My Story. (Long...)

I have been trying repeatedly to write down and explain exactly what it is that has happened to me; this radical transformation that I have undergone. But the truth is that all the words in my extensive vocabulary fall pitifully short of an accurate description of what has happened to me. It is extremely long, but I want you to understand fully the predicament I was in, from which I have been rescued.

Imagine if you would, that my whole life, my spine has been out of wack. And my back has always caused me great pain because of this. But suddenly, God comes along, flips me upside down, gives one great big shake, and snap! Suddenly, everything lines up. No more pain, no more crouching over, no more constant agonizing over, "Is my back going to hurt today, or will it be mostly okay? Can I bend down and pick that up without causing agony for the rest of the day?" In a sense, that's what God did to me this last week.

(Note to the reader: This story isn't pretty. But it does have a happy ending.)

It all began the Saturday before Halloween. BSSD had a Halloween party. I was staying with my pastors, who were helping out with some of the stuff. I got into the party, and at first, it was okay. But then, I started to get a little anxious. Walking onto the open space of the theater floor made me cringe. The large gathering of people made me nervous. Then it snowballed. A lot. And I found myself hiding in the dark in between rows of seats, full of fear. When finally I admitted to myself that I needed to leave ASAP and got Anna, one of the pastors, to take me home, I bolted out to the car.

She dropped me off at her home, and because she was helping, she had to return to take care of some things. At first I'd calmed down a little on the way home, but once she left, it got worse and worse. Rudy, my pastor, got home first, and found me hiding under a fortress of couch cushions that I'd built because I couldn't stand the thought of showing anyone my face. I'd never had such an urge to hide in a small, dark space before, but I decided it was far too loony for me to hide in a closet. I wanted to maintain some shred of sanity.

Rudy was very gentle about it. He didn't push, but gently coaxed me out from under my cushion fortress. We talked and carefully brought up the root behind the panic attack. I've been uncomfortable with open spaces most of my life. Not having a place to hide was a difficulty I've had to learn to live with. But something about the party and the people that night set it off to a whole new level.

After talking with Rudy and Anna about it, and a lot of listening, the fear began to subside. But when the fear disappeared, the pain set in. I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Physical pain and I are not strangers in the slightest. That was the most intense pain I've ever been in. I felt like there were knives in between my ribs, and iron bands surrounding my chest to push them in farther. My stomach cavity was being violently ripped open, and I couldn't breathe.

When it got to the point that I would either have to take something to knock me out for a while or go to the E.R., which would be expensive and incredibly painful, I finally caved and took the knockout stuff. I don't even know how long it took for me to sit up long enough to get that little chore done. Enough said. It was bad.

So. I was knocked out. For a few hours. Didn't sleep worth a darn otherwise, but did get a lot of reading done that night. Was pretty sick the next day. Sick enough to miss morning church. And when I went to evening church, I stayed in a little side room off the sanctuary. Trying hard to participate, but not really in the game enough to pay attention. This was where God began to comfort me with Himself. The sermon, on which I was supposed to be taking notes, completely bypassed my brain. I literally remember two words: Daddy's home. And in reality, I think that was all I needed to hear.

Monday was okay enough that I returned to the girls' house. Monday night, no sleep. Tuesday dawned with a dose of awful. I found myself sitting in a corner in Revival Group (a small family-group of students and mentors) and literally hiding my face with the blanket I carry around to keep me warm.

Furthermore, when I took the issue to God, what I got was a vision that - in my mind - couldn't possibly have been from God. I saw myself standing, facing a gray concrete wall. It had newspaper clippings pasted on it. Each clipping represented a memory or an experience that was just plain bad. The wall itself, representing my past, was just plain awful, and I hated it. I was so full of hurt and anger and fear, that I knew I had to bring down that wall. I attacked it with a sledgehammer and managed to knock a hole through to the other side. But when I saw the other side and realized that on the other side was open space, I flipped. I was more afraid of the open space on the other side than I was of the wall. I couldn't take down the wall. So, rage and hurt welling up inside me, I began to attack myself instead. The vision ended with me standing, staring at the wall, arms and hands completely mangled and dripping blood all over the floor.

It couldn't be from God. It just couldn't. It was awful and gruesome and didn't end with hope or happiness, and I didn't know what to do with it.

Things escalated from there, and one of the other pastors noticed that I wasn't doing so hot. After a painful (for me) conversation, I found myself sitting in my group-leader's office. She let me hang out and have my breakdown in a corner away from people, thank goodness.

By this time, I was absolutely convinced that I was going crazy. I was positive that I was headed for the loony-bin. Anna showed up, assured me that I was not, in fact, crazy, and whisked me away to her house away from prying eyes. Again, under the watchful eyes and wise words of Rudy and Anna, I was able to calm down. But we all figured it would be a better idea if I stayed there until I was able to get a sozo (inner-healing thing with Holy Spirit) scheduled and knock this thing out.

Wednesday began tenuously. Up until that point, I'd been fine in the big open space that was the sanctuary. But that morning, I walked in and immediately felt the anxiety. After some heavy-duty prayer and having one of my pastors by my side the whole time, I was okay in the sanctuary. But while I was worshiping, I was quite dizzy, and so I lay down on the floor to worship from there. Not anything unusual, and Chelsey stuck by me, still praying.

That was when the terror hit. It was so far beyond panic that it was ridiculous. I remember voices over me, me begging in a pathetic whimper for someone to get me out of there, then being stood up and attempting to bolt out of the sanctuary. I was told one of my friends tried to pick me up and carry me to "safety," but I shoved him off. I don't remember any of that, and the only reason I know who was even there was because I was told later. This was a terror that erased my mind. I didn't know who I was or who anyone else was or anything else. All I knew was this fear that had such a grip on me that I had to get away from it.

Once again, Rudy had to talk me down. And once again, I was back in the sanctuary, cowering and hiding my face. Then it was the end of the day and I was over on the side of the sanctuary, still hiding. My friend Daniel came over by me, sat down and put his arm around me. The fact that his touch was comforting to me was a revelation to me of how desperate I was. I have never liked for people to touch me. Only very certain people. But it was good. And he didn't really talk to me, which was good. Then, quietly, he began to sing in his deep, low voice. And instantly, I knew the song he was singing. He called it "the Israeli peace song." Its real name was "Oseh Shalom," a beautiful Hebrew song that my mom used to sing to me when I was little.

It calmed me so much, and knowing that he couldn't possibly have known its history for me told me that Daddy-God was in it, and He was comforting me, too. The next day, I left for school with a game-plan. I didn't wear glasses or contacts, because I decided to pretend that if I couldn't see people, they couldn't see me. It actually worked fairly well. There were still times when I had to retreat into a room by myself and sing to myself to calm me down, but even though there were times that I hid, I did not have a major panic attack that day. I left school feeling sunshine for the first time in too long.

That night, I was typing out in my computer some prophetic words I had gotten, and some letters that God was writing me. (God writes me letters. No joke.) I found, in my notebook, the awful vision that I'd seen Tuesday. And I read it again. And it suddenly clicked. The open space on the other side of the wall wasn't just open space. It was freedom. Freedom from the past, freedom from all my fears, just... freedom. And it terrified me. So much that I abandoned attacking the wall and began to attack myself instead. Then it clicked that that's exactly what the panic attacks were: Me attacking myself. From that second, I knew there were not going to be any more. They were done for.

I had a sozo scheduled for Sunday, but it looked less and less like I'd actually need it. The panic attacks completely disappeared, and joy returned to my life for the first time in ages. Sunday came, and I went ahead with the sozo anyway, just to make sure that this thing was kicked in the teeth forever. God blew my mind.

(Note to the reader: If you aren't familiar with visions or sozos or anything like that, this gets weird. Bear with me.)

I was in that little room again, with the concrete wall, looking at the open space on the other side. A green meadow with trees on the other side of it. I was right where I left off, holding that hammer and dripping blood all over the floor. But then Daddy-God showed up. He took the hammer out of my hand and dropped it on the floor. He hugged me to Him, not caring that I was dripping blood all over Him. It simply didn't matter to Him. But then, it was strange. Every time I went to try and knock the wall down again, He pulled the hammer out of my hand or stood in my way, and wouldn't let me touch the wall.

He showed me a desk on the other side of the room, piled with the same kinds of newspaper clippings that were pasted to the wall. He didn't like them. Jesus came, and he started ripping up the clippings, but they were mending themselves as he tore them. "You're not letting them go," He told me. They wouldn't rip. Holy Spirit was called in on the job. Instead of ripping them, I began to sweep them into a trashcan near the desk. It took work to get them to stay. Finally, all but three pieces of paper were in the trashcan. Holy Spirit set it on fire.

Three pieces of paper remained on the desk. I couldn't read them. I don't know what they said. But I knew the wall couldn't come down until I knew what they were and could burn them with the others. I peered again through the hole in the wall. Freedom was out there. But Jesus would have none of it. With firm insistence that it wasn't time yet, He positioned Himself in front of the hole, blocking the view. Blocking anything from coming into the room, and stopping me from continuing to try to beat down the wall.

Daddy sat me down on the other side of the room and just held me. Holy Spirit came and took my hands, examining the bleeding wounds. "We need to take care of this first," He said. He got a bowl of water and began to gently wash the wounds. It stung, but when He was finished, the blood was gone. The flesh was still some chewed up, but the bleeding had stopped.

So with Jesus guarding the hole and the wall, and Holy Spirit and Daddy sitting with me and holding me, I settled in to wait until I was ready to read the papers and knock down the wall. The wall is still there. But I'm with my Daddy, so it's okay. The room isn't scary anymore.

That night, my buddy Aaron, who sees spiritual things like crazy, told me that he saw I was a different person. "This morning, when I looked at you, I saw black rocks and black clouds," he said. "But now I see a meadow with sunshine and trees on the other side." I hadn't told Aaron about the meadow being my freedom. That night, Daddy wrote me another letter. I'd been concerned that the wall was never going to come down, that I'd never be ready for it to be broken down. But here's what He told me:

"You ask me how it is that you know I will take the wall down. I created you for freedom. It was for freedom I set you free. Just because the wall is still there at this moment does not mean you are not free. I see it all from an eternal perspective, and from my reality, the wall has already been removed. You are free."

With that realization, the last vestige of fear broke off me and fell whimpering to the floor. I really was, really am free. Free and fearless. The wall is still there. I'm still in that room. But I'm free because I'm with my Daddy, who already took down the wall. I know. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. But I'm a new person.

So that's my story. The whole shabang. How God triumphed over fear in my life and made me whole. The three papers on the desk, they don't even bother me. They'll be read when they are read, and until then, I'm more okay than I've ever been. It is my sincere desire that by reading this, you can find a grain of hope to hold onto for when times suck. Because if God can make me a new person in a week... He can do anything.

Peace and Shalom to you all.
Love,
Anna Grace

P.S.: Oh, and in case you were thinking that the vision I saw was just something in my head that I was imagining, Anna came to me later and described the room to me. She saw it too.