Five years ago, today, I pulled into my parent’s driveway, ready to start my new adventure. I thought I was ready, but I really had no idea what was ahead. A radical encounter with God led me to leaving my home in Phoenix and moving to Kansas City. And as I began to unload my stuff, I foolishly believed that all my issues, the diagnoses, brain stuff, were all behind me. God was so good to let me walk in those silly beliefs for a while. He allowed me to get to know Him before addressing some of the very big issues floating in my brain.

The really funny part is that I didn’t even think I had big problems! I mean sure everyone has stuff when they come to Jesus, but I just assumed those got poofed! away when I started doing life with Him. It never crossed my mind that He might want to walk through some of that stuff with me; I figured He was more of a showoff the miracles kinda God. It took months for me to even realize that not only were they still there but there were far more many things than I had realized. In my life before God, I had never even considered that I might deal with PTSD or trauma. I had the bipolar diagnosis and had sat in enough therapy sessions to realize that some of that might apply to me. But really probably not most of it. It wasn’t until about 6 months after moving home and getting to know God that my brain and body finally began to realize that some stuff might be off.

When it happened, it was instantaneous but not in the immediate, miracle healing kind of way; rather it was like my whole being did a big inhale and sigh and everything came flooding out. Twitches, dissociation, waking nightmares, occasional muteness, sensitivity to noise and people, anxiety, etc. It was like entering a living hell. But I was saved! I had moved up here to be re-establish family relationships, to start over with God, and surround myself with a solid church! I couldn’t understand why God would give this to me after I had finally started serving Him.

But all this was already going to happen, my body and especially my brain couldn’t take much more of pretending nothing was wrong. It’s one thing to lie to others about your brain, but when your brain successfully lies to you about yourself, it takes a lot more energy to keep that lie in place. God knew I was on borrowed time mentally; He knew the epic crash was coming and instead of poofing! it away, he prepared a place for me.

When Saul encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus he was left blind for three days. Yet God didn’t leave him stuck on the road to fend for himself; his servants helped him to a home. “The Lord said, ‘Go over to Straight Street, to the house of Judas…ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is praying to me right now.’” -Acts 9:11. God knew Saul’s experience with Jesus would be so shattering that he would need a safe place to stay for a while. Just as He knew I would need a level of trust in Him already and a place to be surrounded when my world crashed.

Our worlds break, they shatter into a thousand pieces, minds snap, sickness stays, and death happens. The joy of knowing all brokenness and death ends someday is tempered with the fact that right now isn’t that time. But God knows this; He isn’t shocked by broken results from a broken humanity. He doesn’t love us less or turn His back. Maybe we haven’t seen our poof! moment where it all is fixed; maybe instead we are walking through the painful, uncomfortable reality that is life, with Him. Just know while we sit in the aching time; He sits with us. He has prepared a place for you, right in His arms.