Better Off Dead

I don’t remember driving there. I don’t remember where I was going. I just know that I was headed east on NASA Rd 1 approaching the bridge. My thoughts were jumbled. Nothing in my brain was connecting. I was physically present, but I wasn’t there. My best thinking told me that everyone in my life would be better if I drove my car off the bridge. At the moment I made the decision to do just that, I looked in my rear view mirror and saw her.

Actually, I could not see her face. I could see her car seat. She was almost 9 months old. She was precious. Her smile and laugh were a gift to so many people. My mind told me that I was failing her. I was fully convinced that her very capable grandparents and daddy would do a better job of raising her than I could ever do. But her presence in that car kept both of us alive that day.

I was dying. No one knew it. I was finishing a busy summer as a youth pastor. I had gone on mission trips and camps and youth week and Astroworld trips. I taught Bible studies and led worship. If you were to look at an album of pictures from that summer, you would see a smiling happy Lacy. I was a master of the cover up. I was a self-sufficient machine that had powered though pregnancy and childbirth. I returned to work after 4 weeks, baby in tow and launched back into all that full-time ministry to students requires.

And then the ground under my feet began to break apart. I had never asked for help before. I began to have these fits of intense anger, like throw someone across the room like a wrestler anger. I wasn’t sleeping, which is not all that uncommon for new moms, but this was more. I spent energy worrying and working in the night on things that didn't matter. And then the anxiety increased. The more I worried, the more I tried to fight it, which only caused a cycle of perceived failure. I could not will myself out of this. I was convinced that this was all because I sucked at being a mom. This little one did not deserve this. I knew she would be better without me. And the deep dark hole of lost swallowed me up like hot lava. I could not outrun it and it was burning me from the inside out.

What I didn’t understand at the time was that hormones are wicked powerful. Combine that with a brain chemistry and DNA that is predisposed to mental health issues and you have a recipe for postpartum disaster. I lived in League City, TX at this time which is less that 10 miles from the neighborhood where Andrea Yates drowned her 5 kids in a fit of postpartum psychosis. That was my only reference point for postpartum anything. I knew that I did not want to harm my baby, so I falsely assumed that this was not what was wrong with me.

We were on a trip with my family when Lucas saw just how bad things had become. I woke from a fitful sleep and FREAKED OUT. That’s a very technical term for a panic attack. He had never seen me like this. He literally held me against the bed. All I could think was I am broken and I didn’t think I was repairable.

Let me pause for a moment for my life PSA: There is nothing more co-creating in God’s plan for redemption than modern medicine. Please don’t ever buy the lie that somehow faith alone is the best path to mental health. Depression and anxiety and phobias and countless other diagnoses are MEDICAL conditions and require medical help. What that involves is best left to your doctor, therapist and your heart to discern, but there is nothing that gets me more furious than a religious teaching that includes spiritual guilt about seeking medical help.

We came home from our trip and I called one of the only therapist that I knew. He patiently sat with me and talked me through these lies and many others that I had perpetuated in my mind. He got me in to a doctor and a psychiatrist. After many attempts, we found medication that helped me see small cracks in the fog. It took many months before I could see daylight.

Remember the story I told about my sister? This was the storm that she carried me through. Because of the fear that encompassed my life, I was petrified when I was given the label postpartum depression. In my mind, PPD meant that I was going to drown my baby. That was not a logical fear, but there was nothing logical about this season. So I did not do bath time - for more than a year. That was Lizzie and daddy territory.

I also needed sleep. When your basic sleep cycle is seriously disturbed, you stack the deck for chaos. The doctors forced sleep with medication, which meant that I had to trust that someone else would answer the middle of the night cries. I had to realize that I could not do it all. And when I tried, I made a mess of all living things so it was time to recognize my humanness.

This was not the first time in my life that I had tried to be a savior to all. That was actually a nickname that friends gave me in college because whenever there was trouble, I would rush in to save the day. But my experience with PPD was the first time that I had the bricks of stability knocked out from under me. It would not be the last, but it opened the door for me to learn to seek help.

Why do I share this story?
I do so because there are new moms that need to know they are not alone.
I do so because there are those that falsely believe the reason for their depression is a lack of faith.
I do so because I am not the only super woman out there trying to keep her crazy contained.

Let me tell you friends, we are better when we get help. We are fuller examples of beauty when we lean on other people. It’s time to shred this idea that we have to keep up the lie of self-sufficiency. We need doctors and friends and sisters and spouses and children and co-journeyers to remind us that there is life and beauty on the other side of our pain. And we have to hand them our hope to hold when we are unable to see the hope of our future.

Who do you need to hand your hope to today?
Who do you need to hold some hope for?

Don’t take on the Healer’s job, you are not their savior, but let's be the flesh and bones of hope to this world.