Prior to Restore I was quiet and reserved; I preferred to keep to myself and was extremely introverted. I also struggled to get into the Word. I spent a lot of time in my nothing box (where I thought about nothing at all). I did not show emotion and would push down any emotion that would try to come out. I was taught to believe that men do not show emotion.

When I wrote my story as part of the Restore journey, I wrote it easily with no feelings coming out. Once completed, God had spoken to me that day and told me that I was going to read it first. Once I started reading my story, that is when my emotion was broken. I could not hide it or hold it in. God was working on me and showing me that he is with me and would never leave me.

Before I began Restore, I felt as though I didn’t matter. I had spent my life feeling as though I was worthless, and it affected every part of my being.

I didn’t think I was attractive. I had been overweight. When good things were coming my way, I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. This feeling came from how my parents and my ex-wife consistently treated me. I didn’t feel as though they ever listened to me or valued who I was. I felt like they only heard what I said when it was relayed to them by a third party. It wasn’t just that they didn’t listen to me though, it was also that they consistently showed me I didn’t matter

t my story and situation hasn't changed since Restore started, but I felt like God grabbed my little noggin and said "No, no. Look at it from here."

Prior to Restore, I had sin in my life’s story that I wanted to hide or wished could be erased, because it felt so distant from the person I am today. I felt fully at the mercy of my mind; compulsively running scenarios in my mind that kept me distracted on a regular basis, followed immediately by shame for not being able to focus or feeling like I couldn't control them. I constantly wondered "what ifs" until my brain would run out of alternate endings. Fantasy is a key theme of my story…

Before Restore, I walked covered in shame, anxiety, and depression. I thought that was just how I was. There was no hope or redemption for me. It was just part of me.

God felt so distant and I was mad at Him. I was even mad that I had to do Restore. I thought, “Why bother? Nothing is going to change who or how I am.”

But through Restore, God changed my view on so much.

The first one and the biggest one is my view on community. Wow, did the Lord redeem my view on a small group setting with a bunch of women!

The fall impacted how I saw and understood my life and relationships in a pessimistic way. Because I’ve experienced very heavy, intense, and difficult circumstances related to trauma, grief, and a family member’s repeated suicide attempts, this led me to have a dark outlook and perspective in life. The depression and anxiety at one point was so severe that I felt the pain was unbearable and I didn’t know if I wanted to live.

Because of my circumstances, I did not necessarily doubt that God existed—but I came to believe that though God was real, He did not hear my prayers and therefore, he did not care about me. He was distant.

I had fooled myself into believing that the castle of my heart was warm and welcoming to God, my spouse, and my chosen few. That was a fantasy I wanted myself and others to believe. In reality, I knew I had become the queen of my heavily-fortressed castle in order to protect myself from the recurring themes of mistrust, rejection, being unheard, and being controlled by men.

I had learned to appear to live relationally with my spouse, friends, and even with God, enough that few would question the authenticity. And while it was real, I knew I was holding back my most intimate self in order to protect the deepest recesses of my untrusting broken heart—because I knew I would be rejected, lied to, and broken yet again if I let the wall down.

We tried for 19 months. During this time we were a part of a thriving Christian community, but our friends were too young, and our other relationships in the church were too shallow for someone to tell us that we are indeed dealing with infertility. So we never saw a doctor. Instead, we just buried the fear that something was wrong and entrenched ourselves in what I call “the monthly hope-devastation-lament-cycle.” While struggling through this, we suffered silently and alone. 

My perspective of God was that he was sitting back with his arms crossed, waiting for me to mess up yet again, perplexed as to why I had not yet figured it all out. I felt like a game was being played with me, and I could not for the life of me figure out the rules. I sat distanced from God, always crying out to him and knowing I was broken, but choosing not to accept his love or grace. I knew He could heal me; I did not think he wanted to.

Over the past several months, through direction and accountability, God allowed my gaze to be pointed towards him, my true healer, and he began to reframe my thinking. 

I was always terrified of my story. Not just ashamed or scared, but terrified. This was because every single time that I opened up about a certain part of my story with the men in my life, it would always end with the friendship ending.

This happened over and over again for around ten years. So I just stopped sharing. I began believing that there was something seriously wrong with me and my story.

I believed that I never was the right kind of broken to be cared for or loved.

A lesson from Restore and Gospel Care that is taught is our need for community and to not be isolated. We are both less isolated and experiencing more of God’s wholeness and flourishing as we do life with others as we were made to. We are now less fixated on our own problems and struggles and God has helped us to move outward toward loving others. As he has restored our souls, he is calling us to live differently, by seeking to help others experience the same restoration through walking with Jesus.

One year later, God has brought redemption full circle in a miraculous way! In his timing and his way, he brought about this opportunity to us to help start palliative care in other countries. We had a divine appointment with a doctor who wanted to help bring palliative care to areas that do not have this kind of care, as well as bring the love of Christ to them.

I had longed to feel known, heard, loved and cared for in my affliction. I wanted to be heard. Jesus did hear my cry. I wanted my pain to be felt, Jesus the man of sorrows had felt my pain. My story had been connected with God’s story…

Prior to Gospel Care and Restore, my soul was hemorrhaging—living in a broken world had greatly damaged my soul. 

I had worked in Palliative care for about 2.5 years. Although not all palliative care is taking care of dying people, the palliative care environment I had worked in was. It was not uncommon to see a couple of deaths each day. The death of an individual of any age is exceedingly difficult to experience, but sometimes we would even get people in their 20’s and 30’s dying from different cancers. Seeing death at such a rapid rate damaged my soul. 

But on top of that, to make matters worse…

A huge part of shifting how I viewed my story was learning about God’s intention for us to experience him deeply. Rather than feeling forgotten or abandoned, I had begun to realize that in a way that may appear backwards to the outside world, God had certainly not forgotten about me. In fact, calling out this part of my story is proof that God has never and will never forsake me…

When I thought about the new heavens and new earth, I imagined that I would no longer feel sadness over the rape. I wouldn’t be tempted to seek comfort through fantasy. I wouldn’t relate to others from a place of fear.

What captivated me most from Isaiah 65:17, though, was that the former things “shall not be remembered or come into mind.” When Jesus returns, I won’t even think about the rape. I won’t remember it. I won’t even think about remembering it!

Learning about Jesus’ desire to draw near to me by His Spirit and through His Word changed the way I approached reading the Bible.

During the dark days of grief over the assault, I opened the Bible longing to understand why God had allowed this terrible thing to happen to me. I often felt like I was met with silence. Restore helped me to understand that Jesus’ offered up His presence freely to me in the midst of my suffering.

Instead of looking to the Bible for answers as to why, I began to read Scripture through the lens of comfort. All over the pages of my Bible were promises of renewal and hope.

I had always thought the goal of spiritual warfare was to persuade God’s people to do bad things. While Satan certainly is in the business of leading God’s people into sin, Restore was helping me to understand an even more perverse goal of the enemy. He is daily trying to cause me to doubt God’s love for me.

It has been his goal since the beginning. 

I felt the force of these lies during the early months of my pregnancy. I was plagued with fear about potentially losing the baby. Every twinge or ache caused panic to ripple through my body.

Why did God create me? “God made you, because he loves you and wants you to enjoy communion with him.” 

That one sentence dramatically changed the way I viewed the assault.

Prior to and during Restore, I was obsessed with God’s role in our suffering. If God was good and powerful, why hadn’t He stopped the rape? That question began to haunt me. I felt tempted to believe Satan’s whispering lies. Perhaps God wasn’t good or powerful. 

But everything changed if God created me specifically for loving communion with Him.

Pain often leaves us feeling misunderstood. Satan has a way of making us feel as if our struggles are unique.

I had experienced this whenever I shared with someone about the assault. I resented their empathy. “What do they know? They don’t know what it’s like.” My heart could be remarkably callous towards others trying to encourage me from a place of understanding. Since the people caring for me often hadn’t experienced abuse, I easily brushed off their sincere encouragement with “they don’t get it.” 

 My husband and I were hardly out of the honeymoon phase of marriage when I started to reflect about being raped as a teenager. Even now, behind the safety of a computer screen, the word “rape” makes my body tense up. Familiar emotions wash over me. “You weren’t raped. You couldn’t have been raped. That didn’t happen.” But it did. 

Community is a popular word lately--but do we really have it?

The world offers a multitude of communities: Facebook groups, clubs, and notifications in group chats that affirm that you are in, that you are connected, that you are part of something.  But are notifications and pixels real connections?

Our groups can be connected only by taste in music, or the latest film, or our opinion on sports. While those things are nice, are they enough? Can those connecting ties hold the weight of struggles with sin and suffering?