As anyone who knows me or follows my blog knows I grew up in a pretty hard situation. Growing up was not pleasant, easy, or fun. There was a lot of abuse, disappointment, and massive amounts of confusion. What I did come to understand at a very early age was that the more independent I was the better off I would be. I learned pretty early to take care of what needed to be taken care of myself and to have no need for anyone. I learned to be very responsible at a very early age and to even take care of many other people in my life including the adults who were "theoretically" supposed to care for me. My point in all of that is to say that one of the biggest struggles in my life is independence and a sense of self sufficiency.
On a side note, I can see that I have raised my oldest daughter to be the same way. She is such a tremendous blessing; she is beautiful and strong and very capable of doing what she needs to do and not really needing anyone to help her. The self sufficient part of me is so proud; then there is the part of me that is being restored and changed that knows I have done her a disservice. She will have to come to the realization that she is totally dependent on God and that we are all created to need people and be dependent. I can only repent of my sinful mistakes and pray that God will be gentle and gracious as He brings her to the realization of her need and true dependence.
Anyway, if something needs to be done, I just do it. If I don't really want to do something that needs to be done, I am very capable of making myself do it anyway. Many times I can and do push myself further than is healthy. I put unreasonable expectations on myself and make myself take care of things on my own. (To be fair, I am getting better about this as God heals me.)
The strength, independence and sufficiency in me that many people admire and think of in a positive manner is truly my Achilles heal, the weak spot in my armor. I have such a hard time asking for help or allowing people to come along side me because I don't want to be weak. The funny thing is that very tendency is the weakest spot in me. It's like the wondering sheep; I am "strong" and stand up, but it isolates me from the fold and allows the enemy to attack without having to contend with my fellow sheep. Now, I do in a sense realize my dependence on God, but that is not so hard for me because I trust Him. I don't, on the other hand so much trust people. That, though, also stems back to not truly trusting God. If I truly trust God, then I trust Him to put those people in my life that need to be there as well as trusting Him inside of them.
As I was reading this morning I came across a verse that really stuck out to me. I began to meditate upon it and ask God to speak to me. It struck the nerve of this very tendency in me.
I Corinthians 4:7
For who makes you differ from one another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?
I began to think of my attitude about where I am compared to where I started out. I have this attitude (which is a very prevalent American attitude) that I have picked myself up by my boot straps. I have said out of my mouth, "I started out this life in a gutter and have clawed and fought to get to where I am today." I have used this especially in dealing with other people who have not had to start out as far below ground zero as I did. "Don't compare my progress in life to someone who has started out in a loving family, who got to have enough resources to survive, go to college, etc." While there is some truth to that statement, I cannot even take credit for the progress. Coming from being a homeless drug addict, with nothing and eating my dinner out of dumpsters does give somewhat of a disadvantage over a supportive home, encouragement, a church background, college, etc. The problem in this whole line of thinking is that "I" have brought myself this far.
What do I have that I was not given? Do I have room to boast of my progress? God called me out of darkness. God has given me to grace to take each step I took out of the gutter and each step I continue to take away from that gutter. Not only did He give me the grace, but He took the steps inside me. Even having started out in the gutter is a gift that God has given me. He has allowed me to know Him in a very special way and to have a very deep sense of appreciation for what I have. That is a gift. When you have always had a bed to sleep in, you might not stop to consider what a blessing it is each day to wake up in a bed. I once owned 1 pair of underwear, 1 shirt, 1 pair of jeans, 1 skirt, 1 pair of Doc Martins, and a leather jacket. Man, am I grateful for my closet full of clothes. I only have to wear my underwear one time in between washings; I could even change them mid day if I should so feel inclined. That is a gift. Most people might not stop to be grateful for their underwear. I didn't teach myself to be grateful for these things. God, in His beautiful grace and mercy, allowed me to have the environment to foster that kind of gratitude. When asked how my day is, I will often respond with ,"It is a good day because I woke up with air in my lungs today." I really mean that. I am not saying I don't ever struggle with my attitude because I do at times. But, there were many days before Christ that I did not want to wake up; there were many days that I should not have woken up (I am sure there are more of those than I am even close to realizing). No one promises me tomorrow, so when I roll over in bed awake, it is a gift I have been given. It is another day to walk this earth and serve my Lord who created me, died to redeem me, kept me alive when I should have died over and over, called me out of darkness, and graciously leads me, heals me, changes me, and uses me each day.
My life mantra, the phrase that usually passed into my mind and heart at least once a day is...
Everything I have You gave me; everything I am You made me; Everything I ever hope to be is tied up in You!!
What do I have that I did not receive? How can I boast about anything? He has graciously given me everything. I did not carry myself out of the gutter. He carried me out of the gutter. I cannot take credit; I cannot boast. I have been dependent on Him for every breath I have taken since me first.
Psalm 71:6
From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother's womb. I will ever praise you.
That was my scripture reading on Northumbria Community for the day. http://www.northumbriacommunity.org/
It goes right along with the theme for the day. God continues to faithfully chip away at that self sufficiency, independence and pride. He reminds me that I did not give myself anything; I daily borrow life from Him. I am so glad that He does not hold my pride and arrogance against me; He just gently reminds me, loves me, and graciously teaches me more about my dependence on Him. I have come light years from where I started out, but it has been Him bringing me, not me bringing myself.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, creator of the universe, redeemer of man kind and lover of my soul.
Showing posts with label salvation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label salvation. Show all posts
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
In the beginning part 5
Ok, we are coming up on the best part of the whole story. Every one's eager anticipating of the great meeting has me motivated to try and plow through the last of the story.
So, I guess we stopped at moving in the guy. But wait, first. I just have to say, I love writing this blog and I love sharing my story. Sometimes, though, I feel so exposed. Sometimes it hits me that all my darkest secrets are on the World Wide Web for anyone to read. People that I see everyday and people I have never met know all my secrets. I mean, I love telling my story, sometimes, though, I just think, you are telling people things that any normal person would keep secret locked away in a vault. They say that you are only as sick as your secrets and that the power of a secret is in the fact that it is a secret. So, once they secrets are exposed to the light, it has no power any more. Don't make too much of this little rant. I don't regret sharing. I want to tell the whole world my story b/c it is such an amazing story of God's grace and redemption. I just sometimes have a moment where I think what an odd thing it is the my blackest deepest moments are in print for all the world to read.
I moved in with this guy. It was kind of an awkward situation b/c I was married to this Squid character (he wasn't dead yet); I was pregnant with Crab's baby, and I was living with this other guy. At the time, we were really into inhalants. We would frequently mix them with LSD. There was a lot of LSD floating around that place. I had just gotten back from Cali and the LSD was not very strong. I cannot really remember how long I have been staying there. I don't think it had been very long. We took like 6 hits of LSD (for Cali standard at the time, that wasn't much, normally that is quite a bit). It just so happened this was a point in time when there was really, really strong acid going around. So we took quite a roller coaster ride, all of us. The whole night was pretty insane. I was pretty out of touch. It wasn't the type of out of touch that I can't see what was really going on now, but at the time things were pretty weird. I can say, I am not sure why I took so much LSD when I was doing drugs b/c I have very few good trips. Most of the time, I was miserable. It caused me mind to be so paranoid and weird. Everyone used to think I was so cute when I was tripping b/c I would keep one hand in my mouth with a big smile on my face. I was really actually scared out of my mind most of the time. I usually thought that Satan was after me or that someone was trying to kill me. Now tell me, why would someone want to repeatedly put themselves in the position to be that scared, but I did it hundreds of times over my drug career. I couldn't tell you how many times I did it. So it was a pretty strange night. At one point, I kept hearing this strange noise in the living room; we were in the bedroom hanging out. I thought that my boyfriends room mate was cooking the cat in the microwave (what I really heard was the hippy beads hanging between the living room and dining room every time some one passed through them- of course I did not realize that until we had come down). At another point, I became convinced that my best friend and boyfriend thought I had stolen something from them, so I cleaned out my pockets and told them to take anything that belonged to them (of course they looked at me like I had two heads). Then while laughing I caught sight of one of the boyfriends knives laying beside the bed and was convinced that they were plotting to kill me. That really freaked me out. Of course, in my paranoid state I did not share what I was thinking b/c I didn't want them to know I knew what was going on.
I must share the religious views represented in the house that night to give you a framework of what was about to happen. I was a proclaimed Atheist (my mom had met Jesus a couple years before and I thought she was crazy). My best friend was an agnostic. The boyfriend and his roommate were proclaimed Satanists who like stealing tombstones from the graveyard (they were all over the house). The boyfriend had been raised a Christian in a Charismatic church and turned away. I have a sense that he wasn't shown a very authentic Christianity. Then there was this one guys who claimed to be a Christian.
We were trying to just chill and the Christian (who was tripping too, was our LSD dealer and was huffing carburetor cleaner) kept coming in bringing up God. He is the one who started us on the religious talk. We all ended up in the living room tripping and huffing every kind of huffable chemical you can imagine. At one point me and Star were on the porch huffing Glade and watching the "sun rise" only to be told it was 10 pm so whatever we were looking at was not possibly the sun rise. There was starting fluid we huffed a bit. Then the Freon came out. Now, lest you forget, I am about 5 months pregnant with Ally at this point. Thank God, for His grace and mercy, b/c she is perfectly normal, super smart and a tremendous blessing in my life.
We were all huffing stuff and arguing over religion. I was calling all of them idiots for believing in anything. I said, "You guys are stupid, there is no God, no Satan, no heaven, no hell. You are all going to rot in the ground and feel stupid for believing in all this non sense." Then I took a huge gulp of Freon. Now, this part of the story must be told in two different perspectives. The first perspective is mine. I heard a deep guttural voice come from out of the floor that said, "Go get her boys." Imagine the voice a movie would give a demon or Satan; that is the voice. Immediately, I fell through the floor and fell for a couple minutes. When my feel landed I was in Hell. I will do my best to describe what I saw, but I have trouble putting it into even verbal words. There were flames all around me, but they were sort of transparent. I felt this horrible feeling inside of me that I came to realize after I met Jesus was total separation from God. Then I realized that there were demons all around me pointing and laughing at me. I knew that they were mocking me as if to say, "ha!! we tricked you, we got you to not believe in us or God and now you are here and there is nothing you can do about it." I truly believe that every person that ends up in hell will experience this mockery as the hoards laugh in victory. Then came what I have called "the dooky monsters". I know that you probably LOL ed over that, but when I came out of the hallucination that is the only thing I could come up with to describe them. They looked like sleestaks from the old school Land of the Lost, only they had glowing grids on them like the old Tron game. The walked kind of like sleestaks too. As they got closer to me, they jumped at me and then I was inside of them. It was like I was inside thick gelatin. Then I sort of flashed from scene to scene in hell. I was retarded for a minute, then some other places I don't really remember. The next think I knew I was back in the trailer, one of the guys had a hold of my arms and the door to the trailer was knocked off the hinges.
Now, the perspective of the observers. I took my big hit if Freon, then suddenly I was screaming bloody murder, stomping on the guy that was laying on the ground beside where I was standing while I tried to get something off of my arms. The guys said that they had never heard anyone scream like I screamed before. It was blood curdling as they said. The guys had to grab me to keep me from stomping the other ones face in. And I was still going so crazy I knocked him into the door and knocked it off of its hinges.
As I came too, everyone was staring at me wide eyed like, "what the hell, just happened?" I was like, "wow, what the hell was that?" Then I said, "I don't know what just happened. I don't know where I just was, but I don't think I am an atheist anymore. I don't know what I believe, but I feel like if I ever end up in that place again, I will not be able to leave it. and...I don't want to go back." I was pretty flipped out the rest of the night. To this day, the group of friends that I hung out with at the time says that I had a bad trip and went religious.
So, the next day, I called my mom. I knew she would be able to help me understand what had happened b/c she was into this religious thing.
Now stop for a minute and really think about what you have read in the previous parts so you can really see the miracle here and really see the power of God. Forgive me for becoming an evangelist for a minute. This is the girl who used to kick in peoples wind shields. This is the gutter punk who stole and conned, manipulated and attacked people. This is the drug addict who just wanted to die in a numb overdose. Hopeless, angry, bitter, broken, and done with life. Who do you know, that is a hopeless case? Who have you just given up on? Who is the person that you have spoken over and over to only to have them reject or even laugh in your face? What is the situation that you despair has an end, an answer, a hope? Think about in a minute.
Don't cheat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stop!!!!!!!!!!! Think!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Find it in your mind!!!!
Now, you can read on. That girl who wasn't even looking for God, that angry girl who would have stolen your wedding ring right off of you finger, and spit in your face while she did it, God reached from eternity and grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her, and said "here is what you are choosing for eternity, wouldn't you like to have something better?" There is NO HOPELESS SITUATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God is the God of Hope. He is the God of redemption! He is the only one who can change us. He is hope for the hopeless, healing for the bleeding, salve for the wounded, peace for the tormented, joy for the sorrowful. He loves, forgives, and restores.
Now back to my story. I called mom and I said,"mom, I know you don't approve of me doing drugs while I am pregnant, but something happened last night and I need to talk to you about it." I told her the story and asked her what I should do about it. I said, "I am not sure I believe in God, but I am afraid to take the chance on going back to that place. I don't want to spend eternity there." Her response was the wisdom if our loving Father in Heaven. I believe that He told her exactly what to say. She said, "This is what I would tell you to do. Pray and say, 'God if you are real show yourself to me.' If He is real, He will show you. If He is not, you haven't lost anything and no one ever even has to know that you prayed that prayer." So I started praying that day. I prayed it every night for a couple months. I broke up with the boy and the adoption agency I was talking to about having my baby adopted helped me get an apartment. I was working the night shift at Whataburger.
Then one night when I was about 7 months pregnant, I called me mom and said I want to go to church with you tonight. It was a Friday night (the church she went to had Friday night services). She was a little shocked, but said she would pick me up. I walked into that church that night 7 months pregnant (huge belly), in a tiny little mini dress, Doc Martins, leather jacket, bright red mohawk (standing straight up). They started doing Praise and Worship and as I looked around everyone seemed so happy and they seemed to be really into the God thing. Tears kept streaming out of my eyes. I kept wiping them away and I was so annoyed that they wouldn't stop. (I never cried, ever!!) I think the tears were b/c I could feel the presence of God around me. I have no idea what was preached that night. At the end of the service a man named David Fees stood me up and began to "prophesy" as they called it. He spoke right to my heart. It was like he cut through every layer of denial, hurt and fear I had and got right into my true heart. He said to me, "The Lord wants you to know that He loves you and that He has seen your tears." I still get tears in my eyes and chills every time I say or write that. I began to weep uncontrollably. No one had ever loved me. My mother and father didn't even love me. She does now and she really did when I was a child as well. She just didn't know how to love b/c she was so broken and devastated herself. I had never felt loved by anyone. I had never felt like anyone valued me at all. But then David spoke to me and told me that someone did love me and that someone loved me enough to die on a cross for me. Well, really he died on the cross for all of humanity, but that is a whole theological discussion for another day. David asked if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart to be my savior and I did pray and I was never the same.
My transformation was immediate. It was like night and day. There was nothing gradual about any part of it. I did a 180 and hit the ground running. I even went to hang out with some of my old friends that night and began to tell them about this Jesus who loved me. I didn't really know anything at all about Him or the Bible or anything, but I knew that He loved me and I loved him. I knew that I prayed and I felt His presence. I had prayed and asked , "if you are real, show yourself to me" and He showed up and He showed himself to me. I knew I would never be the same. It didn't matter who believed me or who mocked me. No one could change my mind Jesus loved me and no one else really mattered to me anymore. I have never done drugs since that night. It was actually a few weeks before that night, but I count my drug sobriety date as that night b/c that is when I knew I never wanted drugs again. Jesus was so much better!!! That was July 17, 1992. At that point, I was intending to give the baby up for adoption and they had no idea about the drugs.
I am going to stop for now and pick up more on that later. But for all of you who have been eagerly awaiting this part of the story, there you go. Thanks for reading. I love to tell this story, it is so good, He is so good.
So, I guess we stopped at moving in the guy. But wait, first. I just have to say, I love writing this blog and I love sharing my story. Sometimes, though, I feel so exposed. Sometimes it hits me that all my darkest secrets are on the World Wide Web for anyone to read. People that I see everyday and people I have never met know all my secrets. I mean, I love telling my story, sometimes, though, I just think, you are telling people things that any normal person would keep secret locked away in a vault. They say that you are only as sick as your secrets and that the power of a secret is in the fact that it is a secret. So, once they secrets are exposed to the light, it has no power any more. Don't make too much of this little rant. I don't regret sharing. I want to tell the whole world my story b/c it is such an amazing story of God's grace and redemption. I just sometimes have a moment where I think what an odd thing it is the my blackest deepest moments are in print for all the world to read.
I moved in with this guy. It was kind of an awkward situation b/c I was married to this Squid character (he wasn't dead yet); I was pregnant with Crab's baby, and I was living with this other guy. At the time, we were really into inhalants. We would frequently mix them with LSD. There was a lot of LSD floating around that place. I had just gotten back from Cali and the LSD was not very strong. I cannot really remember how long I have been staying there. I don't think it had been very long. We took like 6 hits of LSD (for Cali standard at the time, that wasn't much, normally that is quite a bit). It just so happened this was a point in time when there was really, really strong acid going around. So we took quite a roller coaster ride, all of us. The whole night was pretty insane. I was pretty out of touch. It wasn't the type of out of touch that I can't see what was really going on now, but at the time things were pretty weird. I can say, I am not sure why I took so much LSD when I was doing drugs b/c I have very few good trips. Most of the time, I was miserable. It caused me mind to be so paranoid and weird. Everyone used to think I was so cute when I was tripping b/c I would keep one hand in my mouth with a big smile on my face. I was really actually scared out of my mind most of the time. I usually thought that Satan was after me or that someone was trying to kill me. Now tell me, why would someone want to repeatedly put themselves in the position to be that scared, but I did it hundreds of times over my drug career. I couldn't tell you how many times I did it. So it was a pretty strange night. At one point, I kept hearing this strange noise in the living room; we were in the bedroom hanging out. I thought that my boyfriends room mate was cooking the cat in the microwave (what I really heard was the hippy beads hanging between the living room and dining room every time some one passed through them- of course I did not realize that until we had come down). At another point, I became convinced that my best friend and boyfriend thought I had stolen something from them, so I cleaned out my pockets and told them to take anything that belonged to them (of course they looked at me like I had two heads). Then while laughing I caught sight of one of the boyfriends knives laying beside the bed and was convinced that they were plotting to kill me. That really freaked me out. Of course, in my paranoid state I did not share what I was thinking b/c I didn't want them to know I knew what was going on.
I must share the religious views represented in the house that night to give you a framework of what was about to happen. I was a proclaimed Atheist (my mom had met Jesus a couple years before and I thought she was crazy). My best friend was an agnostic. The boyfriend and his roommate were proclaimed Satanists who like stealing tombstones from the graveyard (they were all over the house). The boyfriend had been raised a Christian in a Charismatic church and turned away. I have a sense that he wasn't shown a very authentic Christianity. Then there was this one guys who claimed to be a Christian.
We were trying to just chill and the Christian (who was tripping too, was our LSD dealer and was huffing carburetor cleaner) kept coming in bringing up God. He is the one who started us on the religious talk. We all ended up in the living room tripping and huffing every kind of huffable chemical you can imagine. At one point me and Star were on the porch huffing Glade and watching the "sun rise" only to be told it was 10 pm so whatever we were looking at was not possibly the sun rise. There was starting fluid we huffed a bit. Then the Freon came out. Now, lest you forget, I am about 5 months pregnant with Ally at this point. Thank God, for His grace and mercy, b/c she is perfectly normal, super smart and a tremendous blessing in my life.
We were all huffing stuff and arguing over religion. I was calling all of them idiots for believing in anything. I said, "You guys are stupid, there is no God, no Satan, no heaven, no hell. You are all going to rot in the ground and feel stupid for believing in all this non sense." Then I took a huge gulp of Freon. Now, this part of the story must be told in two different perspectives. The first perspective is mine. I heard a deep guttural voice come from out of the floor that said, "Go get her boys." Imagine the voice a movie would give a demon or Satan; that is the voice. Immediately, I fell through the floor and fell for a couple minutes. When my feel landed I was in Hell. I will do my best to describe what I saw, but I have trouble putting it into even verbal words. There were flames all around me, but they were sort of transparent. I felt this horrible feeling inside of me that I came to realize after I met Jesus was total separation from God. Then I realized that there were demons all around me pointing and laughing at me. I knew that they were mocking me as if to say, "ha!! we tricked you, we got you to not believe in us or God and now you are here and there is nothing you can do about it." I truly believe that every person that ends up in hell will experience this mockery as the hoards laugh in victory. Then came what I have called "the dooky monsters". I know that you probably LOL ed over that, but when I came out of the hallucination that is the only thing I could come up with to describe them. They looked like sleestaks from the old school Land of the Lost, only they had glowing grids on them like the old Tron game. The walked kind of like sleestaks too. As they got closer to me, they jumped at me and then I was inside of them. It was like I was inside thick gelatin. Then I sort of flashed from scene to scene in hell. I was retarded for a minute, then some other places I don't really remember. The next think I knew I was back in the trailer, one of the guys had a hold of my arms and the door to the trailer was knocked off the hinges.
Now, the perspective of the observers. I took my big hit if Freon, then suddenly I was screaming bloody murder, stomping on the guy that was laying on the ground beside where I was standing while I tried to get something off of my arms. The guys said that they had never heard anyone scream like I screamed before. It was blood curdling as they said. The guys had to grab me to keep me from stomping the other ones face in. And I was still going so crazy I knocked him into the door and knocked it off of its hinges.
As I came too, everyone was staring at me wide eyed like, "what the hell, just happened?" I was like, "wow, what the hell was that?" Then I said, "I don't know what just happened. I don't know where I just was, but I don't think I am an atheist anymore. I don't know what I believe, but I feel like if I ever end up in that place again, I will not be able to leave it. and...I don't want to go back." I was pretty flipped out the rest of the night. To this day, the group of friends that I hung out with at the time says that I had a bad trip and went religious.
So, the next day, I called my mom. I knew she would be able to help me understand what had happened b/c she was into this religious thing.
Now stop for a minute and really think about what you have read in the previous parts so you can really see the miracle here and really see the power of God. Forgive me for becoming an evangelist for a minute. This is the girl who used to kick in peoples wind shields. This is the gutter punk who stole and conned, manipulated and attacked people. This is the drug addict who just wanted to die in a numb overdose. Hopeless, angry, bitter, broken, and done with life. Who do you know, that is a hopeless case? Who have you just given up on? Who is the person that you have spoken over and over to only to have them reject or even laugh in your face? What is the situation that you despair has an end, an answer, a hope? Think about in a minute.
Don't cheat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stop!!!!!!!!!!! Think!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Find it in your mind!!!!
Now, you can read on. That girl who wasn't even looking for God, that angry girl who would have stolen your wedding ring right off of you finger, and spit in your face while she did it, God reached from eternity and grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her, and said "here is what you are choosing for eternity, wouldn't you like to have something better?" There is NO HOPELESS SITUATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God is the God of Hope. He is the God of redemption! He is the only one who can change us. He is hope for the hopeless, healing for the bleeding, salve for the wounded, peace for the tormented, joy for the sorrowful. He loves, forgives, and restores.
Now back to my story. I called mom and I said,"mom, I know you don't approve of me doing drugs while I am pregnant, but something happened last night and I need to talk to you about it." I told her the story and asked her what I should do about it. I said, "I am not sure I believe in God, but I am afraid to take the chance on going back to that place. I don't want to spend eternity there." Her response was the wisdom if our loving Father in Heaven. I believe that He told her exactly what to say. She said, "This is what I would tell you to do. Pray and say, 'God if you are real show yourself to me.' If He is real, He will show you. If He is not, you haven't lost anything and no one ever even has to know that you prayed that prayer." So I started praying that day. I prayed it every night for a couple months. I broke up with the boy and the adoption agency I was talking to about having my baby adopted helped me get an apartment. I was working the night shift at Whataburger.
Then one night when I was about 7 months pregnant, I called me mom and said I want to go to church with you tonight. It was a Friday night (the church she went to had Friday night services). She was a little shocked, but said she would pick me up. I walked into that church that night 7 months pregnant (huge belly), in a tiny little mini dress, Doc Martins, leather jacket, bright red mohawk (standing straight up). They started doing Praise and Worship and as I looked around everyone seemed so happy and they seemed to be really into the God thing. Tears kept streaming out of my eyes. I kept wiping them away and I was so annoyed that they wouldn't stop. (I never cried, ever!!) I think the tears were b/c I could feel the presence of God around me. I have no idea what was preached that night. At the end of the service a man named David Fees stood me up and began to "prophesy" as they called it. He spoke right to my heart. It was like he cut through every layer of denial, hurt and fear I had and got right into my true heart. He said to me, "The Lord wants you to know that He loves you and that He has seen your tears." I still get tears in my eyes and chills every time I say or write that. I began to weep uncontrollably. No one had ever loved me. My mother and father didn't even love me. She does now and she really did when I was a child as well. She just didn't know how to love b/c she was so broken and devastated herself. I had never felt loved by anyone. I had never felt like anyone valued me at all. But then David spoke to me and told me that someone did love me and that someone loved me enough to die on a cross for me. Well, really he died on the cross for all of humanity, but that is a whole theological discussion for another day. David asked if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart to be my savior and I did pray and I was never the same.
My transformation was immediate. It was like night and day. There was nothing gradual about any part of it. I did a 180 and hit the ground running. I even went to hang out with some of my old friends that night and began to tell them about this Jesus who loved me. I didn't really know anything at all about Him or the Bible or anything, but I knew that He loved me and I loved him. I knew that I prayed and I felt His presence. I had prayed and asked , "if you are real, show yourself to me" and He showed up and He showed himself to me. I knew I would never be the same. It didn't matter who believed me or who mocked me. No one could change my mind Jesus loved me and no one else really mattered to me anymore. I have never done drugs since that night. It was actually a few weeks before that night, but I count my drug sobriety date as that night b/c that is when I knew I never wanted drugs again. Jesus was so much better!!! That was July 17, 1992. At that point, I was intending to give the baby up for adoption and they had no idea about the drugs.
I am going to stop for now and pick up more on that later. But for all of you who have been eagerly awaiting this part of the story, there you go. Thanks for reading. I love to tell this story, it is so good, He is so good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
