Hello, strangers. Literally.

Hiya!

This is not my first foray into the blogging world. But hopefully it will be my first successful one. Hopefully. I may pull up some old blogs, but I'll probably save all of us the embarrassment. This new blog is inspired by the fact that:

Today I fainted for the first time. Ever. Ok, so the blog is not directly inspired. Like, I didn't have a vision while I was passed out of Jesus coming and telling me: "And the greatest commandment of these is to love. The second is to blog. Go do these things in my name. Make sure to give me a shout-out on that blog"

Anyway...
I have never been so frightened. Ok, that's a lie, but I really thought that I was going to die for about five minutes. Luckily, I was in my room and made it to my bed before really kind of passing out, but I woke up so worked up about two seconds later. Scary, scary, scary. So I've been laid up in bed the rest of the day because Elizabeth Ann Naro, aka Mom won't let me get up. Which is fine for me as I got dinner in bed, and Thin Mints. And also I was really scared to get up and leave. I nay wanted to faint on the way to the caf-dizzle.

So... I have had lots and lots of free time. I watched two movies and slept. And now need some brain stimulation. And I know lots of people who blog and I love reading their blogs and I always think, "Man, I wished more people blogged!" So, just doing my part in the blog-o-sphere.

I also think this is a good place to be accountable to myself. Not many people know this, but the past six months I have been struggling with depression. I have tried so hard to hide it from new friends and peers, but it is exhausting. I think God has made it so hard to hide it and not talk about it because I'm not supposed to hide it. That's ok. Because the more people I share my testimony with, the more satisfied I feel. God doesn't give us struggles to hide away, He gives us struggles to share with others. To make ourselves more vulnerable to love.

He makes us broken so that we can become whole in Him. And I have finally become my whole, real self again. My story is one of redemption through a romance with the Divine. So, I thought I'd put it all out there in this first post.

From the end of my senior year to the beginning of my first semester, I was in a rut. I didn't want to get ready to go to college, I didn't want to work out or be active, I didn't want to see my friends. Which is really, really, really weird for me. I basically sat on my couch and made it through seven seasons of Gilmore Girls. Not normal. I had spent the entire summer feeling uneasy about leaving for Clemson, going back and forth and back and forth and unsure of what to do. I decided to trust God - what other choice did I have? It wasn't like I was going to tell my parents I wasn't really sure about it until I got there.

So, I went off to Clemson. It took me all of one week to be absolutely positively sure that God wanted me out of Clemson. There are lots of gruesome details about Clemson, I will give you the highlights of my "extended visit"

1. My dorm. Well, my closet. I was put into overflow housing with my beautiful and fabulous roomie Mary Nell, who I really do miss a lot. Overflow housing is really a utility closet with bunk beds and a dresser. Here is all the "closet space" we were allotted:
I could really go into more detail, but I won't. A picture's worth a thousands words, right?

2. Theatre program.
They basically told me, "Hey, we've got a musical theatre program, come check it out!" last February. So I did. They showed me their beautiful facilities and I met some wonderful faculty members, but when I got there in August, the wonderful program turned out not to exist. Hmm... still trying to figure out how this one happened. Ha ha ha

3. God didn't want me there.
This should really be the only reason. My spirit has never been so unsettled as it was that week. Even writing this post about it makes me a little uneasy.

So - after crying on the phone with my Mom and Dad twice a day for a week, I think they couldn't take it anymore, so my Padre came and rescued me. This is what that week looked like:

Sunday:
Got home from Clemson around eight. Stayed up til about midnight with my Mom, aunt, and family friend Hope working out a game plan, which was to call schools in Alabama, begging for admission. Here was the list in order of where I wanted to go the most, to where I wanted to go the least:
1. Samford
2. Alabama
3. BSC
4. UAB

Monday:
Call Samford around 7:30 am. We ask if there's a spot. They tell us it's the first day of classes, but they'd look at my transcript. They do. They ask if I would apply, so I fill out an application and write an essay of why I want to go to Samford. I'm admitted to the Samford University around 3:00 pm, and I have housing, a meal plan, and a schedule around 5:00 pm.

This is around the time I become pretty positive God had this all lined up before I even started thinking about Clemson.

Wednesday: I go to my first day of class.

Sunday: I move into my dorm, with my AWESOME roommate Denevia. Together, we are Salt N' Pepa. Witness the matching hats she knitted us the first week of me living in the dorm.

I got cast in a show at school even though I missed the auditions, I have the privilege of helping to lead a Bible Study of ninth grade girls, and I received a bid into AOII, a sorority I fell in love with during rush. Pretty awesome.

However, something wasn't right. The day after bid day, exhausted and emotionally drained. Although I was cast in "We Happy Few" I had originally turned down the part in the ensemble because I was so overwhelmed already. I accepted it when Dr. Sandley took me into his office and told me he didn't think I was a good fit for the theatre department unless I took it. It upset me so badly I cried right there in his office, and I ended up taking the role. I was tired. I went home, got in my Mom's bed and cried for 48 hours. Almost literally. Couldn't stop. Had panic attacks every time I tried to get out of bed. I asked my Mom to schedule me an appointment with a psychiatrist, who diagnosed me with severe depression and put me on Zoloft.

After that, everything changed. I wasn't anxious all the time. I could focus, be semi-socially, and basically function like a fairly normal human being. And it only got better. Sure, the side effects weren't great - I forgot every new name I learned within a minute of learning it (which is embarrassing) and I lost my appetite almost completely (and lost ten pounds, which, I'm going to be honest here, was awesome.)

My relationship with God was growing rapidly. I could feel boldness in His words and in my own actions. I was on a crazy spiritual high in the midst of the lowest point of my mental health. I took refuge in God because I wasn't able to find it in new friends who I didn't want to scare off, or friends who were far away. Looking back on it is so cool, because I see God taking a broken, dirty, piece of trash (that would be me) and making it whole and shiny again. I knew Christ before this, but I had never let Him polish me completely. And it wouldn't have happened without God taking away almost everything. He not only took away almost all my friends, but essentially my ability to make new ones. The thing is, I didn't really feel lonely during that time.

When I got back to school though for Jan term, I felt differently. I could really feel the medicines effects. While I wasn't dealing with crazy anxiety and sadness, I was in a sort of haze. I wasn't every fully present mentally, and my energy was half of what I had before my whole journey through chemical imbalance happened. So I quit the Zoloft. I was being driven crazy having to monitor my mood swings and forgetting names.

And this is my favorite part of the whole saga:

I became myself again. I finally got back the personality I lost nearly a year ago. It was like having an old friend back, familiar and warm - but a friend who matured 3239853902x spiritually.

So... the point of all this? I think that within Christians especially, there is a stigma of failure attached to depression. I felt it all growing up from peers who would discuss how they thought depression wasn't a real illness - just a means for attention and a way to cure the symptoms of a problem without really fixing the problem. Which hurts. It invalidates a very real problem that affects millions of people in our country - Christians and non-Christians.

God blessed me with a story of recovery and hope. As scary as it is to put this all out there for the world, I feel God whispering to me that this is something I need to do. So here it is.

I promise that not all of my posts will be this serious. I just had to lay some groundwork right out. so you know where i'm coming from. It's like the first Harry Potter. Not the best, but totally worth it so you can read the other six. Nerds unite?

So, happy trails until we meet again.