I wanted them to have life...

It was a dark and scary time. I can only imagine what it was like for those who loved me. Through conversations and processing that season I have heard their heart aches, their fears, their agony... But back then I was living in my own torment and couldn't see out of the fog. So all consumed and blinded by need, noise, panic and dread.. I lived my life as a rabid animal just trying to survive, grasping for survival with everything that was within me. Expending every ounce of energy to keep things going as best as I could.

I remember calling a friend after I had driven circles around our small New England town for hours. I couldn't go to one more friend's house, I couldn't have one more conversation that momentarily helped and took the edge off only to leave me back down in the same abysmal pit tormented and suffocating and just trying to scrape by an existence. I begged for help. I couldn't handle the pressure in my head any longer, I couldn't withstand the excruciating ache that wouldn't relent as it continued to gnaw away at my soul. Drowning in depression and depths of despair, desperate to be able to love Jim and the children, but feeling so horrifically limited and imprisoned by my internal reality.

I needed an escape plan. Not a band aid, I needed an exodus.

A team of people would gather including family, friends, pastors and we would seek the help of some Christian professional counselors. I'll never forget the first prognosis that would be shared with me, sitting in our living room, the words would be spoken, that it would be at least 2-5 years and there were obviously no guarantees.

Mental illness is like that I guess. I don't proclaim to know anything but my journey. I am not really educated in these matters other than I lived through them. Education enough I believe, but not when it comes to understanding the scientific equations and understanding of the brain, and the psychology of it all. Truly the human being, made up of flesh, soul and spirit, is a most magnificent master piece, and when things get complicated it takes time to untangle all that occurred.

I didn't feel like I had the time. My past had stolen more from me then I wanted and now it was claiming my present and I wanted a life. While desperately wanting a life for myself; I was looking at our four children that we had, I was looking at a man who truly loved me and I was looking at a possible prison sentence of maybe 2-5 years with no guarantee of parole. That couldn't be the answer.

This moment was one of the pivotal moments of my journey, there would be others.. but this one I remember so very well.

I went before God with my life, as in the moments of salvation when not even knowing if He existed and yet calling out to Him; this time I knew He existed, unsure of what He would do... but confident He would do something I approached His throne of grace.

My prayer laid it all out, not that He didn't know already but I stood before Him knowing He had knit me together once, He could fix what had unraveled... Knowing that a pile of dry bones could indeed walk again, knowing that His kindness and compassion and love had answers.

I spoke of not having 2-5 years, I cried over my children.... I cried out loud for my husband... I told Him I would lay a “yes” before Him. I told Him I was laying down my life so that He could pick it up. I was saying that He had full permission over my life... I said that I laid a “yes” before His throne, and even on the days if I dared to say “no” to anything He wanted, that in this moment I was declaring a “yes” that would trump all “no” that would ever be uttered. That was my prayer.

The next nine months would be full of moments that some I truly don't even remember, just being honest... I wasn't really allowed to drive without someone with me, I wasn't really left alone for any length of time, I had the most precious of friends that laid her life down for me and gave of herself to me so that I would have a chance of a life... we walked out a road that had no guarantees and to be honest maybe a flicker of hope (in our estimation).. BUT WE WALKED. “WE” and “Walked” are important words.

There were moments that I didn't feel like I could go on, the noise in my head, the pressure upon my life, the darkness that at times would encase stealing all clarity, all focus, all motivation, all hope.... But then.. there is always a but then.. But then we would continue to walk.

It wasn't fullness of life, we were scraping by while it is one thing to write it out as a testimony it is a whole other thing to be living it and not knowing if this was just going to be my life for the entirety of all my days.

The process was exhausting, harrowing, beyond comprehension... grace was sufficient, but sufficient grace is full of learning lessons of overcoming. Grace abundant sweeps you up and over the hurdles, grace sufficient causes you to encounter each one.

We had walked grace sufficient for months, truly for years... in this one particular process, however, for months... Then a night would come where we would encounter grace abundant. Why are there season when as in the days of Paul even the slightest touch of a shadow heals and then there are others where the dead don't rise, the sick aren't healed, the demonized aren't delivered? I don't know the answers to those powerful questions.

What I do know is that we encountered a grace that puts dry bones back together again, that looks upon the traveler beaten up alongside the road and stops, that brings back all the scattered pieces from exile to reform and refashion and reknit back together.

It wouldn't be until this Christmas, the Christmas of 2012, that I would hear a message preached that would give me the scripture that went along with the night that my mind fell quiet and solidness entered in with a most dynamic force.

In Job 38 we read, “Who is this that darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?
“Now gird up your loins like a man,
And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding,
Who set its measurements? Since you know.
Or who stretched the line on it?
“On what were its bases sunk?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
When the morning stars sang together
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

The key verse to me, that my pastor preached upon were the words found in verse 7, “When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

On the night I would be healed, Jesus would stand next to me and point out at the stars. He would speak of their song and cause me to be able to hear it, and in hearing the songs of the stars.. I most certainly would shout for joy. It would be in those moments almost a decade ago, that for the first time in the longest time, in all the time that I could remember that my head was no longer full of noise, where the weights upon my heart no longer suffocated, where the dread of the morning no longer resided deep within, where my very life wasn't being choked out of me.

Our pastors, Jim and I and our children stood in a moment of rebirth, in a moment of hope, in a moment that none had truly believed for but all had tried to imagine. We stood within the invitation to life, to hope, to joy...

I want to put in this postscript to this blog post, turned short book, :)

Since those moments there have been other mountains to climb and other valleys to walk through, the fear of the “what ifs” has had to be conquered... the “what ifs” this wasn't really real, “what if” this was just a respite, “what if” …. fill in the blank...

In those moments I have learned that there is an aspect of this journey that is truly strength to strength and glory to glory and that He, who, began a good work within me will complete it. Fear has been overcome by perfect love, and is being overcome by perfect love.

There have been incredible moments of healing and there have been seasons of walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Each have held within them lessons and beauty.

I wanted to get well... I wanted to get well for me.. but in some of those moments.. in some of those moments I needed to get well for my husband.. for my children... I needed to get well so we could all have life.

Those were actually the words that spurred me on to write this post today... I needed to get well so that they could have life... Christ's words were different... He needed to come to earth and walk as one of us so that we could have life. His sacrifice gave us all the promise of healing and life and joy and hope...

A week away from celebrating Easter, from celebrating the death and resurrection of our Lord, of our Savior... I stand testifying to the fact that I know my redeemer lives and He is for me.... He rose me up so that I could live and testify of the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living...