Made whole.

This post is very overdue. Really, I have been putting off writing it. Holding my breath. Waiting. 

Two months since my last panic attack. Two whole long blessed months of not having convulsions of fear on a floor. 

It's crazy how you can look back and not even know yourself. Two months ago I was enslaved by fear; it controlled me. I had been for several years, I've lost count of how many. I was drowning and couldn't get out of bed some days without tears. I avoided social situations like the plague. The bathroom was my place of refuge where nobody could see the struggle. It became so bad this year that I couldn't eat without panicking, I'd have a panic attack and throw up, and then I'd panic about becoming anorexic. With all of these worries came insomnia, and night terrors. Nightmares and weight dropping off, a constant sensation of suffocation. Frankly, being alive at that point was excruciating. 

And somehow God got me through ministry training this Summer. He told me to go and I obeyed but was terrified and unsure and untrusting. As a third year missionary I had more responsibilities and younger people looking up to me... the secretly panic-ridden woman with a very conservative appearance. 

That's something that this has taught me about the battles of others. You don't exactly look at the girl in the floor length skirt and think, "Hey, I bet she has a massive panic disorder that stops her from functioning sometimes..."

You're usually thinking instead, "What an antisocial snob, does she think she's better than everyone?"

And in reality, the girl in the floor length skirt is overcome by sheer panic; the only thing she can think about is not showing it in front of people. 

It's taught me to be slow to judge others.

Before I left for Indiana this Summer, a sweet little boy named Zebulun gave me an origami panda with a bible verse paperclipped to it. The verse was Joshua 1:9, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." Some people have heard that verse so many times it may seem almost cliché to them, like something they were told too many times as a kid. I think they've even made a song out of it that children sing in Sunday School. But that verse became a challenge to me every morning- I taped the slip of paper to my door, at eye level. I brought it with me to ministry training and stuck it next to my dorm bed. It was God saying to me every morning, 

"Don't you have Me? Free yourself of this. You don't need a therapist or prescription drugs to do this. You can do this with Me because I have commanded you clearly: do not be afraid. I have commanded you clearly: be anxious for nothing."

And on the (many) days when living was too much and I was caving under the burden of letting fear control me, that was my stronghold. 

It taught me how ferociously my God loves me. 

Also, I would like to brag on my God- because he used me these past three and a half months whether I was post-panic disorder or right in the middle of battling it. Was I a mule about it? Yes. Did he use me in spite of everything? Yes. In ways I didn't think were possible, even if I had been healthy. 

But is this gone completely? I hope so. 

The very last thing I learned, looking back at the train wreck of the past five years, was that when people tell you to guard your heart- listen. They aren't always talking about infatuations with the latest boy band. "Honey, guard your heart!" The latest boy bands aren't the problem... Your sin problem is the problem. Your heart needs tending and guarding from lust and fear and every sin, or you will wake up drowning in it because you never took the time to guard yourself from it, and cut it out of you upon entrance. Your heart is the perfect place for sin to breed and expand. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. {Proverbs 4:23} This fear struggle isn't over, and won't be until I am home with my Savior. I need to guard my heart.

This Monday we leave to return to Texas, and it makes my heart joyful to know that I'm returning home mentally healthier than I've been in years. Jesus has helped me to overcome. 

Words can't describe the joy.