MY TRAGEDY –

I’ll tell it as briefly as I can, and then move on to sharing the positives that God has for us – his unconditional love and his hope.

At the end of December 2013, and probably earlier, the friends I had were drawing away from me more and more. It was probably in large part my own fault. I was contacting people too much. I was expecting too much from those who had been my closest supporters. However, when I look at my story and see all I was doing, I believe the church was expecting too much from me as well.

In 2014, my mental health took a turn for the worse maybe due to trying to do more than I should. I think that I and those who knew me had forgotten the severity of the illness I lived with.

I gradually broke. I had two car accidents in quick succession and lost my driver’s license. I started having trouble doing the simplest things. Disorganization became a problem. My husband took over the cooking. Eventually, at the end of that year, seeing me lose so much, my husband suspected dementia. I planned to simplify my life.

In 2015 I resigned from the group I had led for nine years. At that point I had only one real friend. I felt I needed another, a peer with whom I could discuss my faith. I spent long periods with my Bible and in prayer. I studied voraciously and wrote devotionals to send out to a list of followers. I needed a friend or a small group with whom I could share these things.

During the month I officially retired from my group, I signed up for a study group that was being formed, promising to promote deeper relationships, I wasted no time putting my name down. I had been waiting for such an opportunity for years.

But two days before the first meeting I received a call saying I wouldn’t be included. There were already two members from Living Room in the group. “To have me there would not be healthy.” I learned that I would be the only person not included. Told not to let anyone know of the decision.

I was devastated. Could not understand how, after the many years of good work I had done, I would now not be allowed something I needed for myself.

I’m a leader and I’m a supporter. But like everyone else with mental health problems I need empathy and care too. The church should be the first to supply these but they were hurting me instead. I was a respected leader a short time ago and now I was suddenly an outcast.

This event marked a change in me. My life hasn’t been the same since. Neither did the organizer of the group treat me like a real person after this. When no one else was around I was hurt with words and actions. I felt my personhood being taken from me. The gentle person I used to be started being angry. “More than you used to be,” my husband told me. A few months later a friend told me, “Marja, you never used to be like this.”

I had been fighting stigma for 22 years, and now I was a victim of the worst stigma I could have imagined. In pain, I publicly cried out about the injustice. That didn’t do me any good at all, but I couldn’t help it. A lot of bad talk about me started happening. I lost my good reputation.

Unbelievable pain and suffering followed for many years. The worst of it—the exclusion from the study group—left me with flashbacks for years. My husband couldn’t leave me alone for more than an hour at a time. I had to have someone staying with me because of the suicidal depression that always hit after a bad memory—always a danger. I had developed a form of PTSD. I stopped cooking and became disabled in many ways.

Even today, emotional suffering still comes upon me, especially when I think of the loss of my reputation which affected my life in big ways. That was the worst and the most lasting damage of all.

But I never stopped writing the reflections on Scripture that I had started sending out in 2013. Despite the suffering, that part of my Living Room ministry never stopped. Thanks to God, it still remains today.

Although my journaling has slowed down significantly, up until two years ago it remained strong. Staying in touch with God during those tough years transformed me. Though tears did not cease, I gradually became stronger, more assured of the role God had given me, more clearly seeing where he was leading.

During the worst of the pain, I tried to draw close to Jesus, aware that he too was suffering. I felt like Jesus and I were in it together, in fellowship, and I’m sure we were. By trying to understand what it must have been to go through what he did, I came to know him better, We became closer.

marja