Someone once told me that I have the ability to write well because I am passionate, honest, and real. Sure, I am honest about my struggles and real about the fact that I DO struggle. So if I’m reeeeeeaaaaally honest, I’d admit that I have never written about my salvation experience (my Life Story) because for many years I was ashamed of my past. How ironic that for so long, I missed the whole point of my salvation.
The truth is, if you read nothing else of this story, all you really need to know about me is this:
Jesus rescued me. Not just from “hell”, but from myself. He rescued me, gave me beauty for the ashes of my life (as seen in Isaiah 61:3), and then restored me and gave me so much more in life than I ever deserved.
So if you’re still reading my story, I guess I better start at the beginning with all the gory details. I grew up as an only child in a Christian family in America’s “bible belt” where there is almost literally a Church on every corner. I attended quite religious Churches where I was always made to feel crappy about SOMETHING that I wasn’t doing or should be doing. I know it wasn’t their intention, but these “religious experiences” really wounded my heart and left me feeling like I’d never be “good enough.”
Maybe it’s because I’m an only child, but I realized quickly that doing excellent in school and making the best grades in the class was certain to gain me great attention and make me feel better about myself. I’m so thankful to say that my parents were
never guilty of
ever making me feel like I had to perform for their approval; however, something inside of me constantly felt like I had to be the best to be approved by people, even by other kids (I rathered being a “nerd” than not noticed at all). I learned to despise myself if I wasn’t “the best.” But by the time that 6th & 7th grade came along, I realized that there were kids much smarter and more talented than me. I remember 8th grade when I only won 3 of the big 5 awards the grade offered, and I was devastated and deeply shamed for weeks after. Again, I had proved to myself that I wasn’t “special.”
8th grade is also when boys began to notice me. In this I found a less arduous way to get attention to fill the emptiness in my heart and silence the voices that constantly accused me of being “messed up.” I was still involved in Church, but because my behaviour with the boys was less than “godly” in some ways, I was often at the center of gossip. Some of the kids even felt the need to tell me all the hurtful things that their parents had said about me. My poor heart was a mess, so I learned to lie to keep the “Church people” happy.
By 10th grade boys were an addiction. I was always too afraid to try drugs, but male attention seemed to be the thing that kept me going. I was also too “religious” to have sex, but other physical things seemed ok for me. My heart grew further away from the Church because of how I was treated, and the deep shame that I lived with kept me from God. I usually only went to Church to see a boy that I liked and make my parents happy. I lived with this cognitive dissonance between my head and heart. I knew that God was real and I believed in Jesus, but I was so driven by emotions and the desire to be special and liked, I often denied my God and chose to settle for things, actions, and people that I actually hated because I "thought" I needed it. I had no idea at that time that it was God all along who could fulfil me in the ways I so longed for.
The longer high school went on, the more things I got into: alcohol, lying to my parents and friends, making up stories just to feel included. My physical boundaries began to disappear, and every time I lied, cheated on a boyfriend, crossed another sexual boundary or stabbed a girlfriend in the back, I deeply loathed myself. I’d spend my private times in tears, vowing to God that I’d never do it again. But then something else would make me feel crappy…so back to the old habits I’d go. And in crept my old friend "shame" again. And then along came more self-repugnance. By 17 years old I had crossed all physical boundaries possible with boys and my heart was actually ripped to shreds. I didn’t even know how to be a friend now, and my social skills resembled co-dependency more than anything else.
University began in August 1996, and I thought I’d study Acting. It would be a new beginning, a fresh start, and I could have a new identity and new friends who didn’t know me or my past. I had been away from Church for awhile, but joined up with the BCM, a Christian organization on my campus. I was meeting so many new Christian people, and some of them seemed to have “something” that I didn’t have but really wanted. Some of the girls seemed so much more secure than me, and there was a sense of health in many of their friendships. They embraced me in a way that my past Church youth group had not.
BUT…there was also the older guy in the theatre department that showed interest in me. So as I continued to choose to feed my insecurity and pain with male attention, I found myself away from God completely and deeper in the world's philosophies than I had ever been. Clubs, alcohol and lies prevailed in my life. My skirts got shorter, my outlook on life got darker, I forgot how to dream about my future, and my shattered heart now grew hard. Shame became what drove me instead of the approval that I had sought for so long. I even turned my back on the few girlfriends that had tried to reach out to me (Wendy & Kelly, I will always love you).
I’m so glad that God never left my side. Even when I was out at the clubs and doing things I actually despised, it seemed like I saw things everywhere or even met people that reminded me of Jesus. He always had a plan for me.
At age 19, after a night of which the horrible details I will not mention, I MET JESUS. I didn’t read about Him in my Bible or listen to some preacher tell me about Him or have an emotional high at some summer youth camp…HE
came to me. It happened one night while I was lying in bed completely full of fear
(I thought I was either pregnant or had HIV...neither of which were a reality, Praise God). It was in the darkest point of the night when your heart hurts the most and the negative voices become the loudest…
Jesus held my hand. Whether or not it was a dream, I don’t care. All I know is that Jesus literally and physically held my hand. And instead of self-revulsion and torment, my Mom’s words resonated from a few nights before…”
Mandy, you’re old enough to make your own decisions, but you need to remember that God created you for something much bigger and better than all this…” It’s at that point that I think I really MET JESUS and gave my whole life to Him. It's like I saw things with different eyes..
I remembered the BCM. I went back there the following week and spoke to Brenda, the minister there, who embraced me despite my brutal honesty and fear of being rejected again. I then left the theatre department to study Sociology, and made some healthy female friendships at the BCM that led me closer to both Jesus and health. In April of 1998, God again came to me (at my request) and empowered me by giving me the fullness of the Holy Spirit. I have never been the same, and I also thank BRENDA CRIM to this day for the influence she had on my life.
I’d be lying if I said it was easy after that. There were layers of insecurities, unhealthy learned defence mechanisms and wrong thinking that I have had to shed through things such as counselling and attending Hillsong College in Sydney. There have been people I’ve had to forgive (including myself), and lessons in love that I’ve had to learn. The difference is that NOW, I don’t have to dull the pain with an addiction or with lies, and I can feel special without having a co-dependent relationship.
I’ll be even more brutally honest with you…even as a born-again Christian, I spent years trying to go back to this old way of existing! I realized a few years before coming to Australia that I could not settle for just “existence” in my old life because Jesus has given me a brand NEW life. For me, it’s no longer about existing with a few occasional “good days”; it’s about living everyday without the torrent of shame and voices that tell me there is something wrong with me, and that I’m not good enough. I now live a life where my Jesus and my healthy Church daily reminds me that I AM LOVED. I now have a reason to live that is bigger than just my own self. I’m now proud to say that I even go to Church. Life is not the same.
The Bible best summarizes my story (and every born-again Christian’s story) in Ephesians 2:1-10:
“It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do.”
And in saying all of that, I’ll end with another few scriptures that explain why I do what I do, and where my life is going.
Philippians 3:7-9 and 12-14:
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith…. 12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Acts 20:24:
However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.
And THAT is my story. It can be yours too, if you want it....
