A Pause from Writing

Hey everyone. Today I thought I’d pause from writing topics and share a section of my life I shared with my online writers’ group back in February. It’s long, but I hope you’re encouraged by it. :)

On February 12, 2005 I prayed the prayer. I remember my oldest sister had something to do with it, but I don’t remember her “sharing the gospel” with me or anything. (I’ve attended the same church since I was born, so I’m no stranger to Jesus, Bible terms, and salvation). All I remember is she helped me pray and that was that. Now I was a Christian and…I don’t remember anything changing in my 6.5-year-old self.

I have memories of doubting my salvation around 7 or 8 years old. You’ve heard people say this before, but I did the “pray again, just in case” thing. Around 10 or 11 I couldn’t stand the thought patterns I was having, and really questioned how I could be saved with those thoughts. But I’d prayed (and had a date to remember it by), so supposedly February 12 was my spiritual birthday. I was saved, right? Maybe.

One day a verse hit me—John 14:15—which basically says, “If you love Me, keep my commandments.” Of course I wanted to love God. But how—if I was saved—was I loving Him and still thinking and acting sinfully? It exasperated me, so out rolled my 2012 New Year’s Resolution. It said something like:

I will honor God in all my thoughts and actions.

I will love the LORD my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and do my best to trust the Prince of Peace in both the good times and bad.

Nothing in that resolution was morally bad. In fact, it is a great resolution, but through it I had unknowingly stepped into a season of trusting in myself. I had missed the following verse in John 14 about the Father sending in the Holy Spirit as a helper upon Jesus’ request.

I thought it would be easy. All I had to do was not think bad thoughts and to not sin in my actions. When I did slip up—which was a lot—I’d confess it and ask for forgiveness to God in my mind like this: “Dear Lord, please forgive me for ‘fill in the blank.’ In Jesus’ Name, amen.”

On the morning of March 1, 2012, my mom told my brother and I that the brother of my now-best-friend had been shot and killed. He was a Christian schoolteacher in the Middle East whose life had been in danger before, but suddenly it had really happened, and at that point it was totally unexpected for me. I didn’t know him very well, but I thought about the killing a lot, and my mind became conditioned with the thought, “I will die.”

As I later wrote to a friend:

“…His death was followed by this amazing time between me and God. I felt so close to God and confident in my faith, and I couldn't wait to meet Jesus. And literally the only time in my life I’ve felt like that was in the months following his death. But then, towards the end of that year, I wanted to "love God by keeping His commands" and everything went down from there. I find it interesting that this stuff followed…a period of [such] closeness to God. I've struggled with my salvation for most of my life (which makes me wonder if I really was saved). …Did Satan see me loving God and then…come down on me hard? I don’t know…”

Over the course of that summer, my overwhelming peace slipped away, and I became further caught up in trying to avoid sin, keeping God’s law in my own strength, and confessing sins with formatted prayers. Nearly every thought that went through my brain I analyzed and apologized for. It became a reflexive action I didn’t even think about, but at the same time, was the only thing I thought of. My brain became so full of tracking and confessing nearly every action that I couldn’t function.

I became afraid I was lying to people. Sometimes I would zone out when they were talking to me, or I was trying to apologize to God while someone was talking, so I felt like I wasn’t listening to whoever was speaking. Then I had to confess that to God. “Dear Lord, please forgive me for lying and acting like I was listening when I wasn’t.”

What was the fix for this problem? To mentally repeat all the person said so I knew I was listening. My brain became backed up with resaying everything in my head, while the person continued to speak with me. And when I couldn’t remember something, “Dear Lord, please forgive me…” etc.

The same applied to my school. I felt if I didn’t read, repeat, and fully understand every single thing I was reading, then I wasn’t paying attention. That’s why reading is still so difficult for this former bookworm. ;)

Every action became a sin to me, because even if I couldn’t find a direct reference to it in the Bible, I found ways to tie it back there. Here’s an example.

My dad liked us to wash our hands after touching our feet because his side of the family are germaphobes. I’d be sitting on the floor, playing with my brother, and my hand would bump my foot. If I didn’t wash my hands, I wasn’t honoring Dad, the fifth of the Ten Commandments. I remember one day accidentally touching my sock multiple times and getting up every single time to wash my hands.

Over time, I became a legitimate germaphobe. I washed my hands every day, all day until they cracked and bled. If I was unloading the dishwasher and touched my shirt to adjust it in some way, I had to wash my hands. If I touched my hair while unloading the dishwasher, I’d wash my hands. If I was handling dirty dishes to load them in the dishwasher, once I finished, I’d wash my hands. I am not exaggerating when I say the hand towels in our house were wet all day long. The only time they had a chance to dry was overnight. Morning would find them crusty and scratchy, and once I woke up, they would be sopping for the rest of the day.

Modesty became a huge issue for me too. I felt like I had to constantly stretch my shirt down around my waist. At church, I’d gather my collar up close around my neck and hold it there with one hand. A simpler fix to that was to not take off my coat and swelter through the service.

I apologized to my brother for everything. If I got upset verbally or mentally, or even felt like I had given him a dirty look, I’d apologize. This is me: “Christian will you forgive me for getting mad at you and glaring?” And then I’d have to talk to God about it. “Dear Lord, please forgive me for getting angry at Christian and murdering him in my heart, and for glaring at him.”

In Summer 2013 I started horse riding lessons, which I’m sure God used in a huge way to keep me going. It came to a point where I lived for those lessons, and occasionally having to cancel crushed me.

My parents and grandmother bought a lot of the lessons, but I paid for my own as well. It got expensive quick, so in October 2014, I approached my teacher about making a promotional video in trade for a few lessons. She accepted, then asked me if I would longe a couple of the school horses once a week, ride when necessary, and keep the heated room in the barn swept, all in trade for lessons. I accepted.

At first, there was no burden in the things she asked me to do. I did the chores and loved them. But then it happened. Again.

The heated room in the barn is at largest about 12x24 feet. The room gets a lot of use in the winter, and a striking amount of dust collected between my twice-a-week sweepings. But that was no excuse for the time I would spend cleaning. The room began to take me as long as an hour and a half per visit, plus cleaning a friend’s paddock which took me another ninety minutes because I stood there, trying to pick up the small flecks of manure. For a time, I spent three hours at the barn doing two chores. Why?

Because if my work didn’t look spotless (which I never really acquired on the paddock), then I hadn’t done, “All my work, heartily as to the Lord and not to men.” God deserved my best, and if it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t good enough.

I’m sorry if your brain is hurting right now, but this isn’t everything.

I became convinced I was deliberately trying to hurt people or damage their property. If I accidentally hit the vacuum on the bed post, I felt like I had to apologize to Mom or Dad for “purposely trying to scratch the furniture.”

I came across the Bible verse that said, “Blasphemy against the Son will be forgiven, but he who blasphemes against the Spirit it will not be forgiven.”

That verse petrified me. I became terrified I would blaspheme the Spirit and end up unforgiveable in Hell. I asked my parents about it, and my dad said he heard that verse applied to the generation to whom Jesus was speaking and the sin would be impossible to commit today, because of the specific events surrounding Jesus’ words. I wasn’t so sure. I remember crying in the middle of the night, afraid I had done it.

I hated it all. School took all day. I procrastinated my cleaning chores, because they took all day. I looked forward to horse riding lessons as my escape, but even there it was a struggle.

I was driving myself insane and to the point of being unfunctional. I prayed about it. I wanted to go back to “being normal.” But then, I felt like I was asking for permission to sin, and so on continued my attempts at pleasing God through works. I knew I couldn’t earn my salvation, but I couldn’t break away from the fear of not doing my weird standard of perfection. I wanted Jesus to just take over and control me.

According to 1 Corinthians 10:13, I knew other people had to have the same issues, but where were they? I also knew God would somehow work all of this for His glory, and I could use it to help others, but I was still miserable.

Much of this internal struggle was unknown to my family. They only saw me taking forever on chores, washing my bleeding hands, and apologizing. Mom and Dad figured it out a little bit, judging from the notes they left me, but even now, they still don’t know it all.

So many nights, I talked to my mom, asking her how to know I was saved. She spent so much time helping me try to sort through my thoughts and feelings, but I never felt like I got a solid answer. I didn’t feel helped. And so, I stopped talking to her about it. That’s not her fault; she spoke to me the words of truth, she told me what Jesus said and did for me, but I just couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t rest in it.

My dad shared Galatians 2:16 and 21 with me, but as I told my friend a few years later, “…I didn’t want to stop doubting because I didn’t want to be lying to myself about really being saved. I didn’t want to tell myself ‘yes, I am saved, God has saved me, I am His,’ because ‘what if I’m not?’ Then I would’ve been lying to myself and others and end up in Hell.”

Around 2014, I became suicidal and afraid of those feelings. I knew I had to tell someone about it, and so after much hesitation and conflict, I told mom, “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt myself.” I knew I had to say something for accountability and insurance.

When I’d hear or see a sinner’s prayer, or something loosely based on it, I’d pray it because “those must be the right words.” But I also constantly prayed my own prayers too, because I didn’t want to be trusting the words over the One I was talking to.

Keep in mind not everything was happening simultaneously. Much of this conflict did happen at once, but there were periods of when I would try to break free. I would tell myself it’s okay to not wash my hands so much, or it’s okay to try to work faster. I repeated the words of my mom that said God wasn’t putting this on me, but I still felt like I was sinning if I didn’t do my routines. My legalistic personality would catch up with me and say if I messed up, then I need to start trying to live free afresh the next day or the beginning of the next week. I had to fight and tell myself, “Today—right now—is not too late to start living freely.”

Several times I found relief. I stopped repeating everything everyone said, I was able to work faster, and I stopped apologizing. But then Satan would drag me down again. I would find freedom, live in it for a while, then go back down, I came to enjoy the moments of freedom while I could, because I knew eventually, I would go back down in the cyclical pattern.

I joined the One Year Adventure Novel (OYAN) program in September 2015, and the legalism swept in on the way I wrote. I was terrified to copy someone else’s work, to plagiarize, to steal.

This was my life. Not for a month. Not for a year. I lived like this from the end of 2011 to 2016, and sparsely through 2017. Five solid years.

Around the beginning of 2016, I took a ladies’ Bible Study on the Armor of God, by Priscilla Shirer, which proved pivotal to bringing me freedom. She taught how Satan studies us and uses tactics based on our bents, weaknesses, and personalities. I saw that clearly in me. Each week built on the next and I slowly started to believe the truths Paul laid out; things like I need to cover myself in the Truth of who I am in Christ; I am righteous because Christ put His righteousness inside me the moment I asked.

The last week was on the Helmet of Salvation. The helmet of salvation is not just being saved. It is the process of saving one’s mind from destructive thought patterns. It is the process of protecting one’s mind with a helmet, and the process of healing the already engrained damage. Thought patterns affect the physical makeup of the brain—good thought patterns physically heal the brain; destructive thought patterns physically destroy it.

And so, I began the slow process of memorizing Bible verses that spoke truth to myself.

In August 2016, by God’s amazing grace, I connected with another OYANer who was struggling in the same ways as me. We began talking by personal messenger, encouraging each other with truths neither of us quite believed for ourselves but solidly believed for the other person. I finally tangibly saw the truth of 1 Cor. 10:13 that said other people do struggle like me.

In March 2017, I came to grips with the fact that I needed to stop holding onto doubt and believe. Believe God means He’ll save me if I ask. Believe Jesus’ work on the cross was enough for me (and only His work was enough; I couldn’t add to it). Looking at Hebrews 3:12 -4:14 it came down to the sin of unbelief. In reading it, I was able to see it’s okay to believe what God says. Duh, I knew that, but there was this constant battle in me that was afraid to believe and rest in God’s promises, because I didn’t want to be lying to myself. But that fear, that refusal to believe and rest, was a lie from Satan. Belief is God’s command; it’s what He wants. Refusal to believe gets me exactly where Satan wants— under God’s wrath.

So somewhere between March and November of 2017 I decided to do it. To believe. To rest. To teach my mind to trust. It wasn’t easy. I still struggle with condemnation sometimes, or my mind goes crazy with trying to figure everything out perfectly, but not to the extent of before.

So, guys. I don’t know when I got saved. I don’t know if it was 15 years ago or 3 years ago. I don’t. But I do know I’m now a child of God. I do know I’m a story for those that struggle the same way as I did and think they’re the only ones out there. I’m proof there is hope. That you can return to “normal.” That suicide isn’t the answer. That God can use your scars to help others. I’m not condemned. I’m free.

And you know a weird thing I just love? I picked my pseudonym in early 2016, never thinking it would be something literal about me. Maybe I am a Liberty Bell. Maybe I’m here to shout out freedom to the captives.

“We’ve prayed the prayer with no reply

Words float off into the night

Couldn’t cut our doubt with the sharpest knife,

Oh, oh God forgive us.

Silence isn’t comfortable

We want drive through peace and instant hope

Our shallow faith it has left us broke

Oh, oh God forgive us

Oh, oh God forgive us

A slave to our uncertainty

Help us with our unbelief

Oh, oh God forgive us.”

–O God Forgive Us – for King and Country

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God can use your scars to help others. I’m not condemned. I’m free.

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