What I’m Learning About the Desire to be Healed From My OCD
I remember praying for healing.
I prayed for it while at a Catholic conference in 2011 — the first year of several where I realized JUST how much my OCD needed to change. I sent out a mass message asking people to join me in praying for it in 2013 when I decided to do a little side trip to the shrine of St. Dymphna (Patron Saint of Mental Illness) in Belgium while on vacation in France.
Then there was the time a friend and I participated in a casual, intimate anointing of the sick after a campus Mass in 2014, on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. My friend prayed for healing for a physical ailment. Our priest assured me I was welcome to come for mental healing.
I remember praying for healing at various adoration nights with the university Catholic group. There was even one time I knelt, looking at the altar linens thinking of the gospel story of the hemorrhaging woman. All it took for her to be healed was to touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak. I remember wondering if touching those altar linens could bring me healing, if I touched them with enough faith. Jesus was physically resting on those linens, was He not?
By this point in my OCD journey, I was touching most things through my sleeves. Or, if I needed to touch something bare handed, I had to wash my hands. Often more than once.
It made me wonder, if I were the hemorrhaging woman at this point in my life and needed to touch Jesus’ cloak to be healed, would touching it through my sleeve be good enough? Or would that instead show a lack of faith? If I truly had faith that the act would bring me healing, I would not need the protective layer over my hands. Jesus celebrated the hemorrhaging woman for her faith.
Would Jesus be disappointed in my lack of faith?
For years, as my prayers for healing went unanswered, the hemorrhaging woman and her faith — a faith I no longer felt I had — stayed in the back of my mind. Not that I felt Jesus was withholding healing because of my lack of faith. I simply began to think that maybe instead of my story culminating in a miraculous healing, mine was instead meant to be a story of embracing my cross.
I accepted my cross.
In 2015, I even gave a testimony at a retreat about finding God amidst some particularly tough OCD moments. At that point, I was aware my OCD was definitely not in the best place. But I did feel like it had at least plateaued. There were obviously some sanitizing habits that other people didn’t have to worry about. But overall, it was manageable. I was functioning.
Mary Beth Keenan, @mb_keenan.15.
Then, the pandemic hit.
The OCD I thought had plateaued began to spike to levels I never expected. Not only had I not been healed, I got worse.
Now, almost three years after the start of the pandemic, and over a decade since the year I realized my OCD needed to change, the idea of praying for healing is completely foreign to me. Both because the healing itself seems almost as impossible as raising the dead, and also because, deep down, I no longer want it.
It sounds silly to admit that. After all, when we hear the gospel story where Jesus asks the man if he wants to be healed, it seems like such an absurd question.
Who wouldn’t want to heal from something making them miserable?
Sadly, healing from mental illness is a lot more complicated than healing from something physical. A broken bone won’t try to tell you not to put it in a cast, but in many cases, mental illness has the unfortunate side effect of trying to convince you not to heal yourself.
Healing from mental illness can bring with it a number of different fears.
Fear of change.
Fear of uncertainty.
Fear of loss of control.
Fear of losing something that makes you, you.
Fear of eventually backsliding.
Fear of the journey itself, because healing is very rarely an instantaneous, painless, uncomplicated process.
Sometimes it's easier to just cling to what you know even if it isn't what's ultimately best for you.
In times like this, like in times of spiritual dryness when it is hard to pray, we are called to ask the Holy Spirit to pray what we cannot.
So these days, as I struggle to pray for healing, all I can do is pray instead for the strength to return to that prayer. To once again have that desire to be healed.
Meet Kayla Hart
Kayla Hart is from British Columbia, Canada, and has a degree in Writing from the University of Victoria. In addition to being a daughter of God, she considers herself a singer, an occasional playwright, and a musical theatre nerd. She dreams of one day moving to the South of France, and jokes that that must be where her future husband lives and why she hasn’t met him yet.
She initially joined the Live Today Well team as a photographer in 2020, then found her true place on the VOICES writing team and is now in her third year as part of this wonderful ministry. What began with a spur of the moment response to a call for photographers has truly become a gift from God in this season of her life. You can find her on Instagram as @hartofsilver and @hartofsilverproductions.