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ack in 2012, I felt like I had hit rock bottom. I’d suffered from serious back pain for years, and it was diagnosed as herniated discs in my lower back. I did all the things they told me to do, but the pain always returned.
In 2011, my husband, Michael, and I moved to Lewisville. During the move I damaged my back even more. I was only able to walk short distances at a time and was entirely dependent on pain medications to function in a job that required that I move around a lot. As I moved around less because of the pain, I’d gain weight, and that made the pain worse. All that, in addition to moving away from family and friends back in Lubbock, brought on a dark pit of depression like I’d never experienced before.
I felt like a complete failure and my mind was swirling with terrible thoughts about how I was of no use to anyone—that there was no reason for me to exist. For too long, I listened to all those lies that the enemy wanted me to believe, including the one that said, “Hey aren’t you a Christian? Christians shouldn’t have depression!”
I believed in God, and I was saved through faith in Christ Jesus, but I was not joyful. I had little peace, and my spiritual life was suffering from a lack of prayer and a lack of being in God’s Word. By 2012, I had undergone back surgery, and while much of the pain subsided, I was still in that dark pit that I could not climb out of.
In 2016, I got to attend a Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Women’s Ministry Forum, a forerunner of the She Stands conferences. During one of the sessions, a passage in Psalm 51 began to speak directly to my heart and it became my desperate prayer: “Lord, restore to me the joy of your salvation!”
“In my weakness, He is strong. My depression and sadness were lifted and replaced with peace, patience, and joy. The joy of the Lord has become my strength.”
So, I began to pray, I got back into the Word, and I asked God, “How do I have your joy restored to my life? Lovingly and gently, the Savior began lifting my face so I could see others who needed help, who needed prayer, who needed to be ministered to. It was as if I was having a conversation with the Lord:
“Lindsay, do you love me?”
“Yes Lord, I do love you.”
“Feed my sheep.”
We were members of Lakeland Baptist Church in Lewisville at that time, and God surrounded me with wonderful Christian women—just dear friends, great encouragers. And one of them really encouraged me to get back into Scripture and to start serving in the church in different ways. For me, the thing that helped most with my depression was helping other people and not focusing on myself. When I started to focus on my own problems, that was just a downward spiral. As I began to get out of myself and focus on God—what He has given me and what He’s gifted me to do and how that can be used to help other people—all of that just lifted so quickly.
In 2020, my husband’s company moved him to South Texas. We found out about a week after the pandemic took hold. Even though my company had no work-from-home policies, as most companies didn’t, I was basically able to keep my job. Now I work as a senior financial analyst in the same department, but I work from home in San Antonio.
When we moved to San Antonio, and as soon as we found a church home [Mission City], it was like, “Let’s put down roots, let’s start serving.” That was just not even a question. It was funny and ironic to me that the first ministry I served in was with kids because we don’t have children. A lot of people who know me know I wouldn’t look for that kind of ministry, but that’s kind of how God works. Sometimes He puts us in places we would never expect or choose to be, but I was able to serve our kids.
I was in the kids check-in area, an administrative role. I checked families in and helped them feel that their children were safe when they entered the church. I was the first face of hospitality as they came in. I so loved that.
About three months ago, our church launched a new campus location. My husband and I are on the trailer team. Our team drives in four 24-foot portable church trailers to a middle school where our new church meets every Sunday. That’s where I help now.
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