Author's Name: Alexander Lloyd Ben Jonson

What do you want most in life? A loving relationship? A solution to a health problem? A sense of peace? Achievement in an area where you feel you are better than your results indicate? Achieving success that can be measured in a thousand different ways? How can you have that “thing” that keeps you up at night, or that makes your heart race? I, Alex, want to share with you a way to have these things in your life, a way God gave me in 2001. Back then, back in 2001, I wanted all of these things, and the story of my life for the previous twelve years had been prey to sadness, depression, unfulfilled goals, and despair—despair that brought pain and unhappiness to me and my family throughout that period. Every time things seemed to be getting better, we would slide back into the despair that had become our life’s defining characteristic. What was the problem? When Tracy and I agreed to marry in 1986, we believed our life would be a story of “happily ever after.” Within six months, my wife was screaming for no reason, binge-eating chocolate cake, hiding in the bedroom, and locking herself in. Although living with me could have caused these things to happen to anyone on the planet, I was deeply concerned; none of these things had ever happened to her before, and she seemed to have no idea why she was so unhappy, other than being married to me. We soon discovered that she was depressed, and had likely been depressed for most of her life. In fact, depression and anxiety ran through her family like wildfire. Several members of her family had taken their own lives in the past 30 years or so.