I received this wonderful testimony from a young woman in our Bible study group who has suffered from "cutting" and other destructive behavior inflicted on her by the hand of the enemy. Please share this with any other young woman or man who you know is suffering from this problem. There is healing and deliverance in Jesus Christ!
Life is Not Easy
Life is not easy, and as humans we often complicate it for ourselves. We search for material or otherwise superficial things to fill that God-sized hole our in hearts. Because of that we find ourselves in really difficult and often dangerous situations. We use drugs, alcohol, sex, money, people, you name it, to fill that hole. Using things or people other than God to fill that hole is problematic enough, but the real issues start when our God-substitute falls short.
In the grand scheme of things my God-substitutes were considerably mild. Praise God that I never got into drinking, drugs, or sex. But I was guilty of using self-mutilation and disordered eating to cope. For years I restricted my food intake, and/or purged my food. At my worst I was purging 7 or 8 times a day. I was a fairly serious self-mutilator also. I cut my arms with knives and box cutters. When that stopped working I burned them with hot water or my curling iron. In the short run I felt better. In the long run I slowly but surely increasing the size of the hole I was trying to fill.
As I got older and matured quite a bit I was able to significantly reduce my dependence on my self sabotaging behaviors and thoughts of suicide. For months or weeks at a time I didn’t engage in any at all, but if things got tough I always held onto a box cutter and small bottle of ipecac and whatever supply of medications I had on hand. Even when life was going well I could never let go of my “stash.” It was my crutch. When things went south I always reminded myself of where I could find whatever I needed and it brought me peace.
As God is becoming a bigger and bigger part of my life I’m starting to see that there isn’t room for both God and self-harming in the same hole. They just can’t coexist. I played with the proportions of each (God and self-harming) to see if I could make them both fit. I promised not to use all of the medications I’d been hoarding but I refused to throw them away. I knew better than to cut myself, but I always needed to have a box cutter. It felt very incongruent to have declared Jesus as my savior but still be harboring thoughts and ideations that were so obviously not of Him.
After a lot of prayer and a few serious conversations, I finally flushed all of the hoarded pills. I didn’t want to, I felt like I needed them. I felt like I was throwing away some kind of tool that would get me through an awful situation. But I also knew that my biggest tool lived in my heart, my Lord and Savior, and it was time to let turn to Him for help, and not to self harming or suicidal thoughts.
It is harder than it sounds. It would be like living your whole life washing and drying all of your clothes by hand. Then you finally get a washer and dryer and you don’t know how to use them. You know it can help you, but you have no clue which buttons to push to get your desired result. I know Jesus is in my corner, but I don’t know how to ask for His help.
When I flushed my collection of pills, it had been over 2 years since I had last cut myself. I knew I had a knife somewhere but didn’t know exactly where. I just knew it was around. And when things got difficult, thoughts of that knife and knowing that I could probably dig it up comforted me.
I was having a challenging day. I wasn’t motivated to do anything important which was really irritating me. I was angry at myself and for whatever reason everything was reminding me of my Dad that day, who had passed away exactly sixteen weeks and three days earlier. It was hard. I also had a painting in the works and was having trouble finishing it. It was so close to being done, but it was missing something and I was frustrated because I couldn’t figure out what that was.
I came across the knife, the only one I had left. I felt my heart leap. I spent the afternoon using the knife to remove a piece of canvas from a stretcher and pry the staples out. I also cut open bottles of paint and carefully trimmed some canvas. I was trying to justify keeping this knife. I was trying to prove that I needed it for things other than to hurt myself, even though that was the only reason I wanted to keep it. I couldn’t stop thinking about two of my friends though, and what they would think. And how would I tell them? Would they still love me like they claimed to? They would be so disappointed. And what would I think of myself, if I kept it? How on earth could I call myself a follower of Christ if I deliberately ignored Him?
At dinner with my grandparents my mood worsened. Being at my family’s restaurant reminded me of my Dad so much it tugged at my heart. There were two different times that I had to command myself not to let my tears fall. Sitting there holding them back I decided I needed to cut myself when I got home. I just did.
On the ride home I was thinking about my day and trying to figure out where things went so wrong. What had happened to bring on all of these feelings? I realized things had turned sharply downward when I found that knife and did not instantly get rid of it. That’s when everything got so much harder. My day wasn’t a picnic before that, but finding the knife and not tossing it drastically changed things. I knew I had to get rid of it, it had to go.
Running out of daylight, I tore up to my room and found the knife exactly where I left it on my bed. I tucked it in my pocket and set out walking. There was an abandoned lot on the edge of the woods on my street. I honestly did not know if I was going to toss the knife or not. The lot seemed farther away than I remembered, but when I finally got there I suddenly wished it had disappeared. I stood for a few minutes. Everything in me was telling me not to throw that knife, I needed it! There was a dialog going on in my head:
“You NEED this knife!”
“You do not need this knife, you have something so much better, you have God.”
“You have God but you don’t know how to let Him help you. Until you figure that out you need this knife.”
“You do not need this knife.”
I couldn’t take it anymore and raised my arm and threw it hard into the woods. When I heard it hit the ground I instantly regretted throwing it.
On the walk home I tried to work through my choice to toss the knife. Why didn’t I feel good about it? Wasn’t this a good thing? Why did I still feel so haunted by it?
The concept that people often have to do things that they don’t want to is introduced to us at young age. And regardless of whether it is the right thing to do, it may not always feel good.
The only comfort in those situations is that we are called to sacrifice things for ourselves for the greater good (our greater God). We are called to do things that we don’t always want to do. And even after it’s done it still doesn’t feel good. But, we have to walk it out in faith knowing that we will not always understand why God orchestrates things the way he does, and we are not question it either.
It is kind of like forgiving someone who has wronged you.
You might still be angry or hurt about the situation, but you are called to forgive. Your emotions may not match up right away, but you have to step out in faith knowing that your obedience will be blessed and having peace that you were obedient.
Maybe it goes without saying, but God loves each of us so much that He would never call us to a position or situation where we would be harmed. On the contrary, He will call us away from those situations and substitutes for His love to make room for the genuine love, His love, for us.
“Live as children of obedience to God; do not conform yourselves to the evil desires that governed you in your former ignorance when you did not know the requirements of the Gospel.” 1 Peter 1: 14
