My heart’s cry – all of my life – was to know “why”. I am sure I was that 4 or 5 year old child who pestered any adult around me with the whys of life…. Why is the sky blue? Why are you doing that? Etc. As a young person, I looked in many, many places trying to figure out why – why the things that happened to me had happened. Questioning endlessly the meaning and purpose behind the suffering of those I loved, and the suffering I endured.
My mom and dad were diagnosed with terminal illnesses when I was 2 years old. My dad died an excruciating death when I was 10. Immediately after his death, I was molested by an old man. I became a Christian at around 10 years old. I desperately wanted God to heal my mom from her battle with M.S.. I believed that if I were a good enough little girl, God would hear my prayers and Mom would be healed when we went to a faith healer in Seattle….. and she wasn’t. By age 12, I began wrestling with chronic depression.
I was an exchange student in Finland during my junior year of high school. While in Finland, the family I lived with (heavy drinkers) thought it would be fun to see me drunk and gave me (who knew nothing about alcohol) 7 seven-up like beverages full of alcohol at a party just before Christmas. I was terribly sick. Shortly afterwards, my employer offered me drinks of straight alcohol – and not knowing anything, I thought the amount looked pretty harmless. He raped me when I was too incapacitated to fight (although, unfortunately, I was completely conscious). My depression and shame deepened. So began a 35 year battle with alcoholism, and 25 years buried in the shame of my constant obsession with eating (and vomiting what I ate).
I was married and divorced in my early 20’s. I went from man to man looking for a savior. These “relationships” felt so meaningless and left me lonely, ashamed and so very empty. I was deeply enslaved to alcohol and food and could find no way out – although I tried many, many different things to be “healed”.
In 1986, I met Ben. I was an atheist and Ben had left his faith completely. We dated for several months, and one Sunday, God tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is the one.” While I was an atheist, I knew that the voice was God’s. We were married 10 months later.
My mom suffered horribly prior to her death in February, 1989. Her death rocked my world… I wanted to die – I felt so guilty – like such an incredibly bad daughter. I had so many regrets about how I had treated her. My depression deepened and I tried to kill myself right after her death.
God led me to an eating disorders treatment center in December, 1999 where I participated in group therapy for bulimia. I believed that if anyone ever knew me, or my story and my shame, they would run screaming from the room and abandon me forever. As a requisite for staying the group, I was required to tell my story to this group of 12 women. No one ran screaming from the room…. Instead they came around me and loved me despite my incredibly shame-filled life story. The lie – that anyone who truly knew me would despise me and abandon me – was revealed. I was completely and miraculously healed immediately after telling my story – free of any compulsion towards food. I had been set free!!!
When Ben’s mom died in 1993, he felt the Lord calling him back to Himself. Ben came home from her deathbed a changed man – a Christian (!), and I wanted nothing to do with it. Ben insisted that I go to church with him and the kids. He convinced me that our kids would be as confused as I was about God if we did not give them a consistent Christian upbringing by attending church.
For many years , I was dragged (kicking and screaming, as you will!) to church. I was that person who slumped in my chair during the service – earplugs in my ears, my eyes closed and my arms folded. It was abundantly clear to everyone that I hated being there.
The Holy Spirit began to work on me and I began to question my atheism and to seek a different answer to my questions about the “why” of life in the fall of 2009. In October, Ben gave me the book, “The Reason for God”, by Tim Keller. It started to answer many of my objections to Jesus and helped me see the suffering of those I loved and my own suffering with a different “lens”. I began to seek to know Jesus, and He reached out and drew me into relationship with Him. January 10, 2010, I surrendered to Jesus as my Savior and LORD, and was baptized that day. During the minutes before I stepped into the baptismal, God and I had a conversation. “Do you know that there will be no turning back if you go forward with this? That this is a deeper commitment than even your marriage to Ben?” I surrendered fully and with my whole heart. No turning back…..
God gave me a promise shortly after my baptism. For many years, I felt like God was “out to get me” in a very hostile way. The promise He gave me was the Scripture, Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future.” He has been and always will be after my heart…. out to get me, if you will. BUT His plans and purposes for me and my life are for GOOD. I am so, so grateful!
In October, 2010, God spoke to me and said, “For you, Deborah, drinking is a sin.” I had made all kinds of deals with the devil over the years and had tried everything to stop drinking. God not only told me it was a sin, but He took away my urge to drink over the next months. He broke my chains and set me free of many, many years of being enslaved every day – and often every hour – to the bondage of bulimia and alcohol.
One evening in October 2012, God told me to stop taking all 5 major anti-depressants I was on for depression. He completely and miraculously healed me of my lifetime of depression. I woke up the following morning free…. no discontinuation syndrome (which rightfully should have killed me!)….. no black cloud of depression enveloping me – which had been with and over me since I was 12. God, my precious and fabulous Savior, had completely taken it away.
I idolized our family’s beautiful home in Seattle for 20 years – spending a fortune on it – and putting it ahead of many other (more significant) things in our lives. Thankfully, God removed that which I held to be more important than Him. On my final run from our home after many months of terrible grief, He gave me an experience where I felt covered with the warm oil of joy and felt His presence. All my grief and my attachment to the house were entirely removed that day, just before we moved out.
In November, 2013, I woke up in the wee hours to God telling me to get up and write something down. I found a sticky note and a pen and obeyed and wrote what He gave me. These are the words: “Time is short. Live with the end in mind. Where will it all end? Heaven.” Even now, I’m not sure how these words will play out in my life and in the lives of those I love. However, I do know them as complete truth from the One Who speaks only truth.
God told me to read beyond the promise He gave me in Jeremiah 29:11…. that He had something more for me in His Word. He pointed me to the following verses: Jeremiah 29:12 -14a where He promises that I CAN KNOW HIM! “Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity.” He has kept His amazing promises!!! He brought me back from the awful captivity and slavery to food, alcohol and depression, and has left me free indeed.
In 2013, after wrestling with fear and grieving from what turned out to be just a scare about two possible cancer diagnoses , God spoke with me about the difference between this world and the one He has waiting for me after I leave this life. I was given an amazing vision of what heaven will look like, and was given such hope, joy and peace in the sure knowledge that this world is a dim echo of the beauty and awesomeness of what is next.
During 2014 and 2015, and after multiple (extremely painful!!!) biopsies (and much, much prayer!), it seemed like the best course of action to have a complete hysterectomy. The surgery was done on June 18, 2015 and I was completely at peace with all that would entail. Things did not go as expected. The night following the surgery, I was given a narcotic (after much protest on my part!) that I was allergic to. What a long and painful night! I chose to be discharged the next day at noon believing that I would be better off at home. At 3 pm, my belly began to “blow up” and I went from a relatively flat stomach to 6 months pregnant in an hour – crazy painful! At the ER, I was diagnosed with profound blood loss (1/3 of my blood volume was in my abdomen) and re-hospitalized. That night, an error was made in the dosing of morphine, and I stopped breathing more than 20 times – I am grateful for the enormous bell on top of the monitor! It would rouse me enough to see “No respiration detected.” on the screen and to take big breaths until the bell stopped. Amazingly, I saw no staff that night…. the first staff after my hookup to morphine at 10 pm was the phlebotomist who arrived at 5:45 am. I am so, so grateful to be alive!!! The following week was really tough. I was so weak and couldn’t sit up for much longer than a few minutes. I couldn’t lay down with a book… it was too heavy to hold up. I felt awful…horrible headache, super weak, so very sick. I went to my regular doctor on Monday, June 29 and she told me I would probably feel this way for 4-6 months as my body healed, my blood rebuilt, my iron stores res-established, etc. I was horrified! On my return home, I wrestled with God – “why has this happened! I asked for Your direction and You told me to go ahead. I have plans this summer….” He answered me with “My will or your will be done?” I finally surrendered to what He had for me. The next day was Elise’s 21st birthday… I felt strong enough that evening to have dinner with the family. Wednesday, July 1, I woke up feeling really good and did a bunch of errands – but was pretty exhausted by evening. Thursday, July 2nd, I woke up completely and entirely healed…. my belly was flat, I felt marvelous – energetic and joyful. I began running (5 miles) the following Monday… it felt great!!! I returned to the doctor for a blood test to see where things were. My iron status, my red and white blood counts were in her words – better than normal! Wow!!!
Ben and I have seen God at work in our lives since then in so many ways. He told us to leave Seattle (leave now, and do not dawdle!) and we have been called through some crazy circumstances to make our home in N.W. Montana. Both of us believe He has brought us here for His purposes, and that He has a plan and a purpose for us in this beautiful place. We both feel incredibly blessed… and He is most definitely active and at work in our lives here.
God has broken my chains (a lifetime of slavery to bulimia and alcoholism and a lifetime of severe chronic depression). He set me free – free to know Him, free to experience His joy, His peace and his hope now and forever. He is answering my perpetual question and heart’s cry to know the eternal “Why” and the why behind His actions, His plans and His purposes for my life. I am so grateful.