My 12 Steps Closer to God

By Destiny A Woman of Faith

This is a true story of a woman who overcame depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and codependency with the help of God. Her journey started the day she decided she would take her own life. She encountered real-life struggles that included a bitter divorce with a narcissist and the loss of everything she had ever known, including herself. With God's love, grace and mercy, He brought her out of darkness, then saved and healed her. With the power of the Trinity, she started a new life, found herself, God's calling and purpose. She was given a story, and the Lord asked her to share it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644161661

Book preview

How Did I Get Here?

Istood on a frozen lake in Alaska burning sheets of paper; smoke and ashes were flying around me. Before the sunrise, the lake was where I went to bury my past. Getting to the point of letting everything go took over forty years. Written on the papers were hurts and damages from a toxic marriage and childhood abuse. To heal, the toxins and memories from my emotionally and mentally abusive relationships had to be released.

Toxic was the word therapists and psychiatrists used to describe my life; it needed detoxification.

Twenty years of my existence with a narcissist nearly brought me to hell. After over three years of divorce battles, the papers were finally signed. That’s it, all done, free at last, free at last! Someone unlocked the gilded cage; I can fly, yay!

Yeah, right, not so fast.

Wait, what’s happening? Seriously? The emotional roller-coaster does not stop after the ink dried.

How did I go from soccer mom to a carefree woman who would battle a bear in the middle of the wilderness?

This is my story.

Prince Charming rescued the young princess at nineteen. When he could not mold her into the queen he wanted, he discarded her, then God came to her rescue. She slew some dragons, eventually became the queen He intended her to be, and built her own kingdom.

My journey of recovery and discovery started two years earlier at a shopping center parking lot. It was another day of retail therapy, except, as I was standing at the aisle, my mind went blank. Leaving empty-handed is very rare; something was wrong.

After I left, I sat in my car and wrote suicide notes in my head. Hmmm . . . who would get a note and what would it say? Some letters would be funny and lighthearted: Well, you know, heaven won’t be boring once I’m there. The worst was the serious letters: I’m sorry, I ran away so many times. I didn’t realize it was a coping mechanism developed from childhood trauma.

I smacked my head on the headrest and contemplated how to commit the act. Would it be peaceful by taking sleeping pills, or shocking like hanging myself from the ceiling of the beach house? Maybe a bullet to the head with one of his hunting guns, quick and dirty? Nah, better not be messy with a weapon; my aim is horrible. My friend took me to a shooting range; everyone’s target got my bullets but mine. Then the thought of being a cripple and having my children take care of me ruled it out.

The frustrating part of writing suicide notes in my head was when overprocessing kicked in. Did I get everyone? What if I forgot a letter to my childhood friend? Or what if I forgot someone who loves and cares about me, like my siblings?

The image of people at my funeral flashed before my eyes. They were asking each other, Did you get a note? What does your note say? Thinking about people feeling rejected made me even more depressed.

Well, no one would get a note, except to one person; it would be to the man I spent half of my life loving. He tore my soul to a million pieces; the note would scorch him. Those were my thought before the truth was revealed. Later, I learned that my death was what he was hoping.

Then a voice came over me, but the radio was off. It was loud and clear. He said, That’s it. Are you going to let him win? Are you not going to let Me fix you and heal you? Silenced, I looked around; there was no one near me. No one was in the parking lot. It was the first time I heard God’s voice so clearly. The thought of harming myself left my mind, and tears came from nowhere; they would not stop falling.

If I did not change, my eternity would be spent with the devil.

The divorce papers were being processed. For sanity, my home was my friend’s basement. During the separation, I lived like a nomad. Two years of my life were spent living out of a suitcase. My family did not need to uproot, because they had their comfortable home.

The husband and children’s lives remained intact, while I spent years trying to reestablish alone. Negotiating whether or not the girls could live with me was fruitless. The husband wanted us to share space. His idea was, we would go back and forth to the marital home, and the kids would stay put. He wanted to take turns staying at an apartment. No way. I don’t want to come back to a shared apartment with my ex to find naughty clothes left by one of his lovers.

To deal with life, a psychiatrist prescribed me four different pills; they were for depression and anxiety. The most potent medication I took before was aspirin. My body was not used to drugs; my cocktail was four colorful pills. The medication brought me up, brought me down, to be somewhat in the middle. Instead, it made me crazier; my mind was already crazy. Twice, I was hospitalized while on drugs; I lost my shit completely.

The psychiatrist told me the marriage was driving me insane and I was barking up the wrong tree. He said, If you do not leave, you will kill yourself. Did a doctor really say that? Yes, he did. He cut off my prescriptions, ironically retired, shut down his practice, and weeks later, moved. He did not bother to leave me a forwarding address.

That night, the rest of the medication went down the toilet; healing was going to be done without a crutch.

The husband wanted me dead. When I told him about my suicidal thoughts, which were out of control, he said, Stop talking about it and do it already. He was tired of hearing me talk about death.

My pastor, seeing that time was running out, recommended a Christian therapist. She would be my sixth therapist. Feeling hopeless, three times that week, I went to her practice called Hope. She knew I was knocking on death’s door trying to get in. When I showed up, she saw the walking dead. Not only was my mind and body broken, so was my spirit and relationship with God. I was not sure if it was irreparable like my marriage. Maybe, once it’s wrecked, it can never be restored. My therapist assured me that with God, everyone is reparable.

She guided me toward the first step to my journey with God.

It was several sessions in when I learned about the Holy Spirit. He has been with me my entire life. Two weeks later, it was His voice I heard in my car.

Before this experience, I was a fair-weather friend to God. You know, the kind of friend you did not hear from when things were good. When things were bad, you got the call at 2 AM. They talked about all the horrible things that happened. When they hung up, they felt better, but you felt worst. Yeah, that kind of friend.

The Holy Spirit was a mystery to me until I read The Spirit-Filled Life by Charles F. Stanley. After reading the book, I knew that He felt my pain, heard my cries, was with me in the car, and was there to save me.

John 14: 16, I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, that He may be with you forever.

My life was blessed. God granted me many miracles. The Lord showed me a lot of grace and mercy, but not enough of my time was spent praising Him.

Well, all that was about to change.

Several therapists told me that I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), from childhood trauma and the toxic marriage. Though I never fought in a war, a poisonous relationship, going through a nasty divorce, mixed with having an abusive childhood, my life was a battlefield.

All the poisons in my world surfaced. I had to finally face it. There were moments it was hard to breathe. My mind did not want to accept reality. My world was crumbling. It was happening. I thought I was breaking, only to realize that I was beyond broken. My life looked like a vase dropped down two hundred flights of stairs onto the concrete sidewalk…shattered.

During my therapy sessions, the truth about the marriage came out. It was a textbook codependent and narcissist relationship. Ten years of marriage counseling and four marriage counselors finally made sense.

Because I’m a nerd, I read several books on the subject of narcissism. My time was spent scouring the internet for information. To self-diagnose, I took several tests to check myself for narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). My results came back; I’m clear. Someone with that condition cannot change; they change you.

There were many questions that needed to be answered: Why did I choose him? Why did he choose me? How do I get out alive? Was I crazy or was he crazy? Should I fight crazy with crazy?

The information gathered helped me get armed for the upcoming divorce.

Everyone has some narcissism in them; it’s how we survive and take care of ourselves. Full-blown narcissistic personality disorder is different. When someone thinks he or she is God the Creator, ummm, red flag. Red, neon, flashing Vegas lights sign. Abort! Abort!

To summarize, these are the most common traits I chose to describe narcissistic personality disorder (NPD):

Ability to take advantage of others to achieve their goal, without regret or conscience.

A lack of empathy or ability to understand other people’s feelings.

They expect others to go along and agree to what they want; they need admiration of others.

After trying for two years with the collaborative divorce, my hope of having a fair divorce with a narcissist vanished. Dealing with him was similar to calming a toddler who threw temper tantrums at the grocery store. No matter what was offered, he would not stop screaming.

At our first powwow, my attorney walked into the room with horn-rimmed glasses, red lipstick, and a cocktail dress. Everyone seemed laid-back and easygoing. The lawyers wanted us to get along and play nicely in the sandbox.

The husband would not agree on the living arrangements. After four hours of negotiations and ready to gouge my eyes out, my hands flew up in the air: Stop. I will move. I will do whatever. This is exhausting.

Three months of my life was spent sleeping in my friend’s guest room, on their kid’s bunk beds, and in my parents’ spare bedroom. My bed was at wherever and to whoever offered me a place to sleep. The rental property we owned was not vacant, and being alone frightened me.

When the husband could not agree on the value of the business or the finances, we hired a financial neutral. We were all looking at the assets sheet like it was an elephant. How do we cut it up? The complexity of the Excel spreadsheet would give an accountant a migraine; everything was tangled. The list was so twisted, it looked like a ball of yarn the cat attacked; we had no idea where the starting point was.

The husband did not agree on custody, so we hired a child specialist. The goal was to do what is best for the children. In theory, it sounded reasonable. He did not agree that the girls needed their mother; he convinced himself he was mom and dad.

The collaborative works well for many divorces. It is about compromise, try not to burn down the house in the process. In this case, it turned into a three-ring circus.

At one point, I thought maybe the husband was dragging his feet because he did not want a divorce. Perhaps, he still loved me. So we briefly hit pause. In reality, he dragged his feet because he knew it was not about love; it was about the almighty dollar. He loves money. He was hanging on tight to his pocketbook; I was clinging on to him.

When it was time to pull the trigger on the twitching marriage, it was done the good old-fashioned way— I hired a pit bull lawyer and filed divorce papers. My lawyer was barely five feet tall, and her bite was way harder than her bark. Before hiring her, I asked one question: Do you have faith? She said, Yes. Why? Then I told her about the two unsuccessful years of divorce proceedings. She told me, she not only protected her clients against narcissists, but represented them. Because of her experience, she knew who we were up