Graduating College

5-7-11

Today I graduated college with a Bachelor of Science degree for psychology and religion. A lot of hard work went into reaching this day. However, I wouldn’t have walked across that stage if it hadn’t been for God. My freshman year of college I developed delayed onset chronic PTSD. This disorder would stay with me until the last half of the fall semester of my senior year. I went years without the ability to fully feel emotion or even physical sensation. I numbed out. I experienced flashbacks of the abuse. The memories of rape were the hardest to go through during this time. I had panic attacks, hyper vigilance, and a constant fear that someone would hurt me again like my brother had. During my freshman year the pain got so bad that I often contemplated suicide. I lost a lot of the will to live. If I had not numbed out, I would have been constantly weeping for the hurt, pain, shame, and lack of support I felt from my family. I know my family loves me, but at the time (unbeknownst to me) most of my family didn’t know about the abuse. I thought word had spread since I had told my parents my senior year of high school. The lack of reaction, support, reassurance, and protection took a lot out of me. I felt, essentially, alone with my pain. I hated myself to the very core. I believed so strongly that it was somehow my fault, some deficiency in myself that had caused the abuse and that made my family not want to help me or protect me. I felt marked by the abuse and unworthy of love or affection from anyone.

God was not going to let me go. He had and still has a plan for my life. The very day that I thought I could take the pain no more and held a knife to the underside of my arm God sent someone to me. I held that knife to my arm for a while, intending to cut a deep line down the underside of my forearm, up to my wrist. I’d heard that was the way to do it. But with that knife to my arm I heard God screaming in my head “Don’t do it!!!” I ended up closing the knife and throwing it across the room, away from me. I then ran out of my dorm room and down the sidewalk towards the cafe. I ran into the youth pastor for one of the local churches. I knew him from being a leader in my high school First Priority club. He asked me how I was doing. I finally decided to be honest and tell him that I was really struggling. He told me to come talk to him in his church office sometime. Not long after that I found myself in a side room of the church building with him, talking about what was going on. At that moment when I needed to let everything spill out, I found that I could not speak. All I could do was cry. I never got to tell him what was wrong, but he gave me the number for a female college senior that I could talk to. I later told him that I felt suicidal through an email. I also met with the college minister and talked with him. I wasn’t able to tell him much either, I was so numb, so hurt, and so ashamed that the words I needed to say would not come out. He directed me to a lady who could set me up with a counselor.

Little bit by little bit, I got better. At least, I got to the point that I no longer wanted to take my own life. I decided to just try living one day at a time and trusting God with my life.

Healing was gradual most of the time, but I went through many short bursts of healing over the years. I have come so far. To walk across that stage at my own college graduation was so much more than just the celebration of hard academic study and achievement. The real reason for celebration was that I am still alive. I don’t want to take my life and I haven’t wanted to take my life for years. I don’t have PTSD anymore. I’m healing and have healed so much. The best part though is that my faith in and relationship with God has grown a hundred times stronger. People sometimes wonder why God allows the storms of life to happen to his children. Seeing the change in me, I wonder what we would be like if God didn’t use those storms to strengthen our faith and deepen our relationship with Him. If I had to do it all over again, I would still have chosen to heal. Burying the pain only makes things worse. The part of the journey of healing that I’ve come through so far has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. It shook me to my core, broke every part of me, and I had to allow God to heal the broken parts. Imagine having a hurricane, tsunami, tornado, earthquake, and flashflood trapped inside of you all at once with no escape. There is nothing easy about healing from sexual abuse and rape. However, God is greater. His goodness triumphs over every evil. His strength trumps all adversity. His power to heal overcomes every wound, no matter how deep. I am truly blessed and grateful to be alive today. I walk, live, work, and heal in the power and love of my Savior. Without him, I can do nothing, but through Him, I can do all things.

You have been reading Simply Life by Faith

-Faith_inpresentdarkness

P.S.- Staying at my dad’s house I no longer have internet service to post to my blog regularly. Instead I am writing posts on Microsoft Word at home and posting them when I can get to town and get a signal.