Love Lifted Me

CBN.com In her words...

I had everything going for me. I was well-liked and accepted by my popular group of friends and did awesome in soccer and got straight A’s, but on the inside things didn’t look as pretty as they did on the outside.

Around the age of 12 or so, I started to experience a lot of feelings of frequent loneliness and sadness… really for no apparent reason. Everyday, I had thoughts that would belittle me and criticize me. I surrounded myself with self-help books and inspirational quotes and told myself that once I get to college everything is going to be good. I’m going to be happy, I’m going to get over this.

Shortly before I graduated high school, I went to a church and I just remember being there and seeing these people have a real relationship with the Lord, with God. I never doubted the existence of God, but I never had that real personal or intimate relationship with Him. When I graduated high school, I found myself just hit rock bottom. I hit a point of just such intense depression. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to live or if I wanted to die, and I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want that pain that was lingering on inside of my soul to just stay there.

A couple of weeks after high school, I found myself in the hospital in the psychiatric ward of the hospital, signing papers that I was a danger to myself. Towards the end of the summer, I started to feel a little bit better and there was a doctor who told my parents it might be good for me to just go east to the university that I had been accepted to. The doctor said that was probably the best thing, and I would get over this and the medication would kick in.

So I packed my bags and my parents moved me a couple thousand miles away to the east coast. Everything was okay on the surface for a while, but before I knew it, I just began to crumble inside, and I just came undone. I was just filled with this anxiety and I remember thinking, you know what... maybe I should just go walk out in front of the train tracks right behind the library and just end this. I can’t do this. I ended up having to be flown home and was readmitted to the hospital where I stayed for about three weeks.

I remember asking my parents for a Bible, when I was in the hospital. I was just reading through the words of Jesus and the hope and the healing that was there. It was during this time that God really, really met me in this darkness and He surrounded me with people who knew Him and began to pray for me and for my family.

I began to feel better and be lifted out of this place of depression. I started going to church and it was there that I really entered into a real personal relationship with Jesus. I remember reading my Bible one night and I came across Psalm 139 and I came across this beautiful verse that said, "I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

As alone as I felt just going through that storm, you know the reality was that I was not alone. God was experiencing my sorrow and my sadness right along with me. In Him, I found my refuge and my strength and my fortress. I just kind of hung on to Him, and He just held on to me during that storm, and He wouldn’t let me go because He had a purpose so much bigger than I could have ever imagined.

Bit by bit, he gave me just a heart for a ministry. I would just pour His love and His truth upon young women in our society today. While doctors are limited in their ability to performing healing, we serve a God who is not, and He can set us free from that, and He has done that in my life. I spend my days with authentic joy. God has redeemed me and saved me.

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