Debbie's Story

Debbie was 41 when she first started paying attention to the recurring chant in her head: “I can’t live like this anymore, I can’t live like this anymore…. I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying.” She was doing laundry at the time, but the chant was also there when she was doing dishes, or making dinner, or cleaning, or doing any of the myriad tasks one performs over and over again throughout the day, day in day out, when one is mother to four young children and one’s husband is constantly traveling. Being so busy, always doing and never just being, Debbie was not able to make wise connections, and continued living her life to the deadening and repetitive chant in her mind.

Over the course of that year, Debbie started experiencing worrisome physical symptoms: dizziness, stomach problems, severe exhaustion and weakness. As her symptoms progressed, she was overcome with fear, anxiety, and negativity, and for good reason: twenty years prior, she had been diagnosed with MS. At that time her doctor had prophesied that she would be fine until age 40 or 50, so she dismissed the diagnosis and got on with her life.

But here she was, approaching 42, feeling truly terrible, and unable to find a diagnosis. She made the rounds of doctors, spent a small fortune on naturopathy and underwent a barrage of tests. No-one would confirm MS or any other disease, until her neurologist, who had already told her that she was in perfect health, found brain lesions on her MRI scan that indicated MS. He suggested medication, including an anti-depressant but Debbie (a trained nurse) felt that the meds would not help her. Her intuition told her that her failing health was not purely a physical matter; rather, it was a spiritual and emotional crisis. She refused the meds and turned inward for guidance.

Within a month after the diagnosis, Debbie had hit rock bottom, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. She felt like her head was disconnected from her body, like it was floating above while her body felt heavy as a rock, to the point where she couldn’t move. She felt such extreme weakness that she couldn’t bring herself to do anything whatsoever. She felt that her heart was barely beating, barely keeping her alive. She had lost weight. She could not function. She was falling into an emotional pit of despair and hopelessness, making it seem like her heart would literally stop beating. She felt like her marriage, rocky at the best of times, was continuing to crumble.

The realization that she was dying came to her on her daughter’s 12th birthday. In her heart she said good-bye to her family and hello to God. But, Debbie says, God spoke to her, telling her that even if she were ready to come, her 12-year old daughter would never recover if she left her. After a few days, Debbie knew that indeed her time hadn’t yet come, that she had a choice, and that she would choose life. The truth of this decision was confirmed in the weeks that followed when one day she opened her bible and her eyes read the words, “This day I give you life and death, and I desire that you choose life.” The message was clear.

Choosing life is no simple matter when your own has been clouded over by death. Only a year earlier Debbie’s brother had committed suicide: images of his suffering, in both life and death, overtook her mind. When her father also killed himself within the same year Debbie felt overwhelmed. She sought guidance, and learned to see these terrible events “through spiritual eyes”: in the case of her brother she learned to see not the visual, physical horror of his hanging, but rather the child entering the divine and thus ending his unbearable suffering. For her father, she knew that in having asked God to forgive him for the harm he had done to her, he too would find some kind of peace. Seeing with the eyes of forgiveness, love, and light—with spiritual eyes— helped her to overcome these tragedies. Yet grief continued to weigh on her heavily, making it that much more difficult to cope with life, especially as she fought some of the same demons that had plagued her brother and father.

While she was at the bottom of her pit of hopelessness and despair, other realizations came to Debbie. She realized, for example, that she could choose hope, that she could choose gratitude, that she could choose health and happiness. Gratitude became a healing power, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Healing, Debbie says, must be walked out in faith, and is there for the asking. Asking is the key.

Debbie also realized that the thinking mind can be destructive, especially when it leads us to overthink, to dwell on issues, to mentally tear ourselves and others apart. The real art of living involves turning the mind off and seeing the world as children do. Reconnecting to who we were as children is absolutely essential to nourishing the garden in our heart, at our spiritual core.

When she was at her lowest point, Debbie’s husband, somewhat estranged to her by this point, picked her up off the floor, sat her down on the sofa, looked her straight in the eyes, and told her that she would get better. “One grain of sand at a time,” he said, “but one day you’ll be standing on the beach.” This unexpected voice of love somehow touched her, and she’s been building her sand castles ever since.