White Robe Vision Anniversary

It's crazy to think that I'm at my one-year anniversary after my White Robe Vision.

For those who don't know what that means... A year ago I was in church singing along to the worship band. I had been struggling with anger, and depression, and aloneness, and everything that you can imagine someone would struggle with after mounds and mounds of trauma. To say that I was in a dark, scary place would be the understatement of a lifetime. I was singing, pleading with the L-rd for a miracle and for forgiveness when I had this image, a vision.

It was me in the fetal position, dressed in sackcloth with ashes and dirt covering me. I was sobbing. My view was as if I was standing watching myself in this dark but not scary space, but I also knew what it was like as the me that was on the floor sobbing. I don't know how I could be both, but I was.

Anyway, Yeshua (Jesus) walked over and helped me up. He handed me a pile of white clothes, a white robe. Instantly, I was dressed in white, holding His hand, and clean from head to toe. I knew in that moment that I was clean, forgiven, redeemed, and precious to the only One that truly matters. The weight that was literally suffocating me was lifted. I felt the physical sensation of being lighter and of being able to breathe. Tears, happy tears, were falling from my eyes and I was at peace for the first time in YEARS.

The high of this vision fueled my healing in counseling, my passion in bible study, and my joy in life. Since I was feeling better, much much better, I started EMDR. I don't know if I just got to the point in my "healing" where my brain started to process the anger and grief, or if it was because I was processing things in EMDR and therapy, but my joy was replaced by anger. Pure rage and grief and the darkest depression I have experienced in such a long time.

Not only was I battling the memories and nightmares that has stopped a short few months before, but I was suddenly from the highest high down in the my darkest pits. Even darker than I had just gotten out of! Suddenly the urges to start smoking again came back. The desire the slice my skin and jump on Tinder resurfaced. My prayers to not wake up in the morning or for me to die in some quick fashion started pouring from my heart again. My pleas for this life to be over or for me to wake up from this nightmare were back. The enormity of the betrayal I faced from ex-best friend hit me full-force. The horrors I survived and lived through hit me like a ton of bricks. My actions, reasons, and reactions all flooded into my memory boggling my mind with the crap that I've been through. Realizations of what my childhood was like, things I had forgotten were dredged up. Past hurts and scars and darkness all covered me at once. Crashing over me like tsunami-sized waves.

Now, after nearly 8 months, these waves are still skyscraper high, but I've sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor where the waves can't effect me so much because my brain has gone blank. I have a vague recollection that bad things have happened. A small understanding that I am hurt and have been damaged mocks me in the early hours when I wake up, or in the moments before I fall asleep. My heart squeezes and heat rises as my brain recalls the nightmares that I just had throughout my sleep were real events that happened. Anger overwhelms me and forces me from bed to try to go find some mind-numbing entertainment from the boob-tube.

I want to believe G-d has good in store. My heart craves the day when my life is redeemed and I maybe see some fruit that the sh!t that I *unfortunately* survived is going to be worth something to someone. Surely there is a reason behind the suffering. Surely there is a way that this can be helpful for something. Surely my life, my experiences, my pain and sorrow will not be a waste!

It's crazy to think that a year ago would start the roller-coaster that has been this past year. To go from so passionate and on fire for the L-rd, to questioning His beneficence towards me. Hope was replaced with rage and ecstatic joy was replaced with soul wrenching despair. My new found zest for life was, again, brought into the deepest of me begging for my life to end.

I'd like to say that my life is back to me being excited and on fire for the L-rd. I wish I could tell you all that life got back to smooth sailing, that I am happy and excited again and that I finished out the year with minimal lasting pain. Well, I could, but that would be a lie. Just when I started to think I was on the mend, my story would be used for goodness and I might be needed in this world after-all, I was knocked down again. Knocked down by someone who was supposed to be a mentor, a leader, a helper in the faith. At that point, the hits kept coming from every side. I confided in her about some recent family wounds and that was used against me, as ammo for the attacks. Ex-best friend joined in the attacks, people from work, patients, family, and anyone else that was in close proximity to me. They ganged up, at the enemies command, and I was bombarded by the tsunami waves that I thought I was avoiding by remaining on the ocean floor. There's no escape though.

Here, looking back on my year, I'm proud of myself for not falling back into self harm, not succumbing to the craving for a cigarette, and for not putting myself back onto Tinder. I fought like hell to still show up, to try to be as present as possible, and to put myself out there for others. I'm working harder than ever to find some good, some purpose, and some meaning in my suffering and loneliness. I am searching for hope and belonging somewhere. But I don't belong here. I don't belong on this earth. I will forever be a stranger, a loner, wandering along on this blue rotating rock. This is not my home. This is not where I will make sense. This is not where the answers will be found, where I am redeemed, or where my purpose lies.

My heart is so tired. My soul is weary. I don't know how much longer I can hold out here.

My anniversary of one of the most powerful gifts the L-rd has every given me is marked by a season of such despair and difficulty that I'm sent back into the pits of existence when I desperately desire to no longer exist. How can this be? It doesn't make sense!