MY STORY - MY PROCESS

I gave my heart and life to Jesus in my early twenties. I start my story telling you this because it is the most important part.

Up to this point I had struggled with obsessive thoughts, fears and very low self esteem. I was always looking for reassurance that I was special and needed. I suffered with many different things emotionally and mentally, but now that I had given my life to Jesus I thought everything would be different.  I had friends, a church, and a purpose, so how could anything be wrong. I spent a lot of time studying the Bible, going to bible studies, going to church meetings, listening to Christian radio and spending a lot of time with my new friends. I felt alive for the first time in my life. It was so fun!

Then around the second year, my struggle with obsessive fears resurfaced. None of my friends knew anything about all the stuff that went on inside of me though.

Two years before all of this my beautiful daughter was born.  She was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. I couldn’t believe she was really real. When she was around two years old, I got pregnant three consecutive times and lost all three at about three months. Then I had to have a hysterectomy because of some health issues. Hope of another child was gone. My Christian friends were there to support me, but they didn’t know that I blamed myself for all of it. The mental and emotional problems I struggled with during my lifetime were wreaking havoc on me again, but I ignored it all and got busy in church work.  I was still trying to fit in.

After a few years the church I was attending closed. During that time, a few of our friends saw a church in Atlanta on television that looked really interesting. It had all the ministries that we were looking for and a school for our daughter, so even though it was on the other side of the country, we sold everything and we moved there. A few of our close friends did the same, as well. We moved, got new jobs, new homes and started trying to make a life. There were many great things about this church, but something wasn’t quite right. It seemed that my emotional and mental issues escalated there. I felt more insecure than ever, and it seemed that I spent a lot of time just trying to fit in. I needed to fit in and be special, like always. My husband was very jealous of me and since I was always trying to fit in and be special this caused many marital problems. After six years of living in Atlanta and almost twenty years of marriage, he told me he was divorcing me. I was very shocked, but I realized I should have seen it coming.

I moved myself and my daughter into one of the church community basement apartments to try and start a new life. I got a job at a good company and things seemed to be going okay, but I hadn’t dealt with any of my hurts or losses. I was still stuffing everything down and running from my inner problems. I was on my own for the first time in my life, and I was busy looking for a new husband, and growing more insecure as time went on. I went from being totally involved in church life to hardly ever going at all.

Then the news hit about a big scandal at the church. So big that it rocked the entire church world. It seemed that all the men in my life that I trusted had gone crazy. I left and moved into an apartment in another city in the Atlanta area. For the first time in my life I was really on my own. It seemed exciting at the time, but very quickly things turned on me. I went looking for love in all the wrong places, and got into a really bad relationship and fell apart emotionally. A year after the divorce my dad sent my brother-in-law from Las Vegas to bring me back home to live close to my family again. Once back in Las Vegas, I started going to many different kinds of 12 step recovery groups. If I didn’t have a meeting to go to, I would be afraid to get out of bed. I was a major mess, and I still had not dealt with any of my emotional baggage and mental issues. I didn’t really know how to or what to do.

Finally, after six years of going in and out of recovery groups, churches,  bad relationships and therapy, I found myself at a place where nothing was helping me and nothing was working. I was barely making it through work, and the rest of my time I was trying to spend alone, so I could make myself better for God. I was living in fear and torment, and afraid to tell anyone how bad things really were. I couldn’t understand why I seemed to be getting worse. The more I read recovery books, the more information I had to beat myself up with. My life and problems seemed hopeless. I tried to get help from people in the church, but no one really understood how to help me. It seemed that my problems were bigger than anyone else could deal with. The people I went to for help ended up giving up on me.

Amazingly enough, at this horrible time in my life, when all I wanted was to stay away from everyone, I met my current husband in a recovery group. He had been through plenty of his own share of horrible situations, and he had lost a lot also. I did my best to stay away from him, but it didn’t work.  It looked like another disaster was about to happen, but what I didn’t know was that this relationship was going to get me into some healing, and past my lifelong patterns of self-destruction.

It didn’t make sense, but my process began. I was done trying to do it my way. I needed to stay still and go through it with God. I was now married and committed to a man who had his own problems to deal with, so he was not available to me in the ways I thought I needed. This left me  a place of being totally dependent on God in a way I had not known before.

Right before this happened an old friend came back into my life. She gave me some tools that I had never heard before. She said to, “Stay out of My Head, Feel My Feelings,  Stay in the Present Moment, Quit Trying to Control Outcomes and Quit Asking Why.”  I always knew I had problems, but up to this point I didn’t know most of my problems came from obsessive thinking. I didn’t even know what obsessive thinking was. I just needed to be still and stay in the moment with God and go through the feelings with Him and let Him make me better, let go and let Him be in control!

Then I went to a Christian therapist who told me about a book written by Dr. David Burns, “The Feeling Good Handbook.” It had a list of distorted thoughts and described what they were. I realized my head was full of them. How could my thoughts be so distorted! I knew I had problems, but could all of my thoughts be distorted? How could this be? I had been prayed for so many times, I had been to so many meetings for help, and had been seeking help for so long. I had scripture answers for everything, but I didn’t know how sick my thinking was. I felt guilty, and I thought God was going to be mad at me, but I decided that God didn’t want me to be crazy, so I was going to do what I needed to do to help myself.

In Dr. Henry Cloud’s book, “Changes That Heal,” I learned I had some really distorted ideas about God, others and myself. At the end of each chapter he shares a lot of the distortions that Christians can have. I didn’t realize I could have distorted thoughts and beliefs about God!

I was ready, and I knew it was time to quit trusting anything I thought to be true, because what I thought was true about life was all distorted thinking. I was like Humpty Dumpty who sat on the wall, fell off, and broke his crown, but now I was going to let God put me back together again. It started with not trusting anything going on in my own head! It seemed very scary, but I just put myself in His hands and kept my mind on, one second at a time.

My Process:  I learned that I had to feel to heal. I found out that I couldn’t think and feel at the same time! If I was thinking or in my head, then I couldn’t feel. If I have to feel to heal then I couldn’t be healing. So, I made my feelings my best friends. I learned to be comfortable with uncomfortable feelings. I was delighted to be feeling! Feelings bring healing, thinking brings torment. I learned to stay out of my head and feel my feelings, and through that process, the most miraculous thing happened, I FOUND GOD INSIDE OF ME!  I knew that no matter what, Me and the Lord would be okay, one second at a time! He was inside of me and He wasn’t going anywhere, and I could always be with Him there, inside of me! #heartsandmindssetfree #mystory #myprocess #heart #feelings #thoughts #head