Another Kerri!

I met Kerri on twitter of all things, which is weird, because I hardly ever tweet.  We met through Rest Ministries' Invisible Illness Awarenss Week.  She was looking for guest bloggers, and I volunteered.  After visiting her blog, I just HAD to have her reciprocate!  What you are about to read is a beautiful, touching story of how our God loves us so much, He will never let us out of the palm of His hand.  Enjoy!

By knowing me now, you’d never guess that six-and-a-half years ago, I was a very different person.  My name is Kerri, and I’m a twenty-year-old kinesiology and applied health student and childcare assistant on the Canadian Prairies.  I’m cheerful, positive, and yeah, a bit hyper.  The complete opposite person to who I was in the early part of 2005 [maybe I was hyper then too, but not in a good way].

In middle school, my friends and I were sort-of the freaks at school.  We got along with everybody, and we were okay with who we were.  In late 2004, a guy decided that he wasn’t cool with us being who we were.  He and his friends began bullying us, and even with school intervention, this went on for the better part of the year—things finally let up in May.  While we went on with our lives during the ordeal, keeping up with school, playing basketball, and being involved in the school community, I think it changed a lot of things in all of us.

With many skipped classes, tears and great grades despite it all behind us, we left the school behind, ready to go on with our lives.  Something, though, followed me out—anger, depression and thoughts of self-harm and suicide.  You couldn’t tell much from the outside, but inside I was a mess.

In the middle of summer, I experienced a reprieve—a chance to go to camp with a friend.  With my rock-solid belief that there was no god, I toughed out Bible camp—blocked out worship, and sat silently in Bible exploration.  Ignored the prayer, the arms that would have held me up and held my head above water in spite of my own drowning.  As soon as I got home, I shoved the Bible camp had given me under my bed.  I couldn’t take it.  Couldn’t believe what they said.  Because life sucked so much that it just couldn’t be true.  Couldn’t imagine that there was a reason to even be alive.

I continued walking in the darkness, and the desperation grew deeper.  On September 7^th, 2005, I started high school.  That evening, I learned my grandma’s cancer had returned after a long remission.  And I broke.

I couldn’t do this.  Life is way too hard.  The desire to end it all then and there was the strongest it had ever been.

And God reached in.

Giving me the knowledge that if I didn’t do something now, I would end up in one of two places—burned out completely and even more disparate than I was now . . . or dead.  And neither of those were the plans He held for me.

In a moment, I was overcome.  Alone in my room at ten-thirty at night, tears that wouldn’t stop, I let go of that last bit of slipping control, and let Jesus in.  The transformation was amazing and almost instant.  The healing had begun.

Life is tough.  That doesn’t change when you change—Jesus involved or not.  I’ve experienced many struggles since then.  I was diagnosed with moderate asthma in 2008, which has had a bigger effect on me, good and bad, than I'd have thought.  I’ve overcome the depression that had me gripped, overcome an eating disorder in 2007, and though I believe these are things that never fully go away, my God has more power in healing any of these things than I ever would once I just lifted my arms and surrendered.

My God has kept me and now makes me ALIVE.  And thank You will never be enough.

Thanks so much for sharing, Kerri!!  Make sure you all stop by her blog (click the link above).