A whole new bond

Dear reader of this blog, let me proudly inform you that today, Debz has become a whole new person. 

Today was a very special day for me, the day of my baptism, my own and firm choice to follow Jesus as one of his many disciples and to accept God in my life. I already made that choice roughly four years ago, but today I can no longer deny it, and I want the whole world to know that Christ has changed so many things in my relatively short life as a christian. Today is a unique chance to say YES to the Lord: Yes, Lord, I want to follow you, all the days of my life!

I know that I have quite a few somewhat sceptical, non-christian readers, but I hope that including these people will keep on reading this post and that they won't see it as another one of those zillions of posts that want to convince you to accept Christ in your life. (It would be nice - and I wouldn't mind - if you did so, but I will still accept you as my friend if you don't. Promised.)

It's now almost 12 years ago that I was admitted to a psychiatric ward for the first time in my life and almost 5 years ago that I got admitted to another, slightly more humane, psychiatric hospital here in the Netherlands. As you might have read in earlier posts about borderline - the diagnosis I've had for years now - it was all quite heavy, not only 12 years ago, when I was just discovering that the psychiatric world is in fact quite close to hell, but also 5 years ago, when I arrived in a somewhat nicer environment that still made me feel quite uncomfortable at the beginning. It turned out that I would be admitted there for over a year, and if I had known beforehand, I'd probably have given up hope altogether. However, it turns out that God's ways are unfathomable.  I truly believe that He put me there in that clinic for a reason. In fact, I'm utterly convinced that He created the wish to study something that can't be studied at any Belgian university in my heart, much earlier in life, so that I would and could come to the Netherlands, where I could be saved. As I wrote in the little testimony that I gave today during the service in which I was baptised and in an earlier post,I was born and raised a catholic, but officially I wasn't, because we went to church only in very special occasions. My education wasn't that bad, but I didn't receive any support that could have encouraged me to actively seek for God. That's probably the reason why I became a convinced atheist. 

But then that moment came that a psychiatric nurse from the hospital began talking to me about God. Religion, and especially Jesus, became a much-discussed topic, and I kind of felt a little bit irritated initially. After all, why bother about a God that doesn't really exist? Why reading stories about a somewhat strange man called Jesus in a book that has existed for over 2000 years and is therefore old-fashioned and so not up-to-date? So one day I asked that nurse if she could ask her God to give me a sign. I was convinced that I would exactly know what to see, feel or hear if it really was a real sign from God to me. And if that happened, then I would accept God in my life, fair enough. However, I was so sure that no sign would be given to me, because "there simply was no such thing as God". When she came back after the week-end, I asked that nurse if she'd asked "her" God to give me a sign. She said she indeed had, but I hadn't noticed or perceived anything weird or special, and when I told her this, she told me to be patient. We kept on talking about the topic, and one day, when I was feeling really bad, I went to her and she saw how I was feeling: horribly bad and terribly sad and alone. So then she said: "Debz, maybe you should look to the other side." But I didn't understand, so I asked, which other side? Her answer was short but left me startled: GOD. I took a sprint to my room, I had to, because deep inside me, I felt something so very special that up until now no words have been invented to describe that feeling. It was a very excited, joyful and exhuberant feeling, that's the closest I can get to a description of that feeling. And then I knew: this WAS the sign I'd been asking for. And the strangest thing of all is that I'd already received it before I'd asked for it. How could I've been so blind? How could I've been so stubborn? The one that had been telling me all that time about Jesus, she WAS the sign! I'm so happy that she came. It hurt me quite a lot when I heard that my parents refused to come to my baptism. But she was there, the person that has saved me. Without her, today wouldn't have been possible at all! She's been - and still is - a really important treasure to me!

Now, I've written a lot about the past, let me turn back to the present. Today was a very special day. I admit, I was extremely nervous, especially because we had to give a short testimony to explain why we wanted to be baptised. After the immersion, I felt so joyful and warm inside, it felt so good... I think I had this very big smile on my face :D And then there was a superb party, with very nice food indeed, presents, flowers, congratulations from people I'd never seen before, and especially the presence of my housemate and that important woman that changed my life completely...

Right now, I'm still reliving the moment in the water, but it went so fast. However, it felt so good that, if I could, I'd do it a second time :) This is a whole new bond, or should I say a renewed bond, with God. And I'm so happy!

Before I got a ducking...

... and after I'd become a whole new person :)

To finish - it's getting late, I shouldn't be such a blogaholic :) - I want to testify what God has accomplished in my life. I had/have a severe psychiatric illness, called borderline personality disorder, and unfortunately I know lots and lots of people who have the same or similar problems. I can assure you that my life was extremely difficult until about 4 years ago. Since then, the real extremes seem to have disappeared or are at least less pronounced in my life. I'm a lot more moderate now and not so extreme and radical as I used to be. The hardest part was the coping with the extreme, intense emotions. I could be hyperactive and euforic at one moment, while 4 hours later, I could be experiencing an extreme depression. It came and went, and was as good as unpredictable. I used to cut or burn myself on purpose on a regular basis. I threatened that I would kill myself. I didn't take my meds like they were prescribed by my psychiatrist. I yelled at people, and felt rejected and left alone by the entire world. Right now, I can proudly say that I haven't hurt myself in the past four and a half years. I have had these suicidal feelings a few months ago, but instead of keeping this all to myself, I have shared it with my psychiatrist and psychiatric nurses. (Read more about them in an earlier post.) I take my meds exactly like they're prescribed. And there is no other explanation for all this than to dedicate it all to God. I was a horrible, stubborn, claiming and radical borderliner. Now, I still have to take my meds, and I have these appointments with several people, but all in all, I've found life back. I can study, I can enjoy life... That's a big difference if you compare it with the life without God. God has saved me!

Now, I can hear you say that my illness wasn't maybe that severe as I initially thought, or that I was just lucky enough to be one of the very few that seem to be able to get a grip on their life, even as a borderliner. However, many of my friends that have several similar problems seem to have got stuck. Their situation doesn't improve. Sometimes they feel well, but it can so easily change into another crisis. I'm doing quite well, as a matter of fact, on the point of crises, and I can only think of one thing: God has cured me to such a degree that from now on I don't have to depend so much on people from the health care institution. My life is far from perfect, and there are some persistent problems, but hey, I'd better not tell God that I have a big problem, but should rather tell my problem that I have a big God :D