I don't want to go too far back into history but the more I attend church and the more I read my Bible and the more I pray and focus myself on being the person He created me to be, the more I'm seeing Him work in my life.
I have been fighting with depression or a long time. Part of my testimony is how God literally saved my life back on 12/16/12. I had been suffering from severe depression and the way my world was changing because of the changes my body had gone through as my RA has progressed. I was losing what little bit of freedom/mobility/worthiness I felt I had. I had begun to feel incarcerated by feelings of hopelessness, fear, anxiety, depression, and did I mention FEAR? I became so disgusted each time I wanted to do something my body wouldn't allow. Something that I had been able to do without so much as a thought three years before. Constantly relying on a husband who is stressed and worthy of a wife better than I: a whole woman who could have provided him a child. Who doesn't need help opening drawers, jars, bottles, lifting milk jugs to pour milk on my cereal. A wife who could work productively, travel, shop, cook for him, clean his house. A wife who didn't spend days on end in bed because she didn't have the strength to walk up the stairs to get to the bathroom so just settled to confine her existence into a 15x20 foot master bedroom.
I remember sitting in my mom's living room right before Christmas in the lights of her tree talking to her and Jeff saying, "if it wasn't for Amelia and my family I would lay down and die. I don't have a life anymore. I'm frustrated. I'm depressed. I'm miserable. I feel hopeless." My mom responded, "I can understand how you feel that way." Now, that wasn't to say that she was in agreement for me to kill myself. She simply let me know that she understood HOW I could feel that way. It was what I needed to hear. I didn't need to hear, "now just stop that right now." Or, "Don't talk like that!" I just needed someone to validate MY feelings of anger and frustration.
Now, to understand WHY it was that I had the hardest time of my life at this time of year you have to learn some history. I miscarried our only child on 12/12/07. The day before I turned 33. I remember laboring in my bed with my mom at the foot telling me how surreal it felt that I, her daughter, was laboring 33 years to the day she was laboring with me. That wasn't an accident. But ever since then, Christmas, and my birthday, has come with a sort of delight in the season and the bittersweet pain of what could have been.
This past Christmas I had had it. We'd made the decision the Christmas before to be parents by Christmas 2012. That experiment in foster care was a nightmare and, as I usually do, made the wrong decision in disrupting placements and lost both children in the process. So, to me it was another year of not playing Santa, not knowing what it's like to go to bed excited for the morning. Feeling like a couple and not a family. Meanwhile, I was becoming even more dependent upon my husband who works hard 40+ hours a week who comes home and cooks our meals, does our shopping, our laundry, our housecleaning and all I did was complain: I can't walk today. I can't get out of bed today. I'm depressed today. I tried to clean the bathroom and it took me 30 minutes to figure out how to hold the toilet brush and scrub the toilet while sitting on the side of the bathtub. I was tired of seeing the burden my wonderful husband had to carry because of me. He deserved a better life. And I knew the only way he'd ever get that better life is if I was no longer around and in my mind if I just went to bed and didn't wake up he'd be sad for a minute but he'd move on. It's the nature of the beast right?
On 12/14/12, a day after my 37th birthday and having been in the hospital with an abscessed RA nodule, I began to formulate a plan. I would wait. I had a plan that would go in effect on 12/17/12 after Jeff went to work and if it worked Jeff would've come home free from a wifely burden. Sunday, 12/16/12 I woke up early because I heard someone say, "Get up, it's time to go." I remember looking up and around and Jeff was no where to be found. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. What in the world am I doing up at 8am on a Sunday?? Then I heard it again, "I SAID GET UP AND GO. I'M WAITING!" I got up out of bed and I said to Jeff, "I've got to go to church." I honestly don't remember if Jeff went with me that day or not. I remember the sermon: Don't Give Back Your Breakthrough. The pastor was setting up his sermons for the new year and the new year was going to be about getting your breakthrough and keeping it.
I don't even remember what was said specifically that made me change my mind that day. But I came home that day and as I sat on my bed, looking at my plan, I began to realize I was staring the devil right in his face. This plan WAS NOT the breakthrough the Lord had for me. It couldn't be. A God that loves me, who sent his OWN child to DIE FOR ME so that I could LIVE would NEVER have a plan for me to DIE. And I remember thinking, "I know how it feels to lose a child. I didn't sacrifice my son for anyone. My body evicted him because my body is broken. But the core of me, the raw barren emptiness from the depths of my barren uterus began to comprehend what God gave up for ME. For YOU. So many have to see reenactments of the resurrection in order to appreciate what Jesus did for us, but to this mother who lost a child, it wasn't what Jesus did that spoke to me that day it was what God did. Here I was still broken from so many things, especially the loss of my child and here is the man who not only allowed for His Son to be born but He created Him with the purpose of allowing Him to die. It had to happen.
As I sat there and thought about everything in my life, everything beating me down, I weighed the pros and cons. Then it came to something this simple: IF someone had asked me to sacrifice my child so that he could have saved even one child, what would my answer have been? Maybe my child was created to die. Think about that a minute. Maybe God knew I needed a way to come to Him. To come to Him for REAL this time. Not like all those other times when I thought I was there but I wasn't. But for real come to Him. Maybe our child's only purpose was for me to know how much love a parent has for a child and how much love my parents have for me and how much love my FATHER has for me. I never got that moment where new parents see their child for the first time and fall in love. I fell in love with a grayish blob on a screen and a thump thump thump of a tiny heart that I swear was the voice of angels singing. I'll never forget calling my mother telling her I heard the heartbeat. Her words of complete relief were, "OH THANK YOU JESUS!"
It's hard to accept that two weeks later the thump thump thump would be gone. Never to hear again. I remember another call to my mom and her voice so full of pain, "OH Allison, are they sure?" She hoped with everything in her they were wrong. They weren't.
I prayed, "If there's a God please let me know if I have a son or daughter." On what would have been my due date I called the Children's Hospital asking how I could make a toy donation.When I made that phone call, I explained to the woman I wanted to make a "donation of toys in memory of my son." My SON. It was the first time I had referred to my child by gender.
I'm sorry this is jumping back and forth but I have a point. Jump forward to realizing while there was nothing I could do to bring back my son, I wasn't going to allow a man who sacrificed the loss of His Son so that I could live forever to be in vain. My son's purpose was to help me see the way God moved.
I decided that day to live. Jeff and I rang in 2013 at church because that's the way we wanted to start this year. Since then we've completed membership classes, we've become members, we've made new friends, and our faith has grown. And my faith and my acceptance of Christ is real this time. Since we made the decision to become a part of this church family God continues to reveal to me this is His perfect plan. It's not an accident.
I continue to struggle with depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide. I no longer have a plan. I put off surgery for weeks because when it boiled down to it I was afraid of never waking up. Afraid of dying. I started to realize that I wanted to live. I just need some help. I'm seeing a Christian counselor and I will be seeing a psychiatrist next week. .
Today I had to go see my counselor and I had to force myself to go. It took everything I had to overcome the fear of something horrible happening to me. I hadn't been out of the house by myself in weeks. I was scared and anxious. But I got to counseling and I got home. I hadn't been home more than 10 minutes when I received a text from my Pastor. She wanted to know how I was feeling and I broke it down:
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I admitted I was struggling with depression. Notice what she responded: Bible study tonight was on Battle of the mind. I ended up going and sharing just a little bit of how I've been feeling and as others began to share I realized that my fears, anxieties, and feelings where shared with others. I found supportive words, hugs, sisters in the church hugging me and telling me "I love you."
None of this was an accident. God knew that one day there would be a time when His daughter would need to be ministered to by a real congregation of real people who experienced real life and who love anyway. I feel so blessed.
This whole long-winded blog is just a small part of the testimony of what the Lord has done in my life. I didn't share this because I want to give too much insight into my life but rather because just as I found solace in others who have struggled or are struggling through battles of the mind, I want to be able to share it. Maybe something I wrote here will awaken something in someone and he/she can realize there's a place for you in the Church. There's a body for you in the Church. There's a kindred spirit for you in the Church. Listen to God. Let Him lead you. Allow yourself to become able to read between the Scriptural lines. Read between the lines of what is being preached to see where you are in God's Master Plan. Are you someone in awe of what Jesus did for you? Or are you also in awe of what God did for you?
There are no accidents. God is the only thing that remains true. His word is the only medicine that can help heal. That eases the pain. And I want to thank Him for his divine and perfect plan. I am here today because God made the sacrifice of His child and then He gave Pastor Leo the Word I needed the day the Lord sent me to Christian Love Ministries that saved my life. The Lord continues to let me know I'm in the right place because of texts like the one I got today from Pastor Regina. Every spiritual need I've needed met has been met through this ministry. There are no accidents. Period.
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