Do You Want to be Healed?

In college, I lost my mind.

I had actually lost my mind far before that, at the age of sixteen. I had a mental breakdown, sitting in my closet, trying to read the book Cold Mountain. It was assigned reading for the summer, and I LOVED summer reading, or really, any kind of reading. But each time I tried to open the cover of that book, I started to cry. Hard.

You see, the year before, I was enrolled in an all-girls academy that kicked my intellectual behind. I had always been one of the smartest, and suddenly, I was one of the “meh.” This doesn’t sound like it would be a big deal except for the fact that I had built my entire life on being “one of the smartest”–a way to detract from who I really was deep down. I didn’t understand that about myself at the time, but I do now.

I always wore a mask.

And when that mask was trying to be pulled from my overly anxious and exhausted fingers, I doubled down and sacrificed myself on the altar of good grades. So, by the time summer rolled around, I just couldn’t do it anymore. Anything, really.

I stopped eating. I ran all the time in the hot Houston sun. I watched The Gilmore Girls until it felt like my eyes had dissolved and were leaking out of my head. But I wore all of this well, making sure the “crazy” never left its little cage in the back of my head.

Well, until college, that is.

I had broken up with my boyfriend, followed my parents back to Texas, transferred colleges, and tried to be normal. I even managed to become a Tri-Delt pledge and had a group of co-ed friends who were a ton of fun and loved to surf. But eventually, that “crazy” broke out of its cage, and I started to hide from my friends, literally hiding in my dorm room as they beat on the door, trying to get me to come out. I could hear them talking, asking themselves where I could be. They cared for a while until they didn’t anymore. I dropped out of the Tri-Delts. I spent my days tanning, working out, and eating little. And I finally told my parents, who helped get me on meds and an appointment with a therapist.

But every time the therapist called to set up my appointment, I threw my phone into the closet.

Closets. I’m starting to see a pattern here.

In John 5:1-15, Christ asks a paralytic if he wants to be healed. The question almost seems ridiculous since the man has been dragging himself to the healing pool every day only to be edged out by others who are faster than him. But it’s not ridiculous, especially when the paralytic answers that no one will put him in the water and everyone else keeps cutting in front of him.

So...excuses.

I’m not trying to be harsh. The man obviously was afflicted, and truthfully, so was I. I believe my mental struggles (although very much chemical) have also been used against me by dark forces simply because my faith wasn’t in Jesus. It was in me to “do” something about my condition. I was smart enough. I could figure this out.

But like Jesus also says, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25). I tried desperately to find my own healing, but it hasn’t been since the ripe old age of thirty-nine that I’ve understood full submission in this area.

I can’t heal myself. Nobody can, except Jesus.

Again, I’m not denying the blessing that medication (in some cases) is. I use it myself and know God led me to it in His infinite grace and perfect timing. But it’s a blessing because of God’s sovereignty, not my own desire to change my life.

Often, it comes down to this for me: Saul lost his mind, but so did Nebuchadnezzar. And Satan would sometimes torment me, reminding me how Saul lost the Spirit and attempted to kill God’s beloved, David. But then the Holy Spirit would nudge me towards Nebuchadnezzar, how he also lost his mind because of his prideful heart, but how quickly he turned to the God of the universe to heal and humble him.

So, do you want to be healed? Of course, you do. I did, deep down. But the only way to true healing is to give every inch of ourselves back to the God who created us to fix our brokenness, and our weakness, and to work through our shortcomings to prove His glory on this quietly dying earth.