The point of this isn't to show that Christianity is perfect, but rather to show that God works through messy broken people. To show that we grow in our trials. That our faith is made stronger through our lowest points when its actually used. We can talk about Faith all day until we actually have to use it and then we wished we hadn't talked so much about it.
Background to me-
Throughout the entirety of my 17 years that I've known myself, I have always been and will prolly always been my own worst enemy- throughout 6th grade up until very recently I've suffered with severe Depression, and Anger Issues Not to say I still don't, but the amount of which has decreased considerably. No its not "diagnosed" or anything, but you don't need a doctor to tell when your out of the ordinary. Middle School was the last time that I was plaged by Suicidal Thoughts, and until recently, I thought I was doing better. I just didn't feel like I fit in in middle school, then again what person does? I felt like such an oddball, so introverted in a way, I loved hurting inwardly. Its still a habit I carry today, beating up on myself. Then came 8th grade when my Anger issues started kicking in. I found comfort in my "angsty" music, feeling like being a Punk was the only escape for me and my emotions and whatnot. Several times I had come crying to Mr Nixons room, saying that I couldn't really stand it anymore and that I really couldn't stand the school and a whole bunch of other stuff to that effect.
I'm going to start my story back in early September
I had just joined as a Staff for a great Junior High Youth Group, and royally effed up the first night by spilling Soda all over a very pretty and expensive looking flat screen monitor. They had a very junky lame monitor replacing it the next time I came. That sent me over the edge My cat died that month, and yes andrew mcgalliard can testify I've prolly been through more cats that he has underwear (I kid andrew) but it hurt nonetheless, after a year with the bloody thing it hurt to see him die. I had applied to about 7 different places for a job and no one replied back-I needed and still need to start saving up for whatever's happening after school. Just in general the school year was kicking me in places I didn't even know I had, and leaving me in the dust. I felt Scattered brained, emotionally a wreck, physically and mentally a wreck, just no bueno all around. My social relationships suffering because of this....lack of a better phrase "Inner Turmoil" spiritually and this battle that I feel that I'm fighting.
The fall months had the distinct privledge in sharing in some of my lowest lows I've ever been through. Things were piling up on me. School, church, people counting on me, I felt like I was being poured out, stretched too thin and not getting enough back. I became bitter towards people because I felt they weren't investing half of what I put into them. I look back and who could blame people? Sure, there were visable signs of my hurt, but who were they to fix my problems? God was the one to rely on and at that point I wasn't talking to Him out of anger and bitterness. So even if he WAS working through my friends to show love towards me? I wouldn't have any of it. I was too enwrapped in my own problems.
A specific point in time, I remember in September, i was oversleeping a lot, having points where I didn't want to get up from the bed because I felt like the world hurt too much when I did, and that I got nothing out of it. I wanted nothing more than to just go to sleep and slip away forever. While lying in my bed, My brain ran through the different ways I'd die, I'd jump off a bridge, , drown myself, Cut myself, teasing myself with the thought of downing the prescription pills in my medicine cabinet every minute or so, I'd end up just staring at the bottle for a good 15 minutes thinking all i had to do was reach. Then my sick dreams would conclude with everyone at my funeral just to see if people would care, just to see if people would come, sometimes it was a big funeral filled with touching ulagies and sometimes it was a small ceramony of 2 or 3 people. My brain was litterally tormenting me with the possibilites and different scenarios that I wanted to live out for some sick reason. I remember litterally crying and begging God just to let me die. Just to let me fall asleep and let me never wake up. Please Please let this happen I kept telling myself. No one cares, no one ever will.
Satan has such a way with words.
I have a journal entry from a period of time in my life at that point
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Panic Attack
–noun Psychiatry. an intense attack of anxiety characterized by feelings of impending doom and trembling, sweating, pounding heart, and other physical symptoms.
It seems that life keeps throwing curve balls. Even when you know what steps to take from being down that same old dusty road, you still seem to trip over all the rocks regardless of your knowledge of them being there. I think, I pray, I try and experience God and then once more, Satan kicks me in the a*s and says your mine.
Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your dearest Roxanne
Here's some context I suppose. Ya know, in your spiritual life, it seems as though people denote the things you are going through because they themselves have already been through them. As if "Oh, ya know, I went through that whole issue too, and I got through it." newsflash folks, to each issue, each person has a different reaction. For what might be to another person an easy issue, might be a faith breaking one to another. I don't want to say that the issue I'm facing is one, that in all of the ministry I'm involved with, the one issue would be big enough for me to throw all of it down and say I quit, but its a point that my mind crossed over once or twice. Not seriously, but I take it seriously because my mind even thought to pass over it. Make sense?
Prolly Not.
I've also been facing an issue of why I do ministry because of the previous issue I'd been facing. Do I do ministry to earn salvation or do I do it because I love the Lord? Do I feel the need to be involved with ministry because hey, why not? or do I feel the real want and need to be involved for the sake of GOD.
I feel that its God. I need to have no doubt that its God. Some days I wish I could just live in another city and just start over, but that would cause a whole new slough of problems that I wouldn't be ready to deal with. God help me if I ever make that decision.
God help me period.
I hate reruns.
I cried out to God, pleaded with God and heard nothing. The still cold silence of no answer was more than I could handle. Never in my life had I felt so much like Job. I became calloused and bitter towards my creator because of it. I knew He was there, the doubt wasn't in me that he wasn't there, I just knew he wasn't listening. I had experienced too much in my faith to believe that he wasn't. In that, it started to show increasingly in my social life.
Don't confuse me and my quiet time with when I just need my alone time. I've always loved being alone because as an only child growing up, it never bothered me. But there are times when you just really shouldn't be alone. So I mean, after this if you see me walking around by myself don't barade me and say "ROXANNE ARE YOU OK!?" because I'm one to wear emotions on my sleeve and if I'm hurting you'll prolly of seen it earlier that day.
I would also get so angry so quick. Its still a problem I struggle with today. One of the most addicting sensations I have ever felt was the power that Anger gives you. I loved being known as that person that, if they wanted to, could beat the crap out of anyone who gave them trouble, and defend themselves if needed or provoked. I had a short fuse and felt a rush at telling someone off or physically showing my anger. It still an addiction I suffer with today.
I realized that many of these things that I experienced had to do with my relationship with God. How do I get back to the light of what I know is His grace? How did I recover from not ending myself in an early death?
I realized how self centered I was being. Now granted, its legitmiate to feel human emotion, but from where I was at-there comes a point when you stop and look back and think-Wow...I really wasn't alone all along.
I was searching for God earnestly in all the places where he wasn't. Verbal affirmation of how people thought of me was what I was craving and I wasn't getting it. God gave me some beautiful experiences within my turmulous 3 months, I got to play worship at the CV rescue mission with the worship team that I love like my own family, I started, and am still a staff on an Amazing Junior High Youth Group with kids that I wouldn't trade for the world, I'm following my dream and being given the gift of being able to lead worship a couple times a week, and there I was saying that I didn't see God?
Well, its partly true. He was there, but there's something in the fact that when you have unconfessed sin, when your pride continually gets in your way, God will go to any length to break that in you. I found how Pride was such an issue in my life, I continually tried to justify my actions before my creator instead of throwing my crown at his feet and begging for forgiveness like I should be. I continually wanted to deny my own sin and look at the plank in others eyes, I kept being Simon the Pharasee instead of the woman at Christs feet, crying and worshipping my creator with a pure confessed heart.
In this desperate time I had been shouting at God, Begging for something to grab ahold of, and so I tore open my bible and started back at the place that I felt the closest to-The Psalms. Music has been a love and a communicator that God has used in my life. I've always related to David spiritually. I've been tempted, I've gone through that and sinned, and then felt the desolation of being the wilderness spiritually- God pointed me towards this psalm.
Psalm 32
The Joy of Forgiveness
A Psalm of David. A [fn1] Contemplation.
3 When I kept silent, my bones grew old
Through my groaning all the day long.
4 For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was turned into the drought of summer.
Selah
5 I acknowledged my sin to You,
And my iniquity I have not hidden.
I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,"
And You forgave the iniquity of my sin.
Selah
6 For this cause everyone who is godly shall pray to You
In a time when You may be found;
Surely in a flood of great waters
They shall not come near him.
7 You are my hiding place;
You shall preserve me from trouble;
You shall surround me with songs of deliverance.
Selah
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will guide you with My eye.
9 Do not be like the horse or like the mule,
Which have no understanding,
Which must be harnessed with bit and bridle,
Else they will not come near you.
10 Many sorrows shall be to the wicked;
But he who trusts in the Lord, mercy shall surround him.
11 Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous;
And shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
Before I had sought out God I felt like I could take on my problems myself without his help-without his guidance, that I could solve them on my own-proving my strength and endurance-How foolish
When i found that my hiding place was in God, and not in people or Myself for that matter, the whole perspective changed for me. When I realized that I can't rely on anything in this world, no matter how great it is for the moment, everything changed for me.
After I realized this, it was a slow but steady rollercoaster ride upwards again. The fact that faith is such a ride never ceases to amaze me. Things that have kept me going, that have kept me alive essentially have been some of these verses-
PS 118
8 It is better to trust in the Lord
Than to put confidence in man.
9 It is better to trust in the Lord
Than to put confidence in princes.
10 All nations surrounded me,
But in the name of the Lord I will destroy them.
11 They surrounded me,
Yes, they surrounded me;
But in the name of the Lord I will destroy them.
12 They surrounded me like bees;
They were quenched like a fire of thorns;
For in the name of the Lord I will destroy them.
13 You pushed me violently, that I might fall,
But the Lord helped me.
14 The Lord is my strength and song,
And He has become my salvation. [fn1]
Basically referring to Satan in my situation
God helped me through that-and there is no other reason that I would be here today if it wasn't for my Savior-My Rock of Ages
I truely realized what the verse "The Lord is my STRENGTH and SONG and he has become my SALVATION" my salvation. It was so good to know that even if I start drowning in the storm, at least I have a salvation in Christ, that if everything around me goes to hell, I still have a salvation in Christ, he is my Strength, and I'd rather have the strength of God than a thousand and one of any of the strongest people on this earth.
The Strength of God is really what keeps me stable and out of Depression and Anger. The fact that HE is what I could lean on, the HOPE of God.The realization that I could let God deal with it. The fact that, frick he has an easy yoke! I can actually TALK to my creator? Everyone says they need someone to vent to, well Naturally God should be the first person, he always hears you.
Then there's the Love. The Beautiful indescribable love of my Abba, my father, my savior, that I couldn't and wouldn't be here today without
1 John 4:16 "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him."
It made so much more sense when I read 1 John 4 which is one of my favorite chapters in the bible. The fact that God-Is-Love. Makes so much sense. Any thought of love that I've recieved from anybody, any feeling I've ever felt of love, its God. God is and always will be love. He showed the ultimate sign of love, so that no matter what we do to screw up, we will always be loved.
That thought is so comforting to me, the fact that my Abba, loves me, and no one can take that away, not even Satan from the firey depths of hell, whatever he does to disillusion the love my God has shown for me in this shallow shell of self pity and depression, that God can outshine that if we let ourselves see. If we LET Him love us. that is what kept me going more than anything else.
Once stable and once I'd realized all this, the fact that My depression and suicidal thoughts, my anger issues, my pride, my self hatred-they were all clouded by my unconfessed sin, and by my not letting God love me. I wasn't feeling Gods presence because i wasn't abiding in God. It had been several weeks since I had any relational talk or experience with God, and it hurt. The fact that I was looking for him when he was sitting down and waving consistantly in my face and I couldn't see him, the fact that he was whispering to me, and I was screaming too loud to hear what He had to say. The fact that when I took my eyes off my own humanity, Christ allowed me to see what he was trying to say all along.
Things to Do if you suffer with this, and things that have helped me-
-Find an Adult or someone you can confide in- Venting helps more than a lot of people realize-Many of the teachers here have been saving graces for me when I've needed them- My mentor Lauren helped me through hell and back, Mr Nixon Tobin Buchanan and Mr Mathews have aided in that-Thank you
-Find a positive outlet-Music was and is that for me. Even better if it helps you grow closer with God if you in that place. Worship is my Escape with God-My passion and the gift which he's given me.
-Please, seek the peace of God-Just talk, he can be your number 1 source if you let him
-when your feeling extremely desperate, its very very tempting but you should not and can't be by yourself. This is the number one rule. If you don't have the respect to keep alive and stay unharmed for yourself, keep others in consideration because we love you, and I love you.
Beating up on yourself gets you nowhere and while it may feel good for the moment, it eats up at you inside over time. One of the worst things I have ever, and still continue to do is beat up myself in different ways emotionally and mentally.
So, I'd like to lie to you and tell you that this whole bit of Christianity is all rainbows and butterscotch flavored lollipops, but it is quile possibly the best and absolute worst thing that I have ever encountered. It demands upkeeping, and it requires faith. A hellof a lot of it in my book as well. We're all different. God allowed each of us to have different personalities and things that effect us. The answers are the same, just applied differently. Abide in Love, Abide in Christ as your Strength and Hope, and even the darkest places, the loest of lows, He will show up-have that faith.- if I can stress anything to you and if all you hear is this today Your Abba Loves you, quite more than anything that we can ever fathom. Ask Him to open our eyes to that, its been life changing for me. Please take comfort in that.
Thank You
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