Summary: Join us in this powerful episode as we delve into Heidi's life, shaped by the strain of her parents' divorce and an unstable childhood, leading to tumultuous relationships and battles with anxiety and depression. We follow Heidi's transformative journey towards hope, peace, and joy. With raw honesty, she opens up about her heartache, struggles, and eventual redemption. From a heartbreaking rebound relationship to challenges in her marriage marked by anxiety and depression, we witness her resilience. Amidst chaos, a decision to have a baby becomes a pivotal turning point, leading her towards healing and self-discovery.
Through the later chapters, Heidi's profound transformation unfolds as she finds solace in her faith, experiencing the power of divine love and the gift of healing. This episode is a testament to the life-changing impact of faith and celebrates the strength and rest found in the most tumultuous times, all through the saving power of Jesus.
View more resources on our website!
TimeStamps:
0:00 - Heidi's Story
10:59 - Navigating Relationships and Self-Discovery
20:54 - Betrayal, Guilt, and Marital Struggles
30:10 - Anxiety and Challenges in Marriage
35:37 - Overcoming Anxiety and Depression With Faith
48:12 - Seeking Truth and Finding Hope
52:59 - Discovering Joy and Peace Through Faith
1:03:16 - Finding Strength and Rest
Keywords: Parents' divorce, Unstable childhood, Tumultuous relationships, Anxiety, Depression, Heartache, Resilience, Postpartum anxiety, Faith, Healing, Transformative journey.
Find Dusty Boys at https://www.lovereality.org/podcasts then cancel them!
Summary: Join us in this powerful episode as we delve into Heidi's life, shaped by the strain of her parents' divorce and an unstable childhood, leading to tumultuous relationships and battles with anxiety and depression. We follow Heidi's transformative journey towards hope, peace, and joy. With raw honesty, she opens up about her heartache, struggles, and eventual redemption. From a heartbreaking rebound relationship to challenges in her marriage marked by anxiety and depression, we witness her resilience. Amidst chaos, a decision to have a baby becomes a pivotal turning point, leading her towards healing and self-discovery.
Through the later chapters, Heidi's profound transformation unfolds as she finds solace in her faith, experiencing the power of divine love and the gift of healing. This episode is a testament to the life-changing impact of faith and celebrates the strength and rest found in the most tumultuous times, all through the saving power of Jesus.
View more resources on our website!
TimeStamps:
0:00 - Heidi's Story
10:59 - Navigating Relationships and Self-Discovery
20:54 - Betrayal, Guilt, and Marital Struggles
30:10 - Anxiety and Challenges in Marriage
35:37 - Overcoming Anxiety and Depression With Faith
48:12 - Seeking Truth and Finding Hope
52:59 - Discovering Joy and Peace Through Faith
1:03:16 - Finding Strength and Rest
Keywords: Parents' divorce, Unstable childhood, Tumultuous relationships, Anxiety, Depression, Heartache, Resilience, Postpartum anxiety, Faith, Healing, Transformative journey.
Find Dusty Boys at https://www.lovereality.org/podcasts then cancel them!
The world doesn't think that the gospel can change your life, but we know that it can and that's why we want you to hear these stories, stories of transformation, stories of freedom, people getting free from sin and healed from sin because of Jesus. This is death to life.
Speaker 2:I felt just extreme shame and guilt because I was an adulteress, because I had caused all this issue with my family and the thoughts of anxiety or depression it's just for coming in more consistently, like they're better off without you. Might as well just be done with this. The breakthrough thing for it all for me, was when he said deception isn't something deep inside me, it's an outsider trying to get in. I was like what? Because in my head I'm like wait, that could mean my anxiety and all this stuff. It was the first time I was like this could be a lie.
Speaker 1:Yo, welcome to the Death to Life podcast. It's your boy, rich, and today's episode is with my sister, heidi, and this one man. I loved hearing this story. I love all of them, but I love this one especially. This is a story about anxiety, depression and God freeing Heidi from it. If you dig this episode, why don't you cruise over to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star rating and leave a review? But yeah, heidi has such a beautiful heart because God has given it to her. And if you're struggling with depression, anxiety, man, listen to the story, be encouraged and be edified by it. Let's jump into the story. Love y'all, Appreciate y'all, buckle up and strap in. Where does your story start, heidi?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh man, probably like most people in childhood.
Speaker 1:It's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say early, early childhood was good. I remember just being a happy kid. It's funky, lively. It really wasn't until I was about 10, which is ironically the same age Jason was when his parents divorced. When my parents divorced, I would say that's when some of these things started to go into play.
Speaker 1:Did you see it coming, or was this like a shock or something like that?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it was a big shock. They had actually separated two times before that, but no one had told me obviously they don't want to worry me with it when that happened. That was like a major shock. I didn't know there were any issues or anything like that. I think that's really the first big fight I even remember them having too. So it was very surprising to me and I still remember that whole day. It was very vivid, big events like that. I feel like your memory just holds it very vividly. And me and my mom left. I think I want to say Billy, my older brother, or both my older brothers, I think, had already maybe moved out at that time, or I know Billy moved to my grandparents' house, so I don't really remember them being there when it happened. But we left and we also went and stayed at my grandparents' house for a little bit and then I just started going back and forth every single week out of living out of a laundry basket. I just didn't get it for a while.
Speaker 1:So the common lie is that the children think it's their fault somehow Do you feel? Like that hit you or what hit you about that whole thing. That was just hurtful.
Speaker 2:I just it was. I don't really think I felt like it was my fault. I really just felt a major loss of stability and I kind of was being used as the in-between. It wasn't a pretty divorce. It was very ugly between them and I was used to kind of you tell your mother this, you tell your father this, that kind of stuff, and probably just learned a lot about my family that I you shouldn't know as a kid. But it was just rough. I would say. Just the instability, the insecurity during that whole time was the worst part. They both started dating pretty quickly and I met all the people that they dated and just I think that's probably the time in my life that I was a little turned, a little bit rebellious. Just I would rebel just against meeting the new people and kind of stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Was it like equal, like with both sets of people that were dating your, your parents, or was it just like you're just angry yeah I would say it was generally the same attitude toward all of it.
Speaker 2:I obviously wanted my parents back together and I just I didn't think that was gonna happen, so I was upset about just how they were dating other people. Obviously, I'm not sure a kid that age would be. My dad ended up. They both, I think, got remarried around the same time and I loved my stepdad. I ended up getting along with them really well. But my stepmom we did not get along very well. She was from Russia. My dad didn't know her very long before they got married and she didn't even really speak much English when she came here and she had a son that she brought over. That was about five and we didn't get along either and it was a rough transition, I would say. I went back and forth probably till either late grade school or very early high school until I finally just decided to go move in with my mom just because things got so bad with my dad. There was just. It was a really rough environment. They didn't get along very well. There's lots of screaming and fighting and just negative things, like I didn't feel protected by him when all that was going on and I know he was going through his own stuff. So I don't want to throw him under the bus by any means, it's just. It was hard for him too, and I'm sure he didn't know quite how to handle it, but that's just. I ended up choosing that just to get some more stability and ended up staying with my mom through high school.
Speaker 1:Huh, who was who's God?
Speaker 2:I would say God at that time. It was just, it wasn't very personal. He believed he was real and I saw him through my family, like I call it, like a second hand religion. Through that time, through the divorce, my oldest brother became like a father figure, him and his wife, and I just talked to them and whatever I would ask them my questions, like spiritual questions, and whatever they said is I figured they knew God, they were good. So I just, whatever their picture was, I thought that's who God was. I didn't really have a kind of a personal relationship at that time. From what I remember, so there wasn't like.
Speaker 1:This is what he thinks about me, or how did you feel about yourself?
Speaker 2:I want to say earlier childhood, like that, I was still like a confident girl. It wasn't until just before high school that I started to get a lot of insecurities and stuff like that, started to not like myself and were worried about all that kind of stuff. I would say, yeah, that's the age a lot of that. Those lies started to creep in different ways. Like another thing about that early childhood, my parents had a band with my uncle. They would travel around different churches and stuff like that, and so I think maybe through that, in a way, one of my lies of perfection started just because, like in church and stuff, if someone was upfront singing and they went flat or went sharp or something my family would like look and be like, like they would notice every little mistake, and so I grew to kind of be that way too, and so if I ever sang up front I would be so hyper aware of any mistakes I would make, and so I just had this desire to be perfect and try to like, please my family in that way. I also got an autoimmune disease around that time and gained like 45 pounds and maybe one summer right before high school so I had to take these steroids that helped with the disease and, as they're regulating it, maybe gain all this weight, and so that was a huge and some guy called me fat my freshman year. So I carried that all through, probably honestly, until this past year. It's yeah, a lot of things would stick with me like that, and so the insecurities, that type of stuff came in around that time.
Speaker 1:I would say and so you're in high school and you didn't need any help gathering insecurities as natural and high school they just come with the territory. But you did have some help based on all these things, that that you're saying. How'd you navigate that? What was that?
Speaker 2:like this is the death portion of the death of the class. For sure there's lots of that. First, yeah yeah, freshman year was probably the worst. Because of that. I worked really hard to try to lose weight and I wanted to be on the gymnastics team with my friends. So I didn't even try out freshman year because I was like I don't want to, I want to lose weight and try to look better before I even try out. So I worked hard that year and tried out my sophomore year and got on with it and that's. I honestly actually really loved high school. It's one of my favorite memories. It was rough going in but overall it was. I had a lot of fun with my friends and stuff and the gymnastics team had a lot to do with that. We traveled a lot and that kind of stuff. But I would say that later in high school my relationship with God sort of became hot and cold, like it became a little more personal. Like there were those week of prayers and stuff they would do and I connected some with that and but in a very workspace way they'd be like we need to get rid of all your music and your movies and I'd go home and I'd throw my iPod away and get all hot for God, as I thought, and then it would shortly wear off.
Speaker 1:You're like I'm not going to listen to in sync anymore. Actually, what music were you listening to?
Speaker 2:I was very into music in high school. I knew every song, every word of many different eras.
Speaker 1:So you threw away.
Speaker 2:that's good for you, I hope it didn't stick Something you should be listening to, but sometimes we get weird right Like that's an answer to salvation is to throw this CD away. Yeah, that mentality carried on through college too. I remember those big. I don't think they're called week of prayers in college, but whatever they were, I felt convicted and I threw away like tons and tons of money worth of movies and music and stuff again. I've done it probably three or four times in my life but obviously it didn't stick because I keep buying it again or it did.
Speaker 1:So hot and cold, getting excited, burning CD, burnings DVD keep going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a lot of fun. I had friends and stuff through high school but I was very boy crazy, I think looking back and it's not. I didn't date a lot of guys but I would talk to different guys and I didn't actually don't think date anyone until Jason. But there was a lot of rejections there. There are people I did and just want to be my friend but I think just the boy craziness of it was, I don't know. I want to trace it back just to probably just a daddy issue of trying to gain his favor and approval just with that early early childhood stuff, maybe the perfectionism.
Speaker 1:When you say boy crazy, were you like extroverted and super, super flirty? Or were you because, like I'm, I feel like I've known you a little bit and it seems like you're an introvert, and so I'm thinking what did that look like?
Speaker 2:I was more extroverted in high school. It wasn't like I was super flirty, but it was like that's what I lived for. I was like, oh, I can't wait to go to algebra because I get to sit next to so and so and like, try to flirt. I would flirt, but not I wasn't like the flirty girl or anything by any means, but yeah, I just would have these big crushes and that's just like what I was most interested in, probably in high school. For sure. It was just mostly lots of that until about somewhere in senior years when I started dating Jason, which was very random. We were friends for a long time. We actually met in sixth grade. He came to my grade school for a year. We were just good friends. And it was actually some of our friends were like you should date Jason or whatever, and they set us up and yeah, we started. He was in your class then, yeah, yeah, we were really good friends before. But yeah, I would say senior year, late senior years, when we started dating and, as you've probably heard from Jason's story, he had a lot of stuff going on at that time and we broke up a lot. Why would you guys?
Speaker 1:break up. Give me a second.
Speaker 2:Well, let's see, the first time was actually me, but all the rest were him. But the first time I was just like I don't know about this guy. I just wasn't sure about him. He was really quiet and just didn't seem super into me. It was like it was right after graduation was the next time he broke up with me and I think he just I assumed he just wanted to go to college, a free man, but it was really. He just didn't know. I think we maybe had a fight or something and I think he talked about in his that he thought a fight just meant it was over because he'd never seen his parents fight. I want to say that was the actual reason, but it just the way he presented it was that he wanted to go to college and we could just date whoever going into it. But we both ended up going to Southern. So we saw each other at Smart Start. That's like the summer, the summer class, and we were in the same class.
Speaker 1:It's over. And then, two months later, hi, I'm back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we were in Smart Start and it was awkward, but I think we were cordial, whatever. And then I still had feelings for him, but I didn't know how he felt, just because he was very closed off with his feelings. But we kind of like talked and like went out a little bit until like the final time where he just was like we should just see other people. My parents did not want me to go to Southern just because of the price and they weren't able to help, and so I was just like I'm going. So I signed up, I signed up for loans, did it all, and then when I went back it was the same thing. I went and I found a job at Starbucks, found an apartment and just went back. And whenever we broke up is when I met someone at Starbucks. I guess the rebound guy after Jason was like we should date other people. I was like, okay, I'm going to try it. And so, yeah, I decided to date this other guy and he'd asked me out on a date and I'd never actually been on a date before, because when high school, all you do is just hang out on campus or whatever. So I was like, ooh, a date. What is this going to be like? And he picked me up and we went and walked across the bridge in Chattanooga and this is where he tells me that he used to be married and but he said they were divorced and it was over and it was. He was older than me, so he was probably about five years older than me, and so I was like, okay, he's older, that makes sense that he could have had another relationship. But the way he presented it was very like like he said they never even could consummate of the marriage and it sounded a little sus. But I believed him because up until that point I was very naive. I had never really been deceived by anyone. I trusted people with their word and he seemed trustworthy. So I believed him and I even ran it by people. This is what he said. I don't know about that, but when people got to know him he was very social, very like everyone loved him. He's that kind of personality.
Speaker 1:Is it sounding by this, by people who were like older and wise, or was it just text my friend, that is my age and yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I would. My friends met him. I also my brother, billy, and his wife or I think they were just dating at the time. Yeah, they were just dating at the time and they we hung out with them all the time and they liked him. He was just the type of guy that he was very believable, I will say at this point, and he would go to church with me. He did do that kind of stuff, but I also wasn't super close to God at that time. I thought I was. Maybe I had that hot and cold thing going and I really would read my Bible, but I really didn't have that personal relationship. And, yeah, I had these values and stuff. Even in high school I had these values, like I wasn't going to saving myself for marriage and all that kind of stuff. But I didn't really have much of a moral grounding as to why. I just knew that was what everyone did and I wanted to make people proud of me or get the approval of my family. That's probably where a lot of that came from and I thought that's basically as good as it got probably at that time. But yeah, this relationship was a lot. Our whole relationship was only like eight months and just this guy. The things I didn't know when I first started dating him was that he was living in his car at that time. He was showering at the gold's gym and eating at Starbucks. He was a mess and he hit it Like I didn't know any of that At some point when we were dating. He must have moved in with one of his friends, because that's where he took me at one point and it just. He had this facade that he had it together and was like he loved God. He wanted to help my brother out with the youth and he ended up having to get a background check and it came back with something really serious on it. So they didn't let him. But he explained it to me in a way that I was just like, oh, that's too bad, that's too bad, that's on your record. That doesn't make any sense he was very gullible, with just a lot of red flags. He told me he loved me after the month or something and I and he treated me like this princess and I just had never been desired or anything like that. And I just ate all of it up and just the full, on every sense of the word rebound. It was what was going on with our relationship and he was very manipulative. Looking back, he would tell me all the time how his sister was worried about me because I didn't want to have sex with him, because she he would say his ex didn't do that and she was worried. You're like. You need to do that in order to know if you're a good match, and I don't want you to get weird one.
Speaker 1:My sister is worried that we're not having sex.
Speaker 2:Yeah, his sister was like the most important person in his life. He wasn't really close to his parents and so I just I carried, I felt a lot of pressure obviously from that and yeah, it was weird, but and he would do that frequently looking back, and I didn't I don't know. I didn't see it as manipulative at the time, I was just very I didn't want to lose him and I was just very into it, looking for that affirmation, looking for that, just trying to please.
Speaker 1:Did you argue with him about it? Or try to stay in your ground, or just.
Speaker 2:I just was, like I tried to reassure him, like no, I'm not like that. I promise if I get married I will, you know, I just don't want to before marriage. And he knew those values I had, yet he would still, you know say that kind of stuff. Yeah, he was very pushy looking back, so I was. I ended up doing a lot more than I wanted to and then I ended up ultimately giving it all up, just, and I remember that day feeling so sad and I felt like I didn't want to do it, but I I wanted to make him happy and that felt okay to me. Oh, I want to make him happy and so I'm going to go ahead and do it. And I just felt terrible after. And then I rationalized it after we're married in God's eyes now and I wanted to marry him anyway, so it's probably okay, we'll just make it official later. That's what I said in my head to rationalize it. But after that happened, we ended up breaking up like a month after that and just all sorts of crazy things happened in that month. My brother was getting married that last month and he had asked him to play at his wedding. Somehow he knew what was going on between us. I didn't tell him. He and his wife, they just knew me so well that they could just tell what was going on and they did not like it. They were upset, they were mad at my other brother for not knowing and he asked me point blank and I lied to him and I felt so bad. I'd never lied to anyone before and he knew I lied and he was so upset and it just it created this huge thing that we can like, which I also. I didn't know this until later, but like they were fighting with my mom and my other brother and there's just tons of family feuding going on because of me and the situation and when we get back to Tennessee after the wedding it was either around that weekend, right before, right after. But I found out he's still married. He had lied to me and he wasn't with this woman still. That's why he was living out his car, but he wasn't divorced or anything.
Speaker 1:How did you find out? He let it slip. Oh, my wife.
Speaker 2:Oh, he, I don't remember. He told me he came clean, but I may have been. He also cheated on me during this time, which I didn't know until after one of my friends told a friend and told me and that was, I think, after we even broke up, but it was probably maybe a little guilt creeping in because he had done that. And then he decided to tell me the truth on some of that stuff. But I was just so overwhelmed and shocked that and I still believed him that he hadn't consummated the marriage I'm like we'll try to help you annul it or whatever and I tried to help him do that stuff. I was just so naive, oh my goodness. And that when we got home, like my oldest brother and his wife were talking to us and she called me on the phone and also called him and basically convinced us that we needed to break up. So we ended up breaking up and he left and never looked back. At that situation. It was so bad because more truth just kept coming out. Like I said, like I found out he cheated, I found out all this other stuff and but I, just because of that situation, I lost complete trust in myself and my abilities to make any type of decision, because I missed so much and I felt just extreme shame and guilt just because of what I've done, because I was an adulterous, because I, oh man, had caused all this issue with my family and I just, yeah, I felt very low and terrible at that point in my life. Oh yeah, I didn't trust myself. And one month later I start to talk to Jason again after all of this craziness.
Speaker 1:One month later, you just, he just felt like a safe person to talk to, or how does it was weird.
Speaker 2:He ended up coming to this Thanksgiving party at my apartment my friend, my other friend, love there, who was also a friend of his. So I didn't really I didn't see Kim Albright means. But he showed up and my sister in law was also a big fan of Jason and she was like, hey, you should date Jason again. His roommate was also like a family member of mine and he was telling Jason the same thing hey, heidi and her boyfriend broke up. You guys should, maybe you should, talk to her again and yeah, we a breakup puppy and a boyfriend within one month after all of that.
Speaker 1:You said it lasted eight months. Eight months feels like a long time when you're that young and it's such a large portion of your life, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah it, yeah, it felt like a long time. It's actually surprising to look back and realize it was only eight months and eight month period. But yeah, it was very and even and it took me a long time to to get through that kind of stuff. I had to reach out for closure even after me and Jason were together, like I would talk to Jason about it I just need to find out the singer, whatever and I would reach out. And it took a while, just because I should have never jumped in and obviously dating Jason again that fast. But that's just what happened. We were just broken, like I was just yeah, and what I thought was the lowest of my low, and Jason was going through a lot at that time too, so he was at just a low point. So we just came together, just broken, but we found this sense of familiarity and comfort in each other and I, man, I told him everything when we got back together and I felt so much guilt, like I had this guilt, like, oh, that was supposed to be saved for him. And now and he even, I think, shared that like he felt sad about that too, because I think at this point we knew we were going to be together forever. So I want to say it was like a two or three year period before we ended up actually getting married.
Speaker 1:I get married Marriage.
Speaker 2:Marriage man. Our first year of marriage was rough.
Speaker 1:How, why was it so?
Speaker 2:rough. I rushed it. I wanted to get married. Jason wanted to wait until he had a more solid job. He was still getting freelance kind of work. But I'm like, oh, I've got a solid job, I'll support us, it's going to be fine. And so I was in an apartment with one of my friends at the time. So when we got married, jason moved in there with us and she was going to end up moving out, but it took a little bit before she ended up finding another place. So we were like living with a roommate for a little bit and Sounds, awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was bad Like it was. It took him a long time, like he ended up. He was working on like a video game with one of his friends for a whole year or something like that and he was getting a freelance work here and there. He ended up doing like construction for a little bit. But I felt like a lot of pressure to be like the breadwinner and I did not like that. And we fought all the time. Man, we fought so much Like we'd never fought when we were dating really, maybe like once or twice big fights or whatever. But man, we fought so much and we just didn't know how to communicate or anything. So it was a lot of learning but we didn't really learn because this continued on for a long time in our marriage and it was let's see, it was while we were still living there that the anxiety stuff started. So I had started that job. Like I said, it was like right when we got married that I got this job. It was like a oral surgery job and it was really stressful for me. It was a rough environment, like the doctor I worked for had PTSD and he would yell and throw needles and stuff and it was stressful. Like he'd cry Sometimes a lot of us would cry after the surgeries were over and he'd come over and apologize and act like a totally different person outside the surgery room but he would yell at you and say all kinds of stuff and I stayed at that job for two years. This job was really stressful but I didn't see it as like a abnormal stress, I guess. So one day Jason and I were going to go on this little birthday date to the Knoxville Zoo. So we're like driving to the zoo and all of a sudden we're driving and I just can't breathe and I just start panicking. And I had never had a panic attack up until that point and I thought it had something to do with my autoimmune disease. So I was like calling my doctor, like do I need to go to the hospital? Do I need to take more meds? Like what's wrong with me? And we figured out I'm just having a panic attack. And I had a panic attack, seemed like that entire day through the night and I didn't know why, what was causing it, which made it worse, made them happen more, because I didn't know what was happening. And my family? I have some mental illness in my family my uncle's bipolar and my mom's. This is when his bipolar started. You're probably bipolar and so I started internalizing that. Oh, my goodness, I'm losing my mind, not to say that's what that is, but this is how I was feeling I'm losing my mind, I don't know what's wrong with me. There's something physiologically wrong with me. So I like took that on as my identity and just really indulged it. I was off for a whole week of work trying to figure this thing out. I was going to this counselor who put me on some stuff for the panic attacks and it would happen that whenever I was away from the house or the car, I might have a panic attack. So I started associating okay, I have to stay close to these things or I'm going to have a panic attack. And it's the worst feeling ever. Just, it seemed like it to me and for the next five years of our marriage I lived like that and there my relationship suffered because of it. My friendships, people didn't really know how to hang out with me because I was very specific with what I thought I could do. I didn't like traveling. It was really hard for me. I get just tons of anxiety about that and I would go to counseling but it really didn't help. I would have some little strategies like breathing techniques warded off, but it's like a panic attack was always at bay.
Speaker 1:What do you think started this whole thing?
Speaker 2:I would say it was the that environment of every day being in constant stress at my job, like high intensity stress, like I actually had to do a specific therapy technique on one of my memories from that job, like where this kid almost died and we had to, like they had to mouth the mouth because the oxygen stopped working, and just it was like a really tense environment. So I think maybe that, but also just a lot of lies, like building up to that point, like this perfectionism stuff and not trusting anyone, like everything Jason did was like on this list in my head. So every time we fought I had this huge list. He was just a big list of things of why I didn't trust him, and I didn't trust him also because of all the times he broke up with me. So I didn't trust that he wasn't going to leave me again, even though we were married, and just all that stuff from my other relationship I was projecting on him and I just had all this yuckiness inside me and it just, I think, built up and finally just came out in that form Just out of my body and anxiety and panic.
Speaker 1:How long into your marriage did this start?
Speaker 2:It was, I think, a year in, yeah, and it wasn't until just this last year that it stopped. It was about a five year, five or six year period and I did everything. I tried the eight laws of health, I tried hiking, but every time I hiked I was like a bear is going to eat me, like some mountain lion's going to come out of the woods and attack me.
Speaker 1:I could not even relax. No, it is Just get out in nature and you're like nature's going to kill me, Exactly.
Speaker 2:Everything that was supposed to help just didn't. It was crazy and I came super codependent on Jason because he was like my safety, because I didn't have that close relationship with God at the time. I didn't trust that God would keep bad things from happening to me because I had this thing in my head he lets some people get attacked by bears or he lets some people die in car accidents or whatever fear I had at the time, and so I didn't trust that he wouldn't let me for whatever reason that it needed to happen, and so I believed in him and everything. I just didn't trust him at all with my life or anything. But I trusted Jason because he would take care of me and so I became very codependent on him in that way, which was a lot of pressure for him because he would get anxious Anytime I was away because he didn't know if I was okay and it was like a really unhealthy dynamic for a while. So our marriage was suffering in all kinds of ways because of this and I would numb the anxiety with just like distractions, like TV or I don't know, sometimes like exercise. I would exercise and just stuff that I could feel better just for a little bit and not seal it, but it was always there. Like I said, it was just a panic attack, was just right there at all points that I knew how to keep it at bay. Like my heart rate at that point in my life was always like between 90 to 100 at resting Very just bad all the time.
Speaker 1:And did you ever look back at life and think, man, I didn't used to be like this or think about when that big change happened?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would look back on the good old days and I knew when it started. It was that day we drove to the zoo, because before that we went to Mexico for a honeymoon and I would hike. Hiking was my thing before I got anxiety. I loved it. I would spend entire days hiking on the weekends and that's what we did. We love. That was like our thing, we do together, and I would travel. I love traveling, I love doing things. It was like it took all of my joy and my life away from me, and I knew that every day. I thought about it every day. Is this my life forever? I knew a better thing and now I have this, and is this what it's going to be like forever is what I thought all the time. And I felt so bad for Jason because I took away all of that from him too, so there's so much guilt with it too. So that's yeah, that's about how our life was, and during this period, we decided to have a baby, probably to think maybe it would help. I don't know.
Speaker 1:We wanted, I wanted a baby but we did and yeah, because there's, there's doesn't there's no anxiety that mothers feel or anything like that.
Speaker 2:No, I'm like this will be perfect. You stay home at babies anyway. I just, for some reason, I thought that was a good idea. That's what we did, and I had a good birth. I had a good pregnancy.
Speaker 1:Jason think it was a good idea.
Speaker 2:No, he didn't know, he wasn't, I don't think, quite ready, but with enough convincing he finally gave in and um, yeah, with many fights and things like that Just was not good. We are marriages was not good, but he agreed and um, I let's see, it took seven months or something to get pregnant and I had a pretty good pregnancy. But my birth was very traumatic. I got pre-clampsia and had emergency C-section and I had. It was scary, my, I was seeing like triple vision during labor and they were telling me that they had no guarantee that my vision wouldn't go out. I was like, is this gonna be like this forever? And she said, oh, it's just the progression of the disease. I was like what? And it was terrifying and anyway, I was on magnesium, which is this horrible thing because of the high blood pressure. It's supposed to help and helps decrease the chance of strokes and heart attacks and or whatever, and the birth was really traumatic. Coming home after all of that, she was in the NICU for almost two weeks and it was just a rough time. We were already not in a good place, obviously, and then bringing a baby into it, not getting any sleep, we were so sleep deprived. Jason helped me a lot because we were just bottle feeding, so he was able to help me do that as well. And till we fought even more from pain to sleep to pride. And I remember at one point I it was bad enough to where I was, like I just want to leave, I gotta get out of here, and I wanted to like go to my dad's house, but my anxiety was so bad that I couldn't leave the house with Chloe to even do that, so I just stayed there and that's honestly how bad it was. When the freedom weekend came, but I guess let's see, I got depressed too. I guess I should talk about this, one of the major points of this story. Sure talk about the depression, let's add on we're almost to the life. I promise this is the last thing. Yeah, the anxiety was bad, the sleep deprivation was bad. I just accepted this is life. Even Jason was like why don't you just accept? Stop trying to make it go away, Just accept this is it and then come up with things to live around it. And I just I remember one night telling Jason I feel like I'm in this cage underwater and it's sinking. That's how I feel all the time. It was horrible and I started getting depressed, and depression was new because of all this anxiety and I stopped sleeping, like there were nights I didn't sleep at all because I just was anxious about stuff all night, and so I started getting depressed and it started progressively getting worse and I I started having these really dark thoughts. Oh, and also during this point my uncle died and two weeks later my grandma died and we were like back-to-back funerals and, oh man, I just got really sad and dark and just like you know, like people they're gonna be better off without me. Just, it was really setting in that this could be life forever and I had already thought my head. I've taken Jason's life away. He loves doing all this stuff and he can't do it now because of me. And I decided Chloe would probably grow up and hate me because I wouldn't be able to be there for her and my mom didn't think I was fun anymore something that came up at one fight and my dad was in and out of my life anyway during all this time. But and my brothers didn't think I was working hard enough. I needed to do the Eight Laws of Health better. One of my, billy, was actually counseling me at the time, during the darkest part of it, so he was trying to help. But, like, when you're that negative, you just come up with things that aren't even true about how people probably see you. So that's what I was doing. I had a reason with every person in my life why they were gonna be much better off without me, and I just started thinking the thoughts were coming in more consistently of like they're better off without you, might as well just be done with this, and it would scare me and I would dismiss them when they would come in at first, but then they just kept coming and then the sleep stuff started happening and I had decided in my head that visuals of what I would do, how I would do it, started happening and that really scared me because I had already gotten my social work degree so I like knew I recognized like all these different things that were happening and so I decided to tell Jason, and he's all right, you either need to call your pastor or the doctor right now, and like, okay, so I called my pastor because I actually don't want to go to the doctor and he's all. You need to go to the doctor right now. He just had a friend of theirs that had committed suicide from postpartum depression and I didn't think I had that because it had been like I think I was like eight months out and my doctors told me I was past that point or something and but anyway, I ended up going in and they told me I should get on some medicine. And that was like in my head, that was like that was the last resort. I'll try this thing. If it doesn't work, that's it. I know what I'm gonna do and I tried it and the first medicine made everything amplified. It made it at all worse. It made me not sleep for a couple days. It made the anxiety and depression ten times worse. It like did the opposite and you had to like wean off of it. So it was like, oh, it was bad. I guess they say certain classes of them don't agree with your body and so you try the other class. That's what I did. I would give it another shot with another one and it ended up helping a little bit, but it made me tired and very numb, like. I did not feel like myself, but it calmed the thoughts or so it just made me very numb and but I was thankful that I could at least could sleep. I slept at some point, like during the day or something, and at least I could sleep a little bit. And but I still felt like I'm like is this as good as it's gonna get? Like I just get to be numb but still have these sad feelings like, and so that is exactly the point when I was scrolling through Facebook and I see this flyer that said freedom from anxiety and depression and Fletcher Church with Jonathan Bradshaw and whatever, and I was like, huh, maybe we could try going to that. So I told Jason about it and he was totally on board, because he was on board for anything that might help and till we go to this and Jason already told this part of the story but we were like all confused and stuff because it was like a marriage seminar and we thought it was for anxiety and depression and all the stuff, but our minds ended up being blown by it- If you haven't heard Jason's episode, they thought Jonathan Bradshaw is a big name in Adventist evangelism and there were not enough cars in the parking lot for that kind of a name.
Speaker 1:So I mean, tell the story.
Speaker 2:I don't want to tell the story for you. So yeah, we want to hear it again.
Speaker 1:We like it. We like the story.
Speaker 2:There was like 10 or 15 cars in the parking lot at the bottom. I'm like what? And so we're like maybe we're early, so we go to the front door and it's locked. We're like what the world? And we see some lights on the base middle and so we go down there and there's some people down there and I see the girl who had posted the fire and like is this the Jonathan Bradshaw thing? Yeah, he's right over there and I was like where, what's going on? And they start Gabby and Elias start talking, and they start talking about marriage and me and Jason are just like looking at each other. What is this? Maybe it's in a different room in the church. And I ask her again. I'm like, is this a short? I think I showed her the fire. She's like, yeah, this is it. I realize this is a different Jonathan Bradshaw and it's totally not what I think it is. And as they're talking, there's these people in the audience responding and they're like saying these phrases, they're like let's go and all this stuff. And I just was super confused, like it was like oh where are we going?
Speaker 1:What does he?
Speaker 2:mean, I've never even heard that term before. I was like are these people? Like, is this all part of it? Like, are they a? But I was taking notes. I brought my little notebook because I was all prepared to try to find some help and I, man, I have all my notes from that still and I wrote some of them down and just talk about. But Elias was talking at the time and the breakthrough thing for it all, for me, was when he said the deception isn't something deep inside me, it's an outsider trying to get in. I was like what? Because in my head I'm like wait, that could mean my anxiety and all this stuff. It was the first time I was like this could be a lie. This isn't me. I might not actually have something wrong with me. This could be like. It was almost this glimmer of hope that this could be like an outsider or a deceiver and I was just like blown away just by that one comment and I wrote down some other things and he was just saying stuff. Like you know, we already have peace.
Speaker 1:I just got chills all over my arms when you said that and I recently got in an accident and so like my arm is hurting because but that's I've, it's not bad enough, but it's hurting and I was like, oh wow, I'm in pain because of the chills of the gospel, like this message hitting you at this time Keep going. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, he was just saying all kinds of stuff that I'd never, either never heard or never understood before. Maybe I was just ripe to hear it, I don't know. But he was like saying we already have peace, we already have these things because the spirit lives inside us. I was like what I had always thought you pray for the spirit to come, you pray. I prayed for peace, obviously, that entire time and never got it, because I didn't think I had it and I was very like I would pray to God, be like okay, if you take this away, I'll stop doing this thing. In college I watch scary movies. Like, if you take this away, I'll stop watching the scary movies or I'll stop whatever. And that's just how my mind worked. And to know I already have the Holy Spirit. If I want him, he's there and that means I already have peace, I already have just all these gifts. I just couldn't believe it. I didn't have to work for it, I didn't have to do my part and then God does his part. I didn't have to see myself or others as the sum of everything I had done or that they had done to me, because that's completely how I'd see myself. I had all that shame and guilt and just all of that stuff from all the things I had done and like what I talked about and that's how I saw Jason, like how I mentioned, like he was just this list of everything he did every single time. That's why I don't trust you. That's why I don't trust you and like to know that God didn't see me that way and I didn't have to see Jason that way, because he forgives us truly for that stuff and he didn't see us that way anymore, like from the foundation of the world. He sees us as blameless, without a fault.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I was just blown away. Like Serena and Jonathan, I did a little Bible study with us after the talk from Gabby and Elias, and I remember when we went up to them I was just like itching to ask them about anxiety, like I just wanted to ask them about it. I was really nervous. And Serena said something that like opened the door and like what do I do about this? And so she. They had this little Bible study with us and they did the thing where they prayed with us and what is the spirit telling you? And we each kind of heard something. I thought it was really weird. I'd never heard of doing that before, like letting God talk back to you or hearing a word from the spirit. And I think Jason heard something like rest, it's time to rest, and I heard something similar. I don't remember exactly, but we both got something completely different out of it, which was really weird, because I was there from this like from the goggles of anxiety and depression and what I was going through, and he was there from like our terrible marriage and the things he was feeling, like working really hard and striving, and so he would. I didn't realize that he was getting all of that, but, yeah, he was equally blown away for different reasons, like it was connecting to exactly what he needed to hear, and it was also connecting to exactly what I needed to hear, even though there are completely different things, and it was from marriage. It was really strange, but it was like because they were preaching the gospel and that was just how they did it. But, yeah, we both went home that night. My mother-in-law had been watching Chloe, and we were like I think the latter rain has hit. We're like these people are different. They're just full of love, and I've never met anyone like this before. They're so genuine and like kind, and I it's just you feel like you're just friends or family already somehow, and she was just like what, what are you talking about? And so she ended up coming to the next day's meeting and she had the same experience and told them her story, which was really cool too, but we ended up hanging out with them more that weekend and I started joining the Bible studies and met you, and it was. It's like the hard times weren't over yet, though, because, while we were excited, I told my pastor at the time I was like what we'd found, and I unfortunately used the wrong language to describe it by saying I heard this new gospel, but it wasn't new, it's as old as time. It was new to me, though, because I'd never understood it. And but he I don't know if I said it initially like that because he's oh yeah, let's get him, let's get him to our church and like, okay, we'll get the info. And I, we talked to him more about it, and the churches in the area just are very divided on the whole message. It was a lot of conflict and it was really confusing for us, because we're like is this too good to be true? You know, we had just been scammed on this financial thing too, and we were just on edge Is this a scam? This is too good to be true. So we were talking to people. I was talking to my family. My family was divided. Half my family was like, oh yeah, and half of them were like no, this is bad, this is a piracy. And it's still like that, unfortunately. But it's yeah, it was confusing.
Speaker 1:What was the thing that you were hoping was really true? You heard it and you're like, okay, I don't know what, if all of this is true or any of it is true, but I hope that this thing is true because it's giving me some hope.
Speaker 2:I think it was just this mentality of not having to work for it, like it was a completed work and like it wasn't like 2080, 4060. It was. He did it 100%. And because that's what seems a little advice of but we have a work to do, they say, and. But when you ask what is the work, there's not really an answer. That's what I was confused on. Do I still have to keep working? Do I still have to try to be good enough for this to be true? For me, that was that weight that was just so heavy. So I think that was probably part of it, like, and I. And then there was that night, jason, there was like this article that came out totally just out of I'm reading our messages back and to each other, and because I just pulled it up and I wanted to see yeah, this is what you said.
Speaker 1:You said how do you know that everything you guys are saying is true? Even when all these conservative Adventists are saying you guys are wrong. I feel like I finally was having hope in life. And then Jason showed me this stupid article and I can't stop crying. It's like the freaking rug just ripped out.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was rough, I was bawling my eyes out.
Speaker 1:I'm sad again for you. Okay, tell me about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was so excited, but I was still not 100. I didn't understand everything yet. I just had that hope now and I was excited. And then he shows me this article, because Jason was still more on the side of I don't know about this. This is he was believing, just like the stuff our pastor was saying and some other people, like people we really trusted they might be right. We should be careful. And he finds this article and he shows me and I got just I don't even like I just got so mad at him. I ran upstairs, ran to the bathroom, closed the door, started crying. I'm like, what do I do? And I was like I'm going to message Richard, he'll be able to answer these questions. And so that's where that came from. But I was so upset because it was like, oh no, if this isn't true, my life is going back to how it was and that's not good and that's how I was feeling. But yeah, I think it helped talking it out for sure.
Speaker 1:And didn't we? Did we talk on the phone?
Speaker 2:Maybe after, like once we texted through I think we were messaging then on that night but then later it was over the phone like Google Meet or something, where we all chatted about kind of like what happened, like just the freedom, all of a sudden that, like I received maybe that's, I don't know. Is that what you're talking about?
Speaker 1:Because my brother was there too. I'll just read a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I said why are?
Speaker 1:you crying and you said I just don't get it. Yesterday I feel like everything just clicked and I was understanding it finally. But then today it's a different story and that must mean I don't actually get it because I just can't do it anymore. This has been the worst two months of my life. And I said a little sad crying face because I was sad, I said. Then you said I feel like I have to be perfect and discern everything perfectly, or else I'm going to be deceived and not make it to heaven man of life. I just know I can't get to that point. And then I said is God giving you that thought? And you said I don't know. And I said are you afraid? And you said yes. And then I said then it can't possibly be from God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never knew that was another new thing that there were different voices, that there could be God's voice, my voice, satan's voice, and that they would feel like my thoughts. That was a new idea. I trusted what I thought because I lived through my feelings before. Like when you ask that, I just like what. I didn't know how to answer that. I thought it. I didn't know if it was from God, I just didn't understand that. That's a really cool clarity to now have to be able to decipher the thoughts that come into your head and find the truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. If it's fear, it can't be from God. Yeah, yeah, because perfect love casts out all fear and God hasn't given us a spirit of fear.
Speaker 2:Man.
Speaker 1:That verse is like my end zone since then, and so we can't move on that. Yeah, yeah so how did through this time, these, this worst two months of your life? How did you start getting grounded in what you were deciding Okay, this is truth. What was? How did you do that?
Speaker 2:I just started reading it for myself, like I got to just find it out for myself. I can't keep doing this thing. I've done my whole life and just trusting other people to tell me what God thinks and how, what the truth is. So got my Bible out and I just pulled it up, started reading through Romans and Ephesians, colossians and John and all this stuff. I even went through and I looked at the pioneers of our church. I looked, started reading Joseph Wagner and it was the same message, even Ellen White the same message righteous by faith, and it was all agreeing and it was there and it was like I could trust that, because it's like it's what the Bible actually says, it's not what some person says or it's on opinion. And so I started becoming grounded in that and, and it's it all started to lift off of me and I can remember that day clearly, when it just was just hitting and like, when I think about that day, it's just like bright and sunny and it's like my Bible was glowing and I was just so excited. I was like happy and I felt joy, for like actual joy for the first time, I think, in my life, and I just couldn't believe it. That's what it was really like and that's what he wanted for us. Like God's a happy God and he wants us to be happy and just to feel his love and to just overflow with love to other people and that's his plan. His plan isn't for me to work my way to heaven and prove I'm good enough, because none of us are good enough. Like it's his free gift that he did for us and, man, all of it just started clicking and just this whole year he's just been showing me who he really is and how he feels about me, and it's I'm glad we get in talk till now just because this whole year has just been so much incredible growth. I've grown more spiritually this year than I have, obviously, my entire life and I have this personal relationship now and. I can tell when he's speaking to me and just I can have really hard conversations and it not really affect me. I had a really tough conversation with a family member and before it would have just crushed me. I would have internalized it so bad, but it's like it didn't even touch me. I just was like that's not true about me. This is what God says about me. That's not true. He they're just not understanding maybe not understanding the way I do, the way I do right now, or something. And it's just this peace. I think I heard you say this, maybe in one of your sermons, but it was like before. You see, peace is like your circumstances lining up and now you get to see your crazy life through peace. Even if things aren't great, you're still peaceful deep down, just because you know what's true and you know you have that assurance and you know that God loves you. You know you're his kid and I actually got to see myself as God's kid. I actually see him as my dad, which is just a weird thing because even my earthly father, we've had our issues, but like when we're doing good and stuff, I feel his love and I know he's not gonna judge me for things. I can just be myself around him and it's in our best moment. God's like that 100 times more all the time, so I can just. He loves me as me and I heard this thing the other day. I think it's tight gives and he said to be fully known and fully loved is the essence of healing, like at the same time, and that's how God sees us. So he's spent a lot of healing and he's just been restoring my life packed to me this year. It's just been amazing. Like I've had a hard year, like I had another baby, I had another really tough birth and pregnancy, but through all of that it was just manageable, just because now I have God and I know he's gonna, he's looking out for me and he cares, and it's just been really good.
Speaker 1:Did you try to not be anxious anymore, or did this new like talk to me about anxiety?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So initially my feelings were kind of still there. But even though I might feel this way, I think it was second time in the movie where it's like God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power, love and sound mind, and I focused on that. He didn't give me fear and he gave me a sound mind, like there's not something wrong with me, and I decided, okay, I'm gonna get in the car and I'm gonna go drive somewhere and I'm gonna just repeat this first, even though I might be feeling anxiety right now. So I like stepped out in faith and believed what he said, even though my feelings weren't agreeing yet. And then my feelings started to agree and I tell you, I have not felt that like heaviness of anxiety in a year or depression. It's just gone. I might have a thought that could be an anxious thought like oh, that's not true and I can just move on and I can go places and I can do things and just be who I used to be. Now it's just, he gave me, he took that anxiety away and gave myself back to me and it's just so much better, like I just could. I never would have imagined that it could be this way. I never would imagine that my life could be joyful like it has been, even though things aren't perfect, and that that gives me trust or faith that it's always going to be this way, because life's never gonna be perfect, but I can still have peace and still have joy regardless. It's just like amazing and one really cool thing that happened over last I think it was last summer we were at the beach and it was. This was all pretty fresh and I just had this thought come into my head, which obviously was a Holy Spirit and it's, I'm gonna, I'm gonna restore your sense of wonder. I was like what? And I and he's done that this year my sense of wonder, like my excitement for traveling and doing all these things I used to love, it's back. He has restored that to me, like he said, and it's just yeah, I have chills just because learning more and more every day about his crazy infinite love. That I just did not know before and I just want everyone to know. And I now see myself differently, like, um, there's that thing that it's like you see yourself the way you think God sees you and that's also how you see other people. That was so true, and now it's also true, but in a better way, because I know how he really sees us. So it's like I could see myself better now too, and all of that stuff is just healing.
Speaker 1:From the stuff that you were saying, that Elias was saying at the beginning. That was crazy. Do you feel like those thoughts or the what he was offering, does it sound crazy to you anymore, or does it just sound like like you can't unsee what he was saying?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that my whole world view changed that night and you can't unsee it and it it's crazy when you haven't heard it before, because it's crazy that you had been living another way, but now it's just life. Oh, it's just truth and it's like it's that's just what the bible says. It's not crazy, it's exciting. Believe what he says and see if your feelings follow, because I bet you they will. Like I was so deep into it, so like it was on my chart generalized anxiety disorder with agoraphobia, panic disorder. I had these things and all of a sudden, one night they were just gone because my belief system just changed. And, yeah, your mind is powerful and god created it that way. He wants us to believe in him and believe these things that he says about us. It'll change your life.
Speaker 1:Let's go back to this sweet girl who just wanted to be loved and wanted to love, and makes this decision and is sad about it. I don't know why that sticks out to me, because I think it's like this innocence, this sweet innocence that was lost, that you thought could, you could never get back. If you got to grab that girl and pull her aside and put your arm around her, what would you tell her?
Speaker 2:I would say god sees you as so much more valuable than you might see yourself right now, and you're not missing out on anything right here, like you're not gonna lose anything. God has something so much better for you if you just believe what he says and just take that time. Give him a chance, ask him to show you who he really is, and he will. And don't believe everything you think. Just learn to hear his voice and decipher what's true, because I think that's what that would have made the difference. You're, you have value. He says you do, and what he says matters.
Speaker 1:Hey, man, heidi, you are a blessing, a testimony, and your ministry is powerful because you're a walking miracle. When, when you saw who you were in Jesus Christ, the angels celebrated. The angels celebrated because, like I said, it didn't have to end this way. It could have ended any other way, but god, but god. And so thank you for sharing your story and for your faithfulness to his faithfulness. It's only you, it's only me waking up to your memory, your love is all I need. It's only you, it's only me waking up to your memory, your love is all I need. Me giving me life, giving me life, I feel it. Giving me life, giving me life. Oh, strength, broken by avenues, spirits out. I was blinded. Oh, see what the world has scheduled for me. I know your ways are better for me, and you are. I found rest is complete. No one else can complete. Yeah, oh, raise, I thought I wouldn't make it. Every time I lay down, you take it. Hmm. Hmm, I thought I wouldn't make it. Every time I lay down, you take it. Hmm, I feel it. Giving me life, giving me life, I feel it. I feel it. Hmm, giving me life. Give me life, give me life.