When the darkness of depression casts its long shadow over life, where can one turn? Jessica, our courageous guest, offers a stirring account of her struggle with this relentless foe, sharing the raw and intricate dance between her mental health challenges and her unwavering faith in Jesus Christ. As Jessica's narrative unfolds, it becomes a profound exploration of navigating mental illness, physical sickness, and familial responsibilities when heaven feels so far away. Through it all, Jessica's testimony stands as a beacon of hope, illuminating the often-overlooked presence of the Savior in the deepest valleys of our lives.
Please reach out to me if you are interested in sharing your story! I would LOVE to hear from you. :)
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When the darkness of depression casts its long shadow over life, where can one turn? Jessica, our courageous guest, offers a stirring account of her struggle with this relentless foe, sharing the raw and intricate dance between her mental health challenges and her unwavering faith in Jesus Christ. As Jessica's narrative unfolds, it becomes a profound exploration of navigating mental illness, physical sickness, and familial responsibilities when heaven feels so far away. Through it all, Jessica's testimony stands as a beacon of hope, illuminating the often-overlooked presence of the Savior in the deepest valleys of our lives.
Please reach out to me if you are interested in sharing your story! I would LOVE to hear from you. :)
Follow us on Social Media:
Facebook: More than Coincidence: Remembering Jesus Christ in Your Story Instagram: mtc.rememberingjesuschrist
Hello everyone and welcome to More Than Coincidence, Remembering Jesus Christ in your Story. As the author and finisher of our faith, our Savior writes personal experiences into each of our lives which can later strengthen, empower and bring us peace upon reflection. This podcast is dedicated to sharing these anchoring memories from everyone's unique stories in order to collectively remember and testify of the reality of Jesus Christ and His presence in our lives. I'm your host, Lily, and I'm very excited to share these experiences together. So today we have Jessica on the podcast. Thanks for coming, Jessica. You're welcome, Will you?
Jessica:
introduce yourself a little bit. So I am married with four kids in my mid-30s. I grew up out east for a little bit and got married and ended up in Utah and loving it. I'm in the phase of life where I am a taxi driver, so that's my main job description.
Lily:
So Jessica, what memories do you have that you remember and reflect on, that prick your heart and remembrance of our Savior Jesus Christ?
Jessica:
So I honestly have so many experiences. But as I was pondering what to share, I felt like I should share a bit about my depression, which is not comfortable. Obviously there's a lot of other stories I could share that would be easier to talk about, but I guess this is important. So I'm one of the fortunate people who doctors describe as running on lower serotonin in general. So, like my baseline happy is lower than normal people, and I didn't understand this growing up. I would say it really hit me starting a middle school. I just couldn't feel happy. So, even if everything was going well, I just felt kind of blah, apathetic, whatever. And then I would feel guilty because I understood that my life was fairly blessed and didn't know what was wrong with me. I thought spiritually maybe I was messing up, and then some counsel I received would be to just kind of smile and fake it till you make it, till you feel happier. So I graduated and I wouldn't say that I was deep depressed. Right, it's more just, I couldn't feel higher. Like I played volleyball and I'd get an awesome spike and everybody would be like yeah, awesome, and like I'd feel exactly the same. Yeah, as just flat, right.
Jessica:
So I head out to college. At BYU I graduated with high grades from high school and I was determined to be a career person. I was the youngest of eight kids. All my siblings are incredibly smart and accomplished. I have five sisters and I watched all five of them give up their careers or talents, at least for a time, to start a family and raise a family. So, coming at this point, we lived in Pennsylvania. That's where I graduated high school. It was a more liberal environment. So I came out saying I am not going to be the woman who just goes out and gets married and has kids, doesn't achieve her potential.
Lily:
Yeah, I'm not going to be a stay at home, mom, I'm going to rule the world.
Jessica:
Exactly, I'm not going to do that thing. So God has a sense of humor, right? Because whenever you tell the universe something like that, that's exactly what you get to experience.
Lily:
Right.
Jessica:
So my second semester at BYU I met Brent. We dated. He proposed on my 19th birthday. That was super sweet and we were married eight months after meeting and I'm very grateful to have him. He's awesome. Right around the time we got married I started getting sick. I just whenever I would eat anything, I started feeling nauseous and then I also had endometriosis. I had really bad cycles and so six months after we got married I had a surgery for that and the doctor said well, if you guys plan on having any kids, I would have a baby here within the next year and a half, like in arms in the next year and a half.
Lily:
Oh my gosh.
Jessica:
And I'm like that doesn't square away with my plans.
Lily:
With my plans.
Jessica:
By the way, I didn't really love kids at this point. I was the youngest. I didn't like to babysit. I never was drawn to hold other people's babies, so I wasn't a kid person to begin with. That's really kind of through a wrench in my thinking. But we prayed about it. We listened to that and had my first daughter. I had her shortly before my 21st birthday. She had some issues and, being a brand new mom, youngest child, I didn't know what I was doing. So it was very, very difficult to have her. We were still both in school. That was a blessing. We could still do that, but because of this I avoided thinking about having more kids. I was like, hey, I can still do my thing with her, I can still accomplish what I want to accomplish. God.
Lily:
I'm satisfied I did it. Can I have one thing now?
Jessica:
Exactly so stubbornly not thinking about children and I knew I was blocking. But he got to me one Sunday in church he had a ton of bricks on the head Inspired me. You need to have another kid now.
Lily:
I was like OK.
Jessica:
I could still probably do it with two. So we moved forward and I ended up graduating with my bachelor's. When I was seven months pregnant with that second baby, we sold our condo and moved out to Pennsylvania for Brent to do summer sales, and that's where I'm from. So that's home and that was a blessing that I got to go home during this time. But I'm building up to all this because I'm just setting a story of stress.
Jessica:
So you remember I was starting at this baseline depressive level and you add stress. Then I had my baby and I was immediately hit with intense postpartum depression. I came home from the hospital and I did not want to exist anymore. I wanted to give up. I wanted to die right then and it was scary and Brent had to go back to Utah to look for an apartment so he had to leave me alone for a little bit. He didn't know all of my terrible thoughts that I was having, but he heard a couple of them and got a little concerned. But neither one of us understood depression totally or that I needed treatment and again, I still associated it with spirituality, just needing to fix myself.
Lily:
Yeah, like if I was more spiritual then I wouldn't be feeling this way. I'd be like a happy mom, so excited my baby's here.
Jessica:
Something's wrong with me in that way Exactly, which then fed into plans that like obviously I'm not meant for motherhood, right, right, I'm feeling terrible at this. It's not for me, I'm a confirmation bias of I knew it.
Lily:
God Right, I'm not supposed to be doing this.
Jessica:
Exactly so. I think Satan loves depression, because I think that's when he comes in and disguises his ideas as your thoughts and just really can take you down fast. We ended up moving back to Utah when the baby was four weeks old and oh, I forgot to tell you. So those when Brent was gone, the Lord inspired my best friend from high school to reach out to me and offer to come over and watch the baby at night for me, and that really helped me get through those initial dark days where she just was like okay, he's my responsibility, right, you sleep, you just like survive.
Lily:
Yeah, that's literally what it is.
Jessica:
You stick with it, yeah, and that that was great. But we we moved when he was four weeks old and that was honestly way too soon to be doing a move and the journey was exhausting. I had my oldest daughter was at this point about a year and a half when he was born and she was very tantrumy and had her own needs. And we get to the apartment and it's just tiny and it's dark and it's cold and it's night and like my body was so exhausted that I was getting vertigo, just barely able to walk, and I collapsed into bed and we have the baby in the closet because that's where he fits, and there's ducks everywhere around this apartment, like hundreds and hundreds of ducks. So I'm trying to go to sleep and they're just quacking all night and to this day, you still don't like ducks.
Jessica:
I still hate ducks.
Lily:
Yes.
Jessica:
I think you've heard this before.
Lily:
Yes, I hate ducks.
Jessica:
So it quickly, like my, my stress just increased exponentially. I thought it was going to be hopeful, but we moved into this dark situation. The baby was getting sick all the time. He for some reason always had a cold, always had a flu, a throw up something, and that was like for the first six months of his life. So that was stressful. Brent mentioned he was in his graduate program, working full time.
Jessica:
Our marriage started to get strained and then we had a tantrum-y toddler and one day I just I'd had it. We'd been arguing, our daughter had been throwing fits and baby was crying because he was sick and I walked out the door and I was, I was just done. I was like ready to just quit and I walked about a quarter of a mile away around the far side of one of the ponds that were in the area which is why we have so many ducks and I sat down and I started having this conversation with God and just telling him I wasn't cut out for it. I didn't want to do it anymore. My family deserves someone better and I talked these things over and just talked at God for, you know, maybe a half hour. It was a gloomy day, it was cloudy, it was not particularly warm, and I then, after I spoke my piece, I just kind of sat there, no clue what I was going to do from there, how I could escape, and at that moment this ray of sunshine just broke through the clouds and shone directly on me, came across the lake and shone directly on me and I looked up and I saw the light and I felt the warm touch on my skin and I and an understanding that God was showing me love was pressed upon my mind. It's difficult for anxious or depressed people to feel the spirit, but Heavenly Father was able in that moment to break through to my understanding and let me know that he loved me and that, with His help, I could stay and stick through the situation. And then a series of thoughts flooded my mind about what my family, what would happen to my family if I were to up and die or up and leave, what that would actually look like. And it helped me understand that my presence was still critical for their health and happiness, even if I wasn't very good at what I was doing in my mind. So after an hour or so I had enough courage to walk back to our apartment and start working the problem again.
Jessica:
This time, however, I understood that God was with me. He cared about me, even though I couldn't feel things very well, and he wanted me to do what I was called to do. So over the next several months I relied heavily on this moment to survive. My depression and the intense, crazy, hormonal part of it did go away through the miracle of God's help. Obviously, I should have had medication, therapy, all those treatments, but it wasn't really on the table for me. So he helped me get through those months and come back to a more normal state of mind. And then he did eventually bless us to have things get easier, a little bit easier. We moved into a better apartment. It was more cheerful. There were no ducks You're laughing about the ducks. They were a problem. They would come bite at our daughter.
Lily:
Oh no, ducks can be mean, they can be vicious.
Jessica:
We poop everywhere. And then our baby was healed through a fasting miracle and stopped getting sick and our marriage started to improve. So I still look on that moment with a lot of tenderness that God reached out to me so personally and even worked around my inability to feel things that he could still let me know that he loved me. So if we fast forward to the time when I had all four of my kids here, I'd been on antidepressant medication on and off as I figured out, that was a good thing. So I mentioned that when we got married, I started getting sick and these health problems continued to worsen through all those years.
Jessica:
I ended up in constant pain in my abdomen from the endometriosis, even when I was not on my cycle. My digestion became bad enough that I only like cooked rice and veggies or deer meat was tolerated without making me feel sick. I started getting like side symptoms, like arthritic joints. Neuromas in my feet made it hard to walk. I needed allergy shots because the air had mold and I couldn't breathe well, and I started getting heart palpitations and shooting pains in my fingertips and my children were struggling with mental health problems. So once again I found myself at a new threshold for stress, where depression overtook me again. This time I went to the temple and I sat in the session feeling so pained and so ill and exhausted from fighting the fight. I just felt again that my children's problems would be better served if they had a more capable, healthy mother and my husband would be happier if he had a healthy, happy wife. And I told the Lord I was ready to go if he wanted me. I felt sick enough and my body was shutting down.
Jessica:
It's like if you want me, I'll go. I'm not going to take my own life at this point. I've learned that lesson. But if you'll take me, I'll go, I'm ready.
Jessica:
And the Lord's approach to me this time was very different and a bit amusing. As I look back on it, I heard a voice in my mind say oh really, okay. Well, if you're sure, then that's fine. I started getting this intense pain in my chest and my heart palpitation started going nuts. And the voice in my mind said again, I can take you right now. I started to panic. I was like, oh, wait a second. I haven't put things together or say goodbye to anybody yet.
Jessica:
And so the reality of leaving in that moment helped me understand that I really wanted to stay. It helped me understand what the future of my family would look like if I left them, and I thought about my children and their unique needs and I realized that the work that I was doing was difficult. My problems were difficult, but I wanted to be the one to help them through it, didn't really want to leave them to somebody else. I knew them and I loved them and I knew their God-given potential. I'd had experiences where I felt their little spirits and I knew I would still love them through the hard things that they did to me or anything else, and I didn't want to risk that someone else wouldn't care for them enough to go through those hard things with them. The Lord basically called my bluff, which I think is so hilarious, it actually is.
Jessica:
The first experience was all tender and comforting, and then this experience was like yeah, right.
Jessica:
Each day was a gift and I wanted to do my own work. So from then on, my depression didn't dive to those same depths. I understood that those feelings were a reflection of a disease and a need for a medication change or the result of stress or some other hardship, and that those terrible thoughts didn't come from above and that they were also false. Right, and life didn't get easier, it got harder, but I was determined to stick it out. So when I was particularly stressed, my depression returned, of course, but these thoughts changed in nature. They turned to being more critical of myself and more negativity in general. Then I was upset that I was the type of person who would have those thoughts.
Jessica:
And again, you know, satan's just coming in with the constant stream of negativity flowing in my mind, and I felt like I had voices constantly coming in my mind with these thoughts and they just wouldn't stop. I did my best to ignore them and to do everything right, feed my spirituality, try to change the thoughts as they came. But one blessed day I sat in the bathroom and I just said, lord, I am so tired of these thoughts, I'm trying so hard. Can you just make them stop? I know you're there. I know you care and I'm not going anywhere this time, but I'm really tired of this.
Jessica:
And immediately it was like the radio in my head turned off and I just heard silence and the difference was so stark and the relief was just washed over me and I just realized that all those thoughts did not come from me. I wasn't a terrible person. These thoughts were planted in my mind and it was the devil and that God had the power to cast him out of my mind. And so I guess those three experiences have been kind of critical in me dealing with a lifetime of having more of a depressive nature, and there are so many other experiences I could share. But I know that God's there. He knows how to work with us.
Lily:
And then, what would you tell somebody who has the voices in their head right now and who is at that point and maybe has been praying for relief and hasn't had the radio turned off? What would you tell them?
Jessica:
I would tell them to keep doing the things they know that are supposed to help, and I just have confidence that God does have the power to do it and he can and will do it when the time is right, and that those experiences are important for your strengthening. These experiences definitely have helped prepare me to handle the problems that I saw come up with my kids, to be able to respond to them with understanding and compassion and also faith that they could be helped and that their minds could be influenced by God Right.
Lily:
That's very cool. Well, would you mind sharing a brief testimony, or are there any other thoughts before we wrap up?
Jessica:
I know that the Savior is there. I know he talks to us. I have seen many little miracles totally unrelated to depression. I have lots of stories totally unrelated to that. He wants to guide us in our life. He wants us to counsel with him and to get direction and lead us through experiences, and he will send tender mercies to strengthen you along the way While he's asking you to go through the hard times. He will send little packets of love down to you here and there to just give you the extra oomph to keep going, and I appreciate that. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Lily:
Amen. Well, thank you, Jessica, for joining us today and hope we can hear from you again in the future, maybe. Thanks again for tuning into More Than Coincidence, remembering Jesus Christ in your story. Please follow us on social media or share us with a friend. If you have an experience you'd like to share, feel free to reach out to morethancoincidencerememberhimcom. I can't wait to hear all of the amazing memories you all have of our Savior. See you next time.
