Emily Parker spoke with author, award-winning blogger and speaker, Emma Scrivener.

I remember a friend saying to me, "You'll always be broken, and your poor husband, he's going to have to carry you for the rest of his life." And yes, there is a sense in which my poor husband does carry me, but there is a sense too in which God calls us to carry each other's burdens, and He works in brokenness. He's not about telling us to pull it all together, He meets us in the darkness and He can work something beautiful through it, even though it's not good in itself.

Emily: In the book another area that you talk about is self-harm. Why do you think that self-harm is attractive?

Emma: As with a lot of expressions, like an eating disorder, or self-harm, these are things that can look very extreme from the outside, but underneath them are struggles with which we can all identify. I talk about that a wee bit in the book.

All of us, right back to Adam and Eve, know what it is to feel things like hunger, or anxiety, or shame, or wanting to be in control, or despair. These were there from the very beginning. We develop ways to deal with those things and some of them are better than others.

Self-harm is just another way of dealing with emotions, or feelings, or circumstances that seem to be too much. One way of understanding it, is you're dealing with one sort of pain, emotional pain, with another type of pain, physical pain. There's a sense of relief. All of these emotions build up and build up and when you harm there's a sense of relief, like you're wiping it away. But the difficulty is that the more you do it, the more you want to do it and the further you need to go each time and so you get caught in a cycle.

If you're confronted with someone who's cutting themselves, or something like that, it does look very extreme. People can be inclined to say, "That's something I would never do. I could never understand that." But there are ways in which we harm ourselves mentally as well, on a daily basis. For example, if I lose my keys, what happens is I beat myself up internally. I say, "Emma, you're so stupid. I can't believe you lost your keys again. What an idiot! No-one else ever loses their keys like that, but you've just gone and done it again. You think you'd learn better, but no, you're rubbish. You should have stayed in bed." And on and on it goes. That is a kind of self-harm and it's something that all of us are familiar with. It's not coming out physically, but it's not so far away.

Emily: If anybody can relate to some of these things that you've spoken about, what advice would you give to them?

Emma: The first thing that I'd say is please know you're not on your own. It can feel very isolating when you're struggling with something like this and there's no way forward, but that is really not true. There are ways forward. What's important is not to try and deal with it by yourself. I'm not saying stand up at the front of church, or at the prayer meeting, or make a loud speech telling everyone the problem. Be wise about who you talk to, but talk to someone you trust, like a good friend, or maybe someone that you know at your church. Explain to them what it is that you're going through.

When you open up, you find that people are a lot more understanding than we think and they can help us and support us. It's a bit like with light in the darkness and you realise that the things that we feel are so big and so painful and so awful, they really are not. They are things that other people go through too. It may well be that you want to go along to your GP, if there's someone you can't think of, the GP certainly should be willing to listen and willing to offer you support and advice. If they don't, then go and find somebody else. The problem is not with you, but with your GP. People will work with you and you'll be supported as you try to move forward. You don't need to do everything overnight either. Just go a step at a time, a day at a time and you can do it. You can really do it, but you can't do it alone.

Emily: How has your relationship with God developed over the years?

Emma: Hopefully it's deepening all the time, but in some ways I have a sense of being more messed up than ever before, which really is not what I would have expected when I was 13 and listening to these testimonies. I think as my sense of my own brokenness, my own sickness and my own wrong choices grows, I see more and more of God's love for me and more and more of His grace. So instead of looking so much to myself and thinking, "I'm rubbish. Everything is terrible and I've got to try and fix it myself." I'm starting to, and I say starting, because it's a work in progress, starting to look more towards Jesus and say, "I am a bit rubbish, but you know what, He is amazing and He loves me and has done everything for me."

I keep stumbling in a million different ways, but the cross, His death for me, His resurrection, and the way that He works through and in my life, that's not just something that happens when you're 13, or when you're 28, or when you first become a Christian. I go back to Him for forgiveness and for grace and for love every single day and every minute, because I need it every day and every minute and that is ok. Jesus doesn't come for people who think they've got it together. He comes for people who know that they are messed up. He's the doctor and He says He comes for the sick. It's a wonderful journey.

I don't always wake up and think, "Wow, Jesus is great and life is great." There are times when it's hard. There are times when I don't feel like God is there in the way I want Him to be. There are many times when I don't feel I'm where I want to be. But I think that's when I go back to the Bible and to the Lord's promises, because they are bigger than my feelings and He is faithful even when I am not and I hold on to that and I'm so thankful for that.

Emily: Why did you write your book A New Day?