04/27/2012
Here is my testimony of how God changed my life if you know someone who is hurting, depressed, cutting or anything please share it with them. Or you can share it on your page.
By the age of 12 I was ready to die, I begged for it to come every night but I feared it everyday. Finally I decided that it was time. I swallowed every pill I could find, I drank bleach, finger nail polish remover, kitchen cleaners, bathroom cleaner, whatever I found with the words WARNING DO NOT INJEST. I went to bed and hoped I would never wake up in this world again. But I did, sick and ashamed, embarrassed and afraid. I felt even more worthless then I did before. But I knew something wasn't right, I should have been dead or in the lest hospitalized. And maybe I should have gone to the hospital but I knew if anybody found out what I did I wouldn't be able to look at them ever again cause I thought no one would understand what I was going through. So I put on my clothes, went to school and spent most of the day in the bathroom puking my guts out and pretending that it was no big deal so please don't call my parents.
Sometime soon after that I gave my life to Jesus in my bedroom after listening to a radio program that had and invitation at the end. I said the prayer, I asked Jesus in my heart and everything was magically better right? Wrong. I heard what they said Jesus did for me, I heard how He took my sins and suffered and died in my place and I wanted to believe that even I could receive this gift. But after going to church some and hearing people talk about God and sinners, wrath and judgement, I came to the conclusion that I needed to pay for my sins, I needed to suffer. I couldn't fathom Jesus being beaten and broken for a worthless person like me. I was nobody, I couldn't offer God anything, It should have been me getting beaten, it should have been me dying for what I was, what I did.
A lot of messed up thoughts were raging in my head, tormenting me. One day I remember being in the shower and the razor cut my skin and the blood flowed out and I don't know why but just the site of it made me feel better. Later I took my razor apart and pulled the blades free and used them to make several cuts on my leg. I heard a demon saying to me "you deserve to be punished, you deserve to feel pain, your worthless, look how you hurt people, look how you let them down, can't you see they don't even want you." I hated it for saying those things but I also thought that the beast was part of me and that what it was saying was true and that no matter how good I tried to act, deep down inside I would always be evil and disgusting at the core.
When I turned 13 I drank for the first time because I let a boy get to me, use me and leave me wondering what was wrong with me. He said all the right things. He made me feel special. How could someone show up all the sudden telling me everything I always wanted to hear and then when he moved to fast and almost got what he was looking for and I said "please stop I'm not ready" he just moved on to the next girl. I felt used, I felt lied to and I was. All those feeling of worthlessness rushed on even stronger than before. Now I was a fool, an idiot and all those things about myself that he made me feel better about somehow grew into worse insecurities than before. So I snuck my parents vodka into a cup of orange juice, and when no one was looking I would take a drink out of the tequila bottle. It didn't take much before I felt the effects and all my problems began to drift away. Then the room began to spin and I had to go outside so no one would wonder what was wrong. I started to puke it all up so violently that a women across the street came over to see what was wrong with me and all I could think was please leave so my parents don't see you and ask what's going on. After that I snuck behind the garage out back and all my problems came at me like a tidal wave and I had my first real intense panic attack. As I laid in the yard gasping for air all I could say to God was WHY, why is this happening to me, why wont you just kill me or let me die.
I went on with my life like nothing was wrong, I smiled and laughed. I was a fake, a fraud, a liar. And when no one was looking I cut myself, scratched myself, burned myself, hit myself and I cried out for help. When I could drink, I would get wasted and sometimes loose control of my emotions, embarrass myself and hate myself even more. I was angry, scared and unsure of what I would do to myself next. I always wanted a boyfriend so I could feel like someone loved me. But I never really knew how to get close to anyone, cause I had a secret i could never tell so in the end I knew that even if someone said they loved me that they didn't really know me so it didn't really count.
When I got out of school I thought if I got married and moved out and started my own family everything would just get better. So I got married. Then I started to drink a lot. Then I got pregnant and everything changed. I quit drinking I started going to church, I let some people into my dark closet, they still loved me and wanted to help (well some wanted to help) and I thought finally everything was going to be better and for a while it was. I cut way less at this time but the demons where still there and they got to me every once in a while and I gave in. I had been cutting since 12 so by 19 it was a major addiction.
While going to church I found out some of my gifts like showing mercy, serving others and just listening to what people were saying. I finally felt like I had a place where I was wanted and even sometimes needed. But something ripped that all away form me. It seemed one man came in a destroyed it all but I know that it was no man but an unseen enemy who blew my four walls down. I had built my house on shifting sand (people) instead of on the rock who is Christ Jesus. And when those walls fell, so did all the progress that I had made. Then the real nightmare began. Soon I turned back to drinking, cutting, psychiatric medications and doctors and eventually drugs of any kind.
I started sharing everything that was in my head, everything I saw, everything I heard, everything I did. Doctors said I had schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, or together Schizoaffective Disorder, also borderline personality disorder and generalized anxiety disorder along with the self injury and insomnia. And they stamped it with a big fat NO CURE! I have a lot of horrific stories from the years between my 21st birthday and the age of 27. Somethings I can talk about somethings I can't but during those years I remember being always afraid because sometimes it was like two different people were leaving in me, one of them wanted to die and one of them wanted to live. I knew that on any given day I could be killed and my killer would be me and that was a hard thing to deal with. How can one protect themselves from themselves. I could go from a good day to a bad day really quick. I could go from living life to being locked up in a mental hospital and not even know how I got there and when I got those stitches in my arms or what drugs where in those syringes they were injecting into me or when they would let me out again.
Sometimes I tried so hard to get things right, do the right thing, to be good. I just could loose control so quickly and the next thing I know I would wake up handcuffed to a bed or in a locked facility with strangers and stitches and bruises. Sometimes I was begging them to take me to the mental hospital cause I knew I was about to hurt myself or somebody else. I would be so angry. I had been going back and forth with God. Sometimes things would seem so clear and I would see His hands at work in my life but then it would just seem like I messed up so bad how could God still love me, how could someone so horrible get into Heaven. I knew Jesus said if we choose Him we could have eternal life and I had chosen Him but I also knew that the church said things like God will punish sinners, liars, thieves and adulterers don't go to Heaven and I was all those plus more. If I was really saved why was I "acting" good, why did I do things I didn't want to do, why did I still want to cut, why was I on all these pills so I didn't kill myself, why was pain and suffering on the daily menu. Every conversation with God consisted of me either asking God why, why, why or to please forgive me please God I promise I'll be better.
But in 2007 when I was 27 years old I heard the Gospel like I had never heard it before from a Pastor named Donald McMaster at a church called New Beginnings and it was GOOD NEWS. It set something in my heart a flame and I wanted to hear more. There was a bunch of meetings starting in a few days with a man named Dave Duell and I knew I had to go back. The demons didn't want me to, they tried to scare me, said I would die but I didn't care if died I had to go back. I had to hear more. I told God I'm done with this medication and these doctors, who by the way had kicked me out of the MHMR where I was being treated for missing appointments. I missed those appointments because of a severe lack of sleep and the medications I was on made me forget everything, medications they gave me. I told God you got to fix this and for the first time because of the Gospel I had heard I believed He would. I want one of those miracles they were talking about. I don't want this life anymore. So on May 7th 2007 I stepped out into the isle of a little church in Chico Tx for my New Beginning. I stood in front of that man named Dave Duell and said something is wrong with my head as I held out my scarred up arms. I was still scared, still had some religion telling me maybe I'm not good enough for God to heal me. As he reached out to lay hands on me something I didn't expect to happen happened. Everyone and everything disappeared and Jesus came right through this man and grabbed me up into His arms and He breathed His life into my lungs and for the first time in days I could actually breath without feeling like it was so hard. I felt like I was lifted up off the ground but my physically body had fell to the ground. I felt like a warm oil or water covered over me from head to toe almost like I was back in my mothers womb. 27 years of pain was washed away, 27 years of torment in my mind gone, all that weight that pushed me down, lifted away and the anger that was raging like a stormy sea was calm like a glassy lake in the early morning. I felt like all the filth of a broken life was washed away. I had heard the truth about Jesus I had heard the truth about who I was and now I was experiencing something I will never be able to quit explain. I was in His arms, I felt them around me, I felt the freedom as the burdens lifted away. I saw the Light obliterate the darkness in my life. I never took another pill, saw another doctor, stayed in another hospital and I never though about su***de or cutting again. Jesus changed my life.
Do you have darkness in your life, are you afraid, depressed or just plain worn out and don't know what to do. I have good news, you don't have to do anything to fix you or the ones around you, you just simple have to open your heart to Jesus who is standing at the door knocking. He has a gift for you, a gift no one will ever be abel to take from you. not even death can take what Jesus has to give you. Once you let Him in you have let Love in because Jesus is Love, God is Love and Love is the cure. Love saved me and Love will save you.
Erin Williams
If you know someone who is cutting or suicidal or depressed please fell free to contact me anytime.
