Deanna’s Story
February 2021
I kept asking God for peace. Just let up a little bit. Ease up. The depression and suicidal ideation was just a little too much. Ok, it was a lot too much, and what I needed was some breathing space. I needed to know that He saw me. That He could see the waves pounding over my head, the riptide pulling me under. If He could see it, then He could do something about it. After all, isn’t that what we are taught? God always answers prayers. God loves us and wants us to be happy. God doesn’t turn His back on us, we turn our backs on Him. God doesn’t give us trials that we cannot bear.
But how many people have taken their own life?
When your life is so unbearable that you go against nature and snuff it out yourself, that seems a bit too much to bear.
My prayers weren’t being answered. The depression continued day in and day out. No calls came to miraculously check up on me when I stood on the precipice. No friends were made that changed my life and outlook. No peace was found.
So I’ve stopped searching for peace from the scriptures and from church and from prayer. It has gotten me no where and I am bitter. The platitudes that once carried me through darkness are like acid in my ears. How dare someone tell me to just put my burdens on the Lord when He has seemingly left me in the dust with a pack full of rocks. How dare they say to put my trust in Him when I feel abandoned by Him? The trust had been broken.
I am looking elsewhere. Weekly therapy, self help books, journaling, Buddhist practices and on and on and on.
One very surprising resource for self-knowing is the movie that my 2 year old daughter has insisted on watching every single day, multiple times a day if she gets her way.
Frozen.
I cannot get through these movies without tearing up or even outright sobbing. They hit me so hard and express so well how my heart aches. When Elsa runs away from the life she has always known, the life that has be her entire identity to find out who she really is inside, she sings with so much excitement:
“It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all
It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I'm free!”
— Elsa from Frozen
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I . Am. Alone. And scared. And alone.
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That’s how it felt pulling off the shackles of religion. “I’m free!”
Free to decide what my heart actually desires instead of what has been spoon fed me my entire life. Free to explore what this world has to offer me. This world that was created for man—for me. Created to be a refiner’s fire for God’s spirit children. Created to teach us. We were sent to Earth at this specific time to glean what we can from what life has to offer today.
We are taught in the church to be other. To be apart and different than everyone else. We’re taught to stay away and be “peculiar” to protect ourselves from the sins of the world.
I think that by separating ourselves and basically quarantining our lives from those of our neighbors, communities, and the greater world, we are missing out on so much. We miss out on the beautiful practices Buddhists teach of meditation and the power of thought. We miss out on the restorative practices of yoga and learning to zero in on specific parts of your body which will unlock trauma that is held within our physical bodies literally healing them ourselves. We miss out on the stories of the pain and trauma that minorities face that will soften our hearts with empathy and bring about actual change in us and the world.
In the second Frozen movie, Elsa searches for her true purpose. She searches for the thing or person that she has been waiting for all over her life. She hopes it will change her life for the better. What she learns was so powerful to me that I still can’t hear it, or lets be real here, sing it without a sob bubbling up out from deep within my broken heart. She sings a duet with the mother she lost years previously:
“Show yourself
Step into the power
Grow yourself
Into something new”
— Elsa from Frozen II
Her mother pleads with her to understand:
“You are the one you've been waiting for
All of my life
All of your life”
— Iduna from Frozen II
I am the one. I am the only one who can fix myself. I have to stop waiting around for divine intervention and grow myself. I have to accept that the thoughts and emotions I have are valid and accept them. I have to stop “shoulding” myself and accept what’s inside of me. I have to accept myself, even if it doesn’t completely align with what I’ve been taught since childhood.
I am missing out on so much by constantly surrounding myself with people who are programed to think the exact same way. I am made for so much more and the only way to grasp it is to step outside of the box that I’ve constructed to keep the world out.
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Liz Forkin said in her book Beginner’s Pluck:
“The truth is, the world is a beautiful and horrible place. When we build walls tall enough to keep out the Horrible, we become impenetrable to the Beauty too.”
— Liz Forkin
It’s time to break down some GD walls and find that beautiful in the world that I’ve cut myself off from.