faith unfaded

(Testimonial Speech)

My world started falling apart at the beginning of 2023. My health was deteriorating and my marriage was falling apart. But we were the ones people came to for healing. We were the ones counseling other couples. We were the pastors.

I was unsure what to do about anything. Leave? Stay? Fight? Give up?

Even my car was struggling and it appeared I needed some kind of spark plug. I went to Auto Zone, determined to do it myself. The older man behind the counter with the twinkling eyes was a kindly grandpa, helping me find everything I needed.

“Can’t you just do it for me?” I’d asked as he chuckled. He told me he was from another store just helping out that morning and that wasn’t something they could do for me.

“I’m sorry but you’re going to have to do this one yourself.”

“But I don’t know how,” I’d told him.

“Read the instructions,” he’d said. “I know you’ll figure it out.”

I bought a tool kit as well and thanked him. He smiled and told me he was sure it would was going to be okay and that he believed in me.

Thirty minutes later, I realized I couldn’t even loosen the housing that held the thingamajigs. I was in completely over my head. I went to a mechanic who quickly fixed it and headed back to Auto Zone to return the unused tool kit.

“Where’s the man who helped me this morning?” Blank stares.

“You know, the man who was helping out from the other store?” The employees exchanged puzzled looks.

“Y’all, stop,” I’d insisted, certain they were pulling a prank. “He rang me up on this receipt.”

The manager took the receipt and studied it before slowly speaking. “But it’s only been the four of us here all day. Maybe it was an angel.”

A strange feeling came over me as my mind started replaying the conversation. “Read the manual.” “He believed in me.”

It wasn’t my first heavenly encounter but it was profound. It was the day I realized He still loved me. I didn’t even realize I’d thought He stopped.

I’d grown up in church, walking very closely with the Lord after a miraculous encounter at the age of 4. At 9, I made a public profession of faith and was baptized. I’d loved the Lord for as long as I could remember, even playing Duck, Duck, Goose to church hymns. “Born of His Spirit, washed in His GOOSE!”

I was a very innocent, very smart kid from a good home. We were at church at least three times a week and I had many friends. I was the leader of the neighborhood tree house club. The two worst things I did as a child was crossing the neighborhood “boundaries” my dad had set to get an Icee one day from the Fill-A-Sack and then having to LITTER to get rid of the evidence.

I also told my swim team coach when I was ten that I had to babysit my little sister until my mom- a teacher- got home from school and I would be ten minutes late to practice each day.

The truth was The Brady Bunch was on TBS and they did that weird time schedule so you wouldn’t change the channel. The Brady Bunch was on from 3:05-3:35 every day and swim team practice started at 3:30. I didn’t want to miss the end! But despite being a liar and a litterer, I was a pretty good kid.

Then came freshman year. I’d been selected as one of only two freshmen on the Debate Team. I was honored but all I really wanted was to be a cheerleader. Never mind that I had zero coordination. Or that I had glasses and braces and was a bit of a geek.

When I say I was innocent…My friend Margaret and I had been playing our favorite game at her house one day- Fisher Price People- right before we started high school when a friend unexpectedly dropped by. We shoved our Fisher Price toys in the closet (we had just gotten our houses and families like we wanted them!) and grabbed some of her mom’s nail polish and magazines and opened the door. “Oh hey, what’s up? We’re just about to do our nails…”

But now I was in high school, Margaret had moved away, and I had an IN to be the most popular girl in school! The junior and senior boys on the Debate Squad DATED cheerleaders.  Surely, they’d have some insider info. I asked them how to become a cheerleader, how I could be popular in high school. They laid out a foolproof plan…that started in the back of the Debate van on the way home from tournaments.

If those IQ tests I’d taken had measured street smarts, I’d have gotten a ZERO! My mom hadn’t even had “the talk” with me yet. I’d only had one kiss! AND I’d just had a Pac-Man party for my 13th birthday. The night I learned I was indeed “popular,”  I realized they’d tricked me. AND I WAS ANGRY!

I went home that night and threw my college catalog away. I’d been on track to be valedictorian, and I threw my dreams away with the catalog. I THOUGHT my life was over. I began drinking, which quickly led to drugs.

This began a cycle I’d repeat for years. I’d run as far and as fast as I could from God, then coming running back. I’d sober up. I’d date a “good” guy. I’d start trying to make up for all I’d done wrong.

I thought if I was good enough, I could make up for being bad.

There was never a GRAY area for me. I was either in the light, serving God, or in darkness, trying to hide from Him.

I went back and forth a lot those teen years.

I was only 19 when I got pregnant and got married. I was ready. Remember my love of the Brady Bunch? I always wanted a lot of kids, and I had them. Five in five years. Plus I got a new name with the marriage- one that wasn’t associated with being “popular” and I could finally start over. I was going to be Carol Brady or June Cleaver..the perfect wife and mother.

Only it wasn’t easy having that many kids! I got my teaching degree while taking six weeks off to have a baby each spring semester and the one baby born in the fall- on Thanksgiving Day- was born with a heart defect. I’d been worried about my turkey while I was in labor with her. She was my fourth. I knew how to do this. What I didn’t know was how to do six weeks at Ochsner’s with her while I had a 2-year old, 3-year old, and 4-year old back home wanting mommy. She died when she was six weeks old, having never come home from the hospital.

After my fifth child was born, I was starting to slide again. I’d done fairly well for six years at that point, but I was overwhelmed. And I’d gotten on pain medicine after having my tubes tied. Drugs in the medicine cabinet are no less addicting than cocaine on the street.

I was unable to manage my severe depression, though in retrospect, I think 2-3 week psych hospital stays were subconsciously my brain’s way of getting a free vacation courtesy of Blue Cross.

When I was doing good, I was very good. I’d volunteer at church, help friends, perform in community theatre, bring the kids to visit nursing homes with crafts they’d made…

But when I was doing bad…

One time I was at the theatre- I was the Arts in Education director at the time- and someone mentioned the way I’d done something, some work-life balance thing involving my kids, the show, marketing, etc..and the person she’d been talking to said rolled her eyes and said, “We can’t all be SUPERMOM.”

You think I’d have been offended, right?!

That was the best compliment ever! My kids had had a very unstable upbringing. I was either playing “Rise and Shine and give God the glory, glory” to wake them up or screaming that we were going to be late and to get their blankety-blanks in the car. I was home baking cookies and doing craft projects or disappearing for hours at a time while Ms. Thelma, my childhood nanny who was apparently STILL raising me along with my kids, would take care of them.

One day I was in a complete rage… throwing dishes at a cypress tree in the swamp behind our house screaming and crying. It was less than two hours after I’d gotten home from a PTA Meeting- where I was THE PRESIDENT!

So to be called SUPERMOM? That was high praise!

I didn’t realize it at the time but there was so much unresolved trauma stuffed inside of me. Sexual trauma at the hands of a neighbor as a young child. Again at 16. At 17, I’d been doing cocaine in a hotel with an older man I’d just met when I apparently overdosed. I woke up to him tying bricks around my ankles about to throw me in the river. When I came to, he said “Oh (bleep)- you’re alive!”

“You were going to kill me?!” I’d asked.

He just shrugged. “I was pretty sure you were already dead, and I couldn’t be caught with a cop’s kid.”

Later the devil would try even harder, using two different men to take me out, each trying to suffocate me with a pillow saying “If I can’t have you, nobody will.” You learn the recognize the devil when he uses the same words and tactics through different people.

Many attacks came while babysitting, especially overnights. One woman’s boyfriend came in my room one day and climbed on top of me while I was asleep. Fortunately, she came home while he was trying to remove my clothes. Unfortunately, her solution was to put a lock on the door where I was sleeping and pretend it never happened.

If it wasn’t stuff that had been done TO me, it was stuff I’D done that tormented my mind. I’d started having affairs during that first marriage- something I now believe was rooted in revenge. I didn’t want love. I wanted the power over men I’d lost so many times before.

I caused some damage. I have many villains in my story- but I know I played the villain in others’ stories as well.

My husband found out I was cheating- I really wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore-and filed for divorce after we’d been married 12 years.

I was divorced for about five minutes before I got married again. This time I married a preacher. Now at this point I was doing good. I was sober and serving the Lord. Surely being married to a preacher was going to change things permanently. Plus I got to change my name again- that last one was getting a little sullied.

Our marriage was built on a rocky foundation, and it was not smooth sailing at first. We moved from my Louisiana hometown to Oklahoma- something I both hated and loved- and we raised the kids.

After the last one graduated, we moved to Mississippi. I left teaching and became a children’s librarian. I was doing good- I had remained faithful and sober- but I wasn’t truly serving God. He was the fine china I’d put on the shelf. I loved Him. I admired Him. But I wasn’t pulling Him out for meals.

One day I was dusting my bedside table when I picked up my Bible to clean around it. I wrote inside, Lord help me. I only pick up my Bible when I dust. That was all He needed.

I began growing closer to Him again. I started praying and reading my Bible daily. Within six months, a door had opened for us to pastor a church on the Gulf Coast and for me to go into full-time ministry for the first time ever. I was on fire for Him!

I was in a great place spiritually. I founded a homeless ministry, taught Bible studies, ministered to alcoholics and addicts… I was still reading my Bible faithfully and praying every day. I’d even begun to make peace with the past. Satan came after me with a vengeance. I rebuked him at every turn.

Then he went after my children. And I stumbled. I tried to keep going but it was like the wind had been knocked out of me. I couldn’t find comfort in the Lord- I was too mad at Him for not protecting my babies. I was running on a tank of gas that wasn’t getting refilled. It began to sputter. I still had the same responsibilities but now I was doing it in the flesh.

Romans 7:18 says, In the flesh is no good thing…and good works- even running a church- are fruitless when done in the flesh.

I became resentful and burdened. My heart grew hard. I relished illnesses because they gave me an excuse to go to bed. We lived in the parsonage next door to our small church, and I felt like I was doing everything on top of missing every family birthday and holiday that fell on a weekend…I felt like I was sacrificing my own happiness and made myself a martyr. I was miserable and I was ready for Him to take me home.

It was actually someone else’s funeral though that brought me back to life. I was starting to spend more and more time in bed between Sundays when Ms. Ruby died. We’d gone to her funeral in a neighboring town when three different preachers stood up and paid tribute to this spitfire of a woman who’d lived a long and fruitful life serving the Lord.

I went back to the car after the funeral inspired but also chagrined. “What are they gonna say when I die?” I’d whispered to the Lord.

The answer came into my heart immediately. “Here lies Jeanni. She was once on fire for the Lord but then she got hurt so she half-hoofed it the rest of the way. Let us pray.”

I wanted more.

A month later I was lying in a hospital bed while doctors tried to figure out why my vitals were so out of whack. I’d been about to doze off when I heard the Lord as clear as day. “Do you want to live or die?”

I thought about it. I actually thought about it- like made a PRO/CON list in my head.
“Live,” I finally answered. He asked again about five minutes later.

“LIVE!” I answered immediately this time.
“Well, hold on,” He’d said.

He wasn’t exaggerating. What happened next was what I call my “tornado spun off a hurricane followed by a tsunami” year. It was also the year of the Auto Zone visit.

My marriage of 23 years did not survive the storm. I left the church in Mississippi in exile.

The Lord pulled out every broken piece of my life and made me reexamine it.

I’d forgiven the boys on the Debate Squad almost twenty years ago when my own son became a teen. One had even called me to apologize when he had teen girls. But for the first time ever, the Lord held that broken shard up to the light and I realized that they didn’t rob me of my light. I had willingly traded it in for a shot at popularity. Being a cheerleader had been more important to me than serving Christ.

Over that next year He took it all, every trauma and every trigger, and helped me process them, learning to pragmatically reshelve them in my mind.

He took my SINS and cast them as far as the east is from the west. There was no more room for shame and guilt.

He taught me how to stop the mental spirals that kept my mind tormented. He helped me learn new patterns of behavior when responding to hurt and anger.

Luke 4:18 says “He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised…”

I WAS BRUISED ALL RIGHT. I was a domestic violence victim of Satan. And the Lord set me free.

Because somewhere during that year, I realized it was never about sacrifice. I can wear the Supermom cape all day long and do a million good works, but until I learned to fully SURRENDER to Him, it’s all just works that will burn up in the fire.

I’d been afraid to give up that last little bit of control. I thought by holding onto it, I could protect myself and my loved ones. What that did was kept the Lord from being able to fully protect me. I didn’t just have to put His yoke on me; I had to remember that He was the LEAD horse.

I discovered that His plans for me far outweighed my own. When I began to delight myself in the Lord, He literally began giving me the desires of my heart.

There is NOTHING on this earth better than being able to stand fully in the light, knowing you have not one area of darkness you’re trying to hide- or justify.

I have finally learned not just how to live but how to have an abundant life. It starts with SURRENDER!