Cradled in the Arms of Jesus: A Story of Faith, Hope and Mental Wellness

By Phaedra Moll

Cradled in the Arms of Jesus is a self-help book for mental health recovery based on personal testimony. I began my journey with mental health challenges while in elementary school, possibly due to life challenges or perhaps due to head trauma. Either way, my first suicide note was written in third grade. Over the years many situations have arisen, causing ongoing mental health battles. But with a variety of tools, I have overcome and been successful in living a full life. The ingredients for recovery: medication, talk therapy, doctors you can talk with, a strong support system, and faith are detailed and encouraged in Cradled in the Arms of Jesus. The Christian faith is strongly encouraged. Scripture is used as a segue into each chapter. The reader is assisted in their faith journey with sample prayers at the end of each chapter. While the Christian faith is the focus of Cradled in the Arms of Jesus, I share that having faith in anything the offers hope is a good starting point. Faith and hope are important elements in mental health recovery. I offer suggestions of other things a person might find faith in. The important thing is to start somewhere in the faith journey. I reveal my own experience with mental health in hopes of offering hope and encouragement to others with mental illness, their caretakers, support system, and family. In a time when America is facing a mental health crisis, Cradled in the Arms of Jesus is timely.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645152828

Book preview

Journey

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. (Proverbs 3:5–6 NKJV)

Iwas in the third grade when I wrote my first suicide note. I lived in Maine and mailed it to my friend in Virginia. I didn’t think she would get the letter. I had sent her several correspondences and had no reply since she had moved the summer before, so I was surprised when she called me with grave concern and talked to me about my note. Where I came up with the idea of suicide at such a young age, I have no idea, but I apparently had that much pain inside me. My best friend moved away the summer before grade three, I had to change schools, I had to start riding a school bus, I was a latchkey kid. There were some other things going on in my home and life was simply hard in the mind of this middle child.

In fifth grade I started with self-harm. I even recall intentionally dropping my bed on my foot with the hopes of fracturing a bone. I merely sprained my foot and was left feeling depressed at my lack of ability to successfully fracture a tiny bone.

In seventh grade I had a lunchroom incident that led me to start restricting food. I had a mild eating disorder. It never resulted in hospitalization or anything like that, but my parents started monitoring my food consumption more closely because I had become a beanpole and had a couple of friends who had been hospitalized multiple times for their eating disorders. I had a tendency of claiming I was eating over at a friend’s house when I really wasn’t, and my parents caught on to my scheme. I even remember lying about my weight when I went to get my driver’s license. Although I didn’t say I weighed less, I said I weighed more than I actually did! Why? Because my dad was with me and I feared him knowing the truth.

My first actual suicide attempt didn’t occur until I was in my twenties and married. I had been dealing with tremendous back pain and was unable to work. I was going through physical therapy and injections in my spine and various medical treatments in hopes of avoiding surgery. As a result, I wound up leaving my job—something I loved doing—and I was so depressed. I struggled to sleep, eat, exist. One day I simply decided it wasn’t worth it anymore and I took a bottle of pills. Then I foolishly (or perhaps providentially) called my doctor’s office to tell him Thank you for trying so hard to help me, and they figured out something was wrong. Apparently, by the time people got to me, my lips were blue. This was the first of many attempts I had on my life.

After I became a mother, I was so happy…and yet so depressed. I couldn’t explain it. Our young family went through a lot of changes—the loss of a family patriarch, moving more than a thousand miles away from all family of origin, and drastic financial adjustments. I was trying very hard to take care of everyone else but couldn’t seem to take care of myself. After a while, I simply