Every once in a while, I have a recurring nightmare. The setting and details change, but the problems and feelings are very similar: I’m in school and I don’t belong there—I’m middle-aged among teenagers and young adults. I’ve neglected to do many assignments, I’ve hardly attended a class, or I forgot I was signed up for it. Whichever way, I’m on the verge of failing. Confusion reigns in my poor mind as I try to sort out what is wrong. Gradually, I start remembering reality: I’ve already graduated from high school; I’ve already graduated from college; there is some mistake. Eventually, I set aside my worries all together because I know it is simply an unpleasant dream. I wake up and sigh.
Even though the situation is not actually real, the feelings are still real. And those feelings create a real physical response. For a little while, my heart and respiratory rate are faster than normal. Soon enough all is well; the truth has set me free.
Truth really does set us free.
If we are to heal, we have to be determined to be seekers of truth. Though we truly feel feelings, they are not, of themselves, wholly reliable as evidence of truth.
Six years after Matt died, I spent a full month feeling, believing, living, mourning something that was not real. I thought my second husband, Brandan, was going to die. There was something wrong with his eyelid, a specialist had ordered a biopsy, and we had a long wait for the results.
Living in that non-reality nearly destroyed me. I asked Brandan to keep our worry secret. And then I thought incessantly about life without him (our new baby and toddler never really knowing their dad, and my four older kids losing another dad they loved). Adrenaline pumped inside me night and day. I started waking in the middle of the night, distracting myself with creative projects. My immune system started shutting down; I got sick.
The truth was something was wrong with Brandan’s eyelid; Brandan might have cancer; if he had cancer, he might die from it, but he really might recover. I don’t remember even considering it could turn out well. I fully believed the worst would happen.
The day we found out Brandan’s biopsy was negative for cancer should have been joyous, but I was already past a critical point I didn’t know existed. I was broken. I couldn’t seem to eat and I stopped sleeping all together. A few days later, I had to be admitted into the hospital.
The hardest, darkest, lowest, most horrific months of my life followed. At first, I was afraid I was going to die. Later, I was so low, and sure I could never recover, I wanted nothing more than to die. I was diagnosed at different times with anxiety, postpartum depression, PTSD and bipolar disorder.
If only I had embraced the truth, instead of my fears, I might have spared myself and my family a whole lot of pain—and that is an understatement.
The truth will set you free. I believe that. It would have kept me free. It does keep me free; it is my key strategy for maintaining mental health.
Seeking truth is essential if we are to clean out those contaminants that have prevented us from healing. The contaminants are all that is false. The contaminants are the unproductive, unhelpful, destructive strategies, thoughts, habits, perspectives, rules we’ve adopted because of our pain.
Answer these questions for yourself: Are you willing to seek truth? Are you willing to try to discover those things that are amiss in yourself? Are you willing to try to work, change, and hope for the best? Will you allow yourself to rejoice over every triumph, without belittling your efforts?
If you don’t give up, if you continue striving to maintain that kind of attitude, you will surely see healing.
