Braver than you Think

"Promise me you'll always remember; you're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem and smarter than you think." A.A.Milne - Christopher Robin to Pooh

I remember being really stoned. My eyes had gone all weird and I couldn't focus. I felt off balance, dizzy and separate from myself. Almost like I was on the outside looking in. I was having problems walking. I had no idea where I was, how I got there or how to get out and go home. I remember falling, crashing into a wall and hitting my head. Some old lady popped out and started screaming at me. I had no idea what she was saying. Then the sound of sirens and the ambulance....... Life was a constant crisis. Constant chaos.

I kept saying I wanted it all to stop. I wanted it to be normal. I didn't want to do the drugs. At least that's what I said and even as I said it, I was shooting up and ripping my arms open with razor blades and jagged rocks. Even as I said it, I threw up if I ate even a small bite of something. In my mind, I wasn't allowed to be free. I wasn't worthy. No amount of wanting or needing made a difference. No threats from any authority could bring about the freedom I said I wanted.

I needed to stay high. I needed to hurt myself. I needed to throw up. I needed to not feel or think. Especially to not think. The images of what happened tortured me. Anything to numb out from feeling the terror, the shame, the pain - I needed that more. And then God touched me. He broke through the torment in my head, in my soul - He took away the 14 year drug addiction. The memories though, the pain and shame and feelings of extreme worthlessness - they were still there. I continued to throw up and hurt myself. I still needed to numb out.

I felt guilty. I wondered if God would kill me because I was destroying myself. I screamed at Him to do it already. I dared Him to take my life, but He wouldn't. Years went by. I lived two lives. I looked ok. People thought I was fun, happy, Christian. I wasn't. When people said, God is in control, I knew my life was completely out of control.

I started writing. Then running. In the woods, alone - He whispered to me. 'Face the pain. Don't run from it.' I never wanted to face it. I never wanted to admit it. I couldn't. To admit it meant it happened. I didn't want to believe it happened. But it did.

All I know - God is my strength - my anchor for freedom. The one thing in my life that gives me the courage to do what I otherwise can't. He brought me to the point of being ready to confront what I never could. He allowed me to use the cutting, the throwing up, the hiding to stay alive. Cause that's what it did. It kept me alive. It helped me survive until I was ready to face what happened.

All I know -is in His presence, I feel at peace. In the woods I feel His gentle touch and hear His whispers of comfort and there I gain the courage to come home and not use things that hurt me.

I want to make a difference. I want what I lived to help someone else find their freedom. Maybe that's why God let me live.

Hope and Dignity

"I was confused. You cleared my mind. I sold my soul. You bought it back for me and held me up and gave me dignity. You gave me hope when I was at the end and turned my lies back into truth again. You even called me friend." Anne Murray

I am overwhelmed with God's love. He reached out to me and in His gentle way, freed me from the awefulness of living on the street, fighting to survive and using my body as a target for all the rage and hatred I had for the people who hurt me. I often wonder why me. Why did He touch me and let me live? I should have died like so many of the people I knew, - like my friend, Sue. One night, she turned on Anne Murray's song, Snowbird, letting it play over and over while she swallowed a ton of pills. She was dead in the morning, - the song still playing, "But now I feel such emptiness within, for the the thing I want in life's the thing I can't win. Spread your tiny wings and fly away."

Someone once told me, the best revenge is to live my life happy and successful. It's been a fight, a struggle, a war. So many times, I wanted to do what Sue had done, let go, give up, "spread my wings and fly away," but God put a fight in me, a determination to live.

All those beatings, being kidnapped and raped, the crazy, terrifying street life, the drugs, the throwing up, the incarceration in jail, confined in a psych hopsital - somehow God used all that to make me strong. He didn't let me die. He wouldn't let me go even when I begged Him to kill me. He "bought my soul back and gave me dignity." He touched me, broke the chains and set me free, when nothing else worked.

Why me? Why not Sue? I had other friends who took their lives, or accidently died from overdosing or because of being so stoned and doing something weird. I used to climb to the top of buildings and stand on the edge with my arms out not caring that I could have fallen to my death. I thought I was invincible. Other times I just wanted to dare life to let me go.

I owe Him my life. The gratitude I feel makes me want to help people like Sue, to give them hope and let them know, if I can do it, they can too. With God, nothing is impossible. I have discovered, there is no darkness so black, no valley so low, He can not redeem it for his glory.


I am alive today because of Him, because of His touch on my life.

Overcoming Hatred

"Hatred can be overcome only by love." Mahatma Ghandi

For years I walked around with so much hate and anger in me. I hated what my parents did to me. I hated the way they shamed me, beat me, made me feel less than human. And I hated the system that claimed they could help me. They were like my parents,- shaming, punishing, bullying.

I was arrested for drug possession. My social worker convinced the judge to let me do the time on a locked pysch ward instead of prison. Being on that ward,- that place of misery pushed me further into myself and broke me even more. Their methods of forcing me to conform were brutal. The chemical and physical restrains took away any shred of dignity I may have had. My brain became dull from the medications, the fight in me subdued, but the hatred grew. Hatred for them, for me, and for everyone who had hurt me.

One time they strapped me to a bed by my arms and legs for some minor infraction. They kept me there for two days like a chained animal, allowing me up only to go to the washroom. At mealtimes, they wouldn't untie my arms. A staff came in to feed me. Humiliated; I refused to eat. I hated them. I despised them. My anger grew. I wanted to hurt them, punish them in some way like they were doing to me.

Instead, I cut into my flesh, trying to rip myself apart, desperate to pull out the bad, the part of me everyone kept telling me was horrible and wrong. Scars formed on my body, but I didn't care, because they were already in my heart and soul and mind.

Hatred and anger became a way of life. It drove me. It fueled the fight in me. I turned on myself with a vengeance. My arms were full of bruises and marks from biting myself and cutting my skin open. The blood oozing out was my salvation, the thing that released the building tension inside me. My blood, a proof of life, that I was still alive.

Blood? That's what finally turned my life around. The blood. His blood. The blood He shed for me so I wouldn't have to hurt myself anymore. Like me, He too was beaten, shamed, ridiculed. He never opened his mouth. He never fought back. That amazed me. How could He not? They laughed at Him, mocked Him, and He said nothing, nothing except, "Father, forgive them...."

Hearing that, my anger began to subside. Thoughts of revenge slowly became thoughts of forgiveness. It's hard to forgive, to let go of the brutality of what some people did - but to not forgive is worse.

I want my life to reflect His love. He loved me when I couldn't love myself. He loved me when I was wild, out of control and bent on self-destruction. I don't fully get how He did that, but I am so grateful for the gentleness of His love that broke the chains that kept me stuck.