My Testimony

My name is Estelle, and I want to give glory to God. 

2013 was a big year for me. In March, I made a watershed career/life decision and transferred from working at an InterVarsity chapter at Stanford to staffing the multiethnic chapter at Cal. God had already called me to the mission field, specifically to cross-cultural contexts in which I would be the least comfortable so that I would have the most opportunity to see Him use me for the kingdom. I saw the move to Cal as a step in the direction of that calling, a step that would take me out of the known, safe environment I'd been calling home for seven years and into new territory to try my wings.

Calling the move "uncomfortable" is a whopping understatement. Without deep friendships waiting for me in the East Bay, I felt incredibly lonely and turned to my work to fill that void. Unfortunately, staff work is notoriously unstructured and difficult to evaluate, so while I became very anxious about my performance and proving myself to be a good staff, I actually had very few concrete measures to go by. After a few weeks of escalating fear, I fell headlong into a depressive episode that made it difficult to remember why I had moved, what was good about my being at Cal, and whether God was a good, loving provider.

In this terrible time, the core narrative that developed was, "God must see this pain, and He must have anticipated it, but He allowed it. Not only that, but it's at such an extreme point that I am considering leaving Cal before I've been here a full month. He must want me to solve this myself, so I can't count on His help. I am completely alone."

With the severity of this depression, I felt as though whatever safety net I had foolishly expected to be there was absent. I could not interpret for myself why this was happening, let alone for other people, so meeting new people felt even more challenging. I wanted to be the "me" I had been at Stanford, but I was instead this frightened, lost, and helpless version of myself that was looking to other people for direction. This felt particularly undesirable in the realm of ministry where I am seen as a leader, responsible for bringing order and guidance. When it came to listening to God, I could not hear his response, however much I cried out to him. I remember praying, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner" for an hour straight, sobbing in the midst of not knowing what was happening or why. I did not know what to do.

I see this as a moment of wilderness. In fact, the passage from Deuteronomy 8 was prophesied over me by someone at Stanford in the spring. I saw scorpions and snakes, I felt thirsty and hungry, I lacked direction and wondered if it was a good thing to have left Egypt. What if I had just made up this "calling" and now I was paying for my mistake? If that was the case, how would I ever make a big decision again? My confidence in myself was shot, and no one could really speak that truth over me because they didn't know me as well.

When I think back to the fall, I see more than just the narrative my fear painted for me. In fact, just as the Israelites' shoes did not wear out and their feet did not swell for forty years, I ended up in the care of a psychologist who was able to help me. She pointed me in the direction of some new concepts: self-compassion, mindfulness, ephemerality (thoughts and emotions don't last forever), and how Jesus encounters me not solely in words, but also through physical gestures (hugs). Though I could not always depend on people to know what I needed, people asked me what they could do. I had a friend who hugged me for probably 20 minutes while I just cried into her shoulder. My supervisor did what he could to help me enter in at a gradual pace and affirmed that he wanted to see me thrive in the long term.

I came face-to-face with my own fragility, and it overwhelmed all my attempts to get around it or ignore it. As I wrestled with what it meant to potentially have a chronic mental illness, I realized that my vulnerability would not be assuaged by a poultice of words, but only when bathed in tangibly expressed love would it be transformed into something that connects, rather than disconnects, me to God and to others made in His image.

It was my pride that died, painfully nailed to a cross of shame.

It was my joy that He revived, a joy that encompasses the pain that underlies all human experience.