Mary + Her Mental Health

I’m tuning in to a little thing I do sometimes. It happens first thing in the morning, just as I’m waking up. I open my eyes, I turn on my other side, hoping to sleep a few more minutes. I open, then turn, then close. Then panic.

First moment of consciousness is a seized shake of all systems. It feels like a punch in the gut that radiates up to my chest and out my fingers. I never wake up to an alarm clock. This feeling is my alarm. As my eyes close shut again, I’m running a dialogue in my brain as my body starts to quietly freak. Okay, you woke up and now you’re feeling panicky. Your stomach is in a fat, splintered knot. Check. Wake up a little more and figure out why.

Is there something I am dreading? Yes. Do I know what it is? Not exactly. I’m dreading what may happen today. I’m dreading the countless things I will never think of. I’m dreading the things I do think of. I’m scared to feel more of the things I’ve already been feeling. I’m worried I’ll learn something today that will make my life more sad to me. I’m afraid of losing my hope today, once and for all. Maybe today is the day I finally lose my mind. Maybe today is the day I get irrevocably crushed, body and soul.

Step 1: a feeling. Step 2: the thoughts behind it. Step 3: Prayer.

This fragile mess is once again spinning in circles. I can’t talk to anyone, but I can talk to you. This stuff, what this is, it’s not real, right? Please help.

Last week, a young co-worker at one of my three jobs was talking to a newer co-worker in my presence. “The thing you need to understand about Mary,” she starts with authority, “is that whenever something goes wrong in her life, the girl prays.” I turn red and hide my face. She keeps going, “I swear, I’m making her a t-shirt that says ‘Stop, Drop, & Pray.’” Until this moment, I had no clue how much I had mentioned prayer in front of her.

There’s a line in the film, Shadowlands. C.S. Lewis is speaking:
“I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because...I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me.”

I do feel helpless. More than ever at any time in my whole life. I don’t know what to do ever. I’m only functioning because I do Step 3 every morning. And after that comes Step 4. I call it KGG: keep going girl.

The minute Step 4 commences, that is, when I start doing what is expected, working, being kind, remembering to mail that letter, etc., that’s how I know that God lives. How else can a broken girl go from Step 1 to Step 4 without Step 3? You can’t, I tell ya. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.