weight of abuse, abandonment, violence. Poverty. Shame.

We didn't talk about emotional wellness. We didn't circle around and lock arms on a communal trauma recovery journey. "Validation" and "emotional healing" were more likely to be terms of ridicule than to be skills gently handed down, and no one much cared what it feels like to live with unseen pain. But I know what it is to give up. I know what it looks like when no one notices your pain, and when choosing life when it feels impossible just starts to seem...not worth it.

I know because my mother showed me when I was fifteen years old, with a mouthful of pills that may just as well have been manufactured by the proverbial chemist.

So this morning in church, when the news broke that a local pastor had taken his own life, it made me think about why.

Our pastor told us softly, quickly. A hint about health problems, a recent diagnosis, followed by, "He took his life."

He took his life.

Four words that set my mind reeling. Four words that, especially in connection to physical health and emotional illness, opened the spillway of a memory dam I couldn't close.

He took his life.

As the daughter of a person who attempted that very act in my presence, the personal connection is inescapable. And as our pastor went on to pray for a grieving church and a devastated family, I thought of a shattered wife. Thankfully grown but certainly no less heartbroken children. His siblings. His grandbabies.

I know what they'll feel. And my heart aches for them.

We prayed for his friends, his co-workers, his congregation—and I thought about their grief. Their confusion. I know what they'll feel, too. And my heart aches for them.

He was a man of such faith and encouragement. What diagnosis could drive him to such a desperately hopeless act?

I have spina bifida. I've been coping with invisible illness since the day I was born. And I have complex PTSD, so living with anxiety is now just as common to me as any Tuesday morning. Three generations of women in my family have succumbed to the devastation of Alzheimer's disease, and I still remember what it felt like to have my grandmother introduce herself to me on a phone call. As if we were strangers. I'm allergic to wheat and peanuts, and I often joke that if or when I get my own terrifying Alzheimer's diagnosis, I'm leaving the doctor's office and heading straight to Olive Garden.

But it's not funny. It's fear. It's a desperation to never reach a point where I introduce myself to my own children—or grandchildren. It's the echo of a violent childhood that taught me to be as quiet and self-sufficient as possible, to stay out of the way, to never be a burden. It's a recognition of the fact that faith and mental health don't always play well together in a world where there is no way to ask for help when you're struggling...because all too often, the answer is, "Pray harder," instead of, "Wow, that sucks. How can I help you?"

Because all too often, the chorus is singing, "Stand up taller, have no fear," instead of, "I'm so proud of you for trying, even when you're terrified."

On the one hand, I have been berated for thanking God for the miracle of my body—because there are people who assume that if I don't fall to my knees and beg for miracle healing instead, it is evidence of weak faith. On the other, I have been applauded for finding beauty in brokenness—because some people think learning to see life as a gift, even when it's hard, is evidence of resilience through faith. Radical trust in the God who created me without mistakes, perhaps deformed in the eyes of man, but with no less purpose.

I look back on my youth, feeling invisible and unseen, without access to or knowledge of anxiety and depression support...desperately clinging to small blessings in hard times like Hansel and Gretel's trail of breadcrumbs, hoping each one would carry me to the next...completely unaware that those tiny crumbs, in time, became the things that taught me how to find purpose in pain.

And those moments—so many of them colored with the faces of my children, my friends, my loved ones—they're why I'm here.

*****

Another thing our pastor said this morning was, "It can happen to anyone." And he was right. Hopelessness isn't limited to people with terrifying medical reports, people with traumatizing childhoods. It touches us when we've lost yet another friend or relationship, when yet another job doesn't work out, when we're not sure how to pay the five bills on the table...and yet another shows up in the mail. It touches people who don't know or care about God. And yes, it touches people who do.

Holding on when life is hard is...well, hard. Small blessings in hard times can seem so...small. So insignificant. So without power to change anything.

That's why I write what I do, the way I do. It's why my social media is full of inspiring quotes and turn-around perspective stories. And it's why my books are full of people just like us—healing from burnout, searching for hope, learning self-compassion—with each character a portrayal of human need, human suffering, and yes, human healing.

There are give-up moments in almost all of my books, because pretending emotional turmoil doesn't exist is pointless. In the Freedom Series, Christine reaches such a depth of helpless despair that she actually hopes her husband will finally do the unthinkable. When he does, an entirely new existence begins for both of them, and it sets Christine on a journey of growth she could never have imagined. At the Safe House, she learns to walk again, learns to breathe again. In a boxing gym, she learns to love again. But most importantly, with every step she takes and in every place she ends up, I hope she teaches by example what it really means to...

Life is fragile, but we’re stronger when we share it. Every day we wake up is another unopened gift, sometimes heavy, sometimes light, but always worth unwrapping. If my words helped you feel seen today, I'd love to keep sharing moments like this with you—each week, always free, and right there in your inbox.