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Preface0

P R E F A C E P019

Some people wake up happy.

Others wake up sad.

I am one of those other people. You know—depressed people. The ones who walk around the planet with puffy eyes and frizzy hair.

Or maybe, better said, I was one of those people.

My story is one of failure and success.

Defeat and victory.

Ignorance and wisdom.

But more than anything, my story is one of healing.

Growing up, I was a happy enough kid. Healthy family. Great parents. Middle class comforts. I was the archetypal artist—introverted, cre-ative, passionate, melancholy. But depressed? Never.

Fast-forward to the year after high school. Nineteen years old. Wrap-ping up my first year of Bible college. Something inside me changed.

Almost overnight.

It was May of 1999. I was living in Mexico for a few months, working at an orphanage for handicapped children. Life was good. I was with a crew of thirty guys, all close friends. We spent the mornings learn-ing the scriptures and the afternoons working around the orphanage.

P020

After growing up in Oregon where it rains year round, I was soaking up the Baja sun. But something inside me turned dark.

I started feeling sad.

Really sad.

I remember laying in my bunk at night and thinking, Why am I down?

Maybe I’m having a bad day, turned into maybe I’m having a bad week, turned into maybe I’m having a bad month, turned into what now?

By the fall I was a wreck. Completely falling apart. My emotions were slugging through the mud. On the outside my life was really good. I was walking with God, surrounded by family and friends. But on the inside, I was a nervous wreck—stressed out, scared, uptight, wound up, driven to insomnia by the what-ifs that plagued my mind.

My friends and family were at a loss. They had no clue how to help. Nothing was working.

I was miserable, unhappy, tired, despairing. It was my first real brush with anxiety and depression.

I still remember the feelings...

My chest feels like it weighs a million pounds. I feel pressure on the back of my neck. Breathing takes effort. My mind spins and leaves me dizzy. My hands hang down, heavy and numb.

P R E F A C E P021

I was barely functional. I would sleep for ten hours a night and wake up dead tired. I would read the scriptures for two hours a day and walk away breathing at best. I would pray and rant and hope and scream, but God was a concrete wall in the sky.

Dark.

Demonic.

Hellish.

These are accurate words to sum up two years of my life.

And hope starts flickering out. Will I always be miserable? Will I always feel sad? Is this just who I am?

Suicide sounds crazy and illogical…until you know what hell on earth is like.

It’s like drowning. Like someone holding your head under water as fear screams through your body.

It’s like suffocating. Like someone pushing your head into a pillow as you thrash about in violent panic.

It’s when you get so down, so miserable, that death sounds like the ultimate release. You will do anything to stop the pain.

Every night I would drive over the I-5 freeway on my way home. I re-member the taunting screams of the overpass…

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Yank the steering wheel to the right.

End the pain.

Why go on living? You will be like this forever. There is no hope.

Death is the only escape.

By the grace of God, my tires stayed inside the white lines.

I was, and still am, a follower of Jesus. I knew right from wrong. Sui-cide is the easy way out, for the lazy and weak.

I remember thinking, I can stay alive, but I can’t go on living like this.

After a few years, it came to a head. I hit rock bottom.

And he found me there. Torn apart. Beaten up. All that was left were scraps and pieces of the man I used to be.

I will never forget the day. Right in the middle of all my misery. Despair was looming like a monster in the dark. I was at church. I had just fin-ished teaching for a Friday night gathering of college students called The Way. I was standing by the stage, faking it to a huge crowd of people pressed all around me, when a stranger walked up to me. She looked at me in a really awkward way and said nothing. I stretched out my hand to break the silence, still faking a smile and hiding the all-too-real pain inside.

“Hey, my name’s John Mark.”

P R E F A C E P023

I will never forget her short, terse words…

“My name is Hope.”

Everything was a blur after that. I think she turned around and walked away, melting into the crowd. I have no idea who she was. I never saw her again. But when she spoke those four words, it was like God was screaming at me from heaven.

Hope!

John Mark, don’t give up. Healing is possible…in me.

I wish I could say healing came then and there—that God hit me with a lightning bolt, knocked me out, and when I came out of it I was as sanguine and happy as San Diego on the Fourth of July.

In reality, that day marked the beginning. God started me down the long, hard, brutal, difficult, amazing, transforming, saving path to-wards healing that day. It would take many years, include highs and lows, and follow the pattern of “three steps forward, two steps back.” But at least now I was going somewhere. Hope breathed motion into my sails and catapulted me onto the longest journey of my short life.

This book was born out of my story. My journey from brokenness to healing. From anxiety to peace. From depression to joy.

I am not a doctor.

I am not a therapist.

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I am not a psychologist.

I am a follower of Jesus who went through the horrors of anxiety and depression and came out the other side—stronger, wiser, and with more joy than I ever thought possible.

Don’t get me wrong. There are still days when I fight to wake up on the right side of the bed. I am a work in progress. But Jesus is remak-ing me from the inside out. I am a new man.

My goal through this book is to pass on the wisdom I learned from my years in “the valley of the shadow of death.” My prayer is that you—wherever you are coming from— would find hope in the healing, sav-ing, redeeming Person called Jesus.