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The Silent Suffering
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Please contact me with your experiences if you would like to share them with others.
The website creator's testimony can be found here.
Dawn's Story
For most of my life I was searching for lots of things. I was searching for who I was and what I was to do. I was searching for love, friendship, and validation that I was OK the way I looked.
I had always been a Christian, raised in the faith, went to church, and lived a religious existence. But I was just playing the role. Christianity was just a hobby for me. It was more like the cross around my neck -- I didn't know how much blood was shed for that identity.
Growing up, I had zero self-confidence, no self esteem, and believed that I was dumb, stupid, and ugly. So at 16 I decided that if only I was thinner, boys might like me. I would be popular, and things would be better.
Boy was I wrong! I tried every negative behavior I could find and fell further and further. I accepted others comments as true and began repeating them internally. I tried to fill my loneliness and insecurity with unhealthy coping mechanisms.
In May 2007, while surfing the Internet, I read a testimony that changed my life! This girl wrote in about eating disorders, not about recovery or being recovered, but about being FREE! And she did this with God's help while attending the program called Mercy Ministries. Whoa! I mean I had never heard such a thing before!
I was scared, but I was filled with hope and wanted God to change me. But how? For the next three months I read that testimony over and over, daily, memorizing the words.
I wasn't sure where to start, so I stayed broken. It was all I had ever known. I made up my mind to to just get by for a few more years. I knew how to starve myself and take pills. I knew how to pretend like a master, I knew how to feed others my lies. But to "let go" and let someone else take control -- I didn't know how to do that...
In August I decided to seek out this girl whose testimony was breaking through the walls of my heart and see if there was anything more she could tell me about God. And here is where my "new life" took over! After emailing back and forth with her, I rededicated my life to my Heavenly King and began my dance of freedom. God slowly started cleaning the cracks in my heart and filling them with His love. Jesus touched me and healed me in so many ways. I could feel His love surrounding me and filling me up and filling my heart where that hole and that ache was.
It amazes me to see just how far God has brought me. I was at the end of my rope, BUT by the grace of God -- and only His grace -- I was transformed. He has bigger and better plans than my destruction or death. My burdens aren't burdens any longer. God is now my coping mechanism. I have an amazing testimony to what God can and will do. When the Bible says, "You are a new creation in Christ," it's no joke. I can't believe how new and restored I feel each and every day. I LOVE being an overcomer!
