Whenever I would hear people's testimonies, I would always get so insecure because mine wasn't like theirs. They almost always started off with a horrific event PC (Pre-Christ) and ended with Christ bringing them out of the mire AC (After-Christ). I never really had one of those; I grew up in church, got saved at an early age, and rededicated my life to Christ at age 19 all pretty much without a great deal of hiccups. It was all pretty natural.

See, I think the misconception is not only that testimonies have to follow a formula to be effective, but that the formula has to start with your life before Christ and then end with how you're a better person now. I think that is true, but the greater purpose in a testimony is not to tell necessarily how you got saved but rather to show the power and magnitude of Christ's saving power to others regardless of where it falls on the spectrum of your Christian walk. My most powerful testimony isn't only how I got saved, but rather how He stepped into my most perilous battle with grace right smack dab in the middle of my Christian walk.

I think most people assume that being a Christian means you are devoid of human struggles. Heck, I even bought into that notion for a long time. I figured that if I was doing this Christian thing right, I wouldn't have to deal with hard things. That's just not true, rather being a Christian should change how you deal with such things.

It's still really hard for me to confess because I'm still working on not being ashamed, but when I was 8 years old I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). There's a gross misconception as to what this truly entails. Society has belittled it to be a trait that people "diagnose" themselves with because they like to be organized; a sort of synonym for a "type-A" personality. This doesn't even begin to cover the extent of the way this disorder manifests itself. If people really understood it, they wouldn't touch it with a 30 foot pole because it can be the most debilitating thing in the world.

Essentially, my brain chemistry is faulty. The human mind has a part of it that processes fear. Fear is actually a really helpful God given emotion and can be really beneficial in keeping one safe from certain dangers. Fear can trigger the fight or flight response alarm which can be helpful in certain situations. However, the fall made sure that flaws and sin creep in everywhere, and that includes sickness within the human body. The brain is made of flesh just the same as the heart is or the lungs are so it is just as susceptible to illness. The problem in people with anxiety disorders is the chemistry in the brain is off and the portion that controls fear and signals the alarm misfires it at all times; it's like having a constant fire alarm going off in my brain. It feels like there is danger immediately nearby because of what the brain is telling the sufferer, but the problem is the sufferer is unable to shut off the alarm compared to someone with more stable chemistry who can reason that there is no danger and the scene is safe. OCD is a manifestation of anxiety where intrusive thoughts come into the mind based on a trigger or doubt and the sufferer performs a compulsion to attempt to alleviate them. For some this is a physical compulsion such as hand washing, but for others it can be purely mental such as a continuous and exhausting reasoning with the disturbing thoughts (often that actually results in more anxiety) in an effort to get them to go away. I identify with the latter.

Without going into all of the details, I showed sign of such illness as early as age 4 but wasn't officially diagnosed until age 8. I went to counseling briefly and was medicated nearly as soon as it was diagnosed. The problem was, I didn't talk about it when I went to counseling and was content to just push it out of my mind where I felt it belonged. I felt weird and ashamed. I reasoned most people my age weren't like this and since I was that I must be a freak. I had no desire to talk about the thoughts that I was experiencing and so I didn't for 15 years.

To me, this disorder was the most disgusting thing in the world. I didn't talk about it and if my family ever recounted past episodes I started to feel really insecure and would desperately try to avoid hearing about it. It was way easier to just pretend like it didn't exist. And it worked for a while because I kept myself extremely busy and was medicated; I didn't have to worry about the mental illness because when I was distracted I was "normal" like everyone else. That entire theory came crashing down in the Fall of 2015.

In September of 2015 I decided, after months of lowering my medication and years of stability, that I was going to go off of my medication. I had heard of how God had healed a few others in my life with similar struggles and I reasoned that their story should be my story too. I also really thought God was leading me to go off of my medicine.

For a month I was good! I was really excited and was convinced that I had been healed. However, as October creeped in and the medicine worked its way completely out of my system (as it sometimes takes a month or so to do), the thoughts came back and they came back in with a vengeance. The worst part was not only that I was fighting these thoughts without counseling tools that I had never received and without the aid of the medicine, but also that they were based around fears dealing mostly with my relationship with Christ. The very thing that had brought me so much hope was now the source of a great deal of my anxiety.

I chalked it up immediately solely to spiritual warfare and for two months went on firmly claiming this. However, as the disorder picked up momentum, I realized (but wouldn't admit) that this wasn't purely spiritual; there was also something going on physically.

I can honestly say that October 2015 through January of 2016 were the darkest months of my entire life. There were not many moments in the day where I wasn't having an anxious thought. There were days where I couldn't breathe well because anxiety placed a weight on my chest of panic that I couldn't get rid of. I felt incredibly alone (another tactic of the enemy). A great deal of my Christian friends could not identify with what I was feeling and when I went to them for help, they encouraged me the best they could but it usually just left me feeling more lost. Anxiety had beat me down and I was tricked into the lie from the enemy that "If I were a better Christian, I wouldn't be dealing with this." There were so many times I went to the Lord in prayer, with tears streaming down my face, begging Him to free me from it. But day after day freedom didn't come; at least not how I thought it would.

See, I had reasoned that freedom from anxiety meant not ever having to deal with it again. God had another plan. His ways are always higher.

In December of 2015 I started going to counseling: a place I previously avoided. I knew I needed to get some help with this but I worried going back on the medicine was being disobedient. Even in counseling, I wasn't seeing a lot of progress due to the severity of the disorder. I had only gone a few times before a particularly terrible episode with anxiety so bad it sent me into a depression that prevented me from eating or sleeping and then landed me in the ER on Christmas Day; I was panicking so severely that I had to be taken to the hospital. The enemy convinced me that going was a sign of weakness and disobedience. Rather, it was the first step in a loss of trying to control everything myself and a step toward gaining a better understanding of what God's grace really means.

A few days after, I went to the doctor and went back on the medicine that I was so sure I was supposed to be off of. I started taking it and started seeing progress. Again, another step. But that's not where it ends. I had at least 2 more weeks after that of severe debilitating anxiety as a result of OCD that eventually led me back into the state I was in at Christmas. I felt so defeated. It truly felt like my new normal and it was so debilitating that I couldn't even find the joy I used to find in all the things I loved one of them being my relationship with Christ.

But I continued to press forward. I was determined not to give up on my faith regardless of what was happening to me. I continued to pray, seek God, and be in His word. I read so many testimonies of Christians who had suffered what I was suffering and how Christ gave them the strength to come out of it. I learned more about the disorder itself and came to terms with the fact that it was something I have but not something that is a part of me. Each one of those things was helping me heal. As I also continued to be faithful in taking my medication and going to counseling I started to see more breakthrough. I started to realize that healing sometimes doesn't come in an instant; for some people it's a step by step process. That how God was working in me. It was through this debilitating condition that I came to terms with the cards I was dealt. No, God didn't intend for me to have this disorder but He sure would use this suffering for His glory. I remember praying one day, "God if I have to have this disorder every day for the rest of my life but it's for your glory, then I'll do it." It then hit me: this struggle was far greater than me.

I finally came to a conclusion one day that revolutionized how I thought about this thing that had plagued me for as long as I could remember and eventually launched a new passion for ministry: Christianity doesn't mean you won't suffer, it just changes how you suffer. 

The fact that I have a mental illness is not my fault or something I asked for; it's something that you wouldn't even wish on your worst enemy. It's not a result of my lack of faith and it's not something I can muster up enough energy to control (believe me I tried). But I do have the power to find freedom from it through Christ. Hear me on this though, this doesn't mean that I don't struggle anymore! Freedom isn't the absence of struggle in life; it's a paradigm shift where the struggle no longer becomes the focus because of God's grace. I still have OCD; but OCD doesn't have me. 

What really helped me in my healing journey was the realization of what grace truly is. My disorder forced me to have to come to terms with the fact that I had "control" over a great deal of my life but I could not control this. I was forced into level of faith that required me jumping into God's arms with this thing that I hadn't really taken to Him for so long because of how ashamed I was of it. So I jumped, hoping and trusting with everything I had that He would catch me. And He did. I realized that His grace is how I was going to get through this. I knew that I might fail again in about 5 seconds but I had to trust that His grace was sufficient and that it would allow me to get through each attack. Eventually I started to see the thoughts for what they really were: an anxious response to a specific trigger. Once I was able to see them in the light, they weren't so scary; rather just an annoying presence.

Through this, God has launched a new passion in me to use my story to help those suffering with mental illness come to find freedom in Him. This also includes educating the church about what mental illness actually is. I believe God wants to use His church as a tool to help those afflicted with mental illness rather than a place where they are condemned for it.

I changed not only my entire testimony that was previously on here but also my title to include a line from the song "Transfiguration" by Hillsong. As a Christian I am changed, but I've learned it doesn't mean that I'm not still changing and this testimony is a perfect reflection of that.