Carrie: So I dragged you up up here to record a podcast episode?
Steve: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: And I didn’t even tell you what it was about, did
Steve: I? Nope. I got nothing. No video, no nothing. It’s all good. All about surprises.
Carrie: I actually wanted to talk with you about uncertainty. And kind of dealing with uncertainty on a spiritual level.
Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower wife and mother licensed professional counselor who helps Christian struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you.
With practical tools for developing greater peace, we’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you.
So let’s dive right into today’s episode. Uh, always a jokester. If you haven’t met my husband here, this is Steve, and we have some new listeners here, and we’ll give the very abbreviated version of your story. So when our daughter turned six months old, he got diagnosed with Sino, cerebellar ataxia, or SCA for short, which radically changed our whole life trajectory.
You were staying home with our daughter, so you had already quit work just ’cause of all the health issues that you were having, but. We then filed for disability. Once we knew what you actually had. Once you had a diagnosis and you stopped working, stopped driving, it was a big change and a big life shift that happened.
Yes. Talk to us about kind of now we’re three years past that and if people wanna go listen for more details, if that’s super interesting, you can go back and listen to our anniversary episodes. We can link some of those in here for you. I feel like you do really well living day by day and walking through this journey, and so, so many people, and myself included, I have in the past, even with this issue, get really hung up on the future.
What’s gonna happen? I don’t know. How am I going to handle this? It could be anything. It could be what if my company lays me off and we don’t know how to pay our bills? It could be, what if something happens with one of my children? What if I die? People face all kinds of uncertainties that they then can obsess about.
Mm-hmm. With OCD and OCD can take uncertainties that we all deal with in our life and just blow them up to a whole nother level. So these are things that people struggle with, but I kind of wanted to talk about it to you from a spiritual perspective, just of how do you deal with the uncertainty of having a chronic condition that is a degenerative neurological condition.
We basically affects your balance. It affects your vision, it affects your memory, it affects all kinds of things throughout your body because it’s a nervous system disorder, and we in essence don’t know how this road is going to go. We don’t know. There’s so many different types of ataxia. We don’t know what type of attacks say you have.
We’re hoping to get some genetic testing, but even with that, that’s not really gonna give us a ton of information necessarily. This is a rare disease. Mm-hmm. Like how are you navigating this?
Steve: Well, first, before everything happened, I was a lot more of a nervous person. I worried about tomorrow a lot more than I do now.
I’m a planner, so I may not outwardly say things, but inwardly I’m like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna make this? After I got diagnosed though it was a blessing in that I just had to worry about how I felt today. Okay. Worry’s probably the wrong word. If we’re gonna be spiritual, I shouldn’t be doing that.
But I had to focus on today. We’ll say that. When I first got a, it was hard. It was an extreme life change. Everything changed. Yeah. And having a child, a newborn is difficult enough. It’s a blessing, but man, is it difficult. Such a change up, especially when you’ve been single for so long and then you get married, have a child, things change.
Add a disease to that, and it really throws things around a little bit. So once I got past that initial shock and was able to accept, okay, I have this disease, I can’t wrap my head around what exactly I have because there’s so much that’s unknown about it. Or what will become of it? Is it gonna get better?
You don’t know. And after a while you just learn. I’ll take it day by day. Yeah. That’s just what I have to do.
Carrie: I just wanna hop in here and say, that’s super relevant for our folks dealing with OCD. I think even just getting to that point of acceptance of the diagnosis can be super hard. Even just sitting with that and saying, okay, I thought maybe I just had a little anxiety, but then things got really bad and I got diagnosed with OCD.
I didn’t expect to be going through this challenge. Or sometimes it can be like one event that triggers them into this tailspin where then they’re not eating and sleeping and they’re highly distressed. Mm-hmm. Or having difficulty working. So it’s different for every person, but for some people it can really knock them kind of off course pretty quickly.
And that acceptance piece of like, oh, now life is different because now I’m having this to navigate. Is really, that can be hard. I like what you said about, there is some level where you have to accept like, okay, this is where we’re at right now.
Steve: Yeah. This is it.
Carrie: This is what we’re dealing with.
Steve: Yeah. And I think I had to accept that every day might be different.
Today might be a lot of pain, tomorrow might not. Yeah. But today’s today. Mm-hmm. So what am I gonna do about today? I have to choose joy. I have to choose to be happy. Somehow. I have to do what I can to be happy. So I wake up and I go, okay, how am I gonna complain less? My wife would probably appreciate that.
Or how am I gonna just have a smile on my face? How am I gonna play with my daughter today and make her laugh? Maybe I don’t have the energy to jump around or hit a ball with her, but I can make her laugh. I can talk with the toys, and those things make me happy seeing. My family happy, makes me happy. So I had to find purpose.
Okay, God, what is my role? It’s very different from the average person, and that’s tough, but I didn’t want what I had to be a life sentence.
Carrie: Yeah,
Steve: Because I think if you consider whatever your thing is as a life sentence, that’s gonna bring you down. That’s the only option. There’s no way out because you think you have a life sentence.
If you think, okay, how can I use what I have to make others happy? How can I be happy with what I have and make the best of it? What can I do today? And then each day I found my attitude changed a little bit. It was easier to be happy.
Carrie: When you talk about today. I think a lot of people have a hard time hitting the reset button on that.
For example, if they were dealing with OCD really badly yesterday, they’re gonna wake up this morning and go, oh my gosh, am I gonna have all these intrusive thoughts today? What’s gonna have, oh, I can’t handle this. I don’t wanna live like this another day. And so what would you say to somebody that’s going through that to kind of help them hit the reset button?
Because I think if that’s our expectation of the day, then it is gonna go rough, right?
Steve: Yeah. That’s a tough question because I think a lot of that depends on, like in my case, how do I feel today if I have an ongoing headache, for instance, or a migraine? It’s really hard to be positive. It’s hard to think past.
Yeah. What it is that’s ing you. But if I can just say, okay, what’s the positive, let me take a mental note. Just for a second, if I even can think that way. How can I get through today with what I have? And what I have is I have a daughter in my case who’s smiling at me. Daddy, let’s go play. I don’t feel like playing, but I’m gonna stand your hate.
Why don’t you do a puppet show for me? Try to reverse things. Do it a little differently than you did y yesterday. When those thoughts come through of, man, I do not wanna feel the way I did yesterday. Or I don’t want to have whatever it was bringing me down or that pain back, or, I think if you can just stop and say, okay, this is where I’m at.
I can’t change that. Maybe it does happen, but until it does, I’m gonna hang on to something. I’m gonna hang onto a Bible verse that I can just repeat in my head or
Carrie: what’s been helpful for you. Have there been certain verses.
Steve: More than anything else. I tend to read acts, Romans, those areas, and I love reading about Paul.
Mm-hmm. Paul has been, he’s been my dude. I don’t know another way to put it, because the way he starts out this rough and tough guy, kill all Christians, be done, be gone. And then all of a sudden the script is flipped. God’s like, I don’t think so, pal. Watch this. And kaboom and his whole world flips. That’s kind of a very abbreviated way of saying it, but his whole world flips and suddenly there’s compassion.
There’s a will for things to change, for people to find God and what the whole salvation story and things flip. And then he goes to prison. And yet some of his best writings were while he was in prison. Yeah. He becomes an encourager more than anybody else, and he has an affliction. Don’t know what that affliction is.
And I think everyone with an affliction says, I bet Paul had what I had, but in my case, I like to think it’s an eye pain. But who knows? And it really doesn’t matter because the thing of it is, is he had something. Yeah. And yet he’s encouraging people and writing at his very best through it. And I think if you look at what you have as a blessing, it will get you through.
Mm-hmm. It will help because what you have, somebody else is also going through. And if you call yourself a Christian. Then how can you reach out to someone else so that they can say, Hey, none of us have the exact same thing. We’re all different. We’re all individuals, but I can really relate with you. How do you have a smile on your face?
How is this working? And there’s something in you that they can pull from. It’s a blessing.
Carrie: I think I’m comforted by Paul’s story in terms of what you’re talking about. Mm-hmm. I think it’s second Corinthians where you said, I prayed for God to take this away. And God didn’t answer the prayer the way that he wanted to.
And a lot of times people pray, God, I just don’t wanna deal with these intrusive thoughts anymore. Please take this OCD away. But God said, my grace is sufficient for you, and that God’s power is perfected in our weakness. We have this treasure in these. Jars of play, and it’s not about us, but it’s about God and what he wants to do through us.
Right? I mean, I think the takeaways for people really are allow yourself to have a fresh start each day, and if you can’t have a fresh start each day, have a fresh start each half of the day even. Yeah. Just because your first half of the day went bad doesn’t mean that your second half of the day has to be bad.
You can change your mindset and say, okay, how can I reset and really be present? I know for me, you get so much information and I think people, they get a variety of information from other people on the internet and so forth, and when you first got diagnosed, and we always tell people, don’t Google this because you’re gonna think Steve’s gonna die next week, or something like that.
Because there are people that have much more faster progressions and much more serious conditions. And deteriorate a lot faster. But I think that there’s a, a variety of of reasons for that. But even what you read, whether it’s about OCD, whether it’s about your physical health condition, isn’t really a good indicator of how your future is going to go.
No. And we have a friend who’s been on the podcast before John, that talked about joy in the midst of his cancer struggle. Mm-hmm. I mean, he is been living with terminal cancer for over five years.
Steve: Yet, he’s the happiest person you would ever meet.
Carrie: Yeah.
Steve: The most optimistic person I think I know if I’m ever down, he’s the one I call.
It just seems so weird when things are going bad or, or whatever. Or you’re sad to call someone with terminal cancer to feel better.
Carrie: Right? Yeah.
Steve: That
Carrie: doesn’t seem right.
Steve: Seem and yet. It’s such a beautiful story. It’s such a,
Carrie: mm-hmm. A
Steve: great testimony and such a great thing of what God can do. He did not allow that situation to become him
Carrie: or to rock his faith.
He actually says that that has brought him closer to God and would say that that’s the best thing that ever happened to him. And
Steve: I always think of that. I think I agree. I’ve grown to admit that as well, that it is the best thing. Mm-hmm. Because it changed my mindset. It made me realize, golly, this life is so short.
Let’s do our best and make our best. Let’s not be selfish and just not do anything with life. Or when there is a bad day, I say that. I don’t wanna sound like I’m finger wagging at somebody. Like, shame on you. No, it’s start from today. What little thing can I do to make myself happy, to make others happy and just mm-hmm.
Draw closer to God? How can I do that?
Carrie: I wanted to read a couple verses here. One was Proverbs three, five and six, which people may be pretty familiar with. Mm-hmm. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways. Acknowledge him and he will make your path straight.
And I think when I was going through this. Diagnosis. And also at this time in our lives, mom was dealing with pancreatic cancer and she died shortly after you got diagnosed. So everything was just kind of a mess in life. And we had a young child and I just remember like those periods of just waking up and just saying like, okay, I trust you, God.
Like that was it. Like that was, this was not some long elaborate prayer, right? It was just like, I don’t know what’s going on. It’s life is crazy right now, but I trust you. And it was almost kind of like. I became my anthem at that point to just say, I’m surrendering this over. I believe that you’re good. I believe that you have some kind of plan in all this mess, and I’m gonna choose today to say I trust you.
And so I hope that that encourages or helps somebody else.
Steve: That’s true too. There are days when I’m very fortunate that I’m not in bed all day or in a wheelchair, especially on the days when I’m not feeling good, and it’s usually at night that I really struggle. There are times where I say, okay, I can’t sleep pray.
Just pray and be bold, and if you gotta keep repeating the same thing, it’s okay. That’s part of it, and I really like Proverbs three, five and six. That’s actually one of my favorite things to read and has been for many years. So it’s uplifting.
Carrie: I think that there’s so many questions that we have about.
Like you said, being a planner, when you first got diagnosed, we were in this awful split level house and I was just thinking like, oh gosh, we gotta get out of this house like tomorrow. Mm-hmm. We became really super panicked about it. We asked my family, can we move into my grandmother’s house? And then you got some therapies and some things shifted and changed.
Mm-hmm. We decided not to do that, that things were okay. You reached kind of like a little bit of a more level of stability? Yeah, during that time, but I remember just panicking because they had told me if your husband’s in a wheelchair, it’s a matter of when he’s in a wheelchair. Right. And our financial situation and the housing situation, like it just was not a good time for us.
We couldn’t just pick up and move and buy another house basically we were at, it was still. Kinda rebuilding my business, coming back for maternity leave and all of that. Yeah. And we kind of crunched some numbers and we were just like, no, we can’t. Mm-hmm.
Steve: We can’t do
Carrie: this right now. That was tough and that was something we had to trust God with.
And over time, God gave us the ability to move to get in a different financial situation. Mm-hmm. And blessed us with this great one story house. We do have a lunch room upstairs, but all of our bedrooms are downstairs and bathrooms and things. That was something I think we had to trust God with. Mm-hmm.
Of. Also, we’re in the land of Middle Tennessee where they love two story houses everywhere. It’s like you might have one bedroom downstairs, but then the rest of the bedrooms are upstairs and so we didn’t want, obviously us to be downstairs and our. Daughter to be upstairs. That wouldn’t work for our family at all, and God just opened up this door and placed us exactly where we needed to be.
Our house sold super fast and then we were just looking and looking and praying and praying, and we’re so thankful. Yeah, to be here. That was just a big, just testimony of God’s faithfulness and God’s grace in the midst of. A really hard situation and hard season. Yeah.
Steve: I think being able to move around a little bit, I’m walking better.
That’s the other thing I’ve learned is once you are able to do some things that you couldn’t do before or didn’t think you could, or you see change, man, it really just boosts you. You look back and go, mm-hmm huh, I’ll be, I can do something more than I could do before, or I feel a little better today. I definitely think that’s encouraging.
It’s encouraging when you can do more than you could do yesterday, even though tomorrow might not be that way. But for today it’s good.
Carrie: I’m curious, I think for us, at least where I’m at, and probably I would imagine where you at, we’re not at a point of praying for a gigantic miraculous healing that you’re able to walk normally tomorrow or that you, you’re able to see perfectly clearly and God restores your eyesight.
I think God has the capacity to do any of that certainly. That’s not how I pray about it now. And would you agree with that?
Steve: Yeah, absolutely.
Carrie: And why?
Steve: Why
Carrie: have we stopped praying
Steve: for a miracle, do you think? That’s a good question. It’s not that God couldn’t do it. Mm-hmm. It’s not. But I think the way that I’ve seen God use me, I’ve been able to go on mission trips.
People will always said, all right, God, I need a way to talk to people. I’m just not good at opening up. Mm-hmm. And talking to people about the gospel, that’s a very difficult thing. Gimme something. Well that phrase, be careful what you pray for. And I think I spoke about this before. Here I am, I’ve got a cane or a walker, or they see me wobbling.
Maybe they wonder if I’m drunk or something because of the way I walk. But I actually walk better now, but I still have that cane. That’s my something. Mm-hmm. That actually opens the conversation. So having something and people knowing that you have it, it makes an impact.
Carrie: Yeah, and just at FYI, for everybody, not all 50 year olds who walk with a cane have been in a car accident because that’s what people usually I come up and ask you, you’ve been in a car accident?
Steve: If I got a dollar every time I was asked that I would be a billionaire by now.
Carrie: I think the reason, and I wanna talk about like how we do pray, but the reason that we’re not praying for that now I think is because God has opened our eyes to what the blessing has been in the midst of suffering. And the blessing for me is that you have been able to be such a huge part of our daughter’s life and how beautiful that’s been.
I think it’s creating a greater compassion within her. It’s shifted the way that. We’ve done family life and I think affected our priorities and we’ve drawn closer to each other and drawn closer to God through the whole process. So in a way, like I could not be thankful for it then, mm-hmm. When it first happened, but I can be thankful for the blessings that we’ve seen.
Now God’s grace. And I always felt like we will take the miracle or the healing because I have a vast spectrum view of healing.
Steve: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: In whatever form that comes. However God wants to give that to us. And so in a sense, we have been healed of the hopelessness for sure. We’ve had a lot of support, encouragement, met other people in the community, whether online or in person, and realized there are a lot of people that are living longer than we initially thought was possible.
So we’ve been healed of, in a sense of hopelessness. Mm-hmm. And we have joy. That in itself is a beautiful miracle out of this. The miracle for me that I see every day is that, like you said, you went down, but then you went through some therapies that got you back to a more stable place, and now you’ve been working on walking.
Mm-hmm. Which is really good for this condition, and you walk as you can. Mm-hmm. And that I think, has really helped you become in a good, stable place. Yeah. Your mindset is really good. So in a lot of ways. You are doing better than you were when you first got diagnosed. And to me it’s also a miracle that as much as we follow up with your eye doctor, they’re really not seeing a whole lot of changes in your vision.
That was a huge fear for us, that you were going blind in the beginning. And so I think we have a little bit more reassurance that there’s no promises on whether or not you lose vision. We don’t know. Yeah.
Steve: And I mean, I’ve had vision loss, but it hasn’t continued.
Carrie: Yeah.
Steve: And that’s such a blessing and I’ve, I’ve had the balance.
But now it’s a little better. I have my days. It’s easier when you’re in the comfort of your own home versus right in a crowd of people, which is something people always, oh, you’re walking better. Well, it’s a funny disease that way, but it definitely was a lot worse, a lot more difficult when I was first diagnosed.
And then, like you said, I went through therapy and having to kind of relearn how to walk and tell myself, okay, I don’t walk heel to toe very well, which apparently is how most people walk, but I can stomp and so no bug shall live a under me, but I can walk dog on it. Anyways, that’s been a good thing, and you pray for healing.
God will heal me one way or another. It’ll either be on this earth or when I get to heaven. Life is short. I don’t wanna be so selfish to focus about me the whole time knowing that when I get to heaven, I’ll be healed. So what can I do while I’m here on the earth? That’s been my focus. There’s nothing wrong with asking God, Hey, heal me.
There’s nothing wrong with that,
Carrie: right?
Steve: I don’t wanna take away from how he can use me either.
Carrie: How do you pray about this disease now
Steve: that God will use me? Lord, whatever begins or starts, or continues, or whatever from this disease, whatever happens, how can I be a light to others? How can I remain positive?
Help me to, mm-hmm. Just continue to keep focused. I keep my eyes on you and provide for my family as best as I can and not be a complainer. I, I don’t wanna complain about this. I may complain about the dishes. I may complain about how dirty the car tires are. I may complain about a lot of things, but I don’t wanna complain about this disease, and I really don’t wanna be a complainer.
That’s not a good thing. My prayer has been, Lord, I don’t wanna be a complainer. I wanna be able to be someone who can do what you want me to do. Yeah. If continuing on the mission trips is the thing, then so be it. Just, I wanna be able to get to the airport and not have to worry about security. Mm-hmm.
Making me wanna stand up and do jumping jacks ’cause that’s not gonna happen. But what can I do and just help me, help me to have, keep my sense of humor and bless others and that’s important. And help my daughter. That’s a big one too. Help our daughter. God blessed us with the daughter and mm-hmm. How can we raise her?
Right? She’s been put in our charge. What are we doing right? What do we need to do better on? Mm-hmm. That’s a big prayer, so protect her.
Carrie: I would say that I pray that God gives you the strength and endurance to do whatever it is that he has called you to do. And I do pray for preservation over what you already have.
Mm-hmm. Like your eyesight and your ability to move. And we’re very blessed and we’re very provided for sure by God and really just. We’re kind of simple people. We don’t have a ton of needs in general, and fortunately you’re not on because there’s no cure for this. I guess one of the blessing. Yeah, that’s a blessing.
That’s a blessing in the sense that we’re not paying like $500 a month for medication or something crazy like that, that you don’t have to be on like really expensive medicines and things of that nature, or go through really expensive treatments ’cause there just aren’t things for that. As of this day and age, I wanted to wrap this up a little bit by sharing another verse.
This one’s about suffering. Romans eight 18. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. And there’s an element. We’re always longing for heaven. We know that this world is not our home. This life is not it. We want to. Take as many people to heaven with us as we can and share the gospel.
Love people really well. Love God, love people. But this isn’t it. We have this amazing home in heaven where there’s no suffering, there’s no tears, there’s no pain. There’s only joy in Jesus and ultimate fulfillment and just our everything. Do you think about heaven a lot.
Steve: Definitely more so than I used to.
I have asked God, I wanna live to be old enough or for faith to be old enough again so we can be there for her and see her through the school years and all of that. I do think about it a lot. I think I’ve lost a lot of friends and family and different ones. Yeah, for sure. You know, and I think about that and think, well, I wanna be sure that the people I know, know how I feel about ’em and where I stand.
And that’s not, I think about that more than I ever did before. I’m not getting any younger either, but they say as you get older, you start thinking about that more anyways. But when you get, I don’t know who they is or they are
Carrie: people in general, yeah,
Steve: Alabama’s coming out. But I do tend to think more about heaven than I used to perhaps because I do have a disease and I do see things, but I also see people who are quote unquote, perfectly healthy.
Who are in far worse shape than I am, at least spiritually it seems. Oh yeah. Not to be judging them saying, oh, you’re going somewhere else. But you see people who are not happy. Yeah. So if you take away the physicality of someone, their physical needs, and you just look at someone spiritually, you look at hearts and hearts only.
It’s a big difference. Mm-hmm. I would venture to say that a lot of people who are in the situation that I am in, perhaps their heart check is a lot better, or their heart is a lot better than those who are in the gym every day running five or 20 miles a day or whatever. You’re in the best shape of your life and your career is the best it’s ever been, but your heart is garbage, your heart is black, your heart is bleeding.
It’s not good. That’s where I say, okay, God, how can I reach those people?
Carrie: Well, thanks for coming and sharing about uncertainty. You let me kinda literally, uh, yeah. I wasn’t really drag you in here and
Steve: Yeah. And
Carrie: you had
Steve: uncertainty about what the podcast say was about. I wasn’t too certain what we were gonna talk about, but I was like, okay, whatever.
It’s cool. It’ll be good. It always is. Appreciate you having me on.
Carrie: Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian Faith in OCD is a production of by the well. Counseling opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or by the Well counseling.
This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.
