WELCOME!
Hi! I’m so glad you’re here! I believe you are here on purpose, for a purpose. If you have not personally been affected by mental health issues, you likely know someone who has. The passion of my life and work is to be a messenger of hope for people with mental health challenges and to equip others with sound principles and real strategies for living well. Each of us has a variety of life challenges, burdens, or afflictions, but that doesn’t have to be the end of the story! (Who Is Not Recovering? HYPERLINK)
FOR ME, THIS IS PERSONAL!
When I entered college over thirty years ago, I was confident about my future plans. I was on my way to becoming a doctor, maybe even a missionary doctor someday. I had been planning for this since I was a small child.
But before the end of my freshman year, it all came crashing down. I was severely depressed. I was experiencing psychosis and acting strangely, and I was hospitalized. Locked on the nearby psychiatric ward, I could see my college campus from the day room. I felt like I was watching the life I had lost.
Within the next 18 months, I was hospitalized 5 more times. I spent a total of 125 days in inpatient care and an additional 35 days in an intensive outpatient program. I was prescribed 9 different psych meds and 5 more drugs to address the side effects of the psych drugs. By the time I was discharged for the last time, I had no sense of a future for myself. I went back to school and changed my major to “undecided.” At that point, I was still deciding whether to live or die.
It was years before I stopped facing that daily question of whether I should live or die. I changed my major to psychology and successfully graduated from college but continued living in a desperate state of mind. I was receiving mental health services and taking all the psych meds that I had been discharged with years before, but I had no hope. I felt like my life was a total waste.
DIVINE INTERVENTION CHANGES EVERYTHING!
But one day in 1996, God interrupted me in the midst of a terrible plot to end my life, and sent a person - one person, that’s often all it takes! - to let me know that life could be different, that recovery is possible. You can read more about that encounter in my book, From Shattered to Restored.
“God can change absolutely anything,” she said.
‘Yeah, right,’ I mumbled internally. ‘She doesn’t know how sick I am!’
I honestly couldn’t wait to get away from her. But that chance meeting ultimately led me to attending the recovery class at her church where a flicker of light entered the darkness that engulfed me. It was there that I learned how to hope again, to recognize God’s purpose in all things, and to apply the principles of God’s Word in order to live life in the wisdom of wellness.
THERE IS PURPOSE AND HOPE IN THE MIDST OF IT ALL!
It is because God took ME out of such a deep, dark place and taught me how to live well that I have such great hope for YOU. I’m confident that there is hope and purpose for you and those you love in the midst of whatever difficulties, trials, and struggles you’re experiencing.
LINK TO PURCHASE BOOK
