April 2, 2013

  Lately I have been dwelling on what is hard and not seeing all that God has done over the years. I see all of the struggles and the heartache. I see my sweet little boy gone to Heaven, a marriage battered and destroyed by bad choices. I see all that is lost and nothing that is gained. I was not given the gift of a "good life" I saw a lot of heart ache and pain. I grew up in a broken home riddled with drugs and violence and all the bad things that you can dream up. I was abused at home and at school and anywhere else they could think up.What I am not remembering is what God did for me twelve years ago in a little apartment. I was Seventeen; I had attempted suicide more than eleven times coming close the last time not even a year ago. I was having severe anxiety attacks and insomnia on top of those. I went days without sleep and when I finally fell asleep I would wake from terrifying nightmares. I was scared of everything, I couldn't leave the apartment without being afraid, I hated being alone as much as I despised being around people. I was terrified of dying while at the same time I continued to try to think up some way to successfully eliminate my life. Then there was a night when I was unable to sleep. I was reading a book, which was what I did ninety percent of the time. It was around 2:30am when I heard loud noises outside. I had not slept for at least three days at this time so I was somewhat delirious as well as already jumpy. I became so terrified I was pacing the apartment, I would sit down and try to read only to be distracted by the noise I had heard and to wonder what had happened and if God was coming back and was it thunder from a bad storm...
Needless to say I was irrational, but God used it. I was sitting there crying and frustrated that I was so afraid and couldn't control myself and I couldn't sleep. So what was the answer? Well, my choices were to 1) Take an overdose of sleeping pills and hope that I would die in my sleep and if I did not hope that I would not have the nightmares. (anyone that has had real nightmares will understand why one would go days without sleeping to avoid having them.) 2) I could cut myself to try to relieve the fear and get some control of my emotions. (This however, was no longer as effective as it had once been and was now landing me in hospitals and nut houses.) or 3) I could try this salvation thing that my sister had been stuffing down my throat for the past four years. 
I chose three, this was not the first time that I prayed for help through a night, but it was the first time that I prayed for God to deliver me and vowed that I would change if He would just take it all away; and He did. I felt a little calmer, but immediately I was bogged down with a tiny little voice in my conscious saying 'get rid of the books'. I wanted to cry, I did cry, I bawled as I began gathering hundreds of wicked books that I loved and read daily over and over. I stuffed them all in bags and piled them near the door ready to throw them away first thing in the morning. I sat down sure that all was good. But that little voice cam back 'all of them' I sighed and I pulled out my special box, with my most cherished books that I had hidden from my mother because she did not approve of them, they went next to the others. Again I thought I was done when again I heard it 'take them now'.
Now this command was hard for two reasons. First because as long as those books were still in the room with me I could always take it back in the morning when the sun was up and everything was back to normal, second I was terrified of going outside. It was dark and my list of irrational fears included walking outside at night. But I was determined to be free as they all kept preaching would happen. So I swallowed my fear, looked up and said God if anything happens to me this ones on you, and I lugged I believe it was four bags of books to the dumpster at 3:00 in the morning. I cried because I was scared and I just kept praying and thinking this will be over soon and then I can sleep! 
And I did! I slept a beautiful long dreamless sleep. I was thrilled the next morning, at least until I looked at my empty bookshelves.There was a tug, it wasn't easy to give up my whole existence  Books had seen me through many hard years and I would not have survived without my stories and daydreams. And there were still night when I had terrible nightmares, but as time when on they were less an less to where now-Thank the Lord- I no longer have real nightmares. I have bad dreams, but not nightmares! I still faced my fears everyday for a long time. It all did not disappear overnight, but overtime, I have grown more confident and I am not scared of people and well everything. I am able to embrace life and enjoy it. So tonight I am determined to turn over a new leaf and start finding all that God has done and is doing instead of all that is going wrong in a life that is so much simpler then what I endured as a child.