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Transcript

My story is one of being broken. I was a kid who grew up and had every opportunity I could. I had leadership experiences within every sports team that I played, and honestly, not a lot for me went wrong. I'd had every desire as a young child to serve a mission and to teach people about Jesus Christ. I got called to serve as a missionary in Argentina. Upon arriving there, I started to have really bad medical problems. I had migraines, and these migraines were so terrible that I stopped sleeping. And I remember, every day it was really just a miserable experience. I would sleep maybe two to three hours a night. When I woke up, we would wander the streets, and my head hurt so bad. And I started to experience severe anxiety and depression, but not realizing that that's what it was. It got to the point that it was so bad of rapid weight loss, weight gain, random dry heaving on the side of the road, and just praying every day, spending hours at night on my knees, just hoping that I could go to sleep and hoping that I could get out of this state. We had a leader that was over all of the missionaries of our area, and I had been discussing with him my struggles that I was having and how I could overcome them. And one day he called me and he said, "Do you trust me?" And I said, "Well, yeah, I trust you." And he goes, "Would you do anything I asked you to do?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "We're sending you home tomorrow." I automatically felt this lifted burden. It was humbling because they said, "You need to go to a psychologist." And I went to the first psychologist, and he said, "I don't know what's wrong with you. I can't figure any of this out." So I got referred to another psychologist. That is where my life changed. And I sat down with the psychologist, and he said, "What if you're never a missionary again? Are you OK with that?" And I said, "No." And he said, "Well, what if you have to be OK with it?" Over a series of months, he helped me realize that sometimes it's OK to accept what God gives you and to be humble enough to learn what He's trying to teach you. I had played sports my entire life, and if a coach told me that I was going to play a different position, I'd say, "No. I'll play the position I want to." Meeting with this psychologist--he told me sometimes you need to learn to play a different position in your life and be OK with it. And I became OK with that. He said, "There's this group of missionaries that had similar experiences to yourself, that still struggle with it years after the fact. And we study meditation." And my initial response was, "No, that's strange." I remember walking in and still feeling pretty broken and looking for peace in my life. Walking out that day, I felt a new person within me. I felt this sense of calmness that I had never experienced before. And I learned that sometimes the feeling of God or Jesus Christ in your life is just calm. And the second that we can let all of our worries and our distractions just vanish--just let them go away and let our mind settle down for a couple of minutes--it's that type of calmness that can help us see the reality of God's hand in our life. I had never felt His love or the emotions of a relationship with Christ on a day-to-day basis as much as I do now, because meditation has allowed me to be so open to the feelings that He can give me. I look back now and I realize that that was the most positive thing for me, because it gave me a chance to realize that it's OK to be broken. And I think God's grace lies in the fact that sometimes He'll break you down to build you up into a person that you've never been before. And I think for me that maybe I was too prideful in my whole life to realize that there was changes that I needed to make. And the grace for me was in the fact that it was OK to change and it was OK to be broken enough to realize that I needed a change. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Anxiety After My Mission

Description
When Cole experienced crippling anxiety for the first time he was nearly 20 years old and didn't know how to cope. With the help of loved ones and professionals, he found peace.
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