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Testimony part 4

8th and 9th grade were pretty stable for me. I was still going to youth group on Wednesday nights and still seeing “the guy.” I did feel strongly about Jesus during this phase, but I had adopted the “once saved always saved” lie and felt that God’s word didn’t apply to me. In my mind I could drink, smoke, have sex, etc and it was fine. The summer going into 9th grade is when I started drinking, and that never stopped.

Towards the end of my 9th grade year I almost died from anaphylactic shock again, but this time on vacation with family in Mexico in an area where nobody spoke English. I won’t go on with the whole story but in a nutshell the ambulance was taking an extraordinarily long time to arrive while I was waiting on the beach with my uncle and this woman ran up to me and asked me in English if I had anaphylaxis. I said yes, she ran off, and came back with several Benedryl tablets for me to chew up. She said her daughter goes into anaphylactic shock too and that her daughter wasn’t with her on that trip but something told her to pack them.

I try to not talk too much about all confirmations and words I’ve received from my mom in my testimony, but I do think sharing the following is important.

One night in 9th grade I woke up to my mom praying for me in my bed. I didn’t think much of it and went back to sleep. Later (I don’t remember how long after…maybe years) she revealed to me that that night she had a vision of her old familiar/monitoring spirit hijack a car I was riding in. My mom was on fire for Jesus during this time and was starting to share her testimony online. “The guy” had also recently accepted Christ as his savior, which had been preceded by a very intense saga of spiritual warfare in his life. So the enemy was probably not thrilled with me or my mom. My mom said she had never had a vision of that intensity before and asked for God’s intervention in what she saw. She says God told her that what she saw would not be prevented, but to “fear not.”

Time went on somewhat uneventfully. One night around 9th grade I was praying at my dad’s house. I usually didn’t pray at my dad’s house because his house was where I always had an intense desire to masturbate. It’s weird to type this but it would be wrong to leave out my sexual struggles throughout this story. Nevertheless, I was praying one night, which hadn’t been a common practice for me since my boyfriend had recently been saved. It’s like I got what I asked for and then just forgot about God. But, during this prayer I had a vision of a strawberry ice cream cone and a large black spider emerging from it. Strawberry ice cream was what I ate on me and my boyfriend’s first date. I was confused by this and never really prayed about it afterwards. I think I believed the spider represented sexual sin that I ultimately wasn’t willing to give up. I later realized that this spider was a demon that was allowed into my life through my sinful relationship with this person, and that demon stayed with me for many years later. I will get back to this.

Me and my mom moved to a neighboring town for the start of my 10th grade year because the garage apartment we had previously rented wasn’t in the best area. I was excited about this move because several people I knew went to my new high school. Things did start out great but only lasted that way for a few weeks. This is how my mom’s car hijack vision unfolded:

At this point me and my boyfriend were starting to become on and off but neither one of us knew how to walk away. The trouble happened when I learned my childhood sweetheart went to my new school. His name was “Matt” and we had known each other from birth because our mom’s were best friends from their junior high days. But they had lost touch for issues with Matt’s mom that I won’t mention. So, the point is that it had been years since me and him had seen each other and there were instant sparks. I ultimately broke up with my boyfriend of all that time and briefly started dating Matt but then I found out Matt was involved in some drugs that were heavier than what I was used to being around. There was a series of events that occurred within a short amount of time and soon I found myself in this tangled web of people and drama and lies which was completely out of character for me. When my ex boyfriend found out I had been involved with Matt they both got into a really bad fight and my ex showed up at my apartment in the middle of the night calling me a bitch and a whore and all sorts of things. I problem is that I really believed all the things he said because the only self worth I ever had was still in him.

I was so overwhelmed with guilt and shame in the coming days that I tried to kill myself with a concoction of pills from the medicine cabinet. Wait, let me back up to the morning that this happened. I woke up on this particular morning with a Good Charlotte song stuck in my head called “the day that I die.” I went throughout my classes that day at school, and when PE came I changed privately in a locker. I usually changed out in the open with everyone else, but for some reason that day I did it privately. I believe in that stall was when a demon entered me and told me to kill myself. It was this overpowering thing that I can’t really describe. It was like someone just told me to kill myself and my spirit said “okay” plain and simple. There was no debating. This was not preconceived. This was not a cry for help. The idea made sense to me. I felt so guilty for hurting this ex boyfriend that I truly believed there was no other way out. I believed that I didn’t deserve to live and that it was my life’s purpose to lead this guy to Christ and since I had thought I had done that, I had completed my life’s mission and no longer had a place on this earth. I spent the rest of the day completely numb, writing letters to everyone that mattered most to me.

My mom didn’t get home until later that evening which gave me time to swallow bottles of every otc medicine we had. I went to dinner with my ex that evening and didn’t say a word to him about what I had done. In my mind, I would easily fall asleep that night and not wake up. But when my mom got home and I was still awake, I started to panic. The sight of her and the love I felt for her made me regret everything. She asked me if I was okay and I told her my allergies were just bothering me. She went to the cabinet for benedryl, thinking I was started to go into anaphylactic shock. That’s when I started to panic. All the truth came out and within minutes I was in an ambulance.

[leavingtarshish]

Testimony part 3

Middle school was a hot beautiful mess. It was really hard finding my place in junior high, especially because me and my childhood best friend were now at the same school and she ran in a completely different crowd than I did. She was a year older but her and her friends might as well have been seniors in high school with the things they were allowed to do and got away with. Smoking pot, drinking, sneaking out, etc. I was simultaneously falling into a pretty dark emotional place and started entertaining the idea of hurting myself. I think I had started having suicidal thoughts towards the end of 6th grade but the whole trying to be a “punk” and listening to edgier music thing took that up a notch.

The day I turned 13 is the one day in my history that I wish I could erase and change the trajectory of my childhood. On that day I started “dating” my first love. This relationship quickly turned into something much bigger than we could handle at such a young age. Too serious and too fast. Looking back I can clearly see that I had no sense of self worth and found all my comfort, stability, sense of self, approval, you name it—in this one guy. So much to the point that during the first year or so of our relationship I would actually call him “daddy” on accident. It was embarrassing and not intended to be sexy or anything of that nature. It would just slip out unintentionally at the most random times. This guy also came from a pretty messed up childhood. Probably more messed up than mine. His dad was horrible and controlling and abusive, and these traits unfortunately made their way into our relationship too. To his defense he was only a year older than me and obviously had no idea what he was doing either. He was very loving in the beginning and wasn’t physically abusive, but as the relationship progressed it grew very toxic with heavy elements of control and manipulation.

Side note: while this was the first controlling romantic relationship I had been in since my home life turned south, it was not the first controlling friendship I had and wouldn’t be the last. Looking back I can see that my people pleasing/co-dependent traits made me fall into toxic friendships with females that would always end up controlling and manipulating me. This happened from 2nd grade to 28 years old.

Anyway, I got in serious trouble with my dad and step mom about a month after me and this guy started this relationship and ultimately moved back in with my mom. I was taking a walk with her one evening while I was visiting her and ended up breaking down in tears telling her I was having thoughts about cutting myself. She asked if I wanted to move back in with her and I said yes.

She later told me that shortly before this happened she was awoken in the middle of the night to a vision of a tree planted at the edge of a cliff. The tree was sloping downwards into the dark valley. God told her the tree was me. And not long after I moved back with her, she had the same vision of the tree, but this time it was standing upright. She also saw demons—that had been with me for some time—trying to get inside my new room at her (my grandpa’s) house, but couldn’t. I can’t explain how much better I felt after I moved in with her. There was something demonic happening at my dad’s house that couldn’t follow me to my new home and thank God for that. I had a pep in my step again and got off Lexapro cold turkey. By the way, the demonic activity at my dad’s house is a topic of its own for a later date when I talk about generational curses.

The spring I moved back in with my mom was the start of many instances that should have killed me. The first of these was my first episode of randomly going into anaphylactic shock. Long story short I was in the hospital for a couple days and was not supposed to have survived the amount of time I was in shock before the ambulance arrived. Some might not think anything of this but I just can’t help but feel this was not a coincidence, especially since I probably wouldn’t have come back to the Lord in the same way I did if I had stayed at my dad’s. Me and my mom were invited to a night church service not long after this happened and a woman who was praying for me said she saw boxing gloves.

That summer I went to church camp with one of my best girlfriends. It changed my life. All I can say is years of bondage and who knows what else were lifted from me one night and all I could do was weep on those church steps, with praying hands laid all over my body, for what felt like hours. And prayers I said for other people were immediately answered. It was incredible. This was the first time I really fell in love with God and going to youth group on Wednesday nights. I loved every minute of it and wanted the world to know who He was. I wish I had maintained that posture in the years to come, but my heart will never forget that night.

[leavingtarshish]

Testimony Part 2

It’s been 5 months since I’ve written anything. There is so much I want to say but when I sit down to do it the words escape me. God, please help me write this so that one day it can help someone.

Intermediate school wasn’t very noteworthy compared to other years of my life. I got down to skin and bones during my 5th grade year because my anorexia had gotten so intense. I’m a bit confused about why I was never sent to counseling or any other steps of intervention were made. My body image was so distorted and I was so young that I had no idea I had an eating problem. I believed I was the problem and the fattest person on the planet. I remember being so cold all the time that my bones felt sore. I’m brought back to that feeling even today when I walk through the refrigerated section of a grocery store and I remember how hard it used to be for me to walk through those aisles as a 10 year old. I digress.

Towards the end of 6th grade I had grown out of my eating disorder, if that’s the right way to put it, and was in a new phase of processing all of my childhood trauma. I feel a bit dramatic putting it like that when I haven’t gone in depth about everything that happened, but my heart keeps pulling away from digging into all of that dirt because it detracts from the big picture and intent of this story. Nevertheless, I was processing things that happened with my uncle’s death and just coming to the realization that he was actually dead. Death is such a hard thing to comprehend when you are younger.

On a particularly hard night, I was laying awake in my bed late and night and started praying for the first time I had in a really long time. I told God that if He was real, then a certain friend of mine would wear a yellow shirt to school the next day. That certain friend always donned all black (very much the cringe middle school punk rock phase of our lives), so I thought a yellow shirt would be the least likely thing he would ever wear. Sure enough, the next day he was wearing the brightest neon yellow long sleeve shirt underneath a black short sleeve shirt.

[leavingtarshish]

Testimony Part 1

I’ve tried to perfect my written testimony of what Jesus Christ has done in my life more than once and I can never get it just the way I want it. So here I am again, sharing it on a new platform, and this time I’m going to just word vomit and leave it the way it is with no looking back or editing. My words alone hold no power, but I pray that Jesus does a mighty work through them.

I started having spiritual experiences when I was very little. When I was a toddler I had my first vision of a lion and a lamb on a piece of paper that contained my mom’s written prayers. Other experiences during my very early childhood years include receiving a stuffed cow just minutes after praying for one, my lost shoe being washed back to shore after walking a good distance without it at the beach and praying I would find it, a cricket suddenly appearing on my leg after praying for help waking up on the way to school, and I’m sure there are other experiences I’m forgetting.

My parents had me very young and we struggled financially. We were always moving from one grandparent’s house to the next. By the time I was in 2nd grade we counted 19 moves, and I have no idea how many more happened after that. Even still, my life was pretty picture perfect until my parents split at the beginning of my 1st grade year and my mom started dating someone new that fall. Then, my beloved uncle—who was more like my big brother—died in a horrible car crash that winter. My parents were not in good mental states at that time and as much as I know they loved/love me, and as much as they tried, things just weren’t good. The emotional neglect and instability instantly took a toll on my health. I was sick for months that year with various things and wasn’t even supposed to pass the 1st grade because of the amount of school I missed, but thankfully I did. Things remained chaotic until 4th grade, when my mom and her same on/off boyfriend had finally split ways for good. Up until then there had been lots of fighting between either the two of them or my mom & other family members. When I went to my dad’s he talked on the phone the entire time which left me alone in the big scary house he lived in. I was afraid of that house because I heard my mom talking about the demons she had seen while living at that house, which caused a crippling fear inside of me. I remember being so afraid I would wet the bed on purpose so I wouldn’t have to walk alone to the bathroom in the dark. I mention all of this to say, my early childhood trauma (that I’m not getting fully into) is what caused my first layer of spiritual bondage at an early age: fear of rejection, fear of the spiritual (I was afraid if I prayed to God I would see demons like my mom), fear of failure/performance complex/perfectionism (because I desperately wanted to be approved of and loved), and an eating disorder.

At the end of 4th grade, the anger started to set in and anorexia started creeping it’s way into my life. Now that things were settled my mind was trying to process things it didn’t understand, and while I didn’t know why at the time, I was suddenly filled with an anger towards my mom that was so unbearable I decided to move in with my dad. My dad was an appealing option at that time since he was living with his fiancé, was in a much better emotional place than he was living as a bachelor, and he simply wasn’t my mom. I felt safe with him.

Where was Jesus? I will say that throughout my elementary years my mom did her best to impart to me everything she knew about Jesus and give me all the wisdom/guidance she could. She did this because she knew that was the most valuable thing she could offer me as we were so poor by every other worldly standard. She was the one who led me to pray for the stuffed cow and shoe and wake up/cricket incident that I mentioned earlier. Not because a stuffed toy cow really needs to be prayed for, but because she wanted me to trust God and pray about everything from the beginning. Still, I resented her for most of my life for talking my head off so much about God and everything else in the world. It was overbearing and left me with no desire to really pursue God. The lies that came from my low self esteem also told me that God didn’t really love me and that I could never have the close relationship with Him that my mom did.

At this point I am a very broken, angry, anorexic 10 year old who needed her dad. So to my dad’s I went.

[leavingtarshish]

I grew up celebrating Halloween. Hosted and attended parties every year, did all the things. But now that I’ve gotten into the research behind what this day actually is, I just can’t see where Jesus fits into all of it. “Trunk or treats” or “fall festivals” at the lukewarm church are no exception. So I’ve chosen to go against the grain and throw out this tradition that I’ve mindlessly followed all these years. It’s not fun being the only person I know who doesn’t participate in X Y or Z thing, but this I know is true: Jesus is God of the living, not the dead (Mark 12:27). And, “the night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Romans 13:12).”

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🍇🍐🫐Galatians 5:22-23 🍒🍋🍎

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For years I have had dreams of being chased by dogs at my old childhood home. The spiritual meaning behind these dogs is for another post at another time, but thanks to Jesus I recently went through a major round of deliverance from those dogs. The Lord gave me an amazing dream confirming victory of this spiritual battle, and I hope it encourages someone out there today.

In the dream I was facing a ferocious black dog that was ready to attack me and my child. My first thought was to run from the dog, but after realizing I couldn’t jump the fence that was blocking my path, I knew I had to stand and fight the dog. Instead of being afraid like I normally would be, I confidently stood and killed the dog—all with my right pinky. The dog was holding onto my pinky while I was effortlessly flailing it around and speaking Psalm 23 out loud: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me…” At one point in the dream I remember thinking to myself that I should be in pain from the dog’s teeth gripping my pinky, but it was totally painless.

The victory was mine not because of my own strength, but because of Christ’s power inside of me. His word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12), and it is Him who holds you by your right hand, saying to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” (Isaiah 41:13)

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Matthew 6:25-34

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Yes!

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Psalm 141:2

May my prayer be counted as incense before You, and the lifting of my hands as the evening sacrifice

Do you think your prayers don’t matter? Do you ever ask yourself what the point of prayer is if God is sovereign and is going to do what He wants anyway? Is it hard for you to pray longer than a few minutes or stay focused when you do? If your answer is “yes” to any of the above, you are not alone!

However, God’s word shows us that our prayers *do* matter and they *are* important to God. So much so that Revelation 5 describes our prayers as being collected in “golden bowls” and equated to incense—an aroma pleasing to the Lord.

I personally love the imagery Revelation provides because it reassures me that my prayers ascend to God. While I can’t fully wrap my earthly mind around the exact way prayer works, it’s so cool to know our prayers actually go somewhere not just into thin air, as I have often felt in the past. And not only do they ascend to God, but they are actually heard: “And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us” - 1 John 5:14

What a wonderful thing to know that the Creator of the universe cares for us, wants to spend intimate time with us, and hears the prayers of His saints.

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You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11

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So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed! John 8:36

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I thought I had a generous heart until recently. When I learned a very close family member’s financial situation had changed, I knew some personal sacrifices were necessary in order to help support this person. I’ve been embarrassed and ashamed that I’ve been finding it so difficult to be willing to make those sacrifices, especially for someone so close to me and, if the tables were turned, would do anything within their power to help me and my family. I’ve also been convicted that I haven’t been doing more for this person all along. While God is still working in my heart to transform this ugly part of me, I’m so thankful for this invitation to learn to be more like Jesus. Whatever you do for others, you do for Him. And whatever you don’t do for others, you don’t do for Him. Today I challenge myself any anyone reading this to do something out of the ordinary for someone else. No matter how big or small the deed, you are serving the Most High King when you serve others.

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Rebuke the spirit of fear and stand firm on the Rock of your salvation. 🙏🏻

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All my hope is in Jesus Christ ✝️

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James 1:2-4

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

[leavingtarshish]

Let Jesus be your peace in the storm today 🙃