Good morning…
At age 92, Betty Skinner is living Betty Skinner very, very well. Yet, as The Hidden Life Awakened by Dr. Cathy Snapp and Kitty Crenshaw creatively chronicles, for many years Betty stayed stifled beneath her smiling, southern role, silencing her special, sacred soul. With God hiding my updated edition somewhere in my home, I am coaxed to climb between the covers of my old, tattered copy of The Hidden Life published in 2006. This love-worn book has dog-eared pages, underlinings galore, and my own meaningful musings in the margins. I am drawn to an excerpt from the moment Betty Skinner begins doing Betty Skinner really well, when her clinical depression admits her to the local psychiatric ward at age 42.
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Living with depression is a horrible way to live because it is a living death. It felt like a twenty pound weight had been strapped on my back and I just couldn’t get it off. Nothing excited me or challenged me. I couldn’t sleep. I had lost my appetite because food had lost its flavor. I couldn’t concentrate. I would pick up a book but couldn’t read it; I just held it. It was a tremendous struggle just to exist. Those closest to me couldn’t help because they felt very threatening, so I pushed them away. I withdrew into a void of nothingness, which is the pit of despair – the weight of depression.
For me, the movement toward healing required a complete surrender. God is always saying to us, “If you will give Me everything, I will give you everything.” It is a constant coming, a constant offering, a constant struggle to let go in order to move to a deeper communion with God…
When I packed my little blue bag to go to the hospital I said, “All right Lord, I’ve been reading about what a good Christian woman should do and how she should live her life, but I want to say to You, Lord, that isn’t working for me. You promised me joy. You promised me peace. You promised me wholeness, and I’m not experiencing any of this. My life is a total disaster. There’s got to be another way. I do not doubt Your promises, but I don’t understand how to find them.” (58-59)
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Suffering, suffocating beneath our role, we can stifle the growth of our special, sacred soul. Surrendering constantly in communion with our Creator, “I give You everything; You give me everything,” our true self continues to be reborn. Jesus answered… “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless a person is born again [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, sanctified], he cannot [ever] see and experience the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, AMP).
…Sue…
P.S. To receive your complimentary copy of The Hidden Life Awakened, please register in the next twenty-four hours for one or both days of our Awake To Wellness Women’s Retreat with authors Dr. Cathy Snapp and Kitty Crenshaw. Explore details and register at stphilipscathedral.org/awake
