Chest pain. Numbness in my arms. That feeling like I’m going to have a heart attack. There’s too much on my mind that I’ve pushed down to try to move on, yet it leaks out and the symptoms begin to flare. I’ve felt these things before — slurred speech, unable to focus. It’s not the ADHD, although that’s what tunes me into the symptoms in the first place. I feel every itch and nick on my body, and as each day passes, another item gets added to the checklist that’s outstanding and can’t get done because of time and the other daily things that must happen — cooking, getting ready for work, and yada yada.
Unable to distract myself, the feelings get worse and worse. The numbness spreads to my other arm, my chest gets tighter, but as soon as I’m required to give my full attention to someone else, the feelings disappear. When I return to myself, it all comes back. This has been a lifelong battle. Therapists have determined I’m sensitive to stress — what stress others can handle easily is difficult for my brain to process. That stress translates into panic and anxiety attacks, causing me to “go to the bathroom” more often at work. The only quick relief I get is to write it all down.
How tru.works Was Born
This was the birth of tru.works. The anxiety led me to share these thoughts and symptoms and let them out. I’d feel frozen until I filled the screen with words. Today, I can say I have school, my car payment, my dog’s health, my relationship, my car’s battery, and a surgery on my mind — all things that are small on their own, but that I can’t get rid of mentally. My dog and my relationship are a constant in my life, and anything more added to that adds to the stress.
As far back as I can remember, this is how I’ve been. As I get older, the length of time my peace holds gets longer, but eventually life becomes so much that I can’t hold it anymore.
Childhood: Prayer as My Only Peace
When I was younger, my mom would lead me into prayer right before bed, and it was the only way my mind was soothed. As I got older, I continued that practice, and it was the only way I could sleep and remain calm during teenage turmoil. The peace it gave me was surreal, but I had no idea what I was truly praying or saying. It was as if God granted me peace unbeknownst to me.
As I got older, middle school and high school became a constant source of stress for me. My peers were all over the place, with uncontrollable behaviors. I couldn’t wait to leave school, yet home felt the same. My mom worked, and when I got home from school, I’d find myself trying to keep my younger siblings in control and focused on things that would keep them out of trouble — which, in turn, kept me out of trouble with my mom.
Church, Bible Study, and Feeling Like a Hypocrite
Eventually I made a friend who invited me to her youth Bible study and Sunday church service, which I only went to so I could spend time away from home and with her. Each Sunday, the pastor would call us up to the altar if we wanted to accept Christ, and I never felt like I needed to.
Eventually, attending youth Bible study became a normal part of my weekly schedule, and I found I had a lot of hidden struggles I would bury and pretend weren’t there — struggles eventually diagnosed as ADHD and anxiety — which upped my stress and added to my sensitivity toward others. Bible study and church gave me a similar peace to the prayer my mom taught me. Except by then I had called myself an atheist since I turned 16, and my soul would burn inside whenever I considered Jesus or Christianity to be the one true religion.
At some point, I decided I wanted to attend church and Bible study without feeling fake or like a hypocrite. I only really felt that way after my friend’s pastor asked me a very important question: did I pray? I initially answered no that night, but then I remembered that I prayed my mom’s prayer nightly for peace. I admitted that to the pastor, which led him to ask if God had answered my prayers. My young brain went into overdrive — I realized I was still alive, and I had no idea why.
I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t dead already. Why was God saving me? There were so many things that could have happened to me — so much evil — yet nothing had happened. Was it because of my prayer? Was it that God had something more for me? Why me? There was no reason for me to be alive, to stay alive. There wasn’t anything about me that was special, or that added significantly to society. Yet I still prayed, hoping — knowing — God would save me, if I believed somewhere deep down that He wanted me alive. Which I was brought up to believe He did.
Reading the Bible to Disprove God
This idea caused me stress and wouldn’t leave my mind, so I bought an NKJV Bible to prove God wasn’t real. I read it in chronological order because I didn’t want to get confused with the timeline of events. I was hoping to disprove Christianity — hoping to prove that I was alive because science had no reason for me to be dead yet. I had no DNA flaw that would give me a sickness leading to an early death. I was never put in a place of danger, never performed dangerous acts, and was always around safe people, all of which reduced the likelihood of dying young.
Saved by the End of the Book
As you can imagine, I got to the end of the Book. When I started, I was hoping to read through the rest of the world’s religious texts too — but I was saved by the time I finished the Bible. Everything in it made sense. I understood why a child’s prayer like mine was answered and soothed. As I got older, I began to reason and seek answers to the questions I had about life, death, my parents’ divorce, and the pain and angst I carried from childhood — angst that had formed into a fear of the world and an expectation of an early death, which, years later, today, has yet to take place.
I’ll end this by saying that shortly after becoming saved and getting baptized, there was a lot of evil that wanted me to deny Jesus. But to this day, I simply cannot deny the Man. He is real. He was, and He is. I could not pick up another book — the Bible makes perfect sense and answered all of my deepest worries and anxieties, and there is simply no other thing I can believe.
This is my testimony.
For more testimonies like this check out the category: artist contribution stories.