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Jesus saved me life

Deirdre
(29/1/2003)

Like a lot of the Irish, I was brought up Catholic. Not at home, but through Catholic schools. The teachings varied from none at all to very harsh. I was about eight when I decided that God couldn't be a loving God and an angry God at the same time... that He couldn't love us if He was hanging over us, waiting for us to put a foot out of line so He could strike us down in thunder and lightening. I guess it had a lot to do with things like extra homework for not going to mass on Sundays, being put in the hall at lunchtime for getting my rosary beads tied in a knot, and being terrified to break the teachers rules in case God got you for it. I didn't know any better than they did.

I wasn't a very happy child. I started suffering depression at age seven. I can remember it starting. By ten I had a self-injury habit. At eleven I made a very basic attempt on my life. By fifteen I had a drug habit, by sixteen I had a nervous breakdown. These times were as low as a person can get. I didn't know who or where I was, and I mean that quite literally. I used to scream at the rain for falling, because when the rain fell it made it clear to me that the world was actually continuing around me. I used to touch the wall, stare at it in fascination, because I wasn't sure what walls were. I was below suicidal. At times I’d wake up, blissfully drifting, wondering if I was alive or dead... until the thought would finally register that I must be alive, at which point EVERYTHING, nothing in particular, just everything, would rise up and smother me again. I spent most of my time asleep. I don’t remember much from this time of my life.

I did come out of this deep depression. I didn't get better, not by a long shot, but I came out of this depression. I at one stage started searching... my life was closing in on me, suicide beckoned all the time... I started seriously considering God, and if He existed. Usually I could only say no... but one night, lying on the floor in the kitchen, it suddenly occurred to me that there MOST CERTAINLY was a God - I could almost feel Him reach out to me, felt myself drawn close... and then He drifted away, and the moment was lost. I didn't believe in God.

Of course now, where I am with God, it makes perfect sense. God did try to reach me, but I didn't reach out to Him. I needed to take His hand, but I missed it.

During these years, age eighteen and nineteen, I got myself a drug habit, moved to Dublin, scraped through my exams... crashed my father's car... fainted, collapsed in the kitchen every weekend, was hospitalised with a head injury and slight drug overdose... but I pulled through. I was happy, or thought I was. Happy to me was not suicidal.

From drugs to drink - by the time I was twenty I was never sober. I’d get up at five in the evening, eat a sandwich, then go out and get drunk. I’d drink five in the pub, get home just before closing time, go to the off licence, buy two cans of Budweiser, drink them topped off by a quarter pint of Cointreau. EVERY NIGHT.

I broke totally this time. I screamed, I took overdoses, I didn’t know what time it was, what day of the week it was, I hit those closest to me, I wandered around Dublin like it was a strange city, then I slept. I slept for days on end. I eventually had to move home to my parents’ house. I slept all day; I spent all night on the internet, not doing much, but there. It was during this time that I got to know a guy called Colin. Colin listened to me - which was more than anyone around me could do for me anymore. He listened, and he spent long late nights chatting to me. Kept me company. The time came, the following Christmas, when I could return the favour, and our friendship was cemented in this.

Colin is a born again Christian. I was happy for him - really was - he had been once as depressed and suicidal as I was constantly, and now his faith in God was carrying him through. It made me wish I did believe in God, but it didn’t make me actually believe.

I moved in with my boyfriend Neal. I was going to college, loved the course, made some great friends. Life at home was perfect. I had no pressures. I had money. Neal cooked and cleaned and took care of me. I was no better. This is when I lost HOPE. Hope had been the only thing I ever had in my life - that when nothing else was right, one day everything would be perfect, and I'd be ok. Everything seemed perfect, and I was not ok. I was far from ok. Losing hope was the last thing I could lose. I became resigned to death. For the first time in my life I could see life and death for what they were, and no longer wanted to fight death. I loved living, but I wasn't able to do it.

Colin came over to visit in February, we met in person for the first time. At various times during his stay with us, I’d glance at him, and see him praying. I can’t explain why, but to watch him pray made me feel relaxed, happy, quite at peace. It didn’t register with me at the time that I was feeling this way, so it didn’t change how I felt about God.

One night, at about three in the morning, we were sitting up talking. I was drunk, Colin was tired. We may have been talking about God, I can’t remember, we were talking about everything... when Colin said he saw something in the room. Human size. Spirit. My utter fear of the supernatural, and the amount of beer I’d had, led me to have slight hysterics. I was half terrified, half disbelieving of what he’d just said. I started crying, so Colin did the only thing Colin knew to do in such circumstances - he started to pray over me. I felt it unnecessary, but I let him, out of respect for him and his faith. It wasn’t going to hurt me, was it? I don’t remember what he prayed, but he had his hand on my back (that I will NEVER forget!) After a few minutes, I felt heat from his hand - not the normal sort of heat, when someone’s had their hand on your back for some time - heat that burned. It got to the point where I actually began to worry that it would burn me.

I stopped being scared, and stopped crying. The feeling just left. Then my fingers started to uncurl. Just on their own. I curled them back up in a ball, and tried to hold them that way, but they wouldn't stay. I felt a little dizzy, a little faint. The heat from Colin's hand seemed to be spreading through me. Every muscle in my body was relaxing, and my mind was drifting... until I screamed a halt on the whole thing. I didn't WANT to know if there was anything out there. I knew what I believed in, or didn't believe in, that part of my life was in order, and I wanted it kept that way.

I explained that to Colin, who just heard me out, but kept grinning. He knew something was happening - and so did I. Otherwise why would I be so upset?

I sort of rolled this round in my mind, and thought about it. I have to say, that drifting, relaxed feeling, it was really nice. Really peaceful. And it struck me, that all my life I'd been trying to experience something supernatural, and here it was, and I was turning away from it. So I thought, ok... let's see if this is real.

So I told Colin, whatever prayer you were saying, try again. I want you to continue whatever it was you were doing. So he did. He put his hand on my back, kept praying, and the same thing happened. It felt a little like my mind was shutting down, drifting to sleep, except I was fully conscious. Totally relaxed, physically, except I kept fighting with my mind, not allowing it to believe, worried about where my thoughts were going. I knew this supernatural thing was genuinely happening, but I still wasn't sure that I wanted to know how or why. Every time I dragged my mind back to being sceptical, Colin's hand seemed to press harder on my back, and yes, it hurt. It soon felt like he was digging his fingers into my back, and the heat from it felt unreal. If I relaxed and accepted that this was ok to let happen, then the pain would ease a bit.

I don't remember when he stopped, but the heat and ache in my back was still there. I tried to move my back away from his hand (cause I was sure he did have his fingers digging into it) but his hand was STUCK. When I moved, his hand went too. When he tried to pull his hand away, the heat rose up again and I did actually think it had burned me, and it was PAINFUL. We might as well have been glued together. It was then that I discovered something - his hand was just resting on my back - there was no pressure, none at all. I could slide my shoulder blade round under it.

He did remove his hand, after a while. We looked at the clock. It was twenty to five. We’d been sitting there for nearly two hours. It felt like ten minutes.

I was still sitting on the floor, and I had my hand on his shoulder. Colin was talking to me, and shaking a bit. I wasn’t too worried, he said he was ok, but neither was I listening to him. I just said in my head, but very definitely "if You're real, show me. If You don't, then I'm sorry, I'll never try believing again". That's when my hand started feeling funny. Colin stopped mid sentence, looked at my hand and then at me, grinned and said "are you trying to get me back for something? Your hand's really burning me". My hand was feeling extremely hot. Not painful this time, just extreme heat like when you hold your hand close to a flame. I looked at it, and it looked alien to me, because it looked NORMAL, but it felt like it was swelling, doubling in size, burning up. Something passed through me like an electric shock. It was like this wonderful warmth spreading through me, making me shudder. This warmth would fill my head, my body, right down to my toes. I couldn't feel anything else. Then I did feel something else. Joy. For no reason, but accompanying this warmth was so much pure, simple happiness. Ever felt so happy you could explode? I though I would. I started smiling. I didn't want to, I tried to stop it, but I couldn't. This feeling, warmth and joy, kept spreading through me, getting stronger each time. I didn't want it to stop, but each time it came through my head I'd sink lower on the floor, and I could see myself losing control completely, so I stopped it.

It was afterwards Colin said to me "You felt some of that joy, didn't you?" I hadn't told him that, so it struck me, yes, I think He showed me, alright.

Knowing that God existed didn’t really change anything. Maybe if I had had other Christians close by, things would have been different right then, but I didn’t. Colin flew home, and my life returned to the same empty, Godless way it had been before. I felt so far from Him. I tried to pray, but I wasn’t sure I even knew who I was talking to. I tried to read the Bible, but I didn’t understand it. I felt more alone than I ever had.

On my twenty-first birthday, all of four days later, I tried to kill myself. It was something stupid I’d promised to myself on the night of my fifteenth birthday - if everything wasn’t ok by the time I was 21, I owed it to myself to end this misery. That’s all I could picture - seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight... misery. I was carted into hospital in the small hours of the morning, and again, this place where Colin’s hand had been on my back - it burned. It was painful to lie on. I felt like I was being shaken. I felt, very strongly, that God was telling me, "you’re not going anywhere!"

I was in another world after this experience. A week later I made it back to college, but it became evident to me that I wasn’t well enough to be out in the real world. I slept a lot. Colin invited me to come over to visit him, so I booked flights and clung to this. I had nothing else. I was looking at my college course - it wasn’t working out. I was looking towards the summer, having to get a job, and I knew I couldn’t. I was looking at the end of my life. I knew it was coming. I just wanted to stay alive until May. I did. But barely.

I arrived in Colin's house on May 4th, happy to be there, but feeling deep in my heart that it would be the last thing I ever did, the last place I ever visited. Colin asked me to come to church with him - and I guess I didn't really want to, but something in me did want to see this place. I was a little nervous, I will admit. I sat through the praise and worship, I watched people worshipping, dancing and singing, and I felt nothing. I was curious, and now I'd seen it, and it was exactly how I'd imagined it, and I still felt blank. Until the preacher started. His name is Brad Spencer, he's American, and he was speaking at Grace International Centre that night. He shared his testimony with the church, and at times - really, truly, I felt that he had looked straight at me, had spoken directly to me. He spoke about drink, drugs, and disbelief. He spoke about his Christian friends, and I could relate to that. Then he spoke about demons. At the mention of the word, my insides flipped over, and I felt something - a definite unease, 'we've been discovered'. I felt ill - I felt angry. Demons. Living in me?

At the end, Brad called people up for prayer - anyone. I sat at the very back, watching people being prayed over, meeting God in an awesome way. I felt driven to be up there. Colin offered to bring me up to the front, but I said no. Then Colin had a bit of an 'experience', and was led by his friends forward for prayer, leaving me sitting at the back. Watching Colin at the front, feeling lonely at the back - I felt empty. I felt out of place. His pastor came over, I introduced myself, and she asked me to come up to the front. I said no. I started shaking, hyperventilating - I DESPERATLEY wanted to go - but I was terrified. I don't know what of. I just was. Ruth eventually persuaded me to come with her. I jumped up, she grabbed my hand, and I went up. I was standing there... I could feel the power of God over me, around me, when that voice returned... not a real voice, not an audible one, but just a heavy thought. It said, "it's not real, you know." The moment was lost. Things looked dull. Brad came by, he prayed over me, but nothing happened. I felt blank again.

I was upset. I was disappointed in myself, for allowing my faith to fail so easily. I was afraid - afraid that maybe this WASN'T real. I was also running around on a lot of adrenaline after the panic attack I'd had. I just wanted to cry.

When I got home, I had time to think everything over, and I wrote down what I was feeling. I wrote a letter to Colin, explaining this. It stated that I knew why I was feeling depression so strongly - I felt it was being dragged out of my mind. I felt it had been nestled in the back of my head, the centre of my mind, and it was being forced to let go. It didn't want to. It was literally being DRAGGED across my mind, and it was hurting as it tried to get a grip and stick to me. I can't remember what I thought while I was writing this, but it's an odd thing to experience... After writing this, I prayed. I thanked God for my time in England. I apologised for allowing my faith to fail like that. I thought over everything that had happened that night, and I just found myself praising Him. I was lying on my back in the dark, throwing my hands up into the air, and saying "Hallelujah!" over and over, with more and more feeling. Each time I did, I threw my hands higher, and something stirred inside me - excitement, bubbling over... so much joy, and so much awe. I will never forget that night, that moment.

The next few days were a battle. Colin tried to help, but he couldn't. I wanted to PRAISE God, I wanted to pray, but I wasn't able. I didn't know how. I couldn't make that leap of faith - I was afraid. I was afraid of finding nothing - of my faith failing in that last second. I wrote in my diary, on Thursday, May 9th, that I wanted to know the Lord - I wanted to take that step, over the cliff face, and that I KNEW I would be caught. I wrote that fear was holding me back. And it was then I said "I will ask God to take from me whatever it is that holds me back, whatever it is that stops me from taking that step, and I KNOW that he will help me."

That night, at about midnight, Colin asked me to name the first book in the Bible. I couldn't. (Genesis!) He took a deep breath, and launched into the full history, from creation to the death of Christ. I took it all in. When he had finished, he asked me if I believed it. My mind wasn't very sure, but my heart was. I did. He asked me then if I wanted to be born again? I said yes. And that was it. I said the prayer, right there in Colin's living room, at ten to two in the morning, May 10th 2002.

Church the following Sunday was a different experience. I didn't partake in the praise and worship, I watched, but I felt it. I felt the same excitement rising inside me, the same overwhelming awe. There was one song... the first thing I saw and heard in Colin's church, the first praise and worship song I ever heard, is the one that now sums up my life - it was EXACTLY what I needed to hear right then. When I heard it that Sunday, I just KNEW that life was different. I KNEW that I was FREE of depression, FREE of suicide. It's called 'This Is How We Overcome':

Your light broke through my night,
Restored exceeding joy.
Your grace fell like the rain,
And made this desert live.

You have turned my mourning into dancing,
You have turned my sorrow into joy.

Your hand lifted me up,
I stand on higher ground.
Your praise rose in my heart,
And made this valley sing.

This is how we overcome.

I haven't suffered depression since that week. I have had lows, I've had some downright nasty times, but I have never suffered depression. I wake in the morning, free from that hollow, sinking feeling. I go to bed without that sickening dread. I walk out of the house without that fog clouding my vision and my judgement. I laugh, I smile, I sing and shout and jump around the room. I LOVE my life. And I LOVE MY GOD! Without all this, written here, without Him - His continued love, His eternal love, I would be dead now. Far from dead, I'm more alive than I ever was. I'm overjoyed to be here, and looking at my future with sheer excitement and wonder. Sometimes I doubt. I guess a lot of Christians do. But I cannot deny this - not even to myself - can never explain away, or ignore, the very fact that I am HEALED of this illness that nothing seemed able to break, except Christ. That is love.

Make what you want of it... this is my "little" (!) story, and every word is truth.

Deirdre