I found myself at a Chinese Restaurant a couple of blocks away from my dorm\u2014having what I believed to be my last supper. An empty bottle of 60 sleeping pills was sitting across the table from me like a friend. I was in the middle of a war that I felt I had the power and the strength to win on my own: the battle of overcoming depression, trying to heal old wounds from my childhood that crept back ever so often, to remind me the only asset I had was this physical body I grieved, and finally, being able to totally quiet the voices in my head\u2013one being a still, small voice that I couldn\u2019t decipher while intoxicated by so many substances as my own kind of remedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
God was pulling and calling me to repent being that I was raised in the church and experienced the anointing of God. I could count every limb on my body but still, it wouldn\u2019t be able to surpass the number of times I was healed, delivered, purged, and used in the spirit. However, I didn\u2019t feel worthy enough or willing to receive total redemption because I was so used to fighting, suffering, hurting, and pitying myself in silence. I could feel the Lord saying, \u201cYou can be full of pity or power,\u201d as my gifts came without repentance and He showed me how He could use them to make room for me in a world that echoes \u201cI\u2019m not enough.\u201d I was so comfortable living in a pit, with all of my troubles, worries, and my past that I began to party through it all. Drugs and Alcohol became my mentors. Although I felt devalued by circumstances in my life and by myself, I thought I could win this war on the strength of my own will. But the enemy painted over the steps to true victory, with the name of a nearby pharmacy, an over-the-counter drug, and a whisper to take my chances with Death since Life became too hard to bear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ate a piece of everything from that buffet. I knew this was the end because God allowed me to survive a suicide attempt before. How could He tolerate me trying to act like Him and determine the course of my life again? It\u2019s because God is simply GOOD. Full of grace, mercy, and favor, I woke up two days later from a coma caused by sleeping pills when I was taken to the hospital. A part of me didn\u2019t want death, but all I could hear through the noise was a resounding, \u201cIt\u2019s too late.\u201d But during my slumber, God said, \u201cNot so.\u201d Though surrendering to God took more tests and trials, this was the end of my war and the beginning of a battle against my flesh in order to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Survival meant God had (has) a plan for me in spite of my foolish heart and my mind. He sewed up my wounds from the war I waged, enough for me to look in the mirror of truth and say to myself, \u201cYou belong here and you are valuable in the eyesight of God who created all things, even me, and said \u201cIt is Good!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
However, I didn\u2019t feel worthy enough or willing to receive total redemption because I was so used to fighting, suffering, hurting, and pitying myself in silence. I could feel the Lord saying, \u201cYou can be full of pity or power,\u201d as my gifts came without repentance and He showed me how He could use them to make room for me in a world that echoes \u201cI\u2019m not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-testimonial-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1342"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1443,"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342\/revisions\/1443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btsministries.org\/staging\/3761\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}