A Year After My Breakdown Last Thanksgiving

A year ago, a movie triggered a breakdown that ended up awakening my purpose. This is the story of what God uncovered in me last Thanksgiving, and what this year has looked like since.

It’s Thanksgiving Day, 2025. My kids are spending the holiday with their dad and the house is quiet. There is something about the holidays—maybe just this time of year, when we’re getting close to the end of one thing and the beginning of another—that makes me reminisce.

Last year, around this same time, something changed in me. It was a day like today. My kids were not home for the weekend (I can’t remember the reason). I was alone, and I bought a TV for my room and decided to watch a movie.

That movie turned into a two-day, soul-crushing breakdown

I watched it again and again, over and over, for two days straight. It was like I snapped—I couldn’t turn it off. I even printed out the script. What may sound like me just getting hooked on a really good movie was more than that. I wept (and wept), obsessed, and hung on every line and every scene, feeling a wide range of emotions I wasn’t even sure where were coming from. It was just a good movie, right?

I didn’t realize it at the time, but God was pulling the scab off of a wound that was twenty years old. I grieved deeply. I felt rage, despair, desire, and remorse.

Twenty years ago, as a young teenager, if you asked me what I wanted most in the world, it was to write stories. But specifically—to make movies. I’m not a great reader, and although I’m a good writer, I always felt limited because of my reading skills. Movies were easier. I wanted visual storytelling to express what was in my mind and heart.

The year I graduated high school, I was trying to decide what I should do with my life. I barely finished with a 2.7 GPA. College wasn’t even a thought. I had no direction, no skills, no idea what I should do other than work at a restaurant. I searched myself for what I loved most, and I knew what it was—but it troubled me.

I was deeply devoted to God, but sheltered. I’d never been outside my little town or circle. In my heart, I wanted to be an actress, though I had never said it out loud. I felt drawn to Hollywood. I needed to be where the stories were being told. I craved to be a part of it. It felt like something that was a part of me.

However, I don’t remember if someone said it or if I came up with it on my own, but somehow I reached the conclusion that I couldn’t pursue a creative career in Hollywood and honor God at the same time. I'm not saying it was true. But in my naive understanding of the world, I felt like I would have to compromise to go down that path and I couldn't do that.

So I gave it up.

I remember the conversation with God clearly. I saw two paths before me: God on one side and the stories I longed to tell on the other. I chose God without a second thought. It didn’t feel like a sacrifice then. I was so in love with Him, so enamored, that I wanted to throw everything aside for Him—like the man who found a treasure in a field.

I knew that if I gave it up then, I was truly giving it up. I would later get married and become a mom. I buried it and decided never to think of it again.

I just didn't realize that it couldn't be killed.

I don’t think God faults me for the decision I made as a young girl. He knows my heart. But I also don’t exactly remember Him asking me to choose between my dream and Him. It never crossed my mind that they could be one and the same. In my passion, I wanted to show God my devotion. So I took the most precious thing to me and laid it on the altar—whether He asked for it or not.

I didn’t regret it until last year. Over the last 20 years, the thought would surface, but I always shut it down. I had made my decision. That was enough. My zeal for God, though misguided at times, never waned.

But it wasn’t just storytelling that I gave up.

I also gave up reading stories, watching them, or even thinking of them. I have a very active imagination, and I started to feel that anytime it engaged, I was doing something unholy. I couldn’t control that part of my mind, and I felt like I should be focusing on important, sanctified things. So I choked out anything that unlocked the creative side of me. I turned off the TV and didn’t turn it back on for ten years. I stopped listening to music that evoked emotion. I just wanted to be good, to serve God—and I didn’t think I could if my imagination was running wild.

Because I repressed it, I would even dream stories. Looking back now, I see how determined my gift was to get out. But when I dreamed them, I felt like something was wrong with me again. It was like I could never weed out this “sinful nature,” no matter how hard I tried.

After my divorce, I went to a creative conference Leeland put on in Baytown. It was called Our Cathedra, and he invited creatives from every genre—not just worship. He spoke about writing stories and making movies, and how we’ve often vilified the creative purposes God gave us because we don’t think they’re holy. It felt like he was speaking straight to me.

I told him afterward that I was afraid to open that side of my brain because I didn’t know if I could control it. He probably doesn’t remember the conversation, but I do. He spoke with such empathy and gently, but firmly, condemned that fear. He encouraged me to let the gift God gave me out.

It was a seed, and it stayed with me.

And last Thanksgiving, it was like God came calling for what He put inside me. When I watched that movie, marveling at the way they conveyed the story and the characters, something awakened. It moved me deeply. And out of nowhere, a grief and a rage rose up in me for what had been forfeited—the stories I had been meant to tell.

I felt a devastation in the gut of my soul, like what I imagine Esau felt when he gave up his birthright. It was a sorrow that sucked the meaning out of life—an irreparable soul wound.

For a moment, I’ll even admit, I was a little mad at God. Why would He let me give something like this up? Why put something in me and give me a totally different life? But it wasn’t His fault, and I knew that.

I felt frantic, and I begged God to give me another chance. It felt too late, but I realized I can’t exist without pouring out what He put inside me. I can’t imagine life without being able to tell stories. I couldn’t suppress it because I wasn’t meant to.

The idea of life without my purpose was like trying to breathe without air. I can do without success, money, accolades, even the ranch house I dream of having. But life is unsustainable without purpose. I can’t live without fulfilling what He called me to. This week last year, I felt terrified it could slip through my fingers, like the parable of the talents and the one who wasted what he was given.

I sat down and started writing.

I filled over 50 pages in Google Drive with just the raw details of one story I’ve carried for 20 years. And I wrote down four more.

I haven’t started writing the actual fiction yet, but I did write a book about my journey to wholeness after divorce this past year. I hired an editor, and I’m still revising and refining it, but the fact that I finished a first draft is huge for me.

I didn’t think I could do it. I don’t even know if it’s any good. But for me, it’s about pouring out the oil God gave me. I don’t want to stand before Him at the end of my life and say I held any of it back.

I’m still disappointed at where I am in life, at times. But I’m so glad I finished something that feels authentic to who I’m called to be. There is a certain kind of self-esteem that must be earned—by doing the thing you know you should or could.

So here’s to another year where I’m determined to keep fighting for my future—and for the gift God brought back to life in me.

And I want to encourage you to search your own heart in the same way. What did God put you here to do? Maybe that is your worship. Don’t make the mistake I did of thinking that only my service in church was holy.

Whatever God gave you to do is holy to Him. And more than that—it’s a precious gift to Him.

Run and chase after it this year with all your heart and strength. You will never regret it. - Stephanja