Man have I NOT had the time to write! But now that the semester is FINALLY winding down and ending...whoop!...I get to write again! Not to mention I get to paint and take pictures again!! I have felt so withdrawn from all forms of art it's killing me! So to start back up with my blog I figured I'd open it with my new and refurbished testimony. The middle of this semester I shared my testimony with all of ASC (almost 300 girls to be exact) and it was probably the scariest experience of my life, but so worth it. I also took a Psychology of Religion course this semester and LOVED it! We had to write a paper on a spiritual experience we have had and it was by far one of my favorite papers to write. It's rough and probably not so well written, but it did receive a 97! I know, I'm rambling, but so much has happened that I haven't gotten to share! Anyways, to sum it up, I love using my story to glorify God in all ways possible and allowing girls to see, you my sisters are not alone. (Also, we had to use a few sources, which I just threw in there lol, so please ignore if you'd like.)
My Spiritual Experience
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” John 14:27 These words were the first breathe of my new life. My spiritual journey has been a long and struggling one but very worth the while and one that I would never change even if I could. Each journey has its ups and downs, but those are what make the journey that much more rewarding in the end.
John 14:27 was the verse my church camp counselor, Mrs. Railey, read to me the night I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. It was at Highland Lakes Church Camp and I was eight years old. That night was the first turning point in my life. I found life; true life and what it meant to live for a purpose. Growing up as a child I had what you call “night terrors”. I would have such intense dreams, or thoughts rather, every night that caused me to loose sleep. I imagined our house catching fire and killing us all, or someone coming in and taking my sister away. These were just a few thoughts I would have that would scare me sleepless. I was terrified every night that something terrible was going to happen to my family or me. It was the night that Mrs. Railey read me this verse from the Bible that changed my outlook every time I lied down to sleep. Every time I would start to have a night terror such as these I would read John 14:27 and remember that I have someone looking over me and He was keeping me safe. Every single time I read this verse I was able to fall asleep peacefully knowing I was safe and my family was safe in His arms. It was not until about my sophomore year in high school that I truly understood what it meant to have a relationship with Christ. I believed in Him and would pray to Him, but I never fully understood what it meant to put my full life, my trust in Him and Him alone.
It was at church camp once again that I learned what it meant to have a relationship with God and Jesus Christ. As a newlywed to high school, I was desperate to have a boyfriend. I thought that was what high school was all about: boys. I crushed over my best friend for the longest time and wished that I could date him but God had other plans for me. As I returned from camp that year, I understood what it meant to love God with all your heart and soul. You have to give Him your life. Not just your prayers, or your thoughts, but your life, your desires, your dreams. Your life is His to mold and lead. I learned what it meant to truly love God with all my heart. I also learned that having a boyfriend was not important at all. God was the only one that mattered. Leaving camp that year was amazing. As my friends and I put it back then, it was like having a “God-burn”, in place of sunburn, for Christ and God. But one that was everlasting that never went away. God became my passion, my life. From then on out I focused everything I did around Him. I read the word, or the Bible, daily and tried in every way possible to follow His words. I walked with my Savior in everything I did: how I acted, how I talked, how I dressed, etc. I was in constant prayer through trials, sufferings, celebrations, and doubts. I turned to God with everything and He guided me. It was not until my senior year of high school that I would face my second turning point in my life.
I met a boy. He played bass in the youth praise band at the church I attended. I was also a part of this band. When we first met we were both really shy and it took some time before either one of us started opening up our lives to one another, but once we did he instantly became my best friend. After a little while we started dating, but secretly. He was a freshman in high school; I was a senior. I knew my parents would not approve of the age difference so I decided to keep our relationship to myself. It was not long before my parents found out which quickly led to drama. They disapproved of the age difference, like I had expected, and pretty much forbid me to date him, but I refused to listen. He was my best friend and I loved him with everything I had. Since I refused to obey my parents I started seeing him behind their backs. This then slowly led to lies and deviance. I knew what I was doing was wrong but I could not bare the idea of breaking up with him. He was my world; my life. Because of this, my mom and I got into a huge fight and stopped talking to one another for a month. I hated it. I hated it when someone was upset with me or disappointed in me. I cannot even tell you how many times I heard my dad tell me those exact words: “I am so disappointed in you.” It killed me. It eventually drove me into a severe state of depression the last semester of my high school career. Just as Arthur had experienced in Autopsy Of A Suicidal Mind, my friends slowly started to fade away, my interests slowly started to decrease in passion, and my teachers were starting to question me. My vice principal actually called my mom and asked if I was doing drugs, which set my mom off even more. She actually accused me of doing drugs, when she knew I never would in my entire life. As I read Arthur’s suicidal letter, I realized how much we had in common. As Shneidman described it, I was experiencing what he called a “psychache” which he would have treated with a therapy he called anodyne therapy, which reduces the patient’s pain. (Sneidman, 160) He described it as “one who puts a full stop to his being, he turns his back on his past, he declares himself bankrupt and his memories to be unreal…because to him life has stopped and he can no longer feel it”. (Sneidman, 162) Things progressively got worse until one night, the night that changed my life. I remember sitting in my room, lights off, alone. I was curled up in a tight ball on the floor of my room in between a tight space of my bed and my closet. Terrors started flooding my mind again but to an extreme I had never experience before. Instead of imagining someone hurting me or my family, I imagined I was the one hurting myself and my family. I wanted to hurt myself. I wanted to kill myself that night. I remember planning out how I would proceed with this action. This “planning” is apparently quite normal for those who suffer with suicidal thoughts. As Jamison claims, suicide and the planning of it is the final response to bale all weariness. (Jamison, 100) The number of actual suicidal attempts places an individual at thirty-eight times the expected risk. (Jamison, 102) My plan I had decided was to cut myself. I imagined how it would happen, I imagined what would happen, and I imagined the aftermath. Questions flooded my mind: Would my parents even care I was dead? Would my friends even care? Does anybody even love me enough to care? I had forgotten what love was. I could not even remember one bit what it stood for, what it meant. It was then that I softly heard the voice of God. He broke through the questions and started calmly filling my mind with words of hope and remembrance. He reminded me of all the times my family told me they loved me. He reminded me of the friendships I had and what they meant to me. And he reminded me who I was. I was His daughter, His bride, His love, and He loved me. He saved me because He loved me. I immediately broke down in tears that night and sobbed myself to sleep. I prayed and prayed that night that God would fix this brokenness that was within me. That He would heal me, heal my relationships with my family, with my mom and my dad. They day after that night my mom came and talked to me for the first time in a month and we both promised each other from then on out we would never lie to one another again. That chapter in my life as a huge struggle but a huge learning experience as well. It took me a while to accept that God was telling me to break up with my boyfriend, but I knew it had to be done. It took everything in me not to want to die but after a while God brought me peace about it. It was difficult, especially seeing him because feelings kept reoccurring, but things eventually got better. I slowly began to heal and I was back in contact with my friends. My mom even started becoming my best friend. Even though I was beginning to heal I still was not ready to try to date someone else, but I thought I was.
Which brings me to the third changing point in my life; the biggest one for me yet. At the beginning of my sophomore year in college I started dating another guy. I thought he was the most amazing thing that I had ever happened to me. He was a strong Christian man and attended church every Sunday. I remember he prayed with me on our first date and I was sold. I had sworn I had found my future husband. The first six months of our relationship was great. He did everything I could ask for and was extremely sweet, but things slowly began to change. I started to realize certain characteristics about him that I did not like/agree with. He was faced with several decisions that would affect our relationship in drastic ways. I also slowly began to notice I was changing who I was to fit who I thought he wanted me to be. I loss confidence in who I was. Depression began to sink in once more but even to a more severe level than last. I began to notice changes in the way I was behaving. I stopped caring about who I was in Christ. I had given up on trying to be who He wanted me to be. All I cared about was pleasing this man who I thought I was destined to be with. This drive for his acceptance slowly took control over me. I stopped trusting in God and started putting all my focus on him. He became my life, my center. Because of that I gave up. I gave up on everything; on my hopes, my dreams, my accomplishments, and my relationship with Christ. I began to fake it. I put on a happy face to cover the pain, the hurt that I was really feeling. I strived to be perfect for this man instead of striving to please the only one that matters, my Savior. I gave into everything and gave him everything. And of course, it only led to destruction. The last half of our relationship was nothing but pain and full of hurtful words being tossed back and forth between the two of us. Everything I was experiencing was just as C.S. Lewis described it in his book The Problem of Pain; we were both trying to put each other in our place or as Lewis calls it “retributive punishment”. We wanted to cause pain to one another in order for each of us to understand how much the other was hurting us. We continued this “immoral act of deterring others” until neither one of us could handle it anymore. (Lewis, 92) We finally decided to try and fix it, try to go to God, but my heart was not fully in it. I did not care anymore. I had come to the point that I believed I could not be helped, could not be fixed. God could do nothing for me. I did not believe. I lost hope. And then he broke up with me. I was devastated; completely devastated. But it was not a devastation that I had expected it to be, it was different. It hurt that he had broken up with me, but what I realized that hurt the most was how I had given up. How I had put so much faith in something I knew would never last. A man. Not God. Only God could last forever. I knew I had failed at that moment. I felt like everything at that moment was over; I was done, gone and could not return.
Several months passed and it was a struggle to regain strength in Christ. It took me several attempts to remember what it meant to have faith, but it got better. God’s first strong presence in my life again was during a church service one Sunday morning. The pastor had spoken about forgiveness and how nothing we could ever do can separate us from God’s love. I remember hearing God’s voice loud and clear telling me I needed to tell my mom everything that had happened. It was on the ride home after the service that I shared my whole life with my mom. I was terrified to tell her, afraid she would look at me differently, love me less, but her reaction was something that I can not express to you in words how it made me feel. She did not disown me, did not yell at me or turn away from me, but instead looked at me with such passion and told me how much she loved me and always will love me. We both started crying at that moment and I had never felt more close to my mom and God at that very moment. It changed my life. My walk with Christ was regained, relationships with friends were restored, and my mom had become my best friend. Until this day I tell her everything even if it is stupid and random. A perfect way to describe that part in my life would be in the words of Polly Young-Eisendrath, “No one can save us from our own unconscious tendencies but ourselves. In knowing that complexes arise in us, rather than being forced on us by others or the world, we can begin to experiment with stepping back from their influence, with changing our minds. Then, when we look into the mirror of self-recogonition, we no longer see ourselves as passive victims of things ‘happening to me’.” (Young-Eisendrath, 149) Through time I was able to step back and take a good look at my life and the choices I had made and learn from them. I was able to find myself once more and start anew.
This trial, or trials, in my walk with Christ changed me. They have made me who I am today and I have never felt so blessed in my entire life. To have the family I have, to have the friends I have, and to now have the man of God I have prayed from since I was a little girl in my life. I end with a famous prayer and quote from Pipher’s book Letters To A Young Therapist, “God grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” My confidence is building and my walk with Christ has never been stronger. I have learned so much and continue to learn so much. Life is a journey, one that cannot be done without God. He has given me life. He saved me and continues to save me everyday. Without Him, I am nothing.
