Have you ever reached that place where you just can’t go on? When life has dealt you too many blows?
I reached that point at 22. I did not want to live anymore. In six years, my life had taken a spectacular downward spiral. It had hit me in the gut: I had been raped, found myself homeless, and gotten into drugs and prostitution. I was in a pit of utter dejection.
I am an adoptee. I was adopted as a baby at around eight months old. I had the most incredible parents. Unfortunately, I was right in between two biological siblings. What does that mean? Well, take ‘middle child syndrome’ and multiply it by 1,000. I just didn’t fit in.
I love Ephesians 1 v5-6, which says, ‘God decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do and it gave Him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace He has poured out on us who belong to His dear Son’.
I was unable to have children. This led me to seek out my own biological family. I wanted to know if my infertility was genetic. Sadly, when I found my family, I found that I didn’t really fit in with them, either.
I attempted to kill myself at 22 and failed miserably. Life rolled on. I was maintaining my drug habit, so drugs and alcohol became my friends. They helped me avoid thinking about the six devastating years that I had just survived.
When I was 29, I had a massive seizure. I had experienced smaller seizures previously and had been diagnosed with epilepsy. This time, though, I woke up in the hospital and could not feel my legs. As I watched the doctor poke a pin into my leg, I felt nothing. At that point, I was told to stop the drugs and alcohol, or my next seizure could be my last. Was I afraid? You bet I was afraid! Did I stop? No, I just politely reduced my drug use!
Meanwhile, I still desperately wanted to have a child. Wouldn’t that make everything better? It was not to be.
In February 1996, a ‘prayer warrior’ moved onto our street, and she focused her prayers on my windows! I attended church for the first time in a long time, and I asked Jesus into my heart. He began to heal my pain. Was everything resolved then and there? No, not for me… but the work had begun! God began to peel away the layers of pain, fear and rejection that had crippled my life from an early age.
Prayer is key. 1 Theses 5 v17 says, ‘Never stop praying’.
I started to ‘feel’ again, a fairly scary process, but God blessed me with some wonderful women who made this journey with me.
Twenty-six years on, and God has blessed me with 18 years of marriage to the most wonderful man. God told me He would give me a child at 50. Not only did He give me a child at 50, but He also blessed us with another child in the family, with glorious red hair to match my husband’s.
1 Thessalonians 5 v24 says, ‘The one who calls you is faithful, and He will do it’.
I can testify to the truth of that!
There really is no darkness too deep for God!
Fiona
Fiona Myles is part of Victory Outreach in Manchester and she is the author of ‘No Darkness Too Deep’.