TRAUMA…[Yet]…”Say to this Mountain…” (Mark 11:22-23)

“The Trauma I Experience Daily…Now updated” 

       This is a post I made a year and a half ago: Say there is a mouse in a cage and daily for years the owner of the mouse pushes a button every morning which causes many electrical shocks to strike the mouse. Well, soon, every time the owner gets near the button to push it the mouse would begin to experience the anxiety of the shock, knowing it is coming. Pretty soon every time the owner was just near the mouse and discussing pushing the button, the mouse would react with great anxiety, etc. You get the point. 

       This is what “exercise, food, body-image, weight, and any conversation regarding these subjects” does to me. When I see and hear people saying they “should exercise more, or should watch their weight, or should not eat this, or should be “healthy” (whatever that means?) and especially those within the body-of-Christ who believe they need to do these things, absolutely causes sudden and massive anxiety! 

       So, part of my battle, which I face daily, is to eat the foods, chips, ice cream, etc. And try by the grace of God to run less, and less intense. For now, I am unable to quiet the voices and “weight judgements” within society and the Church (as a whole). So, I wake up and beg God, every morning and try to breathe and go run with as little anxiety as possible, just to get it out of me, out of the way, and move on with the day. I would like to be free!!!  

       For 11 years now, I have struggled greatly and daily with this. I am worn out so much that any conversation I overhear regarding losing weight or exercise or seeing people eat “diet foods” and exercising causes trauma for me.  

       This is called “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, this, together with what is called an“Eating/Exercise Disorder”. When you see me at church or in public at peace or laughing, it means I am done with my exercise for the day. If you ask me to meet with you, or hang out, or go to work, or do anything with/for you before I have got my exercise out of the way I will not be O.K. I will be a nervous wreck!  

I am writing this because I want people to understand me, I want help, I want others who struggle with mental illness to come together in Christ and support each other. I want the Church to be informed. 

P.S. God says the exercise health focus in the Church/culture is a distraction from Satan. It blinds people from dealing with the spiritual issues because they’re focused on the temporal, physical, and not the spiritual as the first priority. Pls pass this on to others, I am not ashamed of the truth, I want others informed, because I’m not alone in the reality of mental illness. 

UPDATE: I’m sharing this post, which was written a year and half ago! BUT… The God of all grace and miracles, through the laying on of hands of the pastor and elders, during an intense hour and a half of prayer, confession of my own sins struggles, fears and anxieties, with absolute trust God can and would perform a miracle that day…DID PERFORM ONE. Also, he honored my faith to step out, to say “people, lets pray and ask God for a miracle because our God has not changed regarding miracles! And I was DESPARATE and willing to do or give up anything or change ANYTHING in order to see God show up. I held nothing back in my honest confession before others and left that day thanking God and EXPECTING He had answered. But more than that. After that day, He opened the door to a greater ministry and prophecy. Actually, the ministry of a prophet (this is NOT a word that should cause fright, but one which must be correctly understood!). As in, “God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing,… (1 Cor. 12:28a) So, it is a gift and a call. Anyway. I wanted to add the praise report together with this post which expresses the trauma and terror I lived. Do I still struggle, yes. Do I still forget and need reminders and my memory renewed with good memories and thankfulness and remember to “BREATHE” and relax and stay NEAR to the Father continually, YES!!! BUT, God still works, still performs miracles, and is still calling His children to throw their health concerns at the foot of the cross!!! Believe me or don’t. But truly, prophetically, this is why Covid and all that’s tied to it is a blind spot and stumbling block for the Church. You can disagree. But for those who will receive it. Covid has exposed a blind spot in our Church community, in our faith, and in our eternal perspective of life. Soon we will see it. The purpose of this post from a year and half ago is to point out my history, and the trauma I still do carry from it. It’s a reality. But a greater point is to pls focus on this UPDATE, because His Word says, say to this mountain, be uprooted and cast into the sea, DO NOT DOUBT, and it WILL be done for you, ” “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him”  (Mark 11:22-24) Sadly, we do lack faith in God’s promises in America, because we have not had to rely on faith for sooo many years because we have had all “medical advice and answers” and most daily needs right at our fingertips…..OR DO WE!!!  

NOW: Besides the “official” call by God to be a “voice”, along with others who are called, to the American Church that day. I want to try and express the personal healing which took place. Though when I left that day of prayer I had believed God had most likely removed ALL exercise from my life! For this is what I had begged and begged God to do for years, day after day! And after losing all hope about four years ago that I would ever be free of this daily mental torment! I had begun to try and get hit by cars while out running, and begged to be struck by lighting on stormy days, and threatened to cut off my legs (ending up in the psych ward), and had already been in two treatment centers for this problem in the past, and begging to be put in a wheel chair, to trip and fall so that I would permanently injure my legs and NEVER EVER HAVE TO RUN AGAIN!!! So, up until this day of prayer I had lost all faith and hope that I would ever be free. Until one week prior to this prayer session which was set up specifically for this intervention by God, when a man gave me hope that the God I once knew, who did miracles, was able to hear me still and do wonders. HOWEVER: He certainly did hear me and heal me. But He did not take away exercise from my life. What He did was remove the torment. I would describe it by using a word picture. I woke every morning year after year with panic which I could call “being punched over and over again and not being able to get away from it”. But after that day BECAUSE hope was restored again. Faith returned and that faith led to hope and knowing I was personally heard and seen by my Lord and He did love me enough to take care of me! Also, a big part of that being seen and known by Him was that He had given me, this is very key here for every believer, He had given me “Hope, purpose, and value, and a work to do in His Kingdom” and NO longer just living to survive!!! And it went from feeling like I was being “punched” everyday, to feeling like I was being “tapped” on my face everyday. The tap was hard at first, but it slowly began having less pressure and becoming quieter by the months. NOW: IMPORTANT POINT HERE, our brains/minds, and body, have “muscle memory”. And it takes TIME to heal repeated memories of trauma. And I have PTSD from this, which I still suffer from daily. Someday I pray to breathe easier and have less problem with transitions, schedules, change, and staying calm. So, I still run but…..I run less, less intense, and I walk, and I stop, and I BREATHE! (THESE ARE LITERAL MIRACLES FOR ME!!!) And, another very key thing for my day: everyday is SLOW, RELAXED, PRAYERFUL, CONTEMPLATIVE, MORNING PRAYER WALKS, ALONG TIME STUDYING SCRIPTURE, AND A LONG TIME ENJOYING GOD AND LISTENING TO HIS VOICE, AND ENJOYING MY FAMILY WITH DAILY FAMILY WALKS…AND I DON’T HAVE A JOB! (ON PURPOSE) except this job here. All that is written in bold capitals because I do not divert from it except for emergencies, ever. My Life, by God’s good grace, is SLOW because He answered me, and removed ALL “anxious hurry”. Now I seek the Lord and wait on Him in prayer, worship, with hours of time and space for it, everyday. Side note: if there are things “in the way” of your relationship with God or intimacy with Him…remove it. He will honor that decision one way or another. Blessings. Look up!