The Cross

luvpiggy · Post by **luvpiggy** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:47 am

Hi, Everyone!

I just felt inspired to share the following story today. I hope that it will encourage someone. However, I do want to say that it depends on where you are at in dealing with anxiety. This is a story about the worst time of my life with anxiety and how God was with me, but I didn't know it. Also, my child did develop autism, so I don't want anyone who is fearful about the health of their children or weather or anyone who is scared it's going to get worse for them to read this and feel bad. It did get better for me ultimately, but my son is still sick. I think it's a story about about hope in Christ, but I just don't want anyone to read it and feel more fearful. If anyone feels like this will appeal to them and help, I hope you will feel free to read:).

April is also "Autism Awareness Month" and Easter is this month, and there are a lot of parents of children with autism who have anxiety because of the stress, so maybe this will help.

"The Cross"

It was the winter of 2001, and I was having a hellish time. My son had been diagnosed with autism the previous September and then continued to regress. My beautiful boy with big awesome brown eyes was slipping away from me. As someone said recently, "It was like you were screaming and no one was listening." We received very few services to help him during that time and miniscule family support that only added further pain. Then to top it off, an F-4 tornado roared through the community that we had just moved to the previous Spring and eleven people died. It was so symbolic of how my life was out of control. My husband had finished Graduate School the previous Spring. He had his first professional job now at a University. We were supposed to be starting our lives now. We were supposed to have experienced the worst as starving students living in cramped dorm housing. Nothing was what I expected. Now, I was crippled with fear and trauma. I was taking a medication that was only making me worse, but at the time, the prescribing physician kept telling me, “It’s "only" your anxiety.” I had never felt anxiety like this! It seemed like I could feel my bones rattling. I couldn’t function. It seemed like it was difficult to endure every second without a full blown panic attack. I couldn’t be alone at home, so I resorted to sitting in the car outside of the library where my husband worked. I had reached the low of lows. Where was God in all of this? I didn’t know, and I would cry out, “Abba, Father!” I didn’t even know where I had learned that from, but I was screaming for him to help me.

Although this was hard on so many levels for so many reasons, a big contributor to my suffering at the time was my relationship with God. I don’t mean that He was punishing me with anxiety, but I am saying that I didn’t have heart knowledge of a loving God. I was saved, but my perception was skewed. I meant well. I tried to do the right things, but the truth of the matter is that I had trouble being truly intimate with a God that I thought resembled my abusive father. In my mind it was obvious that it was God who was doing all of this to me, and if I could just find the right words and the right actions, hopefully, it would stop getting worse. It didn’t. I really thought that God wanted me dead.

I can honestly say that that was the worst time of my life. I can honestly say that I would never have wished that pain on my worst enemy. I can honestly say that I hope that it’s never that bad again, but at least I will know more about God this time around. After going through that pain, did I curse God and give up on Him? No. I can see why someone who is suffering and removed from God's love because of misperceptions, etc. could easily do that though, and my heart goes out to those who are in that pain. I did, by the way, say a few words to Him after He came through for me in a big way that saved my life, and yes, at first I clung to Him out of fear. It was clear that He was in control, that He was my way out, and that He was responsible for sending me the right help. I didn’t understand it all, but I knew it was Him. I remember coming out of the worst of the nervous breakdown after experiencing a miraculous wave of healing when an obedient woman prayed and fasted for me, and I couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that God was real. I thought I had believed, but now I really believed. “God is real! ….God is real!” I would repeat it like a mantra. And then for one split second, I was very angry with Him. “Hey, if you are so real, then why in your name, did you let me go through that hell? Why did you leave me there for so long without your help?!” Then the fear rose up within me, and I was afraid I had blasphemed. Back to fearing Him. He didn't let me do that for too long because He is so loving.

Time passed, years passed, and I feel that I have grown to have a better view of a loving God. A loving God-who didn’t wait as long to rescue me as I once believed, and a God who was with me through the entire ordeal. How do I know? I know by the cross that I’m staring at right now. I now am sitting in the very same library that I used to sit in a parked car across the street from crouched in fear. I have now earned a Master’s Degree and even worked in this very library. So much has happened. All of it has not been easy, but going through it knowing about a loving God has made all of the difference. You see, during that time that I coward in fear in the car, I was very desperate. My faith was very small, but just as Jesus used a multiplied a little to give plenty of loaves and fishes to feed a multitude, God will use our faith, however small, to show us He loves us.

Well, with my small faith sitting in that car, I asked God to let me see a cross to know that He was with me. I had used that technique of faith about a year earlier. I had developed extreme anxiety and went to the hospital with a panic attack. It’s now apparent that it was the stress of knowing that something was wrong with my son and not having the proper help available. It was bad, but not as bad as what I was experiencing at the moment, so that was how bad it was for me. Anyway, when I got home from the hospital that night and rested on my coach after thinking that I was going to die, the light shined through the window shades and formed a beautiful cross on the wall. I decided to believe that was from God. It was small, child like faith, but it was all I had at that moment to feel His love. It was a baby step. I thought I was a little crazy for thinking that a shadow on a wall formed a cross for me, but I tried to believe for a second.

Later, during that hellish time, I told God in the car that I needed to see a cross again. I really need it! There were three buildings facing me across the street from the library. "Where is a cross?" I was frantic. I decided that the bars in the glass in the windows could be the crosses. There were so many of them, though. God just wasn’t giving me what I needed. He wouldn’t send me a cross! He wasn’t with me in my pain…I thought. He showed up in other ways as I have already mentioned, but I thought that He never really sent me a cross. I would think about it sometimes, but I’d shrug my shoulders and go on.

Years later, I was in a library science class, light years away from my nervous breakdown. The class had huge windows that faced the building across from the library that I perused in a frantic attempt to find a cross. Suddenly, it dawned on me. The top windows that were artfully designed for what I knew now to be the student dance studio contained crosses! Not just bars in a window, but purposeful crosses! I could have chosen any building to look at out of those three buildings that sat across from me, but I chose that building, and I thought that God didn’t answer me, but He had all along. I just didn’t look up high enough to see it! The cross was watching over me the entire time! I sit and stare at it right now. It is a symbol of how far my faith in a loving God has grown!
Now, I know so much. He does and ALWAYS answers prayers for us when we simply ask Him to show us His love and comfort, and HE NEVER, EVER LEAVES US OR ABANDONS US, EVEN IF WE CAN’T SEE IT OR FEEL IT AT THE TIME! He is always with us, even in our dark and hellish moments, and we never have to doubt His promises.

Also, the cross serves as a different symbol for me as well. Before my experience, I thought that God’s love for me was dependent on my actions and legalism eventhough I didn't meant to. I thought He was a God of wrath and punishment who wanted me to suffer. The cross reminds me of how far I’ve grown in my faith and my view of Him because of His doing. I need only to believe in the cross now to receive His love for me. That’s all. Just believe in the cross, and His gift of love that He gave me by sending His son to die for me so that I wouldn’t have to suffer in abuse and so that I wouldn’t have to be separated in hell away from Him. Just believe in The Cross, receive His love, and then act out of the love that He gave me as a gift. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword....I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers. neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35)

I so wish I had known and understood that then, but I definitely know it now! All I have to do is look up at the cross!

God bless you all,
luvpiggy

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:23 am

LuvPiggy, With tears streaming down my face, I managed to read your entire post! What an amazing story of faith! God knows our pain and struggles, and if we only look higher up(you mentioned that you didn't look high enough to see that cross on the building), that is when we will see our HOPE. thank you for that inspiration. God never leaves us, he walks beside us during the trials of life. God is good!!!
Blessings~
Robin

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:35 am

Thank you so much, Robin:)! I always enjoy reading your posts as well, and I love your permanent quote by John Hagee. I also have a story about God using Robin birds to help me in my faith because my first name is Robin too eventhough I go by my middle name, so just to let you know, I think you have a beautiful and good name:) that God has often used to inspire me.

God bless you,
luvpiggy

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 11:37 am

Dear Lovpiggy and Robin:
I loved that story also.
Thank you very much.
MaryJane

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 1:24 pm

Dearest Luvpiggy,
This is the most inspiring, beautiful true love story that I have ever read on a forum....
Tears are also streaming down my face...Tears of joy of how Jesus works in such "mysterious ways"...Mighty is our Lord..and may we never cease to praise His Holy Name...Thank you so much for sharing this Awesome true story with us...
Here is a video that I would love to share with you to add to what you have already spoken...
Here is the movie.... One Pair of Hands...I love you dearly, and May God Bless You!!!!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 2:26 am

Dear Cornflower and Mrs. T Bones,

Thank you so much for your compliments:). Mrs. T Bones, that was a beautiful video and song, and it made me cry. Thank you so much for sharing that:).

God bless you,
luvpiggy

JNB · Post by **JNB** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:50 am

Luvpiggy...You are soooo welcome....May God Bless You In Every Aspect of Your Life....Love Ya!!!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 4:21 am

Thank you. You will never know how much that verse from Romans helped me this morning. I'm reaching for my Bible now.

God bless you for blessing us.

Peace

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:46 am

Thank you very much for sharing your story, it came at a time when I really needed it. You helped my find my faith again. Thanks, and God Bless You!!!!