I was diagnosed with PMDD and it made me question my Christian faith

Faith, at its core, is a trust in the constancy of God, in his authorship of all things, seen and unseen, felt and unfelt. It is the conviction that even in silence, God remains active, shaping what we cannot yet understand. Scripture has always offered a framework for that trust: stories of wandering, waiting, and wrestling that assure us that doubt and suffering are not foreign to faith but woven through it. In every season of my life, the Bible has been my sustenance, its words both anchor and mirror, reminding me that even when my emotions falter, the Word remains steady.

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And yet, for all that Scripture says about the human condition, about grief, suffering, faith, and redemption, it speaks sparingly about the complexity of the female body. The Bible is filled with women whose bodies were central to divine stories: Eve’s creation (Genesis 2:21–22), Sarah’s longing for children (Genesis 18:9–15; 21:1–7), Hannah’s prayer for a son (1 Samuel 1:1–20), Mary’s miraculous conception (Luke 1:26–38), the bleeding woman’s healing (Mark 5:25–34), and even Job’s wife, who bore the weight of loss alongside him (Job 2:9–10). Their experiences remind us that the body is not separate from the spiritual life but a vessel through which God’s work unfolds. Still, in many Christian spaces, the physical realities of womanhood are often treated as private inconveniences rather than sacred parts of our human experience.

From my earliest years in church, I was taught that discipline is the cornerstone of a righteous life, that faith requires self-control, perseverance, and obedience.

From my earliest years in church, I was taught that discipline is the cornerstone of a righteous life, that faith requires self-control, perseverance, and obedience. So when, at fourteen, I began to experience waves of sadness, anger, and despair before my period, I assumed it was a failure of discipline, or worse, of faith. I had few models for how to understand my body in distress, so I prayed for calmness and control. Yet each month I would find myself unravelling again, confused by a body I could not master and ashamed of emotions I could not contain.

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Now, as an adult trying daily to live faithfully, I still face that same unravelling. The week leading up to my period brings an almost predictable crisis: exhaustion, anxiety, and a deep spiritual ache that makes me question not only my strength, but the God who made me. It’s within these moments that I have wrestled with my own body, specifically with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, or PMDD, a condition that disturbs my emotions, mind, and spirit each month. While science explains it through hormonal shifts, faith leaves me wondering how to honour a God who made a body so intricate and yet so sensitive.

Across Christian communities, countless women live with conditions that test both body and spirit: PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, PMDD, and other disorders that disrupt the rhythm of our days. These are not niche issues; they shape how we work, pray, and relate to others, yet they are rarely spoken of from the pulpit. As someone who reads widely, I have often searched for writing that reflects the full reality of Christian womanhood. But much of what I find limits the female body to two themes: childbearing and purity.

My belief in Jesus Christ has always felt broader and more intimate than religion as an institution. Faith is personal and living; religion can sometimes be rigid and slow to expand its compassion. The church, shaped for centuries by patriarchal interpretation, has often treated women’s bodies as either vessels of virtue or symbols of temptation, but rarely as sacred places of struggle and revelation. Because of that, many of us have learned to suffer quietly, to see our physical pain as weakness rather than as part of the complex reality of being made in God’s image.

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In recent years, the most meaningful comfort I have found has come from other Christian women who speak honestly about their bodies. Conversations about menstrual pain, hormonal changes, and emotional upheaval have become small sanctuaries of truth. Through these exchanges, I have realised that discipline may shape character, but compassion sustains it.

Yet the week before my period, that steadiness collapses. I become withdrawn and irritable, my thoughts heavy with self-criticism.

For much of my life, I have practised discipline with sincerity. I have tried to be kind, patient, forgiving, and slow to anger. Yet the week before my period, that steadiness collapses. I become withdrawn and irritable, my thoughts heavy with self-criticism. It feels as though the virtues I have spent years cultivating vanish overnight, leaving behind someone I hardly recognise. In those vulnerable days, it is easy to believe I am failing God. I know the scriptures about self-control and the fruits of the Spirit, yet PMDD dismantles that sense of order, and I am quick to see myself as bad or somehow outside of God’s image.

Over time, I have learned that this cycle of despair is not proof of God’s absence but a reminder of my need for community. I think often of the paralysed man whose friends lowered him through the roof to reach Jesus (Mark 2:1–12; Luke 5:17–26). Their faith carried him when his own strength failed. I hold on to that story when I speak with women who live with similar struggles. We sustain one another when belief feels heavy, reminding each other that even in our frailty, we are not beyond grace. I did not write this to explain away the mystery of the female body or to offer neat answers. I wrote it to create space for Christian women to see themselves whole, beyond the narrow frames religion has sometimes given us. Our confusion is not faithlessness; our questions are not sin. The God who formed our bodies has not hidden from them, and His image is not erased by our pain.

Each month, when my hormones re-regulate, I return to prayer. Sometimes weary, often wordless, but always grateful that God remains. My faith continues to deepen, not in spite of PMDD but through it. These episodes have taught me that holiness is not the absence of struggle, but the willingness to keep reaching for God within it. Perhaps that is the miracle of the female body: that even in its bending, it does not break, but somehow finds its way back to belief.