testimony

what the Lord has done in me.

I was blessed to have Christian parents, who were strong in their love of the Lord. I had a wonderful childhood, growing up at church and in a relationship with Jesus Christ. He was so real to me, and I still have prayer journals from when I was young that put a smile on my face. But I was always so nervous about what other people thought of me, and as a high achiever I placed my worth in my performance. I don’t think that I ever really understood what God love really was.

When I was fifteen, I started struggling.  I would go through days with ridiculously productive energy, but then I experienced my first episode of depression and it was absolutely awful. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning and I would beg my mother to let me stay at home. I went to school two days out of five, and the rest I would spend at home madly trying to catch up on schoolwork, having panic attacks, and school friends. I cut myself off from people I knew at school, but kept going to church, and avoiding stayed in touch with my church friends. It was then that I started self-harming, but by God’s grace I naturally came out of the depression about a year later. I hadn’t seen a counsellor or properly talked to anyone about what I’d experienced, and so what I was suffering from remained undiagnosed for a few more years.

I became really close to a girl in my grade who became my best friend. She was absolutely stunning and grabbed the attention of any guy who was around. I started learning that my good performance at school or even my personality didn’t really matter; this world told me that if I wanted attention or to feel valued or loved, I had to be physically attractive and desired. When I was seventeen, I went to a different school for the last two years of high school, and I started dating a non-Christian guy, out of my desperation to feel loved. It was then that I had my second episode of depression. This one was particularly bad; far worse than the one before. I turned my back on God and sought comfort in the guy that I was dating and self-harm. I was placed on antidepressants, which didn’t really help, and I stopped involving myself in church and stopped opening up to my church friends. I tried to convince myself that I was still a Christian, but in reality I knew that I was running away from God. Eventually, the depression got so bad that I attempted suicide in March 2007.

By His grace, I didn’t succeed; I began getting treatment from a child and adolescent mental health organisation and started on new medication, but still it wasn’t enough. My mood would yo-yo between euphoric and complete sadness. I was a menace at home and would emotionally and physically hurt my parents. Sometimes I would go into fits of rage and throw whatever I could find. I crossed physical boundaries with the guy I was dating and that relationship became more and more unhealthy, and I cut myself off from everyone else I knew and became attached to him. I had replaced God with this guy and because it was impossible for him to actually love me unfailingly like Christ did, I felt empty.

Moving to Sydney, I was suffering from mood changes even more than I was back at home, and soon the fits of rage got worse.  I was completely addicted and reliant on self-harm and when the guy I was dating realised that he wasn’t able to stop me from self-harming, he gave up on trying. Because he wasn’t a Christian, he didn’t believe that God was able to do anything in my life and so almost everyone wrote me off as a hopeless case that would self-harm for life. I didn’t understand that how he was treating me wasn’t love; I didn’t understand that someone who truly loved me would want me to embrace God’s love for me and encourage me to be healed in Him. I didn’t understand that someone who loved me would value me enough to treat me with utmost purity. And when our relationship deteriorated completely, I had a string of unhealthy relationships as an attempt to escape my loneliness and found myself abandoned time after time. In February 2009, after one huge fit of rage after an argument with my ex, I ran up to the top storey of one of the buildings in my apartment block, and sat up on the ledge. I remember crying uncontrollably and feeling more alone than I’d ever felt before. I remember feeling confused. Someone managed to pull me off the ledge, and I spent the night in emergency.

In the following weeks, I started turning back to God. It was hard to shed old habits and so I was still self-harming, but I made new friends at church and began listening to His voice. When the depression was bad enough that I couldn’t leave my house, these Christian friends would take turns to visit me at home, bringing me meals and cocooning me in prayer. I received love in a way that I didn’t think was possible, and even after they found out everything I’d become, they never judged me or made me to feel ashamed.  They showed me that God is a God of grace, and I came back to Christ. He answered our prayers when I got an accurate diagnosis for my mental illness, Bipolar II disorder, in March 2009.

Slowly, life began to turn around. Things weren’t immediately better, but they were improving. I became friends with wonderful man called Don, and we started dating in August 2009. I am truly sorry that I hadn’t recovered more before we began our relationship, but in His grace, God gave Don the strength to help me heal. Don’s heart broke for me like God’s heart did, and I started realising how much God loved me. Instead of trying to take God’s place in my heart, Don encouraged me to seek God more and more. He had faith that God had the power to heal me from all the pain that I was going through. For the first time, I had the courage to seriously let go of the self-harm, because I knew that God was bigger than this addiction. When Don forgave me for all my sinful choices in my previous relationships even though it broke his heart, I finally began to understand what grace was. God spoke to me through this loving man, and I started learning about how He saw me as absolutely precious, despite all my mistakes. For the first time, I feel beautiful because Don sees my body like God sees my body, worthy of care and respect. Don loves me with patience and purity and God has used him to teach me what love really looks like.

Since the beginning of this year, things have been so different. I’ve been free from self-harm for months now, and God has changed my heart in many ways. I no longer have fits of rage, and He is teaching me patience. I am getting better at loving people selflessly, and I am finally at a stage where I can encourage Don in this race as much as he encourages me. My relationship with my family has been restored and I am so thankful to my parents for praying for me so faithfully all these years. I have finally cultivated the discipline to spend time with God daily, and I have understand what it means when God says that I will no longer call Him “Master”, but “Husband”. I dance with my Beloved and He has filled my heart completely. I am never lonely. In the past year and a half, I have grown at a crazily quick pace and am moving off spiritual milk and onto solid food. It is my prayer that I never cease to praise Him for what He’s done in my life, and that He will use me to draw others to Him so they can experience what freedom I have in Christ. Jesus is my all in all, and He has taken someone ugly and broken and given me a new, beautiful heart.