Freddie

Life, to me, feels like one big ocean. One day we’re tossed in, alone for the most part, and expected to keep our head above water – yet no one has clear instructions how to do so. Our parents are supposed to teach us the basics but when your mother is a Meth addict, who’s barely treading water herself, you learn to grab a hold of anything that’ll keep you afloat.

Without my mother available to guide my strokes, I was left to my father and two brothers. Before long I began looking for the intimacy my heart was starved of in the arms (and bodies) of others. In them I’d hoped I’d find a life-preserver I could cling to when the ocean’s waves got too turbulent but every single time I’d grab hold of someone new I found they, too, were unstable and sinking just as fast.

After three years of struggling just to breathe, I moved from Montana to Arizona at the invitation of my older brother. It was here that I heard about the God who’d been searching for me and for the first time I broke the surface. I accepted Christ as life-saver and it was then that my ocean’s waves stopped being merely choppy and became a merciless hurricane.

Winter found me pregnant as the gale-force winds of the storm battled against the love of my Savior. I wrestled the tide alone but after eighteen years I couldn't hold myself above water any longer. On December 24th, 2005, I had an abortion.

Three years passed as I let myself drown and each swell in the current hurled me farther and farther away from security. Another pregnancy, a miscarriage, a suicide attempt by overdose, two STD's from different guys... each pull of the tide was relentless in its violence. I thought that in giving in I would find peace but the desire to live was too strong even amidst such a beating. With each breath I deprived myself of the cry from my soul grew louder. Trying to keep my own head above the surface had proved futile yet I discovered that succumbing to the ebb and flow of the sea was far more painful than fighting it. I was dying for Life but began to realize I wasn’t capable of sustaining it if all I had to rely on was my own strength.

It was then I remembered the life-preserver I’d accepted – and then ignored – all those years ago. I’d been struggling to fill myself; to satisfy myself; to save myself. But it was never enough. Through it all, though, salvation was calling; over the roar of the wind and the crashing of the waves, it asked why I was turning from the only One who could rescue me. This time when I surrendered, it wasn’t to myself and it wasn’t to the deep – it was to my Savior.

As my heart has healed, it's grown. I've found a passion for the God that loves me recklessly blossoming more and more each day and I've decided that Christ didn’t kinda die for me, so I wasn’t going to kinda live for Him. He gave me everything and I want to give it all back.

I know what it’s like to drown in the ocean of life. And now I know what it’s like to breathe.



(This is the true story of a friend, written for Central Christian Church and it's with her permission that I post it here. Stories like hers should be shouted from the rooftops. Our God truly is incredible.)