After dealing with depression, I desired to heal through my strong faith in God and believed continual prayer would heal my mind.  However, the emptiness grew deeper after praying, and the pain broadened. Therefore, I made the best decision of my life, to seek therapy and still pray.  

 

I fully understood the necessity of prayer. It was the pillar of strength my entire life and sustained me through some of the most challenging times.  Nonetheless, I acknowledged I needed to address the core hurt and learned through prayer and proper coping mechanisms that healing originates internally first and then manifests externally. 

 

My Christian teachings over the years instilled the importance of praying but did not effectively equip me on how to navigate through extreme and adverse emotional and mental situations.   Often times I would attend church service, pray, sing and then leave to go home feeling worse than how I entered. My depression began to rule my day-to-day routine, and my emotional mindset became detrimental to my rationale. 

 

Therapy helped me to regulate my emotions so that when I prayed, it was with joy and purpose, knowing that results, be it slow, was surely on its way. My mindset started shifting from negative to positive, but this would not have been the case had prayer and therapy not been coupled together.  

 

That one life-changing decision helped alter the trajectory of my journey, and because of that, I am on a mission to tell the faith-based community and the world that it is good to pray but PRAY and go to THERAPY.