“‘I have struggled with depression ever since I was a small child. Circumstances and family dynamics contributed to this, but the fact is, I was born with what I have called ‘a hole in my head.’ I know this may sound ironic or even disrespectful, since I also have a literal hole in my head from the gunshot wound, but please hear me out.
“‘For decades before this shooting, I lived with this dark hole called depression. As an adult, I have had three nervous breakdowns and wrestled with suicidal thoughts. There are certain demons that we creatives face. For me, producing each novel was like giving birth, and afterward I always felt completely depleted. When this was combined with other difficult life circumstances, it became a perfect storm.’”
At this, I glanced over at Momma, who was sitting in her wheelchair. She was grasping Daddy’s hand, sitting erect in the chair and nodding slowly as the footage of Daddy continued to play.
“‘Back in 2007, I tried to take my life. Despite having a wonderful, loving family and community and a deep faith in Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I had slipped into a terrible spiral of hopelessness. By God’s grace, my attempt failed. My road back to mental and physical health came from my support group as well as mental health professionals and medication.
“‘Perhaps you have a loved one who is struggling. You may not understand this person’s suffering, but please don’t shame your loved one. I beg you instead to seek help.
“‘And if you are the one who is struggling, if you have thoughts of harming yourself, please hear me. Depression is a real and often silent killer, but help is available. It is not weakness to ask for help. It is self-awareness. Seek professional advice and take medication if needed.
“‘Please don’t believe the lie that the world would be a better place without you. You have something important to contribute to society. You are loved, you are important, and grace is freely bestowed to you by a loving God who values every human life. It’s why we celebrate Christmas. A Savior came to save us from ourselves.
“‘I am unable to communicate the depth of my gratitude at being alive. If God has allowed me to survive death twice, I believe He has work left for me. I do not know if I will be able to write another novel, but I can tell my story, and I am committed to working with organizations to raise awareness so that every individual has access to the assistance and services available to combat depression and prevent suicide.’”
On the screen Daddy was clearing his throat, and you could see tears in Momma’s eyes. Scrolling at the bottom of the screen all during this time was the number of the suicide hotline.
“‘God bless you all, and may this Christmas season be filled with wonder and grace.’”
When the report was over, Daddy turned off the TV. We all wiped a few tears and then sat in silence, embracing a holy moment, with the snow falling outside, clean and pure and new.
Daddy wheeled Momma into the dining room with the rest of us following. The cherrywood table was decorated just as Momma liked, with her fine bone china and silver flatware and crystal glasses. Because sometimes, she liked to say, occasions need beautiful things to help us celebrate.
———
Momma didn’t have any preconceived notions of what her honest avowal would do. None of us did.
In the next few days after the TV report, Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and the rest of the internet were filled with polarized responses. Many people posted comments saying I understand her, I’ve been there. But there were also those who disagreed about medication or felt Momma had no business “airing her dirty laundry” to the world.
Pinterest blossomed with all the cover photos of Momma’s novels and then beautifully decorated pins of quotes from the books.
Several big chain bookstores kept selling out of Momma’s books as people clamored for them. The perfect Christmas gift, the bookstores and online sellers proclaimed. Josephine Bourdillon’s novels speak of the grace she believes in and shares in her testimony with the world!
I visited Henry a few days after she made that public statement on TV. He got a good laugh when I said, “With all Momma’s truth telling, she’s probably going to lose some readers.”
His wide shoulders just started heaving up and down, and he laughed so hard he got tears in his eyes. “She may lose some Pharisees,” he said, “but I guarantee she’ll gain a lot of them real sinners.”
I thought Aunt Kit would throw one of her famous temper tantrums, calling Momma a hypocrite. But if she did, I never saw it. Instead, she visited often, always sober, and seemed to have a new love or awareness or caring or something for Momma.
Mrs. Swanson said, “Poor Josy. I always knew she was fragile. I should have watched her more carefully back then. I often wondered what the real story was.”
Most of our neighbors and friends showed compassion for Momma, many calling her brave to be so vulnerable, but there was also the inevitable whispered criticism from those who thought she was too outspoken or disagreed with her take on depression.
“Hypocrites,” I brooded.
“Humans acting like humans” was Drake’s answer.
JUNE 2016
JOSEPHINE
We’re here at The Motte, all of us—Patrick, Hannah, Paige, Milton, Drake, and me. There is an excellent rehab center and I also have my private physical therapist, Suzy, who comes each day.
I use a cane now—I don’t need a wheelchair anymore. I take off my sandals with Patrick’s help, and we walk onto the beach. I cry at the feel of the sand beneath my feet.
Hannah and Paige are absolute bathing beauties in their bikinis, their long hair whipping in the mistral, their bodies tanned. They kidded me that they were going topless at The Motte this year, like all the French girls, but it was just to get my reaction. Sometimes I laugh now when what I mean is to look shocked.
The girls love it. So does Drake.
I hope and pray that Drake will have patience to wait on Paige. She is a hot mess, as she says, but I believe he can handle her.
Sometimes I worry about her. She has the gift. The imagination as big as the world, the drive, the naïveté, too, that thinks she just might do something special. But she has something I don’t. She has grit. And I think, well, I pray that will protect her from the voices, the depression, the bad endings.
I take this time at The Motte with my family as a miraculous gift.
I breathe in God’s forgiveness each day and breathe out His grace.
So much grace.
Some people ask me what it’s like to be forgiven, to feel grace. It’s like walking on a long stretch of beach with nothing in sight but sky and waves and sand. With the sun piercing its brightness, the water tickling my toes, the roaring of the sea singing omniscience and power and yet, a deep peace, the waters changing from sandy brown to light green to a heavy blue, the waves cresting with the white peaks and then rushing to find my toes.
It is my Father’s love, as endless as the Mediterranean Sea when I stare out at it from where Patrick and Hannah and Paige and Drake and Milton are crowded around my chair.
I awoke from my coma, and that was the first miracle, considering the wound. But the second and bigger miracle occurred when I awoke to how much I was loved by God. It washed over me like a wave in the Mediterranean and drew me into blissful moments of hope and joy.
I had to get to the end of myself before I could figure out how to live again. I thought quite literally and horribly and morbidly that the end of myself was dying. Depression does that, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. We sensitive souls feel everything so deeply. Everything matters, and I could not differentiate between the really big deals and the big deals in my head that tormented me time and time and time again.
People have different reactions to suicide. Some get mad. How could that person be so selfish? Some get holier than thou. Well, he’s gone to hell—don’t you know it’s the biggest sin in the world to kill yourself? Some nod and say nothing because deep down inside they’ve had t
he same thoughts and that terrifies them.
But Henry, he had a different approach. He said that we humans are all real messed up and needing God’s forgiveness and grace. And in his words, I understood in a deeper way the gift of forgiveness that I gave to others but had such a hard time bestowing on myself or receiving from God.
Of course, Henry says it’s my stories that helped him find these things too.
I marvel that, when I finally came to the end of myself, what I found was a whole lot of grace.
Epilogue
JUNE 2018
PAIGE
Some people say Momma will never write again, but I know they’re wrong. She says I’m the one with grit, but she has it, too, in a soft and gentle Momma kind of way. She has a strong desire to tell the world more about her struggle with depression and her discovery of a deeper kind of grace.
I think it will happen.
After an initial drop in readership, the sales of her novels picked up again. Momma, true to her word, started a fund to provide money for people struggling with mental illness who could otherwise not afford help.
Henry passed his GED last month and has been accepted to college. He and Libby will both be attending the same online university. Jase’s face crinkles into this great mass of dimples when he explains that his parents are going to college from jail and from an apartment.
Charity Mordant got life in prison. She pleaded insanity, but the jury figured she had plenty of wits about her to torment Momma with letters for fifteen years and push her toward suicide and then plan the murder. And I think Detective Blaylock discovered a lot of other pretty horrible things she had done.
Nick Lupton had several aliases. When Detective Blaylock finally tracked down his different identities, he had a list of crimes long enough to keep him in jail for thirty years. But since he was the one to confirm Charity’s hiring him and his hiring Henry, plus giving the detective the names of other people he’d worked for, he got a plea bargain down to twenty years.
At Henry’s trial, nine months after his arrest, his young lawyer did a fine job of arguing his case and got his sentence moved from life in prison to twenty years, for which Henry and Libby were extremely grateful. In the meantime, Henry studies in his cell and leads a “Jesus study for sinners.” Every time he says that, I smile.
A person’s brain works differently after a traumatic head wound. Day by day we see incremental progress, but Momma will never be the same. “That’s a gift,” she says, and then she smiles a lopsided grin, but I read deep-down gratitude in her eyes. Sometimes Daddy will swoop her up and onto his back, and she closes her eyes and stretches out her arms, like she’s trying to capture the whole Mediterranean Sea in her grasp, and she laughs. Long and hard.
The doctors say it’s the brain injury that’s changed Momma. Her mind is just as sharp on the inside, but she expresses herself differently on the outside. We let the doctors think what they will. The nurse practitioner, the one who whispered hope to Momma on the hardest days and told me to keep my mouth shut and listen to Dr. Moore, well, she knows as much as I do—as we do (Hannah most of all, with her faith that never faltered)—that it’s not just the brain injury.
It’s grace.
We all look at life differently now. Henry taught us that. He was never afraid to ask the questions that no one else dared to ask, about hypocrisy and judgment and especially how Momma could write books of transformation and grace without really receiving those things for herself.
She receives them now. After all the years of struggle, of the dark hole in her head, as she puts it, she embraces life in a new way. As a gift. She will spend every ounce of energy helping others who are locked in depression, who have dark, even suicidal, thoughts, find hope.
I receive things differently now too. I came back from my rabbit trail about a year ago. Drake never pushed me, neither did Hannah or my parents. I just walked into it gradually as I watched Momma and Henry and others I love navigate their faith journeys.
Mostly, I guess Drake was right. Jesus wooed me back.
You listen to Momma’s story, and it’s sad and even tragic, but there is a silver lining of hope that enshrouds it like clouds hovering over the deep and varying shades of dark in the mountains. “Spiral up to hope,” Momma says in a voice filled with awe. “Spiral up to love. Spiral up to grace.”
I’m in college, majoring in English lit with a minor in creative writing. I’m doing college in three years. I’m in a hurry, I guess. I have a wedding to plan. Yes, I’m twenty, but in some ways I’m much older. And poor Drake, he’s been waiting for me for a long, long time.
Next year Drake and I will say “I do” in the tiny little chapel on Bearmeadow Mountain with our families around us, even Aunt Kit. Drake will be dressed in a tuxedo with tails and I will be in white with my hair piled high on my head and Momma’s Huguenot cross around my neck. Daddy will walk me down the aisle, teasing me and then pecking me on the cheek, and I’ll read a thousand expressions of love on his face. Hannah will stand beside me with a cascade of roses. And Momma will be sitting in the front row, petting Milton and wiping her tears and dreaming up another story as only dear Momma can do.
Acknowledgments
Ever since I was very young, I have struggled with low-level depression. I was the creative child with a hole in her head that no one could see. I often thought if only someone would come and plug up this hole I would be normal, like my friends. But if it got any bigger I would plunge toward mental illness, like other dear people I knew.
Many people have walked with me through the path of depression into freedom and hope. Some of them are in this book. To Fred O. Pitts, my friend and youth leader who said, “Elizabeth, blessed are the pure in heart. You’re seeking Jesus—He will be there for you”; to Marcia Smartt, who lovingly embraced me on a college ski trip and walked me through the valleys as dark thoughts whirled; and to many, many others I say, “Thank you. Thank you for being there, for speaking truth to me, for offering hope, for reminding me of my identity in Christ.”
I don’t have a Lucidity Lath like Josephine’s, but I have a collection of file cards from forty years ago up until the one I wrote today, filled with the truth of Scripture. I take daily walks and recite truth. Medication and other treatments have also been extremely helpful to me. I am deeply grateful for psychiatrists, counselors, and others who understand mental illness and offer a professional lifeline to those who suffer.
And so I say to any precious reader who is struggling with depression and dark thoughts: Please get help, in whatever form that may come. Help is available.
Watching my dear mother go through two open-heart surgeries and a massive stroke, I became all too familiar with hospitals and ICU units. I am forever indebted to the nurses and doctors, the chaplains and the staff who served us when we were in the midst of great shock and grief.
My family also experienced overwhelming love and support through the CaringBridge site, as well as through cards and letters and Facebook.
To Ike Barnett, thank you for helping me get into Detective Blaylock’s skin.
To my nephew and niece, Austin and Meggin Musser, merci for walking me through the process Henry faced as soon as he was arrested.
A huge merci to Georges and Susi Kohler, who opened their beautiful apartment at La Grande Motte to me for a sabbatical month. The Motte is where I began writing this novel.
To my agent and friend, Chip MacGregor: You have believed in me and my stories through all the ups and downs of my writing journey. Thank you for your wisdom, perseverance, and good humor. And always remember, Passez-moi les pommes de terre! Merci!
To Dave Horton, VP at Bethany House Publishers, what a delight to be once again working together on a novel. Thank you for believing in and championing this story. Je suis très reconnaissante.
To the wonderful team at Bethany House Publishers, I am thrilled to be working with you again. A big shout-out to Lucy Bixby, Noelle Chew, Kate Deppe, Elizabeth Frazier,
Amy Green, Brittany Higdon, and Brooke Vikla. Merci for all you do behind the scenes. Your expertise is invaluable and reassuring.
To my editor par excellence and dear friend, LB Norton, you are brilliant, and you make my stories shine more clearly (and yes, more succinctly). It is a privilege and joy to work together. You must never retire.
To Nichole Parks, my gifted marketing guru, your savvy and expertise have expanded my horizons. Plus you are a delightful young woman, and it is a joy to work with you.
To my Transformational Fiction prayer partners: Lynn Austin, Sharon Garlough Brown, Robin Grant, Susan Meissner, and Deb Raney, our monthly prayer times have indeed been a safe place for my soul. Thank you for praying me through a very rocky season in my writing life and for being dear friends.
To Jere W. Goldsmith IV, my precious and over-the-top generous daddy, and Doris Ann Musser, my energetic and lovely mother-in-law, and to all the others in the Goldsmith and Musser families, thank you for your support throughout all our years on the mission field and my years in writing: Jere and Mary Goldsmith, Glenn and Kim Goldsmith, Alan and Jay Goldsmith, Elise Goldsmith, H. A. and Rhonda Musser, Janet Granski, Scot and Carol Musser, Bill and Beth Wren, and all my nieces and nephews.
So many friends on both sides of the Atlantic pray for the work of my hands. I can’t begin to name them all, but here are a few: Valerie Andrews, Odette Beauregard, Cathy Stott, Dominique Cottet, Margaret DeBorde, Marlyse Francais, Kim Huhman, Letha Kerl, Deb Lugar, Laura McDaniel, Karen Moulton, Heather Myers, Trudy Owens, Michele Philit, Marie-Helène Rodet, Thom Shelton, Marcia Smartt, Cheryl Stauffer, Lori Varak, and Ashlee Winters.
To my family at One Collective, thank you for receiving what Paul and I have to offer with grace and for allowing me to pen my stories too.
To my sons, Andrew and Chris, I am in awe of the young men you have become. Your passion, kindness, professional acuity, and humor as well as your love and care for your little momma are blessings not taken for granted. To Lacy, I am so thankful to have you as a daughter-in-love. Thank you for being an amazing wife and mother. I admire you greatly, even if I never drink kombucha!
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