The Cross Centered Mind Testimony: susan

One change is the move away from being concerned about taking medication to becoming anti-medication. Some doubts, discomforts about Psychiatry have changed to distrust. I am concerned for others who may be in the clutches of medications. Now I am free from some old thought ruts and have some skills to stay away from those ruts altogether and get out if someone were to throw me in! The Gospel is opened up, sparkling fresh and a refreshing drink of water. I want to stay very close to it. Also, I have more to share with other people as my cup is nice and full. The contents of this course convinced me to look heavenward only for help for pain of all kinds - perhaps you had a willing audience as I had exhausted all alternate coping strategies! My focus has shifted to Jesus' power, authority, supremacy and sufficiency. I am still embattled against sad, regretful thoughts, fearful and angry thoughts - but in just this small amount of time - 51 days or so - these have been slashed way, way down. This gives so much more time and space available for Jesus. Also I can approach Him more expectantly knowing that my mind and heart have not been complaining.

As to my testimony, I was not the woman that I intended to be. Quarrelsome, easily hurt, disappointed and unable to keep the wolf of depression far from my door. Antidepressants prescribed in my twenties had been a wonderful help for a time. Those early tricyclics were very sedating and it was a great relief to know that I would sleep the whole night. Life did greatly improve for a time so I held them in very high esteem. Their effectiveness would decline, dosages would increase, newcomers would replace the old, but I could not keep the door locked against depression. Many decades later, Mds would re-diagnose the underlying problem and new protocols were tried. The success of those first two years of drug treatment would never be duplicated.

There were some frightening developments. A psychiatrist suggested an alternate drug which he warned would cause me to feel worse before improvement. I was to incrementally increase dosage daily until a specific side effect was noted, then continue on at just below that level. My balance went, speech was impacted, but I remembered that I would feel worse before better. When I dragged myself into his office he was very alarmed asking why did you not contact me sooner, this is terrible? Why indeed? With physicians I tended toward compliancy and had he not warned me of feeling unwell? This was prior to pharmaceutical fact sheets with side effect warnings. All these years later when I reported a side effect or two it was met with seeming disinterest. I concluded that I must endure serious physical losses hoping that the benefits of the drug were worth it.

With the drug therapy I pursued every recommended non medicinal remedy such as community service, a weekly hiking club, sales advisor for Junior Achievement, folk dancing, exercise and nutritional supplements, Bible study and church, making pottery and many, many, more. My weekly calendar was so rich with after work activities that if one event were cancelled three more options were in the wings. This was during the first four years. Most helped, none prevented, none cured.

Something about the way I thought and reacted to people was hurting me. I longed to be like the peaceful, contented Christian women that I had met or known. But I was unwilling to do the thing that they did - to trust in the Lord with all their hearts, to rely on His words, to ask Him what their next steps should be. I was unwilling to trust God, unwilling to believe that He would help, unwilling to give Him much opportunity to do anything for me. If an answer to prayer did not arrive within 24 hours I tried to resolve everything myself with my tiny tool kit.

How I loved to read the memoirs and biographies of Christians! Listening to other Christians talk about their faith thrilled me and still does thrill me. Christ offered hope - but the hope I had in Him was that He instantly erase all my flaws, fears, pains, sinful actions and thoughts. Then, I hoped that He would fix me right up, equip me with every skill that I lacked, enable me to walk benevolently forward never making another horrible choice.

The gift of this Cross-Centered Mind course was persuading me to shift all my attention, hope and search for remedial answers to God, without deviation to other resources. The course convinced me that Jesus could and would solve mental health issues. My part would be to expectantly take every difficulty, complex convoluted pain or defeat to Him, in desperate prayer ask Him to heal me. I now know what to do every day - flood my mind and heart with the complex beauty of the scriptures, arrest unforgiving, painful, angry, resentful, fearful and troubling thoughts by instant replacement of a true promise from God Himself thru The Bible - refute painful memories by thinking of the story of Josephs' cruel treatment and his ultimate conclusion "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good" - remember that God has shared with us what will make us happy, He gives us a map with Phil 4:8, guiding our thoughts toward the honest, the just, the pure, the lovely, the good, the virtuous, the praiseworthy. Now this is counter-cultural! Many of us did not have our minds trained this way, mass media and entertainment direct our eyes and ears in opposing directions. They are specialists in focusing on the most hideous. I will need to be in constant, joyfully expectant contact with Jesus to be the woman that I want to be.

I found the Cross-Centered Mind course while searching online for info regarding the fallout of a wretched drug switch that had been prescribed. This was the second time in 6 years that things had gone dreadfully wrong with a drug switch. It is OK because now I have found explanation and clarification of truths that had been blurred. Even in a compromised state this Bible study penetrated my soul. Medications are reduced and reducing.