Freedom

"I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything! The sun came up like gold through the trees, and I felt like I was in heaven. ”  Hariiet Tubman

Harriet Tubman...a slave....knew about being treated less than human. She had been beaten by those who owned her..... not just once....many times. They left scars on her body....and scars on her soul...Somehow she learned to be a fighter. She escaped.....found freedom......found safety. Yet something pulled at her....tugged at her heart....made her risk her life to return over and over and over to help others also know freedom.  

It had been dark for so long...when He finally freed me from the drugs....I walked outside and looked around at the trees, the flowers, the sun, the sky....Everything looked so brilliant...like velvet. The colors....the textures....I wanted to touch everything. It's almost like I had never seen any of it before....

Freedom! It made me see the world differently. It's as if my eyes had been blurred. Everything had been so dark, dim, shaded. I felt like I had been given a new pair of eye glasses that brought everything magically into perfect focus.

Freedom - When I was trapped, a slave to the drugs - nothing mattered except my need to survive from one day to the next, one hit to another. The same with the eating disorder....all I could think about was the addiction....and how to survive. 

I have recieved so many emails and phone calls from people who've read my book...telling me they're finding healing for themselves....and hope for their own freedom....I resisted telling my story. I fought hard not wanting anyone to know what had happened. But now...with every email, every phone call.....I want to tell and keep telling.....I want to help someone else find freedom. 

And I just found out February is Black History month...makes me especially  happy to honor the life of Hariiet Tubman.

Book Give Away

"Not to transmit an experience is to betray it." Eli Wiesel

It took me one year to write what I lived. One year to put it down on paper. One year to remember how far down He had reached to pull me out. One year of fighting within myself to finally come to the place of letting Him use what I lived - to give hope - to someone else.   

It is a story I had never told; I kept it all inside. I started to wonder if it was some crazy dream, or if it had even happened at all. Sometimes I thought maybe I had made it up. Other times I thought it wasn’t that bad – it was no big deal. But last year people I hadn’t seen in a while started surfacing: family, friends... people who knew. “You’re a miracle,” they said. “How did you survive?” 
 “Survive?” “Miracle?”  What did they mean? They started to tell me stories from their memories of how bad things were: how thin I had become, how out of control... My older sister whom I hadn’t seen for a long time returned from living overseas. She needed to talk. She forced me to listen... forced me to remember. 

When the memories hit, they hit hard. I wrote to get the images out of my head. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I wanted to get in my car, close my eyes and drive. It felt like it was happening all over again – the beatings, the confinement, the rape; throwing up time after time after time, even when I had tasted only a small bite of something; shoving needles in my arm  three and four times a day; ripping my arms with jagged rocks to feel something because I was so numb inside.

Why God? Why are you letting me go through this again? 

I didn’t want to remember! Yet in remembering, it dawned on me – finally – just how far down God had reached to free me.

Every day, in heat, rain or cold, I ran - alone in the woods - in the hills near our home. There I felt the gentle touch of God. I heard Him whisper, “You’re stronger now. It’s time to tell the truth of what happened. Tell your story to give hope to others.”

How could I never have told anyone what He had done for me? Nothing else had worked. Nothing had been able to break the chains that kept me living on the edge. Nothing…except the gentleness of His touch. 

The power of His gentleness...
In the Eye of Deception: This is my story. www.gentlerecovery.webs.com

The publisher made an error and printed a couple of books with stretched margins. I thought I would turn this 'error' into a free give away. For everyone who leaves a comment with their email here or on my website -  your name will be written down and my daughter will pull out the name of the winner. The 'winner' will be chosen on Friday of this week.