It is in Exodus 15 that God identifies Himself as healer to His people. Moses had just led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. At this point, all the people are celebrating; dancing and singing praises to God who swept Pharaoh and his chariots into the sea. They are rejoicing in being saved! Soon thereafter, Moses led the people away from the Red Sea into the wilderness of Shur, where there was no water to drink. They eventually made it to Marah, where there was water, but it was too bitter to drink. And as we see over and over again throughout the old testament, the Israelites take their eyes off the power of the Almighty, look at their circumstance, and begin to complain. When Moses speaks to God on their behalf, He comes. Not only does He make the water sweet and capable of being consumed, but He speaks to His people in Exodus 15:26: "..If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer." (emphasis mine)
There it is. I am the Lord. I am your healer.
I do not have to look very far to know this is true of my Father. I can look at lives around me and see clearly how God has transformed and redeemed so many different situations. I can even look at my life and the many ways He has kept His hand on me, healing every step of the way. Regrettably, I don't always see His healing for what it is. I often take God's credit and give it to something else. But, He is teaching me how to praise Him for the healing that He does, even when it doesn't make any sense.
A few weeks ago, the youth group at our church had just finished up their summer camp. Several students shared stories of what God had done in their lives during that week. One student, a junior in high school, shared with us that he had been battling lung cancer and with that, bitterness toward God. That week, God reminded Him that He wasn't finished with his life and gave this student a renewed energy for living. As a church, we prayed over him and asked God to heal. Two weeks later, he was brought back up on stage to tell us that at his recent appointment, they discovered that his cancer, which was covering 50% of his lung, had shrunk down to only 1/8 of his lung. Can you say, HALLELUHJER?!
It was through this young man's story that God spoke to me, beckoning me to share the glory of His healing in my own life. Our story of healing in regards to being able to have children has played out publicly through this blog, but I have left out a major part of my story. I have touched on it, yes, but I have not fully gone there. To "go there" would be hard. It would be painful. It would mean I lay down my pride completely, opening up my heart in a way I've never done.
Today I'm going there. And I am so super happy to do it.
I struggled with anxiety and depression for 11 years of my life.
It started when I was 13 years old. That gloriously awkward age when all your hormones go INSANE, your body does really weird things, and you start to think you have all the answers to life because, obviously, you are so grown up now.
For me, the age of thirteen was very chaotic. Both internally and externally, there were a lot of changes taking place in my life. These changes, in a way, catapulted me into a season of depression. I started to feel very heavy every day, like there was a weight on my shoulders I couldn't really shake. I began to feel all emotion on a deeper level, the main emotions being bitterness and anger. I started to look at myself in a new, very critical way: damaged, unlovable, ugly. I began to compare myself to those around me, like most young girls do, but it soon consumed my mind. Within months, I was convinced that I was completely worthless. One night in my room, I took a razor blade in my hand, and with tears flowing, decided I was just going to end it right there. My hands were shaking so hard that I accidentally cut my finger instead. When I saw the blood, enough logic stepped in and snapped me back into reality.
Though I realized I didn't really want to end my life, I was far from better. I had so much anger, bitterness, and pain coiled up so tightly within that living every day felt like work. Going to school was horrible. I felt unhappy all the time, and begin to work very hard at concealing all of this. So, I began to put my "fake jacket" on. I'd wear it hoping nobody could see the pain boiling just below the surface. Even though I felt different, I didn't want anyone to see these things. For the next 5 years, I explored many different outlets to ease my pain, all of which centered around the attitude that I was worthless, my life didn't matter, and my body didn't matter.
By the time I was 18, I had (amazingly) graduated from high school and Jesus had saved my life. (You can read my testimony here.) Though I was finally able to see that I was far from worthless, all those intense emotions were still right there, completely unresolved. By the time I was 20, I had met Daniel and we were preparing to be married. It was only a few weeks before our wedding, in a moment of crying out desperately to God, that He revealed to me something I never thought possible: I was angry with Him. There were so many parts of me that remained locked in chains of bitterness, and I had never once realized that all of that bitterness could be directed at my Father.
I didn't know what to do with that information, though, so everything went forward as planned. We got married in November of 2009, I worked my last day at my job in December, and in January I was a full-time student and wife. In such a season of good things and so many blessings, I found myself completely lost. Not only had I brought in all the baggage from years of unresolved issues into my marriage, but I was suddenly dealing with an identity crisis. I was twenty years old and somebody's wife, and completely and utterly overwhelmed. "Should I dress differently now that I'm married?" I asked myself. What am I supposed to cook? What cleaning products am I supposed to use? How do I decorate a house? It all sounds so silly, but every bit of it overwhelmed me and again, I found myself in a depression.
Inwardly, I was still drowning in negative emotion. I was still broken from old wounds whose scars were very deep, wounds both self-inflicted and inflicted upon me by others. I was hurting, and I still hated myself. I still saw myself as that worthless, weak girl who couldn't get her act together. There was a darkness, a heaviness, that clinged to me. It spread in every part of my mind, taking over like a virus. My soul was deeply hurting from the intensity of anger toward my Father. I would find myself thinking while driving sometimes, "I could just turn this wheel sharply and end all this." Outwardly, I would deal with it two ways: I would either completely shut down emotionally or lash out in anger. If my husband would try to get me to open up, I would usually tell him without an ounce of emotion to leave me alone because I "didn't care." If he would ask me gently if I had been reading God's word, I would literally scream at him. The beginning of his marriage to me was terrifying. He was confused, concerned. The opinionated, passionate, sassy, and sometimes a little kooky woman he had married was nowhere to be found. He thought he had been duped, and rightfully so. I was a completely different person.
Some days, he would come home from work and find me still in bed. He walked on eggshells, not knowing which version of me he was coming home to every day. As much as he persisted in trying to understand me, I was even more confused by my state. I didn't know who I was. Finally, one day after he came home, I opened up to him and told him all that was happening within. I told him how much I hated myself, how I didn't want to live anymore; life was too much, too hard. I was too much to handle and it wasn't fair to him to be stuck in a marriage to me.
Somewhere around this time frame, we joined a homegroup which helped me tremendously. It forced me out of my bubble and helped me realize that I was not the only person with issues; we all have them. Though I still didn't really know how to handle all the unresolved issues, I did slip out of the depression. And right by my side, every step of the way, was my husband. When the world would have given him permission to leave, he stayed. When I begged him to leave me, he told me he wasn't going anywhere. When I was too much for myself to handle, he held me tightly in his arms. When I hated myself, he loved me.
Through his selflessness, something clicked: If my husband, an imperfect human who sins and falls short, can love me like this, how much more must a perfect God love me?
Over the next few years, I began to learn more and more about just how much God loved me. I was still struggling almost daily, still learning how to accept myself, but I was beginning to open my heart to God who wanted to make me new. I still had not established my identity as being in Christ alone, so when we lost our first baby in miscarriage in February of 2012, I found myself in another season of depression. I had obtained my college degree but didn't feel called to a career. I had put my identity in becoming a mother, so when we lost our child, I felt like I had no purpose. In my limited mind, having a baby seemed like the perfect and appropriate next step in life. Quickly, I found my happiness diminished, snuffed out by the current circumstance I was in. I felt like I had taken two steps forward and five steps back, and was very hard on myself. I offered myself no grace and had no idea how to accept God's.
I had struggled for years believing that I was a weak, terrible person,
someone who couldn't get her life together like everyone around her.
When I became a Christian, in a lot of ways those thoughts got worse. I
felt like a sub-par Christian; how could I have been given life by God
but still hate who I was? Why couldn't I be normal? Why was I so messed
up? But this time, something different was going on: God made me aware of His presence with me in the fire I was in. Not only was I completely drained and tired of going through seasons of depression like this, but I realized my Father did not want me to live in this place. He wanted me freed from my chains. He had died to give me life, and in doing so poured out His grace lavishly upon me. He was working His hardest to position me where I could receive these things fully and be free. In a lot of ways, He was trying to get me out of my own way so that He could move freely.
He placed people in my life that pointed me to Him over and over again. He brought an accountability relationship into my life which constantly spoke truth through my pain. He positioned me as a nanny where I observed a Godly family doing life and whispered to my heart through that time. He provided a godly counselor whom I met with for several months. He gave Daniel a strength and endurance to walk beside me without giving up on me, even though at times I made it very hard on him. Through all of these things, He began to chip away each thick layer of bitterness in my heart. He began to break chain after chain after chain that I didn't even know I was bound by. He began to free my mind of thinking I was weak, but instead merely a broken child in a need of a healing Father. But mostly, He loved me when I didn't know how to love myself.
During the season I was in counseling, my ever-diligent husband began to heavily research my emotional and physical symptoms. Through the information he found, we made the decision for me to start taking several herbal supplements that would balance out my hormones. In reality, we were focusing more on trying to conceive naturally than on my mental healing, but God's plans prevailed regardless of where our hearts were. I began to take several supplements at the same time I was seeing my counselor. Within weeks of taking them, we both saw a discernible difference in my overall emotional state. Where before I was always on edge, always feeling overwhelmed and on the verge of a breakdown, now I felt a calm settle over me. Before I lacked patience and would snap quickly at little, insignificant things. Now, the little things that so bothered me before barely affected me. I was beginning to feel a lightness that I had not experienced for years.
As God led us back to the fertility doctors in November of 2013, I was finally feeling a peace that I had searched for and yearned to have for years. We trusted God in following our doctor's plans and had several tests administered. But we realized: to move forward in attempting to get pregnant, I would need to stop taking the herbal supplements that I credited to making me better. I found myself terrified that I would slip right back into the darkness that had consumed me for years, but we knew this was where God was leading, so we took a step of faith. In December, I was pregnant. I had to stop taking the supplements due to lack of studies on whether or not they are safe in pregnancy. I was a little on edge, worrying I would wake up one day and feel the heaviness again.
I didn't. I haven't, for even a single day since going off the supplements. That which I had credited to my healing deserved no credit. The truth finally dawned on me: God had healed me. Psalm 118:5 says, "In my anguish I cried to the Lord, and he answered by setting me free."
God. Had. HEALED ME!!!!! He had set me free!
There was no longer a dark cloud looming over my life. There was no longer a tangible heaviness in my chest, anxiety restricting me. There was not a weight on my shoulders upon waking. I was no longer waiting for something to go wrong, for everything to fall apart. For the first time in over eleven years, I felt excited about each new day. I had hope. I had peace. And for the first time in a long time, I felt a joy settle into my soul, a thirst for life and to live fully, expectantly of the good God would do.
And when circumstances around me began to crumble as we learned of my mother's decline in health, for the first time my resolve did not crumble with it. For the first time, I was allowing God's grace to be sufficient for me.
Y'all. This is God!!! This is Jehovah Rapha! He is the Lord that HEALS! None of the ways I've been healed can be credited to anything but God. I am still finding myself overwhelmed by how much He loves, how good of a Father He is. When He shows Himself to me, I can't help but be made aware of how desperately I still do and will always need His healing, peaceful presence in my every day life. I can look with joyful anticipation to the birth of our daughter any day now, knowing that while life will be overwhelming in the season of new parenthood, it will NOT consume me because God's healing is more powerful than our circumstance. I have seen His faithfulness and I cannot and do not want it to be unseen or forgotten. And, I can't help but want to shout on the rooftop of the tallest building that GOD IS GOOD!! I want to look and sound like a crazy person if it means God gets glory!
If you are reading this, I don't know your story. I don't know of your pain, your struggles, the areas of your life that you may be bound by chains. But God does. Your perfect Father does. He sees you, every part of you. He knows you. He created you and he loves you wholly. He is not only capable of doing so, but He wants to heal you. He desperately wants you to be free of whatever it is that holds you back. I beg you: Let Him come. Let your Father in to mend your broken heart. Let Him love you.
Oh, Jehovah Rapha. My Jesus, my healer. Thank you. Thank you for the work you are doing all around us. We praise You!
