Marilyn_05

Multiple Personality Disorder. That diagnosis scared me so entirely that I wanted to run for my
life, or more accurately from my life. But despite my ominous label and the reality of my
emotional fragility, God held me tightly and walked with me through a refining fire that
completely transformed my old life from hell into a place of peace and joy.

You may wonder how someone becomes so broken that their personality fragments into distinctly
different people. For me, it was a way of coping with a very dark and painful childhood. From as
early as I can remember, I was repeatedly sexually molested by my father, grandfather and their
friends - sometimes even in groups. Incest is a dirty, ugly word. Living it is even uglier.
After those gruesome encounters, I remember talking to God. He was the only thing that made my
life bearable as a child. I really didn't know much about Him, but somehow in my innocence I
knew that He loved me and that He was my friend. I turned to Him in my times of need…over and
over and over again.

Later, at the age of nineteen I came to understand how I could have an intimate relationship with
God through His Son Jesus and I gave my heart to Christ. While my faith grew over the next fifteen
years, I did not realize that I was still dragging my emotional baggage from my past into my new
life. As a wife and later a mother, I remained stuck in clinical depression and suffered from
chronic anxiety attacks, self-loathing and social phobias as I continuously struggled to recover
from the horrific abuse of my childhood. I was desperate for God's transforming hand in my life.
God is not some kind of personal genie and faith in Christ a magic wand for all of our problems. I
had received God's gift of forgiveness and the promise of eternal life, but I did not believe that He
had anything more for me. I slowly began to realize that I was not doing my part to fully receive
and embrace all He had died to give me. I think in some ways that I was waiting for Him to bring
all the promises to me on some kind of spiritual silver platter. I simply was not cooperating and
taking responsibility for my role in our relationship. As I cried out for Him to deliver me from the
emotional oppression that was robbing me of the joy He promised, He began to teach me about
"active belief".

My anchor of hope and strength amidst my years of emotional oppression was a growing
understanding that this God who had revealed His love and strength to me as a child is also a God
of healing. This very same God, who committed Himself to me in the midst of my darkest hours, is
also the God who died for me some 2,000 years ago on a cross. His name is Jesus Christ. Just as He
carried my sins on His back, He will carry my brokenness on His back as well…if I release it to
Him. His death paid the just penalty for all my sin and it began a healing process in me from the
inside-out releasing me from my dreadful shame. I am forgiven and I have been and continue to
be transformed day by day into a new person.

But to be honest, I don't always feel like a new creation. I remember one particular day when I
was quite angry with God because He wasn't changing me quickly enough. Ignoring the fact that
He had quite a task ahead of Him, I recited back His own promise in His Word, "If anyone is in
Christ Jesus, He is a new creation; the old has gone and the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5 :17).
"Lord, I need an extreme makeover!" I demanded. "I mean from top to bottom. Please God; dig it up
and start over. I'm tired and I'm frustrated. I thought my new life in Christ would come more
quickly and not be quite so expensive. I mean it, Lord. Why do I have to pay $100 dollars an hour
for my new life in Christ? After seven years of counseling, isn't it time for my new life to come?
Why am I still in the emotional trenches of past wars? I am so sick of myself and my oppressive
emotional pain. Please God, make me over!"

You see, I feared that perhaps God's promises were for everyone else but me. Deep down I had
always believed I was unlovable. God's slow hand of deliverance in my life only seemed to
confirm this lie grounded in self-hatred. Yet, God met me in my painful lies and began to teach me
a profound truth that day. He showed me that this journey of faith is about building an incredibly
intimate partnership…a profoundly personal relationship. In it, He does the transforming, but we
do the believing. The "believing" is about taking the truths and promises from His Word and not
just believing in my head that He said these things, but rather believing in my heart that He said
them to me personally.

After I finished crying out to God, I went to my desk and reached for a pen and some index cards.
Then, I headed to my fireplace where I opened a box of matches, knelt down and began to pour my
heart out to God giving Him every piece of me. Despite my frustration that God had not yet
delivered on His promise, I was desperate for His healing touch on my heart and my mind.
"Okay Lord, You are on!" I exclaimed. "I accept Your challenge and trust You to do all the hard
work." I believed He would give me grace for the journey. Kneeling at the fireplace with pen, index
cards, and matches in hand I was ready to write down, surrender and burn anything God told me
to get out of my life.

In those moments, God began to reveal insights about my alter personalities that I had not clearly
understood before. I now saw them as extremely creative tools for surviving something no little
girl should ever have to experience. Obviously those alter egos had served me well for a season. I
was able to retain a 4.0 high school GPA, was president of my class and even selected to
participate in the state speech championship. I was also elected California Girls' State Governor.
By dissociating from my pain and the reality of my life, I had been able to maintain my secret and
in some ways, even hide it from myself. But deep down, those personalities had appetites I could
no longer appease. My creative coping had turned on me; entangling me into a life of clinical
depression, bulimia, suicidal ideations, crippling anxiety, many physical ailments, and confused
dissociations.

Now in the light of truth, I began to write the name of each personality on an index card. On the
other side, I wrote why I don't need her anymore. For instance, there was Tera. I named her Tera
because she was terrified of life…all life. Tera was also the biggest of my personalities. When I
would go into Tera, I would lose almost all sense of reality. God revealed to me I did not need Tera
to carry my fear. He reminded me of a verse in the Bible, "Perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18);
and He challenged me to lean on His living Spirit to carry my fear, just as Jesus had carried my
sins.

Then there was Joy. She was the part of me that could separate herself from an evening of
appalling abuse and happily romp on the playground the next morning. But once again, a verse
from the Bible came to mind, "The joy of the Lord is my strength". I no longer needed to
disassociate to enjoy life. Life is hard, but the joy of the Lord is now my strength!
There were many more personalities to bid goodbye. I remained at the fireplace for hours,
weeping and letting go of life-long friends. I thanked them for all they had done to help me
through. But I also acknowledged that I didn't need them anymore. I was moving on. I wanted to
be whole. I did not want to be Humpty Dumpty in a million pieces the rest of my life. I was ready
for the King to put me back together again! I no longer needed them because I had God's Spirit
within to sustain me and hold me for eternity. I was trusting in the words from Isaiah 53:4-5 with
all my heart that say, "He [Jesus] took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows…by His wounds,
we are healed." Did you catch that? We're not just forgiven. We are healed.

The healing we receive from the Holy Sprit living inside of us is not only for the forgiveness or our
own sin, but also for the deliverance from the sin done upon us which entangles us and prompts us
into more sin of our own. Shame and sin is cyclical. Sin begets shame and shame begets sin. Who
will stop this endless cycle? Jesus holds out His arms on the cross and yells out, "It is finished." As
we reach out and embrace His hand, believing in an active way that His work on the cross was not
in vain, we are healed from this degenerative life of sin. Victory over sin is a continual process
toward life-changing freedom. In Christ alone we are truly transformed!