Recovery From Mental Anguish and Abuse

The Holy Spirit has prompted me to share a synopsis of my personal story so that hurting souls may know there is true healing and restoration at the Cross, where lives are changed from glory to glory! I am well aware that Satan is the dark force behind every bad decision made in life (mine and others) and his agenda is to destroy the person with heartache, or illness, as well as those experiencing the storms of life. His agenda is the same for those of whom he is master, maybe those you see as the perpetrator(s) of your pain (many times family). The Word tells us that we will have troubles in this world.

I love the cartoon that shows a school auditorium with one boy sitting alone under a sign that says
I was the oldest in a large family (stairsteps). Even though dysfunction was the order of the day when I was growing up, I never understood how bad it really was until, at the age of 38, I found I couldn’t function anymore. I wasn’t blubbering or anything, but I couldn’t do more than the basic requirements of daily living. Severe depression and panic attacks became my whole “life.” But I’m jumping a head of the story.

I ran away from home at the age of 17, right after graduation and was in the labor room delivering my first baby on my first anniversary. When my baby
was five weeks old, I rededicated my life to Christ. I had first accepted the Lord at the age of nine at church camp, but wasn’t living in an environment where I could be mentored. After 10 years of a sham marriage with a man who made very bad choices, my husband decided he didn’t want to be a family man and he abandoned us so that he could enjoy the wild side of life (another pawn in the hands of satan). I found myself among the “working poor,” struggling to make it just as a multitude of other women have in the U.S.A. With determination I forged along, many times working long hours and at other times, because of health problems, not working at all. I know the embarrassment of standing in food commodity lines, being treated like dirt at the welfare office, and seeing cashiers snub their noses at me when I hand them my food stamps. I understand the pain of losing your home and moving from place to place because there is no rent money. I know what it’s like
to feed your kids and then eat what is left
over (God always provides something), and
to wear clothes from Goodwill.

Because of my pain conditions, most times I felt too bad to care what others thought. The Lord provided every need at the “midnight hour.” Did it need to be that way? NO. That’s all I gave Him to work with. My life would have been so different if I had just understood my value in God’s eyes. When I was 37, my kids were getting into college and I was working as a Federal employee, the best job I’d ever had. I expected my life to be good at this juncture, not falling apart. When I fell into depression I lost my appetite and lost 40 pounds quickly (I needed to lose it, but not this way!) Insomnia was ruling my life and ruining my job performance. I started “closet” drinking during the midnight hours so that I could sleep a little, and soon started battling suicidal thoughts and panic attacks, as well as flashbacks that I didn’t understand. I spent many long days isolating from everyone and know what it’s like to suffer from painful loneliness. I felt like God wouldn’t waste time on a loser like me, not knowing that this belief was part of the depression. I thought, “If I could just fix myself, maybe He would help me! I found quickly that I needed professional help, which was not a favorable decision in my circle. This threw my relationships with family and church into turmoil. The prevailing thought of the times was that, as a Christian I was not supposed to be having these problems. But I was!

I wanted to have “loser” tattooed on my arm (literally), but THANK GOD I heard God saying, “NO!” I figured I was already on His bad side. Better leave well enough alone.

I didn’t know what was happening to me and feared I was losing my mind. The first psychiatrist I saw admitted me into the hospital immediately. For the next five years, there were several more hospitalizations, three of which were a result of treatment in the ER for overdoses.

This was a real “shock” for my family and church. I had been a prayer leader (performance oriented) and was really clueless about what I was going through. For whatever reason the experiences of abuse from my past, which had been hiding in a secret place, took on a life of their own and decided to emerge into my consciousness at any cost. Trying to stop it was like trying to hold a beach ball under water!

Impossible! It was exhausting. I did have some vague memories of being molested, but I put the memories on a shelf hoping they would disappear and never mentioned them to anyone.

My childhood nightmares returned, bringing along panic attacks, flashbacks, and body memories
(or sensory flashbacks). My life became one long nightmare. The flashbacks brought along dissociation (spacing out, if you will). I could not function on a job at all and all I wanted was to disappear! The mental pain was excruciating. I had no choice but to go on disability, a terrible blow to my already damaged ego.

The first five years of this depression was often life-threatening. Reasoning told me I wouldn’t survive. The Holy Spirit told me that I would. Actually, the Lord had told me six years before I dove into this depression that

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