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The Dark Night of the Soul in the City That Never Sleeps
At first glance, Rebekah Lyons’s life path seemed straightforward: walk the aisle, take the short road to motherhood, and build a family on a suburban cul-de-sac in the South.

But life looked radically different when her family relocated to the heart of New York City. She was forced to navigate a new normal with three kids, two toy poodles, and a minivan. Blindsided by crippling despair, Rebekah wrestled with bigger questions women often ask: Why am I here? Does my life matter?

In a Western culture driven by performance and Pinterest fantasies, her story echoes the rise of loneliness, depression, and anxiety that women are facing at all-time highs. Why are expectations and lifestyles breaking us down in unprecedented ways?

In this beautifully moving memoir of vulnerability, courage, and ultimately transformation, Rebekah shares her journey into the unknown—a thrilling, terrifying freefall that eventually led to flight. Searching for meaning, she stumbled on surrender, discovering that meaning follows surrender.

Rebekah found freedom when she faced her greatest fear, and she invites other women to do the same. For it is only when we freefall that we can truly fly.

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Freefall to Fly

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Contents

PRELUDE Who Will Catch Me?...............................xiCHAPTER 1 Midtown Daydreams..............................1CHAPTER 2 Park Avenue Meltdown...........................19CHAPTER 3 Panic in the Heavens...........................39CHAPTER 4 Girl Meets Depression..........................57INTERLUDE Hope Reborn....................................75CHAPTER 5 To Live This one Life Well.....................83CHAPTER 6 Santorini Bliss................................101CHAPTER 7 Whispers of Relapse............................117CHAPTER 8 Beautiful Surrender............................139CHAPTER 9 Fly............................................163POSTLUDE Embracing your Calling..........................181Acknowledgments...........................................193Notes.....................................................197About the Author..........................................199

Chapter One

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

VIKTOR FRANKL

OUR MANHATTAN APARTMENT looked more like a war zone than a home. Cheerios dotted the floor downstairs next to a conspicuous pool of milk. Couch pillows were strewn on the rug; shoes nestled between couch cushions. Unopened cardboard moving boxes marked "Fragile" were stacked high. And I—well, I was upstairs crawling back under the sheets for a moment alone. With the door propped open to listen in on my children downstairs, I rested in solitude.

The digital clock glowed 9:13 a.m. as sunlight peeked through the cracks of blinds drawn tight. Three children chattered downstairs. Lord knows what they were getting into. Good Luck Charlie lasts only twenty-eight minutes, so my default electronic babysitter would soon be off duty. And there I was. Alone. Surrounded by more than eight million strangers just beyond the 140-year-old walls. The isolation I feared would set in at that farewell evening weeks ago at Barnsley Gardens had come on fast and strong.

Sleep evaded me as my morning coffee kicked in. I let out a deep sigh, and my mind wandered, spinning like the ceiling fan that held my gaze overhead. As the day's mental task list faded, the daydreams flooded in. I was transported back to days of living wild and free.

A young girl spinning round and round, trying not to lose my balance. My earliest memory, set in Lawton, Oklahoma. Four-year-old eyes stared straight overhead, blinking in wonder as the snowflakes swirled like dancing fairies, kissing my cheeks as they descended with their electric touch.

I asked my dad to build a snowman with me, and after some begging, he relented. I ran inside to prepare. My mom tugged not one but two pairs of my pants on top of each other. Together we squeezed on layers of socks and shoes and shoved a pair of white rubber boots over everything else, secured with an elastic band wrapped around a periwinkle button. A plaid coat, navy gloves, and headgear completed the outfit. I was ready to face the snowy wilderness, though I couldn't raise my arms and was barely able to move.

I waddled next to my dad in our front yard late into the dusk, rolling snowballs bigger and bigger until our snowman stood tall. Dad and I stepped back to survey our work. Proud. A true team. If only we had some magic dust to bring our distinguished gentleman to life. Then this moonlit snowscape would be perfect.

When our family moved to Florida, we traded winter snowstorms for sweltering summers. By fourth grade I'd grown into an avid bookworm, even earning the family nickname Beka-Book because my nose was always buried in pages. Each day after school, I retrieved a new Nancy Drew book from the library. I loved Nancy. A fearless detective. My competitive spirit would try to solve the mystery before she did. I also fancied Ned. I would skim ahead, looking for scenes where Ned and Nancy might fall in love. They kept it more professional than I preferred. Many late afternoons, I waited for my mother, a teacher, to finish her work. Books provided escape from the dreariness of a school emptied of friends. These hardcovers followed me home, too. We didn't have a TV until I was in middle school, so I spent my formative years escaping into stories printed on a page.

Once the school year was over, my siblings and I kept the St. Petersburg Public Library in business. Actually, not really, since we weren't paying based on the number of books checked out. We returned weekly to fill cloth sacks with as many volumes as our backs could sustain. Bursting into our kitchen, I'd dump a pile of books on the table and determine the first one to crack open.

One summer I entered a contest at the library to guess how many jelly beans were in a large glass jar sitting in the entryway of the children's section. Brilliant. Lure the kids in with candy and competition. The winner received a collection of his or her favorite books and a fancy dinner out with the family (and, of course, the entire jar of jelly beans). Turns out, I won. I was giddy with delight at my first competitive victory as I scooped up my loot: a pile of Encyclopedia Brown books—the ones where you try to solve the mystery on your own and then verify your guess in the back of the book.

The grand prize didn't stop there. My family of five was treated to a fancy candlelit dinner beneath the Golden Arches. That's right—a table covered with linens and china ... and Big Macs, Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, french fries, and hot fudge sundaes. We ordered anything we wanted from a menu brought to us by a friendly server. Quite a contrast from our usual Sunday-night splurge for twenty-five-cent ice-cream cones. our family was stuffed and happy, thanks to my expert guessing skills. I still have a picture of us sitting together at dinner. That was a shining moment, one that confirmed my choice hobby had been a good one.

Looking back, my infatuation with reading was probably the first clue to my calling. Books brought me life. Stories were portals to other worlds. Had anyone told me that one day I might pen one myself, my heart would have leaped from my chest. But I didn't recognize that inclination as something deeper. And neither did those around me. I never considered exploring the possibility of writing the types of stories I was reading. When I turned thirty-three, my mom commented while pushing my son on a swing at the playground, "I'd always thought you'd write." She spoke the words nonchalantly as if these passions and gifts had been apparent all along, but I had never heard them before. Childhood delight becoming an adult profession seems out of grasp for most of us while we're growing up.

I never made the connection. Until I left home.

* * *

I attended a liberal arts college in Virginia fifteen hours away. I met my match in my would-be husband there just as my sense of purpose surfaced. on a late-night date, we scribbled our passions and dreams on paper napkins at Billy Joe's ice-cream parlor. Hints of something more beckoned us even then. We shared an urge toward something greater that never quite subsided. An elusive longing, anchored in our faith, to make a difference in the world. We didn't have a clue how, but our pulses quickened when we shared our hearts with others. Like minded, Gabe and I were doing our best with the tools we'd been given. Holding a...