Fourteen years ago, I got very sick. I was in graduate school studying opera. My hands shook incessantly, my heart raced, and my emotions plummeted. I was not myself. For nine months straight I did not sleep, and I felt like a madwoman.
I lost thirty pounds, and once my bones crept up to the surface of my skin, demanding to be seen and heard, demanding to be noticed and pushed back down again, my voice teacher told me I looked like “an Auschwitz victim.” He accused me, despite my protests, of disordered eating. The entire voice faculty at my conservatory did. They did not trust my explanations, though they knew me well; I was their graduate assistant.
That chapter of my life became a series of frustrations and disappointments. There was the boyfriend who struggled to understand what I was going through. There was the roommate who witnessed the fallout. There were friendships I could no longer nurture. There was the Hopkins physician who, when I said, I think it’s my thyroid, responded with, No, you are just anxious and depressed.
Months later, my health spiraling downward, misdiagnosis wreaking havoc throughout my system, everything was getting worse. My vocal cords thickened from hormone imbalance, and my voice went suddenly hoarse, which is a hard way to spend hours singing each day.
Around that time, after I asked for help repeatedly, after I let a psychiatrist clinical and deranged enough for American Horror Story evaluate me, a doctor discovered that my pituitary glad had stopped working. She suspected adrenal failure. When she used the word “life-threatening,” I panicked.
She sent me to an endocrinologist right away, who finally confirmed that I had been right all along. The problem was my thyroid.
It took some time, once I got that diagnosis, for my endocrine system to heal. My thyroiditis was categorized as “silent,” which made it hard to detect. It was an autoimmune disease, meaning that my own immune system had attacked my thyroid. And its attempt to destroy that vital little gland almost destroyed me.
***
The months following my diagnosis were optimistic but harrowing. Newly medicated, having jumped through the escape hatch towards healing, my spirit felt refreshed by the thought that I might find stability again. But the endocrine system affects our moods, energy levels, and stress responses, among other things, and after having gone so far off the rails, my body needed time to regulate.
I moved forward delicately, sensing I was not quite yet on solid ground. My emotions stabilized, but slowly, and my mood was often low, depression and anxiety having been one symptom of my illness. I gained a little weight back; my relationship ended; and I completed the performance requirements for my degree, which were postponed when I reached my worst.
Around that time, noticing my struggle, a few friends offered their support, and I was happy to take it. But one of them, from her spot supposedly in my corner, had a take on the situation that surprised me.
“I know one thing,” she said to a mutual friend of ours. “That girl… needs god.”
When I heard what she said, it took a second to realize that the girl in question — the girl she thought needed god so desperately — was me.
***
The idea that someone suffering from depression might just need more Jesus was not new to me. I grew up in a small-town evangelical church, which, in the ‘90s at least, encouraged prayer and counseling — with pastors, not psychologists — over real mental health intervention. Seeking therapy outside the church did not seem like an option. At the same time, I observed firsthand in my family that “turning to Jesus” was not a sufficient way to heal mental and emotional turmoil.
When my friend said, at one of my lowest moments, that I simply needed god, I felt betrayed. After a year and a half of serious mental, physical, and emotional mayhem, and being accused repeatedly of having an eating disorder by mentors and friends, it felt like another accusation. Another person I trusted who thought I was wrong.
I had counted on this person to witness my hardship without judgment, but in the end, I felt judged. Yet even back then, I understood that every person’s spiritual path is personal to them, and that my friend had no way to evaluate the nature of my connection to anything.
She was not the authority on god, and neither was the style of Christianity she practiced and projected onto me. Its boxes and assumptions — its spirit of lack — were unwelcome in my book.
In that moment I time-traveled back to childhood and remembered how often the church said I was not good enough, and how the churchgoers I knew assumed every person in crisis needed more Jesus. Yet in truth, many of them needed medication. Or a more equitable and loving society. Or therapy. Or childcare. Or a divorce.
Today I believe that divine connection — recognition of some creative organizational intelligence beyond ourselves — can always offer support, hope, and peace amidst chaos, but in matters of health, and in my case, prolonged hormone and chemical and endocrine disruption, real medical intervention and time for healing are paramount.
Despite knowing the ins and outs of my roller coaster ride with the healthcare system, my friend thought my efforts — which included a year and a half of self-advocacy, little old me versus one of the most respected medical communities in the country — were not enough. My hormones could not be that powerful, she implied. I would be less depressed if I just had her god.
***
Lately, I have been thinking about this experience, not with bitterness or contempt, not with any regret, but almost laughingly, like hey, the joke’s on you, like oh, you had no idea. Because thirteen or fourteen years later, having spent a lot of time asking myself and others questions about meaning and purpose and interconnection and spirituality, I have never been more certain that I have god.
Girl needs god, my friend once said. Girl had god, I would tell her now. She had her all along.
My favorite part about this story is that the god I have, and you have, too, does not look like the one she thought I needed. I do not say lord or son or father. I do not dwell on sin. I do not stuff the mysteries of the cosmos in a box.
But I do have god. In all her shapes and sizes. In her glory, love, and weirdness. I have god in her big surprises and her wonder. In goosebumps on my skin.
She is there — god herself! — in the way I move, the frenzy with which I cross my ts. Scrambled eggs. Smoking wood. Nonstop kisses from my dog.
I have god; I always did; I know that now
You have god
She is in my joy
in my freedom
in my voice
God is simple: She is something greater than ourselves. Something beyond us. Source energy. Creative intelligence at work — the universe — patterns of nature — patterns that heal and protect.
Call her whatever feels nourishing. If there is one thing I learned in these fourteen years it is that
She does not mind.
She does not mind.
She does not mind at all.
Between you and me—
Ever since this experience, I have encouraged all my friends to be their own advocates in healthcare. I learned the hard way that doctors don’t always get it right, and what shows up “within normal range” in blood work may not be normal for you. The interesting thing is that some of the things that stemmed from this difficult chapter — leaving music professionally, leaving the wrong relationship — may not have happened without it. So who knows? It all worked out in the end, and it nudged me towards becoming the person I was meant to be.
We are Down South this week for John’s final music director interview of the season. It has been a big spring for him, bigger than we expected this year coming out of Covid (well, not out of Covid, but out of the phase where orchestras didn’t play because of Covid). This one is in Western North Carolina, which is lovely, with a magic all its own. The concert was originally scheduled for spring 2020, so here we are two years later, finally watching it come to life.
With more excitement on the horizon for my family, there is always a thing to schedule, problem to solve, question to answer, or hurdle to jump. It puts me in a charged-up state, so I have been reminding myself lately that sometimes inaction is the best action to take. A soothing mantra: Life will reveal itself to me. All I have to do is pay attention.
Thank you so much for being here — take care out there.
The audio version of WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE is published every Wednesday. Last week’s, which was about glimpsing heaven in the everyday, even during stressful times, is available on Spotify, Apple, Substack, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE is written by Lauren Maxwell. Can you help us grow? Send this to a friend and ask them to subscribe. Share it on Instagram and tag @lauren_only. You can also become a sponsor, which makes this publication possible! Every gesture of support is deeply appreciated.
Helloo, this one has to be one of my favourite pieces of yours :") Thank you for sharing it with the world <3