My Testimony

This is my story,

this is my song.

Praising my Savior,

all the day long.

Welcome to the place I am about to share. I am about to share my story with you. Know a couple things, some things written about here are very sensitive and could be triggering. If you want to talk to me about anything written, feel free to but know if it’s something I’m not ready to talk about, I’m not going to talk about it and I will tell you that. Some of this stuff may be upsetting to those who know me but don’t know everything about my life. If that is you, know that I was never hiding anything from you, some of this is really hard to talk about for me even years after its happened. I am not trying to hide a part of me from me, I have changed a lot in the last 10 years. More like 6 months. The past 6 months have been very challenging and I will talk a little about that too. Know that while I am sharing this, I am in a good space. I am not acting on bad habits and am currently pretty happy and joyful and I owe that all to the Lord. I am still who I am. I am still the same Madison. I am more like who I truly am and want to be right now in my life than I have ever been and that’s a God thing.

Thank you to the people who have supported me through thick and thin. Thank you for loving me unconditionally even when I was far from myself and far from who God made me to be. Thank you for loving the broken me but also loving the whole me. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you to those who are still here for me. And thank you to those who were in my life for a season but are not presently in my life.

Without further ado, here we go.

I was born February 14th, 2000 in Kingman Arizona (I bet a lot of you thought I was born in California. I was not. I moved there when I was months old though.) My dad was a marine. He was away on a ship when I was born. He missed a lot of my life but I am very grateful he is a bigger part of my life now.

I grew up in California and I miss it all the time. I lived in Oceanside which is like 45 minutes from San Diego. It was beautiful. I made amazing friends, some I still talk to today like the one I will hopefully be seeing in August. My life was as normal as a marine brats life could be. My dad served a couple of tours in Iraq when I was younger so he missed some of my life. We always got by without him but there was always a piece missing.

I have an older brother. He has asbergers and intermittent explosive disorder. This has lead to some trauma in my life from the episodes he would have where he would get very violent. I still remember a lot of what happened when I was around when he’d have episodes and I remember a lot of what he said, especially the not nice things. This makes my relationship with him complicated because life with him even now is not easy and if I’m being really honest, I don’t really want anything to do with him.

So I dealt with my brother. I dealt with a neighbor too. At the age of 7, I started being molested by a neighbor. This lasted until I was 9. I was able to finally say no and he listen. Soon after his family moved away and I no longer dealt with it. I struggle a lot with this still. It’s a part of me that has never healed and hopefully will eventually be healed and I’ll stop having such vivd memories of this. I did not remember this even happened until I was 16 because I repressed it. Just an FYI, repressed memories coming up is not fun at all. It truly sucks and I deal with it constantly. This event is something that I believe has caused my issue with physical touch and why I can only have it from certain people who are safe in my brain.

When I was 10, we moved from California to Indiana. This was a really hard transition in my life. New school, new home, being around new family for the first time. I thought it was going to be good. I was never bullied at my school in California so I didn’t know what bullying was. This is when I first experienced it. This is when depression and anxiety came into my life.

During this time, my aunt took me to her church. This is where I first really learned about God. I met amazing people here. People who impacted my life a lot. People who didn’t know I was struggling but was still there for me.

When I started school, I could immediately tell I was different. I talked different. I dressed different. I acted different. Everyone had their friends and not a lot of people talked to me. I made “friends” but it never lasted. This is when the bullying started. I wasn’t as quiet as I was now. I tried to actually talk to people. I tried to make friends. But it just didn’t work. I had a friend named Tyler but that became a lot of drama in middle school.

Middle school. Some of the worst years of my life. I did make a couple friends here and only one lasted when I moved to center grove. We still talk every once in a while. This is when a lot of my issues began. I started pulling my hair out to cope with what I didn’t know then was anxiety. I learned that when was injured, I got special attention so I tried to intentionally injure myself. I bruised myself a lot. I didn’t really have friends. I was alone in my room a lot of the time. My love for music started when I was in 3rd grade starting with Taylor Swift and Queen. The older I got, the more I relied on music and crafting. They were my only healthy coping mechanisms.

This is when I started getting really angry at God. I was told that He was good. But this? This did not feel good. I was going to church partly to see my aunt and uncle and partly to see the youth pastor and some of the youth leaders there. They made me feel safe. They made me feel included. They made me feel loved.

I did not have a good relationship with my mom. I hid all of my issues. I didn’t let her know I was struggling with anything until I was 15 or 16. I know by the pictures it seemed like I did, but I put up a front with her and had the real struggling side of me come out when I was alone. I was really good at acting like I was fine so she had no clue about anything.

The summer before 8th grade is when all heck broke loose. I started cutting. I stopped eating or if I ate I was purging. By the start of my 8th grade year though I was able to get it under control or so I thought.

8th grade was one of the hardest years. Not only did I move, but that’s when my tourettes started getting more and more prevalent. I was getting bullied at martinsville. Then I moved to center grove. I definitely did not fit in there at all. And I still don’t fit in. I got bullied in center grove too. About half way through my 8th grade year, I started self harming again and skipping meals here and there.

The current youth pastor at the church I was going to left the church and that’s when I stopped going. I no longer had my safe people, I lived farther away. Why should I keep going to a place that the only reason I went was no longer there? So I left. I stopped thinking about God or if I did think about Him, I got angry. Why would He let me go through so much stuff.

The beginning of my 8th grade year is when I fell in love with Demi Lovato. I became obsessed. I knew everything about her. I could relate to her with her struggles. She became an inspiration and her music became a clutch to me. It was one way I felt like I was being heard and understood.

By the middle to end of my 8th grade year, I no longer wanted to live. I was self harming everyday. I was at my heaviest weight of that time at around 200 Lbs. I struggled a lot with my self image. I still to this day have an unstable self image. Some days are better than others.

In my 8th grade year, I was going to physical therapy. My physical therapist went to a church called Emmanuel and they had a middle school group. I heard of a few of the people who I thought were friends going there. They just found more reason to make fun of me because of my tics and the way I talked. They thought I was faking it. Like everyone else at my school. I went for a while. I started to kinda see God through another light but was very hesitant on what to believe because after what I was going through, how could God be good?

I met a leader here. This leader helped me a lot. She would sit and talk with me while other people would not talk to me. I was very quiet by this time so I stopped trying to talk to people. And only really talked to people if they came to me. Even then it was usually very short and brief because my anxiety was unbearable. I then hit high school, I was no longer supposed to go to the middle school group but go to the high school group. I think I went once before it got to be too much.

This is when it got bad. This summer is the summer I tried to commit suicide multiple times. Obviously none of them succeed and my parents still do not know about this. I never told my mom because I was scared of what she would say. No one knew how bad I was struggling. I was staying up until 3, 4, 5, 6 in the morning. Sleeping until 11. And doing it all over again. Barely eating anything. I went from almost 200 pounds to 160 these months.

I made a community on a messaging app called kik. I had friends that I could talk to. Friends who understood what I was going through and I understood what they were going through.

One night, I was going to commit. And I believe this is the night that I would’ve succeeded because this is the night God saved me. I was listening to music at probably midnight that day and it was a pop music station. Next thing I know a not very pop song came on. The song is called The Last Night. It is a song by my now favorite band Skillet. This song stopped me and made me realize something. This song almost described perfectly my life. Self harm, parents I couldn’t talk to or would blame me for things or tell me to pick my battles because of my brother, wanting it to be the last night of my life.

I stopped and listened to this song. Some of the lyrics are “this is the last night you’ll spend alone. I’ll wrap you in my arms and I won’t let go. I’m everything you need me to be.” “the night is so long when everything’s wrong. If you give me your hand, I will help you hold on.” And “This is the last night you’ll spend alone, look me in the eyes so I know you know I’m everywhere you want me to be.” These lyrics hit me and I couldn’t stop crying. I looked up Skillet and learned they were a christian band.

That’s when I realized something. I didn’t want my life to end. I just wanted the pain to end. I had a bible that I got because of going to church and needing a bible and opened to a random page. The page was opened on Psalm 23. I looked at it and found this verse. “Even when I walk through the darkest of valleys, I will not be afraid for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.” This is psalms 23:4. This I say life verse now. The verse I always hold onto. It was in that moment I decided that God was real. The next Sunday I went to the high school youth group. I met so many amazing people that day. That’s the day I truly accepted Christ

A couple weeks later, I was invited to a sleepover, cookout for 4th of July. It was so much fun and I started creating really good relationships. These relationships lasted years until they all graduated by my junior year. They were really good friends and I sometimes talk to one or two of them every once in a while. My freshman year of high school was hard. I got 6 months clean from self harm this year for the first time since I had started cutting. I had bruised myself less still dealing with it when an injury would pop up because I would try to make it worse. I had amazing friends who I felt I could trust. I was meeting amazing people at my church. I was still depressed but I was managing. I was still dealing with disordered eating though.

My freshman year summer was the year I went to my first real camp. It was down in Georgia. This is when very important people entered my life. When I went to camp, one of the youth leaders came with. One of the youth leaders was working at woodlands (the camp we went too) that year. I was gonna avoid names so I will use letters. S was the leader who came down and A is the leader who was working at woodlands. I had my first panic attack here. I didn’t know what was happening when it happened but figured it out because my anxiety was out of control with the amount of people and sitting in the middle of a row.

I had talked to A a little bit before this day. I remember hanging out with another leader and a friend to get her a journal for camp. So I knew of her but honestly couldn’t remember who she was. I immediately got drawn to her. I remember it was like the first full day of camp and we had to do a swim test if we wanted to get in the water and so I did that then saw her sitting on the deck and I went and we talked for the rest of this time. I shared a lot about myself. One thing that came up was my anxiety and she said I could sit with her and S and the other leaders during the services if it would lessen my anxiety. I truly appreciated that.

Camp was rough because we were not allowed to have our phones, I think I literally cried because I was so attached to my phone and music. I have a lot of issues with not liking a lot of foods so that was a battle because I didn’t think to bring any food so I did go some time without eating there and that caused tension between me and my camp counselor. I know she was just watching out but one morning it did not come off very well and it was not good.

I became really close to S too. I would spend the time I wasn’t with A with S. I felt safe with both of them. This is when one of the things from BPD really showed because it deemed both of them “favorite people.” (if you want to learn about this, look up favorite person on The Mighty and good articles should pop up.) This would later cause a lot of issues, if you read up on it, you’ll understand why.

When we left camp, I was kinda close to some of the girls but mostly with S and A. A stayed at the camp for 2-3 more weeks because of the last camps and other stuff she needed to do there but S obviously came back with us. Knowing them really helped me through a lot of things. They were there for me through a lot.

My sophomore year is when my tics started getting worse. I had been diagnosed with tourettes 2 years before. My tics would get worse with anxiety and my anxiety was running rampant. I have both generalized and social anxiety so school was a mess. Too many people and too many things to be anxious about. This was the year bullying was the worst in high school. The person was with her friends in my geometry class and they would always make snide comments about my tics.

By this time, I talked like someone from Indiana usually does, so no one really said anything about the way I talked. But it was also the way I looked. But my tics were the biggest thing in high school. In middle school, it was more appearance.

My 16th birthday is the last day I purged. It’s pretty easy to remember that date. By then, I weighed 127 lbs. I was finally starting to be happy with my body. Kinda at least. I made that decision that day to no longer purge because it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth the fight. The fight kept beating me. It was my turn to claim my life. I was almost a year clean from self harm at this time. Yes I was still battling depression but it wasn’t the worst but wasn’t the best.

When I made that decision, it’s obvious that my brain wasn’t happy. Purging gave me a sense of control in a way and I didn’t know life without it. I only remembered life with that and skipping meals. Why would I want to live any other way? Because Jesus would want me too.

This is when I found bible journaling. This is when I fell in love with reading my bible because I could do it my way. I could do it with creativity, which was one of my coping mechanisms I used. This is when my faith came to life. This is when I truly started living. The more I learned about God, the more I fell in love with Him and the more I learned how to be like Him and what He had to say about me. He calls me worthy, chosen, beautiful, a masterpiece, and wonderfully made. He made me the way I was supposed to be so I needed to learn to accept that.

I had been on meds for my tourettes for about a year now. A lot of different meds to try and help. My tics were getting out of control. It was not a good time. This is when I was put on the med that I felt like ruined my life. If you’ve read this far, you have probably figured out that I struggles a lot with my appearance but specifically my weight. The next 2 meds I was put on made me gain weight and it felt like my world was ending. Goodbye to my perfectish looking body and now I was living in a body I tried so hard to get away from.

I went to camp the end of this school year. We went to the crossings in Baghdad Kentucky (imagine your dad fighting in Iraq and your going to a city with the same name. He was not amused). A little before camp is when those repressed memories came back. I started to have more panic attacks especially around people because I didn’t feel safe. I was having nightmares and memories just pop up out of the blue. Only 1 person knew about this and that was my best friend. But after listening to one of the talks at camp, I decided to tell an adult. I decided to tell A.

A listened to me. She prayed with me and even now she still is there for me when it gets rough. That day I felt relief. Relief because this big weight was off my chest because I was no longer hiding something that really was impacting my life.

My panic attacks didn’t stop, they started getting worse, but especially when I was at church. I would not be able to sit in service all the time. Especially when they changed the format. I couldn’t be around a lot of people. Any little thing could set them off. Panic attacks are very sucky feelings. You know you are not dying but in that moment it feels like you are. You can’t breathe. You can’t think. All you can do is panic and sometimes you don’t even know why.

I found comfort in people like A and S. This is the year I told my mom I had anxiety and depression. I was finally able to talk about it in the therapy I was doing in between trying to do CBIT. Once again I felt a relief come off my shoulders.

My depression and anxiety lingered. Some days it was bad and I could barely see the light at the end of the tunnel and some days there was too much light and it blinded me. My junior year was not bad. No body really messed with me this year. But it was the year my tics really starting to ramp up. This was the year I started having to leave school early because my tics would be too much. I would get intense headaches or I felt like I was a distraction in class which would make my anxiety get worse which would entail make my tics worse. This issue lasted through my senior year.

My junior year, my mom got diagnosed with cancer. Three different types in 5 different places. It metastasized which made it get worse. That year I went to camp and my mom had seizures. I had finally been having a pretty decent relationship with her and this happened. This devastated me because I was not there for her. This was really hard for me to deal with. At least I had people around me who helped me through it.

Here came senior year. I was doing pretty well. Yes I still battles with anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and tics but overall it wasn’t awful. That April I was going to be 3 years clean from self harm. Then it hit.

In January of that year everything came crashing down. The second semester of my senior year was the worst year of school for me. My tics were completely awful even with medication. My panic attacks were bad. That person who bullied me in geometry, yeah she was back sitting right behind me with her best friend in one of my classes. That was a mess. My anxiety was always so high that my tics were so bad I physically could not go to school or if I could, they would get too bad that class and i’d have to leave.

My depression hit a very low low. Almost as bad if not worse than when I was 14. I relapsed in self harm that February. My depression was horrible. Getting out of bed was the hardest thing ever. I didn’t want to do anything. This is when the suicidal ideation started to come back. I was never actively suicidal I just had the thoughts. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted everything to stop. I started dating my now fiancé in October of my senior year. I didn’t want anything to do with him. The only thing that kind of kept me going was my internship at the church. I was told that I needed to spend time with God before I started working on projects. So every day I went to the church, I read something from the Bible. That helped greatly and being surrounded by great people my C, S, and A.

That April I went to a partial hospitalization program. This meant I spent from about 8 in the morning to 2 or 3 in the afternoon at this place. It was 10 days long and it was not a good experience. I was put in with the adolescent group. The oldest person besides me was a freshman. This made it really difficult to me because I felt like I needed to help them instead of helping myself because they needed the help more. I got nothing out of that program. It made me hesitant to ever ask for help again.

At church, we had youth group once a month. It was called verb. It was middle and high school. It was about 300ish or more people. I had multiple panic attacks every time I went. I had people I could lean on but I thought they were going to leave me when I graduated.

I graduated high school and was then sent to the 18-24 group at my church. I knew barely anybody and the people I did know, it was not much of a friendship, it was more of acquaintances. I went once then I was done. That was one of the worst summers. I didn’t talk to anyone from the church because I thought that they were going to leave me so I left first. I stopped going to church. I very rarely read my bible. I changed. And not in a good way. I was living the life of my mental illness. Impulsive decisions, desperate things to keep the relationships I did have, very unstable self image, black and white thinking, splitting (meaning going from loving someone to hating them. Kinda like black and white thinking) and my suicidal ideation and self harm thoughts got bad. I had stopped self harming after about a month when I relapsed in march.

I realized that I lost myself. And the only place I knew where I was was at church and with God. I slowly began reading my bible again and decided to give 1824 another try. Now, I figured A would be there but I was literally praying that she wasn’t. I was so scared to see her again. I had finally kinda gotten over being completely attached to her and not wondering about her.I was worried that if she came back into my life, she would just leave. I didn’t want to see her. And guess what? She was the first person I saw that day. And she was so excited to see me. I was happy to see her but that favorite person switch in my brain switch again and I became attached again. I did see S and I met some new friends. I joined a small group. I got plugged in.

Ever since that September/October, I have gone to 1824 consistently. I try to go to small group every week. I try to go to every event that the 1824 had. I slowly started to feel better and for about 4 months, my depression was nonexistent. I was happy. I was loving life. I was still dealing with my tics but they were slowly getting better. Then February hit. My depression came back and I wound up slipping into self harm again. It was not a good time and I was really struggling, but I had my small group and they people at the church to rely on and most importantly I had God. I slowly remembered to rely on God and stopped self harming after about a month.

That was April 2019. July 2019 was one of the hardest months. My mom went from well to not overnight. She went from being responsive and alert to very very slowly speaking, not being very responsive, and being pretty much out of it. After 2 days of that, I took her to the ER. That is when we got some of the worst news ever. Her Brian cancer had grown tremendously and it was pushing her brain to the side. We were devastated. But I had God and while I kinda hoped for a miracle, I was also okay if He took her home. And on September 2nd, 2019 my mom went home to be with the Lord and the Lord gave me a peace about it. While yes I was very upset to have lost my mom, I knew she was no longer suffering and was now doing things she enjoyed. And while I do miss her, I still have a huge peace about it thanks to God. He is the only reason I have been able to get through it.

In December of 2019, my depression, which hadn’t fully gone away since February but died down some, started coming back really bad. I had surgery that month and was living with my aunt. Then January hit. On January 11th I was hospitalized for the first time. My psychiatrist was worried I was a danger to myself and admitted me. While this stay didn’t really do much for me, it gave me a break from normal life for a couple of days. On the following Saturday, I was released at about 2/2:30. The first place I wanted to go (besides to get food) was church and that’s exactly where we went.

Church was the only place I wanted to be in that moment and so that’s where I went. I wanted to be near to God. I also got to see A who was very surprised to see me (she knew about me going inpatient).

April of this year, I hit one year clean from self harm. And that feels amazing. It’s been such a journey that making it to one year, especially after January, was a huge win. In April my brain flipped a switch. I went from still pretty severely depressed to happy almost overnight. I have been pretty happy and filled with joy since then. I feel the happiest I have ever been right now. And the only way that was possible was God. He’s the only reason I’m happy and filled with joy. He’s the only one who could have done it. And I am beyond thankful to him.

I was able to start serving behind the scenes again with C and this brought me so much joy too. I was finally doing things that I enjoyed doing and with people I loved.

Last month, I became the new leader of my small group. I will officially be leading my group starting in August. That’s a huge God thing. I wanted to step up and do more and He opened this door.

Last month I got new tattoos. One of them is the word warrior and the placement is key. The placement is over my last self harm scars. I was finally ready to close that chapter in my life. I was finally saying I’ve been battling this for years, I’m giving it to God. He’s made me a warrior just through fighting this.

God has done so much in my life whether or not I saw it and I am so happy to get to say that I know Him. He is my Father. He is my Abba. He is my Jehovah Jireh. He is my Yahweh-Nissi. He is Elohim. He is my creator. He is good and always has been even when I was far away from Him or very angry with Him.

If you read this, thank you. I hope this can help show you that through many things, God is still good. He always has been and always will be. Jesus is my savior and I am in a relationship with God, the best father ever. He is patient. He is good. He is love. All He’s ever done is love me and I am so glad that I can return the love in the capacity I can love it.

Madison Rae <3