My Crashing Story - Crashed to Called

But then God called me by his grace, and he chose me from birth to be his. —Galatians 1:15

I was born on a humid Hawaiian bathroom floor in a beanbag chair on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. I was delivered by a mechanical engineer and named by the Holy Spirit when I took my first breath. As soon as my dad (the engineer) caught me, surprising even himself, he announced in a deep, loud voice, “Rebekah!” My birth story gave me anxiety my whole life—no hospital, no nurse, no doctor, no name planned for me. It was just my parents, a beanbag chair, and God!

How could these be my parents? I like to have a plan, calculate arrival times, prefer comfort, and welcome the wisdom of doctors in my life. I asked my dad once what training he completed to deliver me and the seven other siblings who followed me. He answered, “I just read a fireman’s manual.” Seriously? 

As I reflect on my birth story, by God’s grace I can now look past the crazy and see the comfort of my birth. One crucial fact turned my previous anxiety into permanent peace: God chose me at birth to be His. My earthly father gave me a name that God selected. Galatians 1:15 says, “But then God called me by his grace, and he chose me from my birth to be his” (tpt). God called me by name at birth. Out of His love for me, God chose me, at birth, to live called by grace.

Crashed, courage, conquer, comfort, cured, completed, and called are seven words to describe a three-year journey of transformation that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The codependent crazies led to a chaotic state that eventually cracked me, forcing me to start a journey from crashed to called. 

Crashed  

Forty-one years after my birth, I encountered God’s transformative love crashing into my heart during a difficult season. It was in a time of physical, emotional, and spiritual crashing that the truth that God loves me moved from my head to my heart. My crash story was a classic case of leader burnout from a life of too much—too responsible, too fast, too busy, too stressed, too tough to feel, too prideful to ask for help, too much family tension, too much trauma—and not enough sitting with my Creator, resting and allowing Him to care for my soul. 

Out of His love for me, God chose me, at birth, to live called by grace.

One day I woke up and couldn’t move. I had been like the Energizer bunny, and my batteries suddenly went dead. I was in stage four adrenal failure, my thyroid was in serious trouble, and my hormones were out of whack. Over the years, I had trained my brain to not listen to my body, but my body overrode it and quit on me. I went from running ten miles in a day, parenting three children with a husband who traveled weekly, leading a Bible study, and being president of way too many organizations to not being able to simply walk upstairs for months. I entered a complex process of healing. It’s a form of torture to stop someone so energetic from moving and doing. I kept asking questions: When can I run again? When can I do for Jesus again? In my screwed-up theology, I believed that God needed me to do for Him in order for me to be loved by Him. In my overdoing, I reached a level of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain that I couldn’t work my way out of on my own, so it was time to ask for professional help.     

Courage

It took outrageous courage to face my situation: courage to physically rehabilitate from a place of not being able to run, walk, or even move for months, courage to feel and deal with unresolved emotions, and courage to face areas of my soul I had hidden from God and others for too long. While facing suppressed emotions, I started to recognize and experience fear and extreme sadness for the first time. I didn’t know how to identify fear because I had controlled it by numbing my emotions with busyness and over-exercising. Once I ripped off the bandage, I awakened to fear and realized it was the root of my anxiety, allowing panic and pain to set in. I had to press in to God’s truth like never before because the panic trapped me in a place of isolation. It took courage to push through the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. The only way out of undesirable emotions is to proceed through courageously.

It’s no coincidence that the counselor God guided me to for professional help is the author of a book called Courageous. Through my years in counseling and emotional processing, I gleaned the emotional concepts needed to become courageous. My counselor taught me that a courageous woman faces her situation with bold courage. She feels to heal, embraces the rainbow of emotions, recognizes denial, regulates her emotions, identifies her feelings and connects with the emotions of others, and runs toward emotions instead of away from them. 

Conquer 

My counselor’s guidance gave me the courage to conquer my fears and begin my recovery. She was able to see what I needed and guided me to recovery from codependency. Codependency is a complex term that is difficult to define clearly, but the side effects of my codependent behaviors were causing much of my anxiety. A few definitions that resonate with me are: 

• “A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior. The other person might be a child, an adult, a lover, a spouse, a brother, a sister, a grandparent, a parent, a client, or a best friend. He or she could be an alcoholic, a drug addict, or a mentally or physically ill person.”[i] 
• Codependency is “a theory that attempts to explain imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's self-destructive behavior such as addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.”[ii]
• “Codependency involves a habitual system of thinking, feeling, and behaving towards ourselves and others that can cause us pain. Codependent behaviors or habits are self-destructive. We frequently react to people who are destroying themselves; we react by learning to destroy ourselves. These habits can lead us into, or keep us in, destructive relationships, relationships that don’t work.”

Regardless of the exact definition, I slowly came to understand that codependency was something I needed to recover from since I was raised with parents who were both codependent, am married to an addict, raised a son with mental health struggles and behavioral issues, have several alcoholics in my life, etc. I needed to heal from codependency and own the controlling behaviors that were harming me. According to Melody Beattie, “codependents are the people who consistently, and with a great deal of effort and energy, try to force things to happen.” That was me.

I decided to take my healing seriously when I was put into a social timeout. I wanted to uncover the root of my fear and conquer it. I’m not sure when fear crept into my heart, but it was in my head, body, and home, killing all of us. 

While raising a son with ADHD, anxiety, seasonal depression, and autoimmune disease, I witnessed his anxiety come out as explosive anger most of his life. One day, when my son was eighteen, I was journaling to process my emotions and practice detaching from his behaviors, and the Lord took me to a memory of being pregnant with my son and a moment when I believe the fear took root. I was hiking with my husband, and we got stuck on a cliff, forcing us to either jump thirty feet to safety or get trapped by the water. After forty minutes of staring off the cliff and allowing panic to set in, I finally jumped. I hit the ground hard, and my mind went wild, thinking I would lose the baby from the impact. I felt scared and alone. At this point in our marriage, my husband was knee-deep in chemical addiction and unable to comfort me emotionally, which only reinforced the feeling of being alone. Looking back, I now understand that I was struggling with codependency. My husband’s drinking and drug use were negatively affecting me. I was getting sucked into the disease of worrying and trying to control his behaviors, quickly losing my joy and peace in the process.

God showed me that jumping off the cliff was the moment I had partnered with a lie that subconsciously gripped my heart and was stealing my joy. I believed my son would die from the fall, and at some level, that lie had impacted my reality for his whole life. He didn’t die, but we battled sickness for years. I spent his childhood trying to fix it, solve it, and figure out a cure. It caused enormous fear for him and me. I confessed to partnering with the lie, handed it to God, and waited to hear His truth. I heard God say, “I created your son, and I will sustain him; he didn’t die and will not die; he is an overcomer.” This truth conquered and silenced my fear and released me from the lie and the desire to control anyone’s behavior but my own. Fear and love can’t coexist. First John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” After that day, I felt a level of freedom I had never felt before. God’s love and truth conquered my fear, set me free, and led me to a new level of faith.

Conquering fear, codependency, and controlling behaviors was a process for me, but recognizing the deep-seeded lie from the enemy was the beginning. I meditated on these scriptures any time fear tried to creep back in: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.…Fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” (2 Timothy 1:7, nkjv; 1 John 4:18). Meditating on God’s love conquered my fear. 

Comfort

God’s miraculous signs and wonders were an incredible source of comfort during my healing process. There were dark days, lonely days, hard days, and days when I would walk around the block and then nap for three hours to recover. Healing took one step at a time, one day at a time, uncovering one lie at a time, and receiving one truth at a time. During the journey, I saw multiple rainbows on the dark emotional days reminding me to trust God throughout the process. A few months in, I went on a work trip with my husband. While I rested in a hotel, I read the book Scary Close by Donald Miller. In the book, this guy was experiencing extreme pain from a family situation and was praying for restoration. He walked outside and saw a whole rainbow. God reminded him to trust the promise that He would reconcile, revive, and restore his family. 

At that exact moment while I was reading, I saw a whole rainbow out my hotel room window. I felt God’s love comfort me through the rainbow and couldn’t believe the incredible timing. I must not have acted enthusiastic enough, so God sent another rainbow the next day at the same exact time. In the isolation of a hotel room, I came to believe I was not alone. I saw twelve more rainbows over two years as I healed. Every rainbow felt like God’s comforting love appearing at the perfect moment of loneliness and despair. In Terra Mattson’s book Courageous, she shares a rainbow moment and follows with this thought, “Rainbows require both rain and sunshine for such a beautiful phenomenon to occur. Such is life. The moments of amazing wonder, the grace that sustains us in hardship, the fact we are never alone—all these realities can help us keep our footing when the storm comes.”

Cured

It was two years and three months of pain and waiting in a posture of total surrender. Then the Lord showed up and cured me. While I was feeling much better, especially after an experience at a waterfall when God enabled me to run again, I wasn’t 100 percent. Healing can be an event, but it can also be a process; sometimes it is both an event and a process. I struggled with adrenal fatigue and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and my right leg didn’t have full power. Most people get PTSD from war, but I had multiple levels of clinically diagnosed PTSD from the mental health war that went on in our home. I hit my limits, and my body cried for mercy. I was desperate to return to feeling like myself, so I decided to attend a four-day healing conference to pursue my 100 percent. 

• On day 1, I felt some old panic creep back in and was freaking out in the chaotic setting with thousands of people and loud noise. A friend said to me, “That’s great news. Can you press past the panic? Panic can surface before a breakthrough.” I trusted her enough to stay, but I was miserable inside. The blaring music activated my PTSD, and I wanted to take flight. 
• On day 2, I went forward for prayer and asked for healing for my lame right leg. The young man prayed. I tested my leg, and nothing improved. He prayed again, and there was still no improvement, but I started to feel an overflowing joy enter my heart. The joy continued to increase, and I was cracking up with laughter by the night’s end. I even woke myself up in the night, giggling and snorting. The joy, drained by years of a challenging marriage and hard parenting with unhealthy codependent patterns, seemed to be crashing in. I received joy!
• On day 3, the man preaching said, “You have to go through the process to get to the promise.” I was transfixed and listened to every word he preached. After he spoke, he asked everyone with PTSD to stand for prayer. Standing up with my right hand on my head and left hand on my heart, tears streamed down my face as he prayed, and supernatural air shot through my brain. Then ice and heat started to circulate through my right leg. I tested the leg, and although it was still a no-go, I knew the PTSD was healed. I ran to the front and said to the speaker, “You, me, now. You’re my guy! Will you pray over me?” Peace immediately flooded my mind, and the presence of the Lord covered my entire body after his prayer. I received peace!
• By day 4, I had complete faith that more healing was coming. I asked again for healing over my right leg. Three people prayed over me. I tested the leg and said, “Nice try, but nothing.” They prayed again. I stretched the leg, but it was once again a no-go. After they prayed for the third time, I felt ice and heat come over my hip and leg, then felt a supernatural power that was new to me, and all pain left my leg. I tested it for the third time, and it was completely pain free. I was overflowing with hope. I had been to over one hundred massages, physical therapy appointments, doctors, and acupuncturists, but no one could heal my leg. God cured the impossible! I received the healing! 

God’s supernatural joy and peace cured what no doctor could cure. I received joy beyond words, I was filled with peace beyond understanding, and my hope was restored—in addition to the healing. Before my trip, I had been camped out on this verse: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you will overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). God brought this verse to life for me and in sequential order, which blew my mind. His hope cured me!

Completed and Called

During this time of not being able to move physically, produce, teach, speak, or lead, I learned to be truly loved by God for who I am and not what I do. Throughout my healing process, I experienced God’s love crashing into my heart and soul and healing my faulty belief that I was only loved for what I could do. Amidst the crash, God called me into a deeper relationship, a deeper knowing, a more profound way of being, a deeper truth of His love that transformed me. God’s love moved from my head (knowing) to my heart (experiencing). My anxiety coping strategy of busyness was stripped away during my season of stillness. 

Galatians 5:14 says, ““For love completes the law of God. For all the law can be summarized in one grand statement; ‘Demonstrate love to your neighbor, even as you care for and love yourself’” (tpt). God’s love completed the process that He started in me. He didn’t leave me broken and lifeless. His love that called me by name at birth continually comes crashing into my heart, conquers my fears, comforts my soul, cures all sickness, changes me, compels me to show His love to others, and completes what He started. I crashed and died to an old way of being, and now I am becoming someone who lives called!  ~ Rebekah Cancelosi