Who I Used To Be
surrounded by beer bottles and bibles
Dear 22-year-old Chanel,
It’s been about 11 years since we’ve spoken. Are things unmanageable enough yet?
I worry about you.
I think of you every time I decide to lash out at someone not acting the way I think they should. When someone asks if I’m giving myself grace, I wonder why I can’t give you more grace.
You’re 22. You’re waking up with empty beer bottles on the floor next to your parents’ futon.
The pink carpet of your childhood room that once held spreads of tarot cards at night has been replaced with wood laminate. Your bedside is littered with bottles and books — hard cider and IPA migrating between stacks of Carl Jung, Oliver Sacks, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and a giant Lutheran Student Study Bible.
Clearly, you’re unwilling to let your old identity go and it’s tumbled you to rock bottom.
Six months ago, your pastor back in Washington State mailed you that giant, maroon Bible by your request because you left your personal one back with your other belongings, tossed aside for other people to collect. In anger, you left the Bible behind with your clothes and furniture where your ex-fiancé packed up his own half of the apartment.
I can see you in flashes.
A morning headache reminds me of your morning hangovers before going to work the three jobs you insist on having, to prove that you are a functioning and healing person.
I see the broken mess of you begging others for attention that you should have avoided. I feel the emptiness as you come home at 1 am, knowing that you led yourself to another bad situation.
Why do you keep the Bible next to your bed? Why do you Google “I’m 22 and I don’t know what to do with my life” with the pairing of Ephesians and a hard cider open next to you?
God is begging you to recall the baptism verse the pastor had picked for you three years prior, before you decided to dismiss God’s calling for you and pursue the calling the world wanted from you.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.
Ephesians 5:8-10
You were brought up in a world that commercializes the pursuit of happiness and maintaining control. You’ll have to start reading scripture to get to on the right path. But know this: there is no happiness or peace if you cling so tightly to the control you find destructive comfort from.
The journey will be a long one, an imperfect one.
You’ll need to start talking about the hardships you’ve been through from a lens of responsibility and humbleness.
Nobody wants to talk about the trauma of your psychosis and hospitalization in the way you want them to, but you’ll have to lead the way. Lean into Ephesians during this time and recognize that your depression and anxiety, while biochemically genetic, are still rose bushes that need to be tended.
I wish you had tended to your garden sooner.
You’ve still got a long way to go. I wish you had weeded out the drinking and substance abuse, the pride that seeded distrust in others, and the relationships who kept you small.
You’ll find that Ephesians 2:4-5 says you were dead in your transgressions, “but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (emphasis added).
I think I have a hard time giving you grace out of my frustrations because I can see now that we wasted so much time pursuing the wrong identities. With the same power that erupted Christ from his grave, we have been given a faith that leaves our dead selves behind.
Yet, why do we drag these old ways around?
One day, you’ll wake up at 5 am surrounded by bibles and stuffed animals. You’ll go from needing the next drink or anxiety medicine to just deal with life to praying without ceasing.
By no means do you become a saint.
You are a living contradiction — or hypocrite as you once spit toward Christians — but you fully recognize this about yourself. It grieves you that you cannot seem to bite your tongue from internal judgment but over the years, you’ve found that you’re quick to repent and far less abusive toward yourself.
Repentance has become the key to freedom.
It’s not the feeling of constant guilt for your sins. It’s the pause before you openly complain you’re a victim or the regret you feel after you’ve judged someone too harshly for something you struggle with yourself.
With every pause, you grow closer to Christ. You have traded in the pursuit of “strong, independent woman” for "create a new heart within me, oh God.”
Dear 22-year-old me, I know you choose the more difficult path because you are determined to believe that help is a bad thing.
You must do it your way or you are somehow less of a person. This old belief in the false gospel of self-efficiency equaling salvation will often try to ensnare you as you follow the path of Jesus’s work being our salvation alone.
Today I will think of you with more softness.
I see you in the hard words of strangers and the angry women I meet. I see you in the dripping sarcastic and the hurt without hope. The ones throwing around scripture they don’t even put faith in as the word of God. The ones who do whatever it takes to avoid surrender.
There is nothing impossible with Christ.
It is possible to never think of suicide again, or drink, or smoke, or abuse medications. There is something greater to run toward than the pursuit of happiness.
There is peace in all circumstances.
2025 Mental Health & Motherhood Summit
Created by mothers, for mothers. Accessible pricing. Recordings that fit your schedule and over 24 speakers! Because your mental health matters, even when everything else is demanding your attention.
Join us to feel compassionate support October 10-11.
Tickets are now on sale for $25
You can also listen to the Meet the Speakers series for 2025!
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My husband and I have been contemplating what it means to share our testimonies with our daughter, Eliza, who is soon turning 4. It’s a big question for us because we weren’t raised in homes that did that sort of thing.
I forgot to tell you about June 1st
In all transparency, this is a hefty marketing email about the summit.
This is really beautiful and reveals such depth in your journey. The freedom found in repentance is an amazing grace from God. My flesh rebels against surrender but in Christ, my hope was found. I am so grateful to receive your motherhood minutes!! ❤️🙏🏻
This is really beautiful, Chanel. I felt the inner struggle. You tapped into our common humanity.