Even If We Can’t Find Heaven: A Story of Love, Pain, and the Fight for Healing
There’s a song that carried me through the darkest season of my life—Rachel Platten’s Stand By You. It became my anthem during the most heart-wrenching moments of my daughter’s mental health crisis. I would listen to it on repeat whenever I felt like I had nothing left to give, when I was drowning in the weight of her pain and my helplessness. Even now, when it plays, I still ugly cry—because every word still echoes what I lived, what I felt, and the fierce love that refused to let go.
The lyrics speak to a kind of love that doesn't back down. The kind that walks through fire, lends strength when you have none, and stays when others walk away. That’s the love I had to learn to embody—not the easy, feel-good kind, but the kind that breaks, bleeds, and keeps showing up.
Before the Storm
A few years ago, my daughter experienced something I had never even heard of: cannabis-induced psychosis. Up to that point, I thought marijuana was mostly harmless. I’ve since learned better, but the guilt I carried for not knowing, for not protecting her, was crushing.
My daughter became a stranger to us. We didn’t know whether to grieve her loss or keep reaching through the silence to bring her back. Nothing prepares you for this kind of sorrow—when the body remains, but the mind has slipped away. It was a slow, aching kind of agony and helplessness.
Before this, our family seemed to have it all together. We shared a common dream—Zion. We were unified, loving, spiritually focused. I worked hard to present the image of the perfect family, partly because I so deeply crave acceptance. But it was more than just appearances. We really were trying. We made commitments to support each other, prayed together, read scripture, and truly sought to be one.
A Warning in a Dream
Just months before my daughter’s crisis, I had a dream. In it, my family and I were in a dark basement, and a demon blocked the stairs. We couldn’t escape until we brought in enough light to corner it. My husband commanded it to stay as we fled upstairs.
The upstairs was radiant—sunlit rooms with tall windows and beauty everywhere. We rejoiced in our escape, grateful and relieved. But then, as I looked toward the stairs, I saw the darkness still there, spilling slightly upward. “It’s still in the basement,” I said. “We’ll just stay out of the basement.” Then I woke up.
I didn’t understand then, but I do now: the demon was real. It was already in our foundation. My daughter’s breakdown didn’t summon it—it exposed it.
Isolation and the Wounds of Gossip
Once it surfaced, everything started to fall apart. People we considered friends turned away. Some were ashamed to be associated with us. Rumors started swirling—slowly at first, then viciously. I watched, in real time, how gossip grows. A seed of speculation becomes a whispered theory becomes a declared fact.
I’ve always hated gossip, but this experience ignited a holy rage in me against it. If you cannot confront the person you’re talking about in love and courage, you have no right to spread their story.
The Blessing of True Friends
In the aftermath, we were plunged into a kind of hell I never imagined. But amid the wreckage, a few faithful friends remained. They didn’t run. They didn’t shrink away in embarrassment or judgment. They stayed. They cried with us, prayed with us, and loved us in our brokenness.
> Mosiah 9:7
"Do you have a desire to enter God’s fold and be called His people? Are you willing to help carry each other’s burdens, to lighten them for one another? Are you willing to mourn with those who mourn, and comfort those who need comforting?"
Through them, we learned what it truly means to bear one another’s burdens.
When Despair Knocks
At my lowest, I couldn’t get out of bed for days. One night, I cried out to the Lord in desperation. In the dark of my shower, I saw her—despair, crouched beside me, pale and bony, weeping with such emptiness it chilled me. I wanted to run. Instead, I prayed.
As peace began to settle, I heard, clear as day: “Her name is Despair. Do not let her overtake you.”
> Isaiah 15:3
"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yea, I will help you, yea, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness."
That was my turning point.
Beauty From the Furnace
Since then, it has been a slow climb. A lot of trial and error. A lot of falling down and choosing, again and again, to stand up. We’re not at our goal yet, but we’ve gained something irreplaceable: authenticity, courage, and a refusal to let darkness define us.
> Isaiah 17:1
“Behold, I have refined you, but not with silver; I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction.”
I’ve come to understand that even affliction is a form of love when it refines us.
> 2 Corinthians 1:1
"Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them who are in any trouble by the comfort by which we ourselves are comforted of God."
A Song and a Stand
Through it all, that song has been our anthem:
> Even if we can’t find heaven, I’ll walk through hell with you...
Love, you’re not alone, ‘cause I’m gonna stand by you.
That’s what true love really is. Not polished perfection. Not unity without struggle. It’s standing by someone when the whole world walks away. It’s choosing light when darkness claws at your feet. It’s lending your wings when theirs are broken.
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Eventually, our daughter did return—but not untouched, and neither were we. None of us are the same as we were before. The ordeal left its mark on all of us.
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We still carry scars. But scars mean healing. And we’re learning—still learning—that heaven isn't a place we discover; it's a reality we shape. Often in our darkest moments, we build it by choosing to bring light: God's light, the truth He offers. We do this through acts of love, unwavering faith, and by walking with one another.
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