My Testimony

First I want to apologize for not posting any blogs for the last couple of months, but there is some good news behind this (and some bad). You may have read about my pregnancy journey in the post ‘God’s comfort in times of grief’. Well I’m pleased to say I’m expecting again and this time it is all good – therefore I’ve been suffering with the side effects of lots of nausea, worry, tiredness and generally feeling like crap! It’s getting a bit better now though, after a much needed holiday. My husband has also been quite sick and unable to work at the moment which has been hard for us both.

I recently shared my testimony at church so I thought I’d make that my next blog post. At the beginning of the year I wrote a few things down that I wanted to achieve in the year ahead and one of them was to share my testimony at church. So, although it was not in the church I’d expected to share it, God was faithful.

I’m originally from England and went to a Church of England primary school, so I learnt the basics of the bible there. But to me it was just another school subject and a load of made up stories! My salvation was nearly 6 years ago and was very much tied in with an issue of mental health, hence my interest in the subject and my calling to work in this area. I am currently working at a small Christian organization in Christchurch, which is a temporary residential placement for up to 9 people diagnosed with some kind of mental illness. I already had a psychology degree from the UK, so it was part of God’s plan all along!

My personal experience in the mental health system opened my eyes to the spiritual side of life and how it plays a part in our overall wellbeing. It also showed me that very little attention is paid to this area by the professionals. Hence my account of what happened to me is very different to the doctor’s interpretation. I suffered a one-off psychotic episode triggered by stress and was hospitalised for 2 weeks. I then suffered some depression and anxiety for some time afterwards. The whole experience was very spiritual for me and helped to solidify my faith.

Psychosis is defined as ‘losing touch with reality’, with symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations or voices. The doctors say that I was under a lot of stress and everything that followed was psychosis brought on by this. This is true to an extent, but what happened for me was much more complex and involved a very real God, not a delusion. I was under a lot of stress, but then I believe God stepped in to try and help. Before all the ‘madness’ started, I was getting the cows in early one morning (on a dairy farm) under a very starry sky and looked up to see a very bright and slow moving comet or star of some sort with a long tail. It was so spectacular I was expecting to feel some kind of impact as it reached the horizon or see something on the news later. As I watched it, a huge feeling of peace came over me and all the built up pressure of my recent worries and anger was released and my head felt clear and refreshed. I carried on with my work as usual for the next few days, still feeling peaceful but not thinking anymore about it.

The night before my next day off, I believe God wanted to show me that it was Him who had given me that peace and so revealed Himself to me in an amazing way – through music on the radio! At first this was a joyful experience for me – I was amazed and excited, speaking with Him through my thoughts and hearing His replies in the lyrics of songs. After a while though, it became a bad experience and this is where I believe the psychosis actually started – although I see it as ‘being in touch with a different reality’ rather than ‘losing touch with reality’. I think it was due to a combination of my own brain going into overdrive overthinking things, and the influence of the Devil who was fully taking advantage of the situation and my newly opened mind. God was still there reassuring me, but His voice was drowned out.

I called my mum in England who I thought was a Christian and blurted everything out to her. I was still listening to the radio which was now giving all kinds of mixed messages – both good and bad. She was telling me to turn it off but I wouldn’t and I soon became suicidal, but in a very calm and rational way. I told her about a cliff in Christchurch I’d heard about where many people go to jump off, some even with terminal illnesses who’d had the blessing of friends/family and said goodbye first. I also called poor Tam in Thailand and tried to make a suicide pact with him, Romeo and Juliette style. Long story short, my mum alerted my boss who unfortunately took me to a friend’s house rather than straight to hospital. Things got worse again that night and ended up in me finally getting admitted in a police car first thing the next morning and my mum got on the soonest plane possible!

In hospital the internal spiritual torment continued until they finally knocked me out with some drugs. I have some weird and wonderful stories of things I said, did and thought during that time and why. Many would explain how doctors interpret things as completely irrational and insane when they are actually not. One quick example would be that I asked my friend to bring me a pregnancy test so I could see if God had given me a miracle baby like Jesus. This sounds crazy, but in my head I had tried to bargain with God telling Him that I would know He was really real if I was pregnant because, although I was not a virgin, I knew it was a very long time since I last had sex! Lots of psychosis involve so-called ‘delusions of grandeur’ where people believe thay are chosen for great things. This is one of the things that overwhelmed my brain and made me want to die, as I was thinking ‘why are You talking to me, God? What do You want from me?’ There is also a common symptom of psychosis of feeling like you are being watched. Some attribute this to the FBI/CIA, but I knew it was God and that He had known everything I had ever done!

Anyway, I felt much better the next day and continued to work out my new faith more logically and calmly. I continued to communicate with God in a few different ways, but kept it to myself. I learned pretty quickly to keep my mouth shut about anything God-related in front of the doctors/nurses but I continued to talk about it with my mum and friends, not realising they were feeding back to the doctors! While I was in hospital I noticed a lot of other people with spiritual related symptoms and concerns, which were not being addressed in any way by the professionals. They were much more interested in diagnosis and medication. Long story short again, I was sectioned under the mental health act in order to ensure I took meds; I lost my friends, and could very easily have lost my job, my visa and received a lifelong diagnosis of bi-polar disorder. It seemed very easy to get stuck in ‘the system’ so I was very lucky in the end.

After I got out of hospital I continued my journey with God. I mentioned I suffered some depression and anxiety, which I believe was due to a number of factors and was healed by a combination of things – spiritual input being a major one which I had to seek out for myself. Although I know this now, at the time I was very much against the whole mental health care system and medication, and was tempted to think it was all a spiritual matter.

I was angry and fearful of God for a long time, blaming him for what happened to me and seeing it mostly as negative. As my relationship and understanding of God developed though, I came to see it as the best as well as the worst thing that has ever happened to me. God also revealed some personal issues from my past (see my last post ‘The Father Wound’), which explained why I’d behaved in certain ways and felt certain emotions for my whole life. He brought this into the open and allowed me to discuss it with my parents and heal emotionally. I found a place for some medication in the short term until I had worked through everything to heal at the source. I sought out lots of spiritual input, prayer, counselling and support from peers, friends and family.

I have come to understand that we are a Tri-unity similar to God as we are made in His image, and we can be adversely affected in each of the 3 different areas – physiologically, psychologically and spiritually. This is confirmed in the bible in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 – Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The professionals have realised this too and come up with various models such as Te Whare Tapa Wha (a Maori model of wellbeing), but still the spiritual side is mostly being neglected or glossed over. There were many other parts to my experience, but it would be a very long post if I included them all! I am happy to go into more detail or answer any questions that people may have – just leave me a message…