It was November 30th. We had just gotten back from a trip and missed church, so we decided to go to a friend's church's evening service. It was an EXCELLENT sermon on letting your fire for the Lord be as high as it can get. No big deal, right? Yay for surrendering to the Lord! Haha...not in my case. This great idea combined with earlier symptoms (and, who knows, maybe my strict conservative upbringing) spiralled down...down....DOWN into a miserable year and a half of living Hell. Woot.
This could take a long time to explain, but I feel like I should tell my story. Pride gets in the way, but God can take care of that. He can use it to touch somebody even if it's just one person.
First, it was little things, you HAVE TO read your Bible, you HAVE TO walk this way, you HAVE TO wash the counter, you HAVE TO rewrite that, you HAVE TO apologize a million times for this, you HAVE TO pick up that piece of trash, you HAVE TO clean every single inch and millimeter of that bathroom.
Then it started to get worse. My thoughts seemed uncontrollable, I would automatically thing just TERRIBLE things and then go and have to confess them in a prayer only to think it again one millisecond later, over and over and over.....and over....................and over........yeah. You get the picture. It sucked. I'm not saying that I'm guiltless, I am responsible for thinking those things, but with God's help, I turn from evil thoughts every day.
Over a year and a half it got worse and worse. I never felt forgiven, I always felt sinful and guilty. I wasn't assured of my salvation, I second-guessed myself on everything. Then it started turning into eccentric questions: Does God want me to do my school? Does He want me to eat? Drink? Watch Tv? Maybe I should just read my Bible ALL DAY. Maybe then I'd be righteous enough. Maybe then it'd be ok. Then it got contradictory. I'd go to read my Bible and POP! A question asking "What if you shouldn't read your Bible?" Well, then what should I do?!?! Exactly (are you getting a headache yet?).
Late at night, is the door locked? Go check. Five minutes later....HAVE TO check again. If I didn't listen to the have to's then I would be immobilized with guilt. Actually, either way I was immobilized. Nothing was for sure, nothing was constant, nothing was trustworthy. I could read a Bible verse and think it would fix all my problems, then 5 seconds later it would all go down the drain. I could recite the truth to myself countless times but it never worked. It helped for a bit, but it never fixed anything permanently.
NOW I am NOT saying that God's Word is not powerful! In no way! A lot of those verses changed my life, comforted me, and kept me going when everything else hurt.
In this miserable time, I was...well, miserable, but I also grew a LOT closer to God. I got to know His Word LOTS better. I was introduced to the powerful truth of Jesus taking our sin upon Him and transferring His righteousness to His children. I realized that God looked at me as He looked at His own Son (believe it or not, I had never heard this concept growing up!!! Or at least was never paying attention :S)
NOW HANG ON! HERE ENDS MISERY AND SADNESS AND THE LIGHT BEGINS TO SHINE!!
Enter helpless mother who has done absolutely EVERYTHING to help her daughter and has been unsuccessful. At this point we've thought of demons, horrible sins that need to be corrected (JOB), and finally start to think of obsessive compulsiveness.
So Mom took me to a counselor. I'll write another time about my counseling experience, but after a couple months with not much success she referred us to a psychiatrist with the intention of getting me on medication.
I was diagnosed with OCD. Yep, you read that right. It's minor, very different from your normal scared-of-germs OCD. It's more in the mind, I guess.
So I got a prescription, go back every three months or so for him to fill it and, it's gotten all better :). Yeah, the recovery went pretty fast. There was no sudden light shining moment, just a quick constant recovery.
I could talk for awhile about this but...I'll save that for another time.
Going back to the side table thing, I realized that most of that stuff was kept because I thought I HAD TO keep it. It was a victory for me because I am so happy and thankful that God has brought me through so much and that I was able to throw all that stuff out with no regrets. PRAISE BE TO HIM!!!
The whole point of this post is to say that, if you are going through problems, don't be ashamed to go to a counselor or a psychiatrist. You're not weird. I know it may feel like that but, it's not. No one looks at people strange when they go to the doctor for weird bumps in their skin. It's no different with us. If you're having problems, tell somebody. WHATEVER YOU'VE BEEN TOLD, YOU'RE WORTH MORE THAN GOLD.
Forever His,
Dorothy :)) <3
<3 BLUES CLUES!
ReplyDeleteDorothy, thank you SO soo much for sharing the whole story. It really amazes me to see the beauty that God brought in your life. I am very inspired. seriously, praise God!!!
Love ya girlie!!!