I turned 41 this past
May on the 19th. The first 40 years of my life was a book until
itself. From the beginning all the way through the end of the “me I used to be,”
epic extremes have led me from one end of the spectrum all the way through to the
other, and I have lived to tell my story. So here I am, pouring myself out in a
new way. I myself have become an open book for I can honestly say that for the
first time in my life I have nothing that I am hiding or trying to evade, run
from and hope that nobody ever finds out. All of my secrets and skeletons have
all been cleaned out and there are windows in the closets where the walls used
to be. The light has exposed everything that once was covered in darkness and
love has cleansed all that I once was.
I am free. I am whole.
I am a miracle, and I am living proof of just how magnificent the Lord who made
me is. For it is only because of His love and mercy that I am here. For this, I
am eternally grateful! I am the proof of His passion and just how inexhaustible
His vision and plan is for the most wretched kind of misfit. I am living proof
that all that is said to be pathological and unchangeable in behavior and
nature can be deconstructed, reshaped, and sculpted into someone that is
transformed from an impossible mess into the Master’s Message, His one of a
kind Masterpiece. I don’t say this because I am so great or I have learned so
much. I say this because that is what I was, and because of all that His Love
is, this is who I am. I am His and no matter what, I will never stop shouting
from the rooftops that He is my everything!
I have done some of the
most unimaginable things to myself physically and emotionally because of the
inescapable agony that permeated every part of my life and body. All I ever
hoped for was just a moment of relief so that I could know what it was to see
just a glimpse of what life looks like through eyes that are not jaded and a
heart that is not broken. I spent the greater part of my adult life self-medicating
just to be able to try and live beyond the tormenting reminders of my past and
all of the abuses that used to define my life.
I was an introverted
rage-o-haulic. I was desperate to be loved and yet terrified to let anyone
close because the second I did, they always ended up going away. I was clingy
and smothered anyone who dared to want to be close to me. For the first 40
years of my life I was never able to have a single healthy relationship because
I was not well. It is impossible to give anything that you are not.
I was dysfunctional and
sick therefore all I knew how to continue creating was variant levels of
dysfunction and sickness. Don’t get me wrong, I desired more than anything to
be able to have a stable life filled with reason and rationale. I had never
been willing to do anything to face myself and learn a new way of living. To be
honest, I really didn’t believe I needed to. To do things that way would mean
that I didn’t know how to manage my life or that I was incapable of making my
life work without having someone else step in and try to micromanage and
dictate to me what they deemed to be the “right” way. My ego had grown far too
big to ever admit I needed help. I had spent my life growing up having everyone
else telling me what I could and couldn’t do and there was no way in hell that
as an adult I was going to let anyone tell me what to do.
Needless to say, advice
was never something I heeded and if it got into one ear, it most certainly went
right out the other. I was stubborn and totally unwilling to budge once I made
up my mind. As an adult, I threw my temper tantrums until I got my way and then
wondered why nobody really wanted to stay with me. I had become someone who was
totally scary to be around because I was moody, I was unpredictable and if
something didn’t go my way I was a force to be reckoned with. I was a power
hungry ego maniac with a chip on both shoulders and a heart so ready and
willing to give all that I was until someone did something I didn’t like or
agree with. Then my open heart turned into a rock hard frozen mass that made it
impossible for anything to get in or anything good to come out.
I was the girl who
wanted everything now and had no patience whatsoever. Time, due diligence, and
cultivation was nothing but a waste of time as far as I was concerned. If I
wanted something and I couldn’t get it done, I would just go find someone who
could and do my best to get it that way. I was a con artist and could come up
with a story that would make nearly anything possible. Sadly, this is not what
I grew up hoping to become. I don’t think anyone does. I’m pretty sure that
there were things I learned along the way that incorporated survival and skills
into what became my personality.
However, what I have
learned is that none of what I have done or how I have lived was really me at
all. Yes, I have done the things I have done but the person I was created to be
was really buried underneath all of the behaviors and habits that I acquired
along the way.
Instead of being the
broken mess that I believed I had become, I found that as all of the things I
learned along the way were peeled away layer by layer, I was underneath it all,
but instead of being totally crushed and broken, I had really been protected
from it all!
The real me has always
been right here inside, protected as if I have been securely sealed in the
amniotic sac of love. No matter how much I have been affected by everything,
nothing was ever strong enough to get inside of the real me. I am the innocence
that I thought was gone because of the things that have happened to me and all
of the things that I have done wrong. It was never taken from me at all because
there is no power in this world that is strong enough to overcome Love, and
love is what we were all created by.
I am in awe at how life
looks and feels to me now. I think often about how in the Bible Jesus speaks
about having to be like little children in order to see the Kingdom of Heaven.
I started thinking about what life was like for me when I was a little girl.
Life was all about trust, and dreaming and believing. I could hear the most
outrageous story and believe it was true. I didn’t need proof. I didn’t need
someone to show me how. I trusted that what I was being told was real, and that
was good enough for me. Why? Because of my connection to being able to
visualize and feel what I was being told.
Children perceive and they feel. They
have strong intuition and communicate nonverbally because they sense, feel and
then take action. They do. They play, they invent, they imagine, they explore,
they are daring and willing to try things knowing there is no guarantee. Even
when they get hurt, they are eager to get back up and do it again.
They believe in themselves
and have physical experiences to validate why. Children desire to fix and heal
and comfort. Children live to express themselves bigger and better than they
did the time before and the time before that. Children love to love and have
access to an unceasing flow of boundless enthusiasm. Children believe they can
only until they are told over and over again that they can’t. Children love to
take the boxes they crawl into and make grand forts out of them, but they
always find new ways to invent and reinvent ways to design and arrange the
boxes to make their imagined adventure different and more exciting each and
every time.
Children push the envelope, they ask questions and are interested
in why things work the way they do. Children love to use every sense they have
been given to immerse themselves in each moment and once they taste, touch,
feel, smell and experience something, they are unlikely to forget it.
Children love to be
around others and know that they feel better when they are playing with other
children. To isolate a child is to take away the very spark within their spirit
that gives them life. Children by nature are collaborative. Competition is the
exception and not the rule because competition is a form of separation,
isolating them from the community under the label called “better than” or not
good enough.
If a child sees another
child has fallen down or is hurting, they will go to them and try to figure out
a way to help. It is only when children are pushed away and caused emotional
suffering that they begin to put their walls up and distance themselves from
the one who is hurting or rejecting them.
Yet as adults, we
believe that we know everything and that the children need to learn from us. We
are so busy trying to be “grown ups” that we have lost our ability to play,
create, and connect to others. Children are the purest examples of what true
life looks like. In the lives of children there is joy and kindness, and there
are so many things that as adults we have lost sight of that are essential to
character and quality of life. The kingdom is not found in how many scriptures
we can recite, how many times a week we go to a church service or in how many
rules we have been able to follow. The Kingdom is expressed in every moment of
awe, in laughter, in reaching out your arms to help someone who has fallen so
low that they don’t know how they can make it another moment. We are the
Kingdom. We are so busy looking for a place that we are trying to get to that
we end up missing all of the incredible moments right here and right now of all
that Heaven is here on this earth.
I had something happen in my life that rocked my world and shattered everything I had spent my life believing life was supposed to be. I found myself caught up and entangled in the webs of my own lies, deceptions, and perversions that I was desperate for Jesus to come back and take me to this place I was taught is called Heaven because in Heaven there is no suffering and there are streets of Gold, there is abundance of everything good that you can imagine and people who have died that I love will be there waiting for me as long as they loved Jesus and were “saved.”
In Heaven I get to have
a huge mansion and this incredible life where every day for forever is wrapped
in the blanket of God’s love and His goodness made in His perfection and beauty
so why in the world wouldn’t I want to hurry up and be able to get there? Here’s the thing though; as long as I was
looking for Heaven somewhere else I was missing everything right now.
Everything for me was almost like just to pass the time to try and be good
enough to please God enough so that I could be allowed into the big white
pearly gates.
I went through life
going the motions doing things and performing according to what I was taught is
pleasing to God and constantly fell on my face because no matter how good I
tried to be I always tripped along the way.
I realized that I was
living my life trying to please God because I wanted all of the stuff He could
provide and give me. I wanted the enormous mansion and everything that I could
imagine forever and ever. I didn’t want to hurt anymore and I certainly didn’t
want to burn in an everlasting hell where I would be tormented day and night
forever separated from Heaven and God! I spent my entire life terrified to live
and terrified to die. The fear of the unknown has always done me in. I have
never in my life been so sick and tired of all of the rules of what you can do
and can’t do in order to please God or be accepted into His Kingdom.
Then the
fear of being kicked out of the Kingdom if I go and screw up as I usually did,
and the constant terror of rejection that hadn’t even happened yet was enough
to keep me running like I was on a hamster wheel. All I wanted was to be loved
and the God I had been taught about who made me and loved me was inconceivable
to me, yet I knew I wanted Him more than anything.
It was really
impossible for me to see God any different than what I experienced growing up.
Our parents are so important because they are the first experience we ever
have. They are our gateway to God. How can we ever imagine a God who will be
unconditional and love us and forgive us when our own family refuses us, judges
us, and punishes us over and over again sometimes unmercifully as we are
reminded for ages of what we did wrong or how our choices have impacted them?
Why would we ever believe deep inside of our hearts that we could be accepted
unconditionally when most of us have never even seen what that looks like?
We all have our own
ideas of what Love looks like or how we will know if someone really loves us,
but I can honestly say that I never in a million years would have ever believed
that what love really is was possible even though I always hoped that it was. I
had no idea that Love really has nothing to do with how you feel or what
someone else give you. Love is an action word. It is a constant that is ever
moving, and ever present. It is always accessible and is the only true cure for
all that we label depression, anxiety and mental illness. Love is the only
thing I know that when you give it, it fills you inside with equal force that
you gave to another. It is the only case where I know for a fact that the more
you give the more that you get immediately within. Living love has become my
drug of choice!
I spent most of my
adult years as a mom and as a woman totally addicted to anything that would
give me even a second of pleasure or escape from all of the misery locked for a
lifetime deep inside of my heart. I spent nearly 2 decades going in and out of
emergency rooms and hospitals creating conditions and inducing episodes of pain
that would almost always guarantee I would get at least 30 Vicodin at a time. I
suppose I should have become an actress because I was so good at faking
illnesses and playing the part when it came to needing medicine. I don’t say
this with any kind of pride or to pat myself on the back for being able to con
dr’s into supplying me the weapons that singlehandedly controlled and altered my
life for many years.
Then something happened
to me in 2010/2011. I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and I had ongoing
back pain that was horribly excruciating because of a bulging disc in my sacral
area of my low back. At one point I was going to the dr. every 10 days and they
would refill my Percocet. I did that until I was sent to a pain clinic in
November 2010. At the pain clinic they rationed me out 185 of the 7.5/325
strength Percocet a month. I remained on that amount of pain medicine all the
way through the beginning of June 2012 when I came to a place where I decided
that I had enough and so I stopped taking the medicine altogether. The medicine
never totally took the pain away but it masked it enough mentally where I could
push past the threshold of what was physically doable for me and keep going in
my life without being incapacitated because of the pain.
I never realized just
how much of an addict I was throughout my life until I didn’t take narcotics
any more. I spent my life in denial about so many things resisting the
acceptance that I really was a huge mess that would never be any different
unless something drastically changed without the change being traumatically
drastic. I truly believe that it was the mind numbing properties that gave me
the edge I needed to feel hopeful while I was going through the greatest hell I
had ever known. The way I was able to feel close to the Lord in the midst of
the pain taught me how to reach for Him in a way I never did before. In that
process I began developing new ways of thinking and living, of being and doing
that began to dramatically affect the way I was navigating life.
Do I love God?
Absolutely with all that I am. Did I get here today just because I fell head
over heels in love with Him on my own. Yes and no…I chose to obey and do the
things that I have never done at any other time in my life because I knew that
the way I had always done things in my life was not working and if I continued
to do anything the same as before I would surely lose and so would my children.
I knew I couldn’t live with that.
The difference was that
even when the pain and emotion was so intense for me, somehow the medication I was taking gave me the ability to reason
enough with myself and choose to do the thing that was so hard to do. The fact
that I had a constant supply of narcotics that I had always had to fight to get
before actually diffused my fear of what life would look and feel like for me
if I didn’t have them. After spending years and time in and out of medical
facilities going through hours and hours of tests and observation just hoping
that a doctor would write me a prescription was exhausting, but in order to get
the meds I didn’t know of any other way.
So when I developed a
real medical issue and had a green light which gave me access to whatever I
needed to manage the pain for the first time in my life I felt relief. Not
relief from the pain so much, relief from everything I have had to do and put
myself and other people through in order to get pain meds through the years.
Now all I had to do was go to my pain clinic once a month and they would write
the prescriptions and off I’d go. I think it must be a psychological thing
about fearing the lack of something that makes you need it and crave it almost
obsessively because once I knew I could get more medicine month after month, I
noticed that I wasn’t taking them the same. It was almost like knowing I had as
much as I needed was changing my addiction to them. I was gaining the control
over it and it was losing its hold on me. I have become convinced through this
journey that emotional pain causes a plethora of physical pain that is very
real and at the same time un-diagnosable.
Addressing the center
of all of the emotional and mental realms and trauma’s of my life has made it
possible for me to go from being nearly physically incapacitated from the pain
to now actually having some days where I forget I have pain at all! Of course it hasn’t happened overnight, but I
have been able to see myself and all of my patterns and habits along the way
change, transform, heal and become consistent. This has altered my quality of
life in every way, but it has taken my full commitment and cooperation in order
for me to get here. I finally realize that I am worth it and that if I ever hoped
to know what it is like to live life limitlessly, that I needed to start with a
single step. And here I am!
This month it has been 2 full years since I have been on any pain medicine. I don't have any desire for it, I don't think about it and in fact, even when I am in the most excruciating pain, I would rather bear the intense pain and actually feel and experience life as I am, than to put anything into my body that will cloud or desensitize me from being able to feel the fullness of the joy and the pain and I am living life doing ALL things through Jesus who gives me strength!
