Rescued From Jaws

This is part two of my story.

For part one click here.

I had a happy marriage. (that is Dale's grandma with us)

Dale and I met when I was 15, he had just turned 18. We were each other’s one and only. We got married three years later. His personality was risk-taking, adventure-seeking, confident and decisive. Mine, timid, shy, reserved, sensitive… We were the perfect couple balancing each other well, until we began to disagree on parenting methods. Until he was away at work so much and I was feeling like a single mom.

During that time other legs also fell from my “support” stool. Relationships were strained in several places in my life.

We had made the decision to put our oldest, Kayla in school after homeschooling her through fourth grade. I found myself trying to be the “perfect mom” to her by helping in the classroom, walking her to and from school with Ethan whom I was still homeschooling.

On top of that, I increased craft-production in my little crafting business and held a boutique in my home that fall.

That was when the dizziness from the anxiety began. I knew I needed to “not be anxious about anything, but with prayer somehow drop my burden on the Lord and I’d have His peace. I just didn’t know how to do it. I began to drown in guilt and shame, self-condemnation and spiraled downward to insomnia the following fall. Insomnia lead to depression and oppression, near to despair.

I reached for people, but none had a hand that could lift me. God wanted it that way…He wanted me to know the futility of flesh. My own and others that I tended to lean on in affirming my worth, or leading me to answers…

Continually I held a thin thread of hope at every place of hopelessness, and was upheld from going under. That is what my faith amounted to during those days. A thin thread.

My heart heard a whisper of truth from God’s Word in the darkest times; His living, wonderful, comforting, guiding, correcting, freeing Word. That LOVE was my sustenance. Though His love seemed elusive to me, and I scarce believed it at the time. In my mind, yes, but in my heart, no.

Accusation was constant, and when it came, I knew it to be true. I was a worthless, faithless failure and I believed I was possibly ruining my kids… Outside of Christ I would have been...

However, I was in Christ, therefore, I had to learn the lesson about putting on my new nature. (2 Corinthians 5:17) I had to remember it was no longer I who lived, but it was Christ Jesus who lived inside of me. (Galatians 2:20) I had to learn that it is by GRACE that I stand by faith (Romans 5:2). Not by MY ability, or strength. (Philippians 3:3)

The very first Truth God gave me to start me on the path to freedom was the dawning that I was NOT a VICTIM of my thoughts. I had a choice. It had gotten to the point that all thoughts that came to my head were received in my heart if they were negative. It just made sense to me…I had no doubt my flesh (my self) was dross.

But we (believers) have the mind of Christ! (1 Corinthians 2:16b)

Accusation: “you have NO faith!” Answer: “when we are faithless, He will remain faithful, for He cannot disown Himself.” 2 Timothy 2:13 (GRACE)

Accusation: “you are ruining your kids.” Answer: “He will restore what the locusts have eaten.” Joel 2:25 (GRACE)

Accusation: “you will not be free of this.” Answer: “I [God] will deliver you and bring you into a spacious place.” 2 Samuel 22:20 (GRACE)

Accusation: “you are worth nothing.” Answer: “you will lead women in triumphal procession in Christ.” (not me but Christ in and through me~a personal promise given to me that day) 2 Corinthians 2:14,15 (GRACE)

In those years, Jesus sustained me as he refined me from the impurities of my SELF-reliance. I had been a Christian for ten years prior. I had grown in love with Jesus and knowledgeable about scripture. I was leading Bible study and teaching Sunday school when I fell. (FROM GRACE and RELIED on mySELF again).

“He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food. Job 36:16

Tomorrow I will talk about the Spacious Place

God Is Still In Control When You Are In A Pit

Have you ever felt like God is so far away that you are sure you must be "cut off" from Him? Have you experienced what some call "the dark night of the soul"? Have you been in a pit that you could not climb out of but by the grace of God. A strong and mighty hand was the only thing that would suffice to deliver you?

You are not alone. It is said by several speakers and authors (usually those who have gone on before us) that God's people will inevitably experience such a time.

I did. 1999...I "went in" to a pit of depression, anxiety and panic attacks. No matter what I tried, what I read, how much I tried to "Tell Myself the Truth", or quote scripture, I remained in such a state. For a year I struggled, and during the times when I had other women meeting with me, my head would stay above water, but when school started the fall of 2000, the women were too busy to meet, and I was once again alone in a darkness it would take me too long to describe. That fall was "the dark night of my soul".

I slept very little, the insomnia I had was beyond what I ever knew a human to be able to go through. And if you have experienced oppression, you understand and agree with me that it is in the most vulnerable dark place where the enemy comes in and hurls accusations at you and tells you what a loser you are, and attacks you with whatever works against you. I was in the deep shadows of unbelief, fear and condemnation. The hair literally stood up on the back of my neck a few times when I saw the filth of my soul...

And yet... a thread of faith was ever present. It was in the moments of deep despair and near hopelessness when the Lord would whisper a truth that I could stand on...like..."when we are faithless, He will be faithful for He cannot disown Himself." I knew I had no faith. My husband had shouted it at me one morning in his frustration with my lack of sleep. BUT then...the Lord whispered, "I have given you a measure of faith." Always coming through for me ever so quietly, and sometimes very rare it seemed, but just when I needed it most...The Lord's voice. When I felt crazy, I heard "but we have the mind of Christ." When I felt I had no place going to church, I was too pathetic, I heard, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."~always a whisper.

It was in the darkness where I died to my self. I learned that the things I expected of myself, and the things others expected from me could not be fulfilled by me. I am powerless. Without the Lord and His power, I am a clay pot. Without His power, His life in me, I am an empty vessel. Barren. Dead.

It was in this darkness where I found life. True life. Not life by human power...for all flesh fails. But Holy Spirit power. The ability to let go of what I could not hold on to...responsibility, creating, or sustaining anything on my own, to the freedom to exist with the life of the Spirit of God in me, and the power of God to work through me, to give Him the responsibility...the credit...the glory for anything good in my life, and to release the disappointments to Him to make into something for His purposes.

I began to see a counselor at some point in the initial year of my anxiety, and after several times seeing him, cried to the Lord, "God, this is going to take 100 years!!!!!! Your word says that You are the Wonderful Counselor, please help me!" ...So I sat with the Lord for one to three hours every day for... well, it has been 10 years. Reading His word, talking to Him, listening to Him. He took me back to things in the past, he brought me to places of pain, and challenge in the years that followed, and gradually He has set me free. I am totally free today. His truth has and continues set me free.

What brings me great joy today is to tell you that God had a purpose in allowing me in the pit. When I was there I struggled with all the same issues you probably do/did...Was it something I did? Do I need to do something? Is there something I am missing? Does God love me still? I mean, I know in my head, but my heart just cannot seem to believe it or receive it...

But now...the ability to understand the pit, to encourage and love people through it, to know that God is doing something in the darkness that could never be done in the light. Like the seed that goes into the ground and dies before it becomes a plant. You, child of God, will experience a death that the life of Christ might be made manifest in you. You see, we limit God with our striving, and we strive naturally, only by a work of God in our lives will we be able to lay down our striving in order for Him to rise up in us.

The Bible says we need to take up our cross daily. It is not a one time death. It is a daily choice, but there is a time, a season of pruning that God will take you through to get you ready for the ministry He wants to do through your life. Some might go through a couple of pits, some might be darker than others...but all of us must experience a measure of darkness in order for the jar of clay to be broken (our flesh) and the light of Jesus to shine out and bring true life into this world...

Look up, sister, for your redemption draws near!