R
It's been a long time since God started working in my life and I don't think I've ever told anyone everything I'm about to say here, but I think God wants me to do so, so here it goes.
I grew up in a 'Christian' family that didn't really go to church. Sporadically we'd go to one or another, but not for a long time. We identified as Christians, and my Mom and Dad still think they are, but their idea of what a Christian is doesn't align with what the Bible preaches. Their idea of Christianity is that God created the earth, that Jesus died for our sins, but all religions are right and everyone but really bad people go to Heaven. For most of my life I believed this, as well. I also believed in evolution and at the same time that God created the Earth in seven days, although I never stopped and saw the contradictions in these beliefs or thought about how if all religions were right, then all religions were also wrong because they contradicted one another.
I also cannot remember a time I did not have depression. Not the type that comes when a loved one dies or something bad happens, but the type that comes in long periods that seem never to end, regardless of what is happening in one's life, and nothing you try to think about or try to do to feel better gets rid of the overwhelming feelings of hopelessness, sadness, anger, and lack of energy. Because of this, I grew up very introverted, disassociating in my thoughts (the way I thought was like neverending plays or movies going on in my head. Characters in books or movies would be doing things and thinking things instead of me thinking "I want to go play..." It's not like I had dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities); I was always somewhat present, it was just how I processed and still sometimes process the world. This might seem like a digression, but when someone has any type of mental disorder or sickness or whatever you want to call it, it affects everything in that person's life, so I feel it needs to be said. Because of how isolated it made me become, I've never had any friends that I could really confide in, and I never trusted anyone fully.
Another thing that might seem random but is important to understand when I try to explain my interactions with my family and other people. I grew up in a psychologically abusive household. My parents expected perfection and any mistake was met with punishment. My father was addicted to pain killers and had a drinking problem. Now, he's stopped, but only in the past year. He loves my brother, sister, mother, and I. Often he is very nice. He has provided a house, food, and clothes for all of us. While he did physically abuse my sister and brother on occasion, he never did so to me. However, his temper is terrible, and when he does get angry, he screams and insults people. He doesn't care about what anyone else thinks, because as the father "we're not equal to him" and therefore shouldn't voice our opinions as if we are. My mother has become very timid. I'd call her a battered woman, only he never hit her. She doesn't fight back because she says avoiding an argument is more important than being right. However, if one never stands up for oneself, eventually, one becomes broken. She would blame my sister my brother and myself for things my Dad would do (such as spend too much at the grocery store because we should have stopped him), or for making him unhappy. One time I was in the bathroom and my father walked in on me. I screamed, and he left. Then he walked in again. I screamed, and he left. This went on until I was finished and crying. My mother asked me if my father had touched me, and I said no, because he hadn't. Then she got angry with me for crying and making him feel bad, and made me apologize to him. Both of my parents have very good qualities and often they are really great people. But the problem with repetitive abuse is that eventually it becomes a waiting game. Even in the good times one is scared and angry because eventually the abuse will start again.
When I was in 6th grade, a friend invited me to her youth group. It was the first time I anyone talk to me about real Christianity. About what the Bible meant and what sin was. Still, no one ever talked to me about how to become a Christian. Since most of the sermons were on sin, I formed and idea that somehow a Christian was someone who either didn't sin or who didn't sin very much. I knew I wasn't like this, so I knew I wasn't a Christian, so I started trying to eliminate sin in my life. During high school, I passed into an older youth group in the same church. The pastor at this one preached by yelling at us about sin and how terrible it is without tempering it with messages about love and forgiveness. I somehow got it in my head that to be saved, one had to repent, then keep praying for each individual sin. I also wanted to share God with other people, so I tried to do that. Only, my views were wrong and I didn't know how to do it in a way other than how it was shown to me. I started modeling my pastor and yelling and judging people. This was a terrible thing and years later, I still am filled with self-reproach for how I must have actually pushed people away from God. There is no excuse. All I can say is I didn't know the way myself (no matter what I thought at the time), and teenagers learn by how adults around them act. I thought I was doing what was right, and any misgivings I had I suppressed because that was how the pastor acted and surely he would know the right way to do things.
At some point, my parents began to get angry that I was telling people that the only right way to God was through Jesus. The way I was doing it was also a problem for them, but their main issue was with the message. They stopped me from going to the youth group, which was probably good because I don't know if I would have been saved if I kept going there. However, this also left me with no one to talk to about Christ. And I was starting to question the idea that one had to somehow be good enough to enter Heaven. Also, my depression had gotten a thousand times worse and, whereas in younger years I merely was miserable, now I just wanted the pain to end and I became suicidal. God was the only thing that stopped me. I believed that if I killed myself I'd be doomed to hell. I wasn't sure if I was a Christian at the time (and looking back I wasn't), but I knew that suicide was a sin, so I didn't do it. My parents did get me into counseling, and I'm grateful for that. Without it, I would never have been prescribed Prozac, and that has helped me a great deal. However, my psychiatrist was also my father's psychiatrist (and my grandmother's, and my cousin's). She demonstrated that she couldn't compartmentalize by assuring me that once, when my father got high, he wouldn't do it again and he was very sorry. You never say that about a drug addict. Let alone to a teenager living under said addict's roof. I tried to have them switch me to a Christian counselor, but they wouldn't. I was allowed to go to a school Bible Study, but not to any church that claimed Jesus was the only way. Somehow, in the midst of all this, Jesus found me. I don't remember where I heard the true way to Him, or when I first understood that salvation wasn't through good works, but through faith alone. But at some point I did and Jesus saved me. My depression didn't go away entirely, but I was put on Prozac and that combined with God eased it. A lot of people think Prozac is a 'happy pill'. It's not. There are chemicals in the brain and I'm not sure exactly what all of them are called, but in a normal person, there's a balance. People get sad or happy, but the balance stops one emotion from getting too much dominance. This might change based on certain circumstances, but generally the emotions come and go based on events in a person's life. In someone who has depression (as in the mood disorder), the chemicals aren't balanced. They could accomplish every single dream and they might still feel terrible. Prozac normalizes the levels in the brain. People still feel sad if bad things happen, but they have the ability to feel happy in circumstances where most people would be. Anyway, the worst of the depression was gone, but I was still very much alone in terms of human company.
There were a few people in the Bible study I could talk to, but I was very introverted and didn't know how to form connections with people or tell them. And I was afraid of judgment. I tried reaching out to some people through e-mail. But my Mom somehow accessed my e-mails and stopped me from contacting people who could help. I was a fairly new Christian and I had so many question and doubts and very few places I could get the answers from. After graduation, there was a campus Bible Study at the college I went to. I went there for awhile, but partly out of a busy schedule and partly out of laziness, I stopped going. I know now I shouldn't have. At the time, I felt I didn't need other people, or rather I did, but people that would be there for a while, not for four years and then never see them again. Despite being technically an adult, I still needed to rely on my parents for economic support. I didn't have a car of my own and I didn't bother asking to borrow one of theirs to go to church because I knew they would look into whatever church I was going and deny me the use of transportation if it claimed Jesus was the only way to Heaven.
Now, I have a job. I still live with my parents, but I have my own car, so Novemberish I started going to a Bible-believing church. I wish I could tell you that I was the type of Christian that held strong through adversity, but if you read the rest of this rambling mess, you know that's not true. Having no one but my self to talk to about my own thoughts has led me to make some really dumb decisions. Part of the isolation was beyond my control, but part of it I talked myself into. I had God to pray to, but God created humans to be with other humans. It's easy to pray to God for guidance, but one's heart is a deceitful thing and sometimes I've thought God was telling me one path was the right one, only now I realize it wasn't. Having no other Christian to talk to and bounce ideas off of led to me slipping away from God. Within two weeks of going to my new Church, God has shown me how far I've drifted from Him. He's shown me many things I've gotten wrong and need to correct in my life. He's been steadily leading me back towards a healthy relationship with Him. Lately, He's been leading me to rip out all kinds of sin in my life and showing me that, even when I thought I was alone, He was with me. And that He's here for me know. I don't deserve His mercy, grace, and love, but He's given it to me. Lately, He's been showing me how wrong it is to think that one should be a Christian alone. He's showing me how my introversion has hurt my walk with Him. By not forming ties with other Christians, I've lost a lot of perspective. A lot of the conclusions I came to about what's sinful and what's right have been wrong. It's hard to believe that God still loves me and that Christ's sacrifice can save someone like me, but God has shown me that it does. In the past few weeks particularly, God has been leading me to a) trust Him and seek Him with all my heart whenever I begin to stray from Him, and b) to reach out to other Christians. It's been hard because part of me is afraid of being judged for asking certain questions. Another part of me believes that I'm selfish to want a connection with another human being (depression does something to the way someone thinks) and that God can't possibly use someone as sinful as I am in the body of Christ, so I should stay away. But Jesus has been telling me lately that I'm beloved and forgiven and that if I don't try to reach out and be honest about my struggles and confusion, I won't grow in Him.
I grew up in a 'Christian' family that didn't really go to church. Sporadically we'd go to one or another, but not for a long time. We identified as Christians, and my Mom and Dad still think they are, but their idea of what a Christian is doesn't align with what the Bible preaches. Their idea of Christianity is that God created the earth, that Jesus died for our sins, but all religions are right and everyone but really bad people go to Heaven. For most of my life I believed this, as well. I also believed in evolution and at the same time that God created the Earth in seven days, although I never stopped and saw the contradictions in these beliefs or thought about how if all religions were right, then all religions were also wrong because they contradicted one another.
I also cannot remember a time I did not have depression. Not the type that comes when a loved one dies or something bad happens, but the type that comes in long periods that seem never to end, regardless of what is happening in one's life, and nothing you try to think about or try to do to feel better gets rid of the overwhelming feelings of hopelessness, sadness, anger, and lack of energy. Because of this, I grew up very introverted, disassociating in my thoughts (the way I thought was like neverending plays or movies going on in my head. Characters in books or movies would be doing things and thinking things instead of me thinking "I want to go play..." It's not like I had dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities); I was always somewhat present, it was just how I processed and still sometimes process the world. This might seem like a digression, but when someone has any type of mental disorder or sickness or whatever you want to call it, it affects everything in that person's life, so I feel it needs to be said. Because of how isolated it made me become, I've never had any friends that I could really confide in, and I never trusted anyone fully.
Another thing that might seem random but is important to understand when I try to explain my interactions with my family and other people. I grew up in a psychologically abusive household. My parents expected perfection and any mistake was met with punishment. My father was addicted to pain killers and had a drinking problem. Now, he's stopped, but only in the past year. He loves my brother, sister, mother, and I. Often he is very nice. He has provided a house, food, and clothes for all of us. While he did physically abuse my sister and brother on occasion, he never did so to me. However, his temper is terrible, and when he does get angry, he screams and insults people. He doesn't care about what anyone else thinks, because as the father "we're not equal to him" and therefore shouldn't voice our opinions as if we are. My mother has become very timid. I'd call her a battered woman, only he never hit her. She doesn't fight back because she says avoiding an argument is more important than being right. However, if one never stands up for oneself, eventually, one becomes broken. She would blame my sister my brother and myself for things my Dad would do (such as spend too much at the grocery store because we should have stopped him), or for making him unhappy. One time I was in the bathroom and my father walked in on me. I screamed, and he left. Then he walked in again. I screamed, and he left. This went on until I was finished and crying. My mother asked me if my father had touched me, and I said no, because he hadn't. Then she got angry with me for crying and making him feel bad, and made me apologize to him. Both of my parents have very good qualities and often they are really great people. But the problem with repetitive abuse is that eventually it becomes a waiting game. Even in the good times one is scared and angry because eventually the abuse will start again.
When I was in 6th grade, a friend invited me to her youth group. It was the first time I anyone talk to me about real Christianity. About what the Bible meant and what sin was. Still, no one ever talked to me about how to become a Christian. Since most of the sermons were on sin, I formed and idea that somehow a Christian was someone who either didn't sin or who didn't sin very much. I knew I wasn't like this, so I knew I wasn't a Christian, so I started trying to eliminate sin in my life. During high school, I passed into an older youth group in the same church. The pastor at this one preached by yelling at us about sin and how terrible it is without tempering it with messages about love and forgiveness. I somehow got it in my head that to be saved, one had to repent, then keep praying for each individual sin. I also wanted to share God with other people, so I tried to do that. Only, my views were wrong and I didn't know how to do it in a way other than how it was shown to me. I started modeling my pastor and yelling and judging people. This was a terrible thing and years later, I still am filled with self-reproach for how I must have actually pushed people away from God. There is no excuse. All I can say is I didn't know the way myself (no matter what I thought at the time), and teenagers learn by how adults around them act. I thought I was doing what was right, and any misgivings I had I suppressed because that was how the pastor acted and surely he would know the right way to do things.
At some point, my parents began to get angry that I was telling people that the only right way to God was through Jesus. The way I was doing it was also a problem for them, but their main issue was with the message. They stopped me from going to the youth group, which was probably good because I don't know if I would have been saved if I kept going there. However, this also left me with no one to talk to about Christ. And I was starting to question the idea that one had to somehow be good enough to enter Heaven. Also, my depression had gotten a thousand times worse and, whereas in younger years I merely was miserable, now I just wanted the pain to end and I became suicidal. God was the only thing that stopped me. I believed that if I killed myself I'd be doomed to hell. I wasn't sure if I was a Christian at the time (and looking back I wasn't), but I knew that suicide was a sin, so I didn't do it. My parents did get me into counseling, and I'm grateful for that. Without it, I would never have been prescribed Prozac, and that has helped me a great deal. However, my psychiatrist was also my father's psychiatrist (and my grandmother's, and my cousin's). She demonstrated that she couldn't compartmentalize by assuring me that once, when my father got high, he wouldn't do it again and he was very sorry. You never say that about a drug addict. Let alone to a teenager living under said addict's roof. I tried to have them switch me to a Christian counselor, but they wouldn't. I was allowed to go to a school Bible Study, but not to any church that claimed Jesus was the only way. Somehow, in the midst of all this, Jesus found me. I don't remember where I heard the true way to Him, or when I first understood that salvation wasn't through good works, but through faith alone. But at some point I did and Jesus saved me. My depression didn't go away entirely, but I was put on Prozac and that combined with God eased it. A lot of people think Prozac is a 'happy pill'. It's not. There are chemicals in the brain and I'm not sure exactly what all of them are called, but in a normal person, there's a balance. People get sad or happy, but the balance stops one emotion from getting too much dominance. This might change based on certain circumstances, but generally the emotions come and go based on events in a person's life. In someone who has depression (as in the mood disorder), the chemicals aren't balanced. They could accomplish every single dream and they might still feel terrible. Prozac normalizes the levels in the brain. People still feel sad if bad things happen, but they have the ability to feel happy in circumstances where most people would be. Anyway, the worst of the depression was gone, but I was still very much alone in terms of human company.
There were a few people in the Bible study I could talk to, but I was very introverted and didn't know how to form connections with people or tell them. And I was afraid of judgment. I tried reaching out to some people through e-mail. But my Mom somehow accessed my e-mails and stopped me from contacting people who could help. I was a fairly new Christian and I had so many question and doubts and very few places I could get the answers from. After graduation, there was a campus Bible Study at the college I went to. I went there for awhile, but partly out of a busy schedule and partly out of laziness, I stopped going. I know now I shouldn't have. At the time, I felt I didn't need other people, or rather I did, but people that would be there for a while, not for four years and then never see them again. Despite being technically an adult, I still needed to rely on my parents for economic support. I didn't have a car of my own and I didn't bother asking to borrow one of theirs to go to church because I knew they would look into whatever church I was going and deny me the use of transportation if it claimed Jesus was the only way to Heaven.
Now, I have a job. I still live with my parents, but I have my own car, so Novemberish I started going to a Bible-believing church. I wish I could tell you that I was the type of Christian that held strong through adversity, but if you read the rest of this rambling mess, you know that's not true. Having no one but my self to talk to about my own thoughts has led me to make some really dumb decisions. Part of the isolation was beyond my control, but part of it I talked myself into. I had God to pray to, but God created humans to be with other humans. It's easy to pray to God for guidance, but one's heart is a deceitful thing and sometimes I've thought God was telling me one path was the right one, only now I realize it wasn't. Having no other Christian to talk to and bounce ideas off of led to me slipping away from God. Within two weeks of going to my new Church, God has shown me how far I've drifted from Him. He's shown me many things I've gotten wrong and need to correct in my life. He's been steadily leading me back towards a healthy relationship with Him. Lately, He's been leading me to rip out all kinds of sin in my life and showing me that, even when I thought I was alone, He was with me. And that He's here for me know. I don't deserve His mercy, grace, and love, but He's given it to me. Lately, He's been showing me how wrong it is to think that one should be a Christian alone. He's showing me how my introversion has hurt my walk with Him. By not forming ties with other Christians, I've lost a lot of perspective. A lot of the conclusions I came to about what's sinful and what's right have been wrong. It's hard to believe that God still loves me and that Christ's sacrifice can save someone like me, but God has shown me that it does. In the past few weeks particularly, God has been leading me to a) trust Him and seek Him with all my heart whenever I begin to stray from Him, and b) to reach out to other Christians. It's been hard because part of me is afraid of being judged for asking certain questions. Another part of me believes that I'm selfish to want a connection with another human being (depression does something to the way someone thinks) and that God can't possibly use someone as sinful as I am in the body of Christ, so I should stay away. But Jesus has been telling me lately that I'm beloved and forgiven and that if I don't try to reach out and be honest about my struggles and confusion, I won't grow in Him.
Thank you for that clarification and understand why i got the wrong idea about what that sentence means.. I am glad it did not mean what i thought it did.. Part and parcel of us being human beings hey LOL .. But i am glad you did not react with anger or personal attack to my post and calmly responded with your clarification.