Five Years

August 5, 2003 is without a doubt the day my life changed forever.

It is hard to find words to describe my life before that point. Without going into too many details or digging up the things my Lord has cast into the depths of the ocean, my life, from preschool through my later twenties was shadowed by a cloud of spiritual, psychological, and emotional abuse. Entrapped in the isolation of a cult, my life was not my own, but controlled by a malevolent leader, who by luring my mother, claimed her children as well.

My life was a pit of depression and hopeless drudgery. God seemed a far off diety, too angry to love me, too holy to tolerate me, and too powerless to change me. I was desperate to love Him, desperate to feel His pleasure, desperate to be accepted. My marriage was hanging by the most tattered of threads. I felt my entire world torn between what I had been told was right, and what I knew in my heart was right.

I prayed for guidance, and for the first time, believe that God could lead me Himself. I felt my life was at a crisis point: I loved two people in this world most of all, and I knew that in the end, I would lose one of them. And though in some ways, my heart was broken that day, the rest of my life began a miraculous healing.

I see myself in the backseat of a taxi driving to the airport in Montreal, praying for a miracle, praying I hadn't just sold my soul. I remember calling my husband, whom I had been separated from for months, and tell him that I was coming home.

And I remember waking up the next day, and feeling the release of that the burden that I had put on every day for as long as I could remember. A freedom that I can only liken to being set free unexpectedly from prison.

Since then, my life has seemed a dream. The Lord lifted me out of a slimy pit and has given me a firm place to stand. (Psalm 40:2) I have a restored marriage, restored relationships with my father and sister, a new life in the place of my childhood, and three little miracles I call my kids.

During the summer of 2003, the Lord ministered to me with many hymns. They were my lifeblood, the sustenance to which I clinged to for breath at times. Ever since I was set free, every time I am in worship, my eyes often overflow. At the beginning, I feared that I would eventually dull to the miracle done in for me and my tears would cease due to indifference. But I am so thankful that five years later, my eyes still mist when I think of what my God has done for me.

Among my favorite hymns was "Come Thou Fount". Every time I hear it, I think of it as God's special love song for me.

Come thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing thy grace
Streams of mercy never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above
I'll praise the mount I'm fixed upon it
Mount of thy redeeming love

Here I raise my Ebenezer
Hither by thy help I come
And I hope by thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wondering from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood

O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above