I grew up in Morocco and I really loved living there because people were always interested in me and they liked the way I looked. I also really liked Moroccans they were so hospitable and although most of them were Muslims they had christian values; they really put other people before themselves and they were very loving and caring. Being the only girl in the Moroccan school I went to with blond hair and blue eyes really made me stand out from the crowd. I didn’t feel pressure to look good in Morocco because of the fact that I looked different to everyone else. However, when I came to England after living in Morocco for 15 years I no longer felt special or pretty because everyone looked like me and some girls were prettier and thinner than me. I felt a lot more pressure to look good and my view of true beauty was thinness. I thought you were only beautiful if you were skinny and all I saw in the mirror was a very fat girl.

I tried to change the way I looked and quickly started to be obsessed with what I was putting into my body. I started counting calories and there were lots of foods that I wouldn’t eat at all. For lunch at school I would only eat hardly any lunch and for dinner, while my family were having a three course meal, I would ask my mum to make me cooked vegetables and I would just eat that. For the first few weeks of doing this I would go to bed hungry but my body got used to the amount I was giving it. I began to be able to feel my spine and every morning I would check to make sure I could feel all my bones. Even with this I still saw myself as being fat when I looked in the mirror. Starving myself had an effect on my mood and I would come home from school and cry, every day. I was rude to my parents and all I wanted to do was exercise, study for my exams and do my homework. Eventually, I lost my period and I went to the doctors and she said that if I keep going then I would not be able to have children. I really want to have children and I didn’t want anything to jeopardise that. So I asked God to help me realise that I needed to change and I also began to notice how much my eating disorder was effecting my sister and my parents. I wanted to change for them and I wanted to appreciate the body God has given me. I only realised about a year ago how thin I became and that was when my heart really changed. God helped me to see what I was doing and how my relationship with Him had disappeared when I started starving myself. I really wanted to change, to live life with Him and to look after the body He has blessed me with. God loves me and He wants me to enjoy food. Starving yourself is a life long battle and it is not worth the pain, stress and control.

Grace

Grace by definition is an undeserved gift. Grace is unconditional love towards someone who has done nothing to earn it. That’s what knowing Jesus is about, receiving grace, accepting love. But here’s the thing; I find it hard. Teeth-gritting, painful, messy kind of hard. Logically grace shouldn’t be hard because you’re gaining something that you’ve given nothing to have. It should be the gift with no catch but sometimes I think the catch it just having to believe it.

I want to work for God’s love because that would mean that God was more like me and more understandable. If I was God I wouldn’t want me, I’m not worth dying for but God isn’t me (praise heaven), he is loving enough to adopt a scruffy, misbehaved, selfish urchin like me. It breaks me to accept a gift like that, to acknowledge an astounding love that I would never be capable of giving. It makes me feel impossibly small but at the same time safe and peaceful and loved. I have nothing to offer, I am nothing, in the face of something so beyond perfect as God’s love for me. I feel the poorest I could be and yet at the same time, I feel I’ve gained everything.

Charlotte’s Story

Crash Landing: Guest Post

Matt’s Story

Compared to some my life has been hard. Compared to some my life has been easy. For me my life has been just that, my life. By the time I was 12 I had experienced parts of life some adults never experience but whether my life was hard or easy doesn’t matter. What it was was difficult and chaotic and confusing. This triggered an overload of emotions, some were mine and some were other people’s and by the time I was twelve, I felt numb.

The numbness was what I was desperate for and when I was 13 I discovered that alcohol could take me there. I could put on a smile or a frown, I could fake any emotion but I couldn’t feel them. Alcohol seemed to freeze the feelings in me and eventually everything about me became numb and cold. I spoke in a monotone voice, I wore black and nothing else.

It felt good to escape the chaos for a while but it was empty. I needed to feel something but I was still terrified of my own emotions, I felt I needed to run from them, so I started to cut myself. It was such a relief.

So that was my life. I went to school and got bullied and beaten, I went home to responsibility, I went to church and youth group and felt guilt. Every evening I drank until I could feel nothing. Every night I cut until I could feel something. All this was enough, until I turned 15.

I had been through 3 divorces before I was 12 but I had never had someone I looked up to abandon me. When I was 15 the man I had considered to be my Father, my Daddy, told me he didn’t love me; told me I was no longer welcome around him. I drank and drank but I could not get rid of the feelings. Hurt, abandoned, unloved, hated, despised, worthless, nothing. I figured if I couldn’t numb it I would cover it up. Then I plunged my knife through my wrist.

I had somebody watching over me that night. I hit my artery but I didn’t slice through it. I nicked it. A lot of blood but nothing my body couldn’t handle. I woke up the next day in a friends bed with the worst hang over ever but I had my life. And I was happy about that. And that overwhelmed me.

I still drank, I still cut but I was now wanting to feel emotion. It was then I started opening up in my youth group and very quickly discovered that I was loved. Not for anything I brought to the relationships there but simply for being me. Damaged, numb me. I had a lot of problems, a lot of emotional scars but I very quickly learnt that problems can be sorted, scars heal. I had a lot of anger and hate but found that love and kindness were so much better. Through a lot of help, prayer, kindness of others and learning to be open, I quickly got away from the alcohol. Without the alcohol I could feel again and I stopped self harming too.

Am I ‘cured? No. I recall one time I was incredibly tempted to cut. I was 18, I discovered my girlfriend was cheating on me. I got home, collapsed on my bed and my hand happened to find a screw on my bed. I do not think I have ever thrown something so hard in my entire life.

It has been an interesting life but I wouldn’t exchange one bit of it for another. Every experience I have had has made me who I am. I am so far from perfect but I am me and I am loved.

That’s how we wait

Word for the Week

Living with Waiting

I will look to see what he will say to me,
and what answer I am to give to this complaint.
Then the LORD replied:
‘Write down the revelation
and make it plain on tablets
so that a herald may run with it.
For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it will certainly come and will not delay.’
Habakkuk 2:1-3

Habakkuk’s first prayer of complaint asked God why he was not dealing with Israel’s problems. The answer came that God was raising up the Babylonians to bring judgment. Habakkuk’s response was a cry of shock and dismay that God was working through such a wicked and unrighteous nation. So, once again he waited for a word from the Lord. God’s answer, in effect, was ‘wait and see’.

There is a revelation, and it will prove to be true. The vision of the world ‘filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea’ (2:14) will be fulfilled in the end, but it ‘awaits an appointed time’ (2:3). Although ‘it will certainly come and will not delay’, we are to ‘wait for it’.

But what kind of waiting does the Lord require? Some have seen human life as one of endurance in a ‘vale of tears’. Others have mainly spoken of the need to spread the gospel and evangelise. Stll others are tempted to shrink within a ‘spiritual’ world, shutting out the world of violence and injustice, poverty and luxury, while waiting for Christ’s return.

That revelation of the appointed time, the vision described by Old Testament prophets (Isaiah 65:17-25, for example) and New Testament visionaries (Revelation 21:1-8), is the end goal of God’s work and an inspiration for our life now. It’s a biblical vision that includes a beautiful city of justice and joy, jewels glittering in the sunshine, trees and fields that clap their hands, a joyous banquet, songs of glorious rejoicing, loving recognition of old friends and, above all, the Lord at the centre. God alone will bring it about. But at the same time as we wait for its fulfilment, we are called to bring some of the wonder and the glory of that vision of the future into today, working for human flourishing, for environmental care, for justice for the poor, for more parties.

So we seek to show something of the glory of his rule and reign in our own small worlds while we wait. We ‘write down the revelation and make it plain’ (2:2), we speak and witness, and above all we demonstrate the love and mercy, grace and forgiveness of the Lord in every way we can.

That’s how we wait.

Margaret Killingray

Mia’s Story

When I was asked to write a piece for this blog I had mixed feelings. I have had several serious episodes of depression and I have survived relatively intact. I won’t lie and say life is perfect, but I have moments of joy, purpose, hope. Who better to help than someone who has been there, right? But it’s tough to know what to say. I mentioned my misgivings to a trusted friend and she told me to tell the truth, because people know when you are just telling them what they want to hear. I agree: the trouble is I’m still not sure I know what the truth is.

My childhood, whilst in many ways very comfortable, was not an easy one. I lived in fear of my father, who had an unpredictable, raging temper. I first contemplated suicide when I was quite young. Once you think those thoughts, it’s easier to go there again. It’s a very lonely place to be. I never broke the taboo and talked about it. I learned to keep up a front, especially in Christian circles. I was very angry about hypocrisy in the church. Years later, I have learned that the church is made of flawed individuals such as me and I try instead to look to Jesus, who accepts me as I am. He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11: 28)

Apparently depression often has different symptoms in men and women. Men tend to be angrier, and women more withdrawn. I remember how dramatically things changed when my dad first started on anti-depressants. I felt relieved, but very confused about identity. It was scary to think that a person could be changed into someone else just by taking medication. I’m not sure how much of my depression has to do with nature and how much to do with nurture. In a way it doesn’t matter: it is what it is.

School had always been fairly easy for me, both academically and socially. When I went away to university I struggled more. Whilst at uni I had three depressive episodes, the last of which caused me to leave without graduating. It was devastating. I had set so much of my self-worth in my achievements. It is a mistake I still regularly make. Looks, success, money, all the things the world values do not last. My true value comes from being made by God and loved by him despite the fact that I will mess up and need to ask forgiveness every day for the rest of my life.

When I was at my most desperate I longed for oblivion, but perversely, I couldn’t shake my conviction that death is not the end. I was afraid that suicide was just the beginning of eternal damnation. That is what depression did to me: I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was worthless and unlovable. How could God possibly love me? Why did he make me just to suffer? I raged against Him.

I didn’t just have depression, I was depression. I lost pleasure in everything I had once loved. I didn’t know who I was any more. I was crushed by shame. Hope disappeared, and I knew that this I would feel this way forever. I became not a normal person who suffered bouts of depression, but a depressed person maybe once in a while had a few days in which I forgot that everything was meaningless. I was utterly alone, especially when surrounded by people. I had terrifying physical symptoms such as feeling like an invisible elephant was sitting on my chest, preventing me from taking breath. It took all my energy to do the simplest of tasks like getting up and taking a shower. My sleeping and eating patterns were erratic. I wished that I had a terminal illness, which people could understand, and which would bring an end to my suffering.

I have lost out on jobs and friendships because of depression. I’d like to say it has made me wiser and more empathetic, though I’m not sure it has. It has, however, made me get out of the race to meet people’s expectations. I’m learning not to set so much store by the opinions of others.

I tried antidepressants on a couple of occasions, and the second time I had a frightening allergic reaction with hives all over my body and my lips swelled up. Talking therapy helped me the most. I had a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I’m not sure how many of the CBT techniques we actually got round to talking about. When I finally started talking honestly it was like the floodgates had been opened and the words just wouldn’t stop. For so long I had replied “I’m fine” whenever anyone asked how I was.

A few practical things that have helped: gardening/ fresh air/ being in nature; regular exercise; listing things to be grateful for every day; routine and accountability.

A couple of things that I have found unhelpful: Facebook (it makes me jealous and discontented); trusting my emotions.

God has promised, ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’ (Philippians 4: 6-7) I certainly don’t remember that every day, but it’s a wonderful promise and shows how much God cares about us.

In many ways depression is an honest reaction to the broken world we live in, but if you only see the bad then you miss what is beautiful and good and true all around us. There is a lot of stigma surrounding mental illness, which is surprising, given that it is so common. It is treatable. Don’t suffer in silence.

A Note to You

I have had depression before but although I still struggle with the same thoughts, I have been well for a long time. I know what it’s like to feel hopeless and unlovable but my experience is different from yours and yours from mine. I don’t have the answers and I can’t fix anyone but that’s not the point of this blog. The point of this blog is to make you feel less alone, that’s all. It’s here to show you that you’re not the only one.

I’m saying this because it’s easy for me to sound like I know what I’m talking about, but I don’t; I’m just as confused as you are. I don’t know the cure for depression or the reason for it and I can’t get back all the time I lost to it. The only thing I’m sure of is that there is a God and that he loves us, even when we fail.