 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
| by Donna Nakamoto Peninsula Bible Church South Cupertino, CA
Read the short version...
My younger sister was the first Christian in our family. She joined a Young Life group in junior high (when I was a sophomore in high school) and promptly began to pray for all of us. Sometimes we talked about God. We were raised Catholic, so I believed in the concept. However, the God the nuns in catechism taught about certainly was not someone I wanted to get any closer to. That God would quickly punish me for my many sins. I already had a very strict earthly father, and I surely didn’t want another. My sister couldn’t convince me that God was any different. My husband and I started dating early in my senior
year of high school. I was in love, the real thing. The
early years of our relationship were the happiest times I had ever
known. We married several years later and settled into our new
life. We were going to live happily ever after, so I thought.
Even though I appreciated his honesty and concern, I didn’t even know the man and I surely didn’t want to pray with him. He sent me home with a small booklet called “The Four Spiritual Laws”. When I got home that night, I went into the bedroom, lay on the floor, and read through the book. I hated reading about how sinful I was, I already knew all about that. But the idea that there was a solution interested me. Until then, I thought the only way to ever experience joy and happiness again was to undo the past. That, of course, I was powerless to do, thus the hopelessness of my situation. But, if I could think and feel differently about what I could never change, perhaps there was hope after all. I was beyond ready at that point, tired of everything that never worked… SO, struggling against my flesh and against Satan, I’m sure, I turned my life over to God. What I experienced immediately was nothing short of miraculous. The weight that I had carried for years, the weight that had almost killed me, was gone! I was ecstatic! I was going to live again, really live, and I knew it right then! I began attending church, joined a bible study, then drank myself silly with my husband and our hard-partying friends every weekend. As we got older we lightened up, but I continued my habit. I suffered severe postpartum depression after each of my kids were born. The second time was worse than the first. I prayed at night that I would die in my sleep. I cried in the morning because I was still alive and I had to get out of bed to go through the motions of living for another day. Finally, I was sent to a psychiatrist. That first doctor put me on antidepressants immediately, and I began to really sleep again for the first time in months. Unfortunately, he never told me to quit drinking. So, much improved, but still addicted to my evening medication of alcohol, I continued. Finally, God began to gently show me that I needed to stop drinking altogether. I didn’t want to believe it, mostly because I didn’t know how I’d manage without my nightly numbing. I struggled successfully that first night, then the next and the next. I felt like I was rolling a huge boulder up a hill that kept getting steeper. Worn out, I called my sister in tears. “I can’t do it,” I told her. “I know,” she said. “But God can and He wants to. Don’t just ask Him for the strength to resist alcohol Donna, ask Him to take away your desire for it altogether.” It was then that I realized I hadn’t really even prayed for help. I had tried to do it on my own. That night, I laid on the floor and cried out, “God if you don’t take this thing away from me it will kill me. I can’t do it and I’m tired of trying. I quit.” That prayer was answered as swiftly and as surely as my initial prayer for salvation. God took away my desire to drink! that was over 12 years ago. Now, I was on antidepressants and off alcohol. Things improved dramatically, but I still had a way to go. I only prayed when I had no one else to talk to and no where else to turn. I never really wanted to, it was always sort of a last resort. When I did pray, I presented my request quickly and signed off. I didn’t want to get too close to God, because I feared his disapproval and punishment. Its amazing how much that twisted thought process reflected my relationship with my earthly father.
As it turned out, I hadn’t grasped that truth at all, at least not in my heart, and that’s where it needed to be. We all intellectually understand what the Bible tells us, it’s simply a matter of reading or hearing the information and saying, “Okay, I accept that.” But feeling and truly understanding that love is what changes us. I kept thinking about a little card my daughter had received in Sunday School that said, “He loves each one of us as if there were only one of us.” Somewhere during the middle of that 12-week series I finally felt and understood that love, and I could hardly believe it! It was far too good to be true. I went home that evening to pray and I realized I had no clue what to say. Things were so different now. I lay on the floor, face down and I was silent for a long time. Slowly I realized that my arms were stretched out to the sides, and my feet were crossed. I had (unknowingly) physically assumed the same position of Jesus on the cross. I remembered David Eckman saying, “When God looks at you He sees Jesus, and when He looks at Jesus He sees you.” At that point I began to sob, and it was a long time before I stopped. I never did say anything, but that was my prayer of gratitude because I finally understood God’s love for me. At the Acceptance
Seminar the following week, the topic was prayer.
That was a good thing for me, because most of what I had previously
thought of as prayer suddenly didn’t seem right at all. After
class that night I went into the ladies lounge. I waited a
long time until I was sure I was the only one left at church.
Then, in the dark, I curled up in the fetal position on the little
sofa and let go of a lot of baggage. I left years of guilt,
shame, and self-hatred in that dark bathroom when I sobbed, “Help
me Daddy, help me.” It was all I could say, but Read Couples Connection! for yourself! Visit our online Christian bookstore! Visit our
Testimonies home page for more stories! |
|
|
|
I began my struggle with depression in
junior high. It was tough, but I knew how to deal with it:
Alcohol, just to unwind and to forget, for awhile, how awful I felt.
I started smoking marijuana soon after. By high school, I had
moved onto hallucinogenic drugs (“acid” or LSD) and amphetamines
(“whites” or uppers). This was the early 70’s. At
school, during the week, my friends and I poured hard liquor into
our sodas, took amphetamines, and smoked pot. Amazingly
enough, I kept my grades up. I never cheated. I turned
in my homework, even if I wasn’t going to class, and I always
studied for exams. My parents had always stressed the
importance of good grades and college.