We’re 9 months into the year no one wanted to have–a year where my sister Heidi, 31 years old with 4 little kids, is very, very sick with a rare blood cancer called MDS. Along the way, the treatments or tests or what-have-you ruined her kidneys, and now the very dialysis that’s keeping her alive is preventing her from getting the bone marrow transplant that could actually save her from the cancer.

For a while, there was much blogging. Heidi and I both wrote updates and posted them to social media. There were tears, but there was praise. We felt certain that God would be near us. I wrote about this in a whole series of deeply-felt posts (you don’t have to look too far back on my blog to find them). As the waves of sorrow rolled through me, I trusted that somehow, God was doing something beautiful. We just couldn’t see it yet. I clung to hope. I clung to Scripture. I clung to God and he clung right back.

Fast forward to now. The transplant Heidi was supposed to get in March of this year is nowhere closer to happening–is in fact, further away than at first. Heidi is exhausted. And not sure if the fight is worth it, or for how long it will be. She’s in pain, and nauseous, and anxious. As we’ve been facing a possible end to this story that we so desperately didn’t want, two weeks ago, I lost it. I started falling apart at work in a ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ situation and then kept right on falling apart.

It’s like all the stress and pain from nine months crashed down on my head and I was trapped in the cruel grip of a world that keeps grinding on. A life that won’t stop for me, no matter how bad it gets. I’m never off the hook–I have to keep going to work, making meals, dropping kids off at school, reading them stories, attending to their minuscule and seemingly never ending needs. Nothing stopped for me. And how dare I expect that? What made me so special? Nothing. I wasn’t special. Everyone lost people. Everyone suffered. How dare I lose it like this.

I cried the whole way home with my daughter in the back seat. And the first little whispers starting coming into my head–I should hurt myself. Maybe kill myself. At the very least start thinking about how to do such a thing.

The old-fashioned phrase of what I experienced that day, culminating with a horrific night after the kids were in bed, might be nervous breakdown. Uncontrollable weeping. Self-hatred. Shouting obscenities and hitting myself in my back yard. I hated myself. I hated life. It felt like plummeting down that first hill on a roller coaster. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. More than something I did, it felt like something that was happening to me. Of course I did it–I said those regrettable things and no one else–but from a place of such weakness that my self-control was utterly gone. There was nothing to hang onto. I was free-falling. I started threatening to cut myself–I wanted to, desperately.

Adam just listened. And listened. All night, he listened as I cried and raged and lashed out. I said terrible things to him, and to God. Ugliness spewed out of me. I had so much anger and disappointment and rage at God for leaving us here to suffer without him. And then he demanded praise anyway? No. He was not getting that from me. He was supposed to carry me through this, to shoulder my burdens, but he didn’t. He left. He left me.

Shattered.

Broken.

Those words are in the lyrics of so many songs. But I never knew what it really felt like to be broken until that night of madness.

Why was I so desperate to hurt myself? Because I wanted to brandish my physical wounds and say, See? THIS IS HOW MUCH I’M HURTING. You think I should be volunteering for school functions and committees. You think I should smile at you and make small talk because we’re polite, functional adults here. You think because I show up at the office dressed with my hair combed I’m coping. You think I should be fine. But I am not fine. I am breaking. I CAN’T. I’M DONE.

I’ve had overwhelming sorrow and doubt during this journey already. But nothing like this. God turned his back. How could he leave me in this state? How could he let me shatter to pieces in my back yard like that? Why won’t he make himself felt? Where is the comfort of the Spirit?

How could you, God?

That night, I lost my mind. I literally went crazy. I couldn’t bear that the same God we tell ourselves is always there and never leaves you, was gone. That night, I couldn’t bear myself either. Every bad word you can think of, I called myself. Because what was my problem that I couldn’t take the same pain that everyone else on planet earth has to taste? I was disgusting, and weak, and self-destruction seemed like the only possible relief for the fire in my soul.

I never understood self-loathing before. I never understood the desire to harm yourself. Now I get it. It’s what happens when God turns his back, and you stretch out your arms but all there is, is darkness.

To be continued. Which is my way of saying, God, if you care how this story turns out, you’ll have to step in and change the course of everything. Because right now, it feels like I’m hurtling into the darkness and crashing will be a relief.

Amen.

[Side note for anyone who might be very worried right now: this is not a “cry for help” post but an important chapter in a journey that, no matter how tired I am, will continue towards its conclusion, whatever that may be. Many of you have been a huge part of this story already, and I feel that it’s important to chronicle the darkness as well as the light. I am not considering self-harm or suicide. That was a one-night dance with insanity. Also, I’m seeking counseling and now have anti-anxiety medicine at my disposal. The help you can give now is to cry out to God on my behalf, because without him, it is all despair, and darkness, and horror.]