Why Me?: A Personal Story of Lessons, Pain, Grief, Heartache, Faith, Perseverance, and God's Unfailing Love, Grace, and Mercy

By Lisa Golden

When life has beaten you into hopelessness, when your spirits are crushed, God still has a plan for you; do not give up! It's in the dark and in the dirt where growth begins. Transition into your transformation!

Have you ever found yourself asking, "Why me?" Lisa Golden has. Why Me? is a personal story about the lessons

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685565336

Lisa Golden

LISA GOLDEN is a follower of Christ and mother to three amazing children. Lisa was born in Washington, DC, and lives in the Virginia area. She studied at Regent University and is an author, poet, social-media content creator and sharer, public servant. Having worked in the information technology arena for over twenty years, Lisa serves in a senior leadership role at her place of employment. She is proud to be a Christian author with the TBN/Trilogy family.

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Why

Me?

A Personal Story of Lessons, Pain, Grief, Heartache, Faith,

Perseverance, and God’s Unfailing Love, Grace, and Mercy

Lisa Golden

Why Me?

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2022 by Lisa Golden

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without written permission from the author. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780.

Trilogy Christian Publishing/TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-68556-532-9

E-ISBN: 978-1-68556-533-6

Dedication

God, I thank You, honor You, and love You!

This book is in loving memory of my mom. I love you with my whole heart!

I miss you so much and thank you for being my friend, my rock, my giving tree. You are my number one, Mom! Thank you for loving me so selflessly and always believing in me. You were right to say that God saved me through you on multiple occasions. Amen.

Acknowledgments

To my three children: Shawn, Masiah, and Ari. Mommy loves you always; you are God’s greatest gift to me, aside from life itself. Keep faith in the Lord all the days of your life.

To my dad and his wife, Susie. Thank you for your help during our most difficult time. Mom would be grateful, and so am I.

To my brother: Mom loved you so much. God loves you, and so do I. I’m praying over you.

To Franell: thank you for being my constant in supplying me with daily devotionals. How blessed I am that each morning you spend with God, you think of me. God bless you. Love you, Sis!

To Jahaira: thank you for your help, my friend, and for checking in on me on some of the challenging days. Love you. God bless.

To the many pastors who are leading and helping so many get to know our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ: thank you! To my pastor, Steven Furtick: if only you knew how God used you in my time of devastation and grief. It really was Just the Two of Us; thank you for that sermon. Love you, Elevation Church family!

To Trent Shelton: we don’t personally know one another, but your messages of encouragement helped me on some very low days. The engagement on social media was a bonus add-on for sure. I realized that we had much in common, and you gave me hope in my grief; thank you! God bless.

To everyone who showed up on October 5, 2020: I thank you. God bless you always.

To the few who God assigned to walk with me in the wilderness: I thank you.

To my TBN/Trilogy family: this is an honor; thank you for the opportunity to work and grow with you!

I love and thank you all!

With gratitude,

Lisa

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One: 2020

Chapter Two: When We Were Children

Chapter Three: Anxiety and Fear

Chapter Four: Thorns

Chapter Five: Love

Chapter Six: Rest

Chapter Seven: Everyone Can’t Go Where You’re Going

Chapter Eight: The Weight of Being Entrusted

Chapter Nine: The God Who Will Supply All Your Needs

Chapter Ten: Separation and Healing

Chapter Eleven: Being Groomed for Abuse

Chapter Twelve: Strength to Hold on, Strength to Let Go

Chapter Thirteen: Why Me?

Postscript

Bibliography

About the Author

Chapter One

2020

Year of the Wilderness

Today is October 6, 2021; it’s been a year since my mom passed away on October 5, 2020. I miss her so much! This has been a season of great loss, grief, pain, anger, pruning, and transition. Each day is a day that I step into what’s ahead, what God has planned for me, but here I am, constantly reliving the nightmares of yesterdays that have come and gone, all of which are intertwined with the troubles of the present day; it’s an unshakable pain and frustration that I feel over what cannot be changed. I’ve been unable to free myself from the unbearable pain that comes in waves, waves of all different sizes. There’s no forecasting when the waves of sorrow will hit and no measure for how great the pain felt will be from one moment to the next. A year ago, life as I’d come to know it would be forever changed. Changed in ways I did not anticipate, could ever expect, or imagine! I was not expecting my mom to die. It was an unforeseen heartbreak, one that continues to pain me but one that has kept me close to God.

My oldest son, my firstborn child, would be brutally attacked around the same exact time, a week and a half after my mother was intubated and transferred to ICU; in fact, my son was at another hospital, also in ICU. After forty-eight hours of his being monitored in ICU, I received a call from the hospital, letting me know that he would need to be transferred to another hospital here in Virginia to have emergency brain surgery. They needed to remove the fractured pieces of his skull and stop the bleeding in his brain; he ended up having a hematoma of the brain. He would end up suffering from what they call a traumatic brain injury (TBI).

I remember the night I received a text message about his being in a fight and in the hospital, but it was more than just a fight: it was an attack on my son’s life, and by God’s grace and mercy, he’s still alive, but nothing has been or will ever be the same for us. He was two classes away from graduating, a senior in high school, class of 2020. We had already picked up his cap and gown; I was so proud of him, yet we wouldn’t go on to celebrate his graduation: we’d be celebrating the fact he was still alive instead. I had just come from visiting my mom in ICU when I got the text that he was in the hospital; I was standing in a parking lot, meeting a friend of mine, and all I can remember thinking was absolutely nothing. I was numb.

When I got to the hospital, I would see a police officer who minimized my son’s attack as being just a fight. When the doors opened, there was my child, lying there with a neck brace on and multiple injuries to his body. This would turn out to be one of the most devastating experiences of our life! First my mom, now my child! I remember the day I waited for him to arrive at the hospital they were transferring him to for the surgery, sitting right outside of the ICU doors by myself, quietly and patiently waiting, my heart heavy, and feeling like I couldn’t breathe from the crushing I felt on the inside. It was as if I had just been hit in the stomach and had the breath knocked out of me. No one was there; it was empty; the silence was loud, and I wanted to scream, How is this happening right now? What is happening right now? Why is this all happening at the same time, right now? A bundled pain would become a part of my life’s subscription, and I didn’t subscribe to that!

The day my mom was buried, amidst all the heartache that I already carried, including the situation with my son, would evolve into a deeper heartbreak as God began pruning off from my life. The friends who I thought I had, the relationship I had been in for a year’s time would all end abruptly, and I’d end up taking this journey with God and God alone. The man I had been in a relationship with, spent so much time on, and poured into, the one who would sit with my son and me in ICU after his surgery, the first person who I called when my mom transitioned, one of the pallbearers at her funeral, would simply walk away from our relationship, blaming me for his decision, only to come back weeks later after disclosing that he attempted to date someone else. Really? The relationship kept me in cycles of emotional narcissistic abuse and triangulation with others he was associated with during my time of grief; I allowed this to go on for a year.

While it may seem that was the least of my troubles or should have been the least of my concerns, it was one that was connected to my grief in such a way that it would magnify my sufferings and cause a lot of additional pain, problems, and heartache in my life. The relationship was intertwined with the worst time of my life, and there was no separating one event from the other. The person who I cared for did not care for me; he didn’t care at all about how his actions were affecting my heart or my emotional well-being, but selfish, self-centered people who haven’t hit the worst times of their lives yet seldomly do. This relationship aroused my anger, caused me to sin, and really made me take a hard look at my life and who I allowed to be in it.

The relationship with this person became a nuisance and would become an embarrassment in my professional life as well. An agency that I had already been having challenges with would be notified of our personal issues. This is where I draw the line.

The last thing I needed in my life was to have an embarrassing personal situation show up in my career. A place where empathy and sympathy for the worst time of my life lacked, a place where I had felt disheartened, frustrated, and disappointed, to say the least. Regardless of how I felt and what I’d endured, I needed to be accountable for this situation. I am responsible for who I allow in my life. I am also responsible for safeguarding parts of me that no one should have access to. I am responsible for who I trust; I left myself wide open for the enemy’s attack, but God vindicated me. It was a lesson learned.

That said, the enemy was strategic about using that relationship to entrap me, and I almost lost myself, having a soul tie with this person, but God! This is why that relationship would become an important part of this testimony. I would like to add that I forgive that person and that I learned some very valuable lessons from that relationship and how important it is that we guard our hearts, pay attention to who has access to us, and who has access to the people who have access to us as well because who people associate with are equally as important—this I learned the hard way. I’ll go into it further but would also like to mention that forgiveness