DOE’S TESTIMONY

 And now, I’m sick with this illness called CFS and it has pulled me closer to God and knowing Him because I am so alone. ---Doe

       I was 31 years old when I came to know Jesus Christ.  I was lonely. We had just moved into the area of Virginia that we live in now, so I was 28, and had my son Tanner.  He was 4 months old when we left my precious South Carolina.  I say that because it’s where my husband and I moved the day after we were married, and that was in 1986.  So little Tanner came along  in `1989.  I was saved at 31, but the Lord was working on me with Jeff and when I was pregnant with Tanner.  I had  to have this special ultrasound because I had been spotting and they wanted make sure he was there.  Oh, and he was at 6 wks. He wasn’t just a fetus---he had a heartbeat and it was alight and beating.  He had come to us from God, straight from God almighty.  He was a baby. Alive!

       So, when we moved here, as I said, I was so alone.   To me, it was like moving to NY city.  It was busy and the people wouldn’t look at you.  No one would speak.    I had no friends.  The only people we knew were across the street. Their daughter babysat for us at the first house and she now works for my husband! (smiles)  It’s always a God thing!   So her mother would speak and would visit now and then, but I just had no deep close relationships. And then Jeff lost his job.  They moved him up here, gave him a promotion---and they let him go.

       Jeff had 3 months severance pay so, during that time, he looked for a job in his field while I stayed home with Tanner and slowly was losing my mind.  I kept bugging my neighbor. I kept talking to people at Tanner’s playgroup about how I was feeling, but no one could or would connect and, before I knew it, there was no playgroup.  I was extremely depressed and before I knew it wound up in a psychiatric facility to keep from killing myself.

       After I got out, it felt so weird. Momma and Daddy helped with Tanner.  I felt like I wanted to go back to the hospital because I had friends!  Oh it was so weird.  I can remember those feelings just like they were yesterday.  Reading the book “Down came the Rain” by Brooke Shields, was the first time I had heard of anyone experiencing what I did.  She wasn’t hospitalized, but could have been had it not been for the fact the she had her extra’s!  She of course, had her husband and her baby, but she was gone, and out of it.  She cried all day for many days.  But she had also to her credit good close friends, her mother, and her friends from theater---and then a Doctor, who finally told her she needed medication.  Later, she got counseling.  Her life included also a nanny or, as she called her, a baby nurse.

       I did not have that luxury!  So, finally, Jeff found a job and we began looking for churches.  I had grown up liberal Methodist and didn’t know it.  Jeff went to a Methodist Church but, then, he became a Baptist and remained so most of his life. The Baptist church is where he gave his life to Christ. But, he lived the carnal Christian life before he met me and before we had our first child, Tanner.

       Finally, after going to visit 3 Methodists churches, we wound up (by the recommendation of a friend of mine from MOPs) visiting a conservative Presbyterian church. Also, during that time, we were discussing having another child.  We waited a while and I visited a Mom’s Support Group at a woman’s home.  During the visit, I heard all this talk about “oh, no he’s not a believer”, and then, someone would say “well then they’re going to hell” and this went on for quite sometime, they call it ‘Christianeeze’ speak. (laughing) So I looked at another woman who went to a different church and I asked her “How do you keep from going to hell?”.  (WOW, Shoshana that makes me so excited even now) 

So, she led me to Christ that very night and my life changed then and has everyday since I met Him.

       After a while, we had our daughter Nikki.  She was so easy.  I had Tanner by C-Section and it was rough----and, then, there was the major depressive episode (but it wasn’t the only one). Nikki, on the other hand, was born after we had become Christians and I was treated like a queen while I was pregnant---by everyone, especially the men whose wives had had children. 

      Nikki came out “pink and cheesy”. It was the easiest birth. After they gave me the epidural, I could feel that she wanted to get out of my womb and the nurse says “ok, push” and I went “what?”  Jeff had gone down to get a snack and he was standing in the door of the birthing room looking like: “I’m going to barf.”  So he came over fast…and out she came.

       The first week, she slept all the time.  She was unbelievable.

The second week, she started screaming and she did that everyday for 4 months while my deep dark depression was setting in.  But, this time, we had me stay home and Jeff called the church and asked if anything that could be done to help us.  The church’s women would take the kids for a while, while I dealt with this with my Dr. who was (although we weren’t sure at the time) taking us down the wrong path.  The medication that she had me on was not working and I had been with her for almost 4 years, and she was stingy! And mean!  So I forget exactly what happened, but Jeff said “we need to fire her and hire another doctor---a psychiatrist”.  <sigh>  So we did.  He has been with us every since and he is a God thing!

       After I started to get well, life moved so fast; my knowledge of the bible increased and, the more it increased, the more I got  to  know my Father God through Jesus Christ.  Sometimes, if I were in a SS class, I would be so bored, but  then someone would say something and my ears perk up and I wanted to know more!  I still do that!

       Of course, thru the years, there was baggage that had to be unpacked with counselors. My mother was emotionally and mentally ill when I was growing up and there was no compromise. I was never considered right about anything until the time I got married.  I lived an unrighteous life of rebellion with a sexual history that had costs with it.  Sad costs.

       All of this hit me when I became a Christian. My brother’s wife so wrongly declared “but you’ve got to experience those things so you know who and what you’re looking for.”  <<SIGH>> Yeah, do that.  We have raised our kids in a loving,  fun, joking, home-schooled Christian atmosphere.  One where, I and their father were teaching them about sexual love and that it’s only for when you are married.  The first thing I had to teach my son immediately, was the word “gay” because a friend of his called him that.

       I explained it to him, and he was like “ewwww, that’s gross”.  Later, I had to take Nikki out of public school because every child in that class had a sexual word coming out of their mouth and it was coming down the pike from an older sibling or a raunchy lifestyle of parents or a parent.  Jesus Christ got us through those years, because my parents didn’t agree with it and neither did my sister-in-law or our friends.  But, every year when I was about to give it up, Jesus would put something in our path that said “these are mine, do not put them back there.”

       So, now we have two healthy (so far) young people budding to birth out into the world as Christians.  Am I so naive as to think that they will stay that way? No.  Only God knows if Tanner and Nikki will hold fast to the Lord after they leave us and go out into the world on their own. 

    Once, we were at a home-school convention and the speaker spoke about a woman who really believed that her children would be Christians after they left home because she had home-schooled them.  What really happened is that her kids turned against Christ and, in her innocence and arrogance, she lost them.  She was devastated as she cried on the phone to this speaker.  Jeff and I have never been like that. Maybe that’s good, but it wasn’t good to be aware and knowing of the world and its evils either when we were single.

     And now, I’m sick with this illness called CFS and it has pulled me closer to God and knowing Him because I am so alone.

You wouldn’t think that someone who is married and has two teenagers and some awesome pets, would be all that lonely.  But I am.  So that draws me in Joy to Him, because Jeff and the kids get to go places I can’t go.  I feel left out.  I have had to take every emotion and put it in the hands of the Lord God almighty.

    GOD HAS GOOD

 PLANS

 FOR YOUR

FUTURE

know what I'm doing.

 I have it all planned out--

plans to take care of you,

 not abandon you,

plans to give you

the future you hope for.

   "When you call on me,

when you come

and pray to me,

 I'll listen.

Jeremiah 29:11

(Message Bible)