My Testimony

 I was born on December 1, 1982 in Ft. Campbell Tennessee. Most people think of Kentucky when they think of Ft. Campbell, and the majority of Ft. Campbell is in Kentucky, but the hospital is in Tennessee, so I have a State of Tennessee birth certificate. My dad was in the Army, and was stationed at Ft. Campbell. We stayed in Kentucky for awhile, but then my dad was moved to Germany, and myself, my mom, and my half brother(he was my mom’s biological child but not my dad’s) moved to Germany with him. When I was 3, while we were living in Germany, my parents got divorced. My mom had to move back to the states, and she had to take my brother with her, because he wasn’t my dad’s biological child, but she left me behind. She told me later that she left me because she had no job, and nowhere to go, and she had no way to take care of me. Which I kind of understand as an adult, but I’m sure as a 3 year old child, I was sad, scared, and confused. Soon after that my dad sent me to live with my grandparents in Alabama. My grandparents loved me, and took care of me, but I’m sure it was a huge shock to me again. It was another huge change in my life. 

When I was around 4, I  saw my biological mom again, I stayed with her while my dad and my step mom got married. Then my dad, step mom, and myself moved to Ft. Stewart, Georgia. This was another big change for me. A new mom, a new house, a new state, a new everything. It was in Georgia that I have the earliest memories of my dad sexually molesting me. I don’t remember seeing my biological mom again after that. I do know that I talked to her on the phone phone, which apparently upset me so much that I wet the bed whenever I would talk to her on the phone. I was later told, by my biological mom, that when we moved from Georgia, she wasn’t told where we went or was given any way to contact me. We stayed in Georgia for several years. My dad spent a lot of time away, I’m not sure what he was doing. As you know with the military, you never stay in one place too long, and we were sent to Ft. Riley, Kansas. 

Almost as soon as we had gotten moved to Kansas, my dad was shipped out to fight in the Gulf War, Desert Storm. He was gone for over a year. I spent most of 2nd grade, and all of 3rd grade in Kansas. It was in 3rd grade where I found my ultimate escape. I fell in love with books. I read as many books as I could get my hands on. They took me to another world, one that wasn’t my own. A world where I had friends, where I wasn’t abandoned, where I felt loved, and cherished. 

My step mom was 20 years older than my dad. She had already raised her kids, yet she still took on the task of raising me, and for that I do appreciate her, but she had a lot of mental health issues. She had anger issues, I’m sure she has depression issues, and she was emotionally and physically neglectful. It got worse when my dad got an early out from the Army in 1992, and we moved to Alabama to be near her children. I’m not sure if it was because we were close to her biological children, but it seems that I , all of a sudden, became a burden to her. I also became the maid. I cooked, I cleaned, I did all the laundry, I cut the grass, I even painted the house. I took care of her dogs, that she bred, and that she got the money from the puppies she sold. But it seemed that no matter how much I tried it wasn’t enough for her. It wasn’t clean enough, or I didn’t do enough of taking care of the dogs, or something wasn’t right. And the sexual molestation was continuing as well. It continued until I moved out and got married. On top of that I was being bullied in school. I was being made fun of because I talked different from the other kids. I didn’t seem to fit in, and I didn’t have many friends. The friends I did have were outcasts as well. There were many times that I just wanted to die. I didn’t want to be alive anymore. I was just too scared to do anything about it. 

We had gone to church occasionally, but not really too much, but a friend of mine started taking me to church with her. Not only was I able to get away from my house, and my parents, but I found a relationship with Jesus Christ, and got saved. Things didn’t get much better, but I had a Savior who was there giving me the strength that I needed to live, and to not give up. 

I ended up quitting that church, I can’t remember why, but we did, and I’m thankful we did. Because a few years later a different friend started taking me to church with her, and that is where I met my husband. The first time I remember noticing him we were outside getting ready for a church bonfire. This was an old time country church with the long cement tables outside where they would put food on and everybody would gather around and eat. Well, I was standing on top of those tables sweeping them off, and I noticed his Auburn shirt and commented on it, I’m an Alabama fan. Our relationship didn’t start until a few months after that though. 

In December of 1999, he asked me out, and I said yes. In April of 2000 we got married. I was 17, and he was 18. In February of 2001 our oldest daughter, Jennifer, was born. Life wasn’t too bad. Sometime before Christmas of that year, my father-in-law found my biological mom for me. The first time I saw her since I was a young child was Christmas of 2001. Unfortunately, the relationship with her didn’t go like I thought it would. It turns out she is very much a narcissist, and everything is about her. Again, I was battling a mom who never failed to let me know that I wasn’t good enough, and that it didn’t matter how hard I tried, it wasn’t enough. I have tried several times to have a relationship with my biological mom, but sadly it isn’t meant to be. It’s the same with my step mom, and my dad. I have forgiven them for all the abuse, and the pain that they have put me through, all the trauma and hurt that they have caused me, but until they can acknowledge the trauma and pain in their own lives, that has caused them to cause trauma and pain in me, until they can acknowledge their wrong, and change, the a relationship cannot happen. You cannot heal a wound if you keep picking at it and opening it back up. And that is, actually, what trying to have a relationship with them right now would be like. Unfortunately, my step mom passed away in May of 2004, so I wasn’t able to have that relationship with her. It hurts to know I may never have a good relationship with my parents, but I’m holding on to God, and I know that He will take care of me. 

In October of 2003, our youngest daughter, Katie, was born. In early 2004, since I quit school to get married, I decided I wanted to get my GED, so I started GED classes, and took the GED test, and got my GED. I then decided I was going to get a job, and was quickly hired on at Walmart. This turned bad quickly. I got extremely sick. I had rashes and hives all over my body, i couldn’t keep anything down, I was extremely malnourished, I was extremely fatigued, I couldn’t sit upright for more than a few minutes, I slept constantly, I was in bad shape. I was in the hospital 3 times. I was, finally, diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. I was so weak that if I ended up in the floor, I couldn’t get back up. I couldn’t even buckle the girls into their car seats. It took awhile, but I slowly started getting better. I was seeing my doctor, was getting colonoscopies, taking medications, doing what I needed to do. But I did something stupid. I stopped going to my GI doctor because it was time for another colonoscopy, and I didn’t want to do that. So with no doctor visits, that also meant no medication refills, so I stopped taking my medicine. I was ok for a while, after all I had achieved remission. 

When Katie started Kindergarten I decided I wanted to go to college, so I started at a local community college. I got an Associates degree in Liberal Arts, then I started working on a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education. I quickly realized that public teaching was not where I wanted to be, so I changed my major to psychology. Ever since my first psychology class, psychology has fascinated me. To study why people do what they do, to help people work through things. It’s definitely something I think I would love to do with my life. Except that I started feeling God calling me to homeschool the girls. So I put my education on hold, and focused on their education. When Jennifer was in 6th grade, and Katie was in 3rd we pulled them out of public school and started homeschooling them. They both graduated high school through homeschooling. I fully believe that it was one of the best decisions of my life. 

Right in the middle of homeschooling 2 Highschool students, I started getting sick again. I was having issues breathing. It’s started slowly, and I was diagnosed with asthma, but none of the medications that the doctors kept throwing at me seemed to work. I gave up on that doctor and just decided to live with it. One day, at a primary care appointment, the nurse practitioner said to me, “every time i see you, you are wheezing. I want you to see a pulmonologist”. I agreed, with the stipulation that it wasn’t Dr Heidecker, the doctor who diagnosed me with asthma. So she sent to a pulmonologist in Jasper, Dr. Westerman, who did some lung function tests, which Dr. Heidecker never did, and told me that I didn’t have asthma, that there was something else going on, but he would have to do a bronchoscopy to find out what it was. The bronchoscopy was very traumatic. I was awake, and aware throughout the whole thing, and I could hear them talking about, “look at all that webbing,” and “she is going to have to have surgery for that”. I ended up having a panic attack right there during the procedure. 

 

I ended up being sent to a thoracic surgeon, who then sent me to my ENT. My ENT did an in office scope and diagnosed me with subglottic stenosis. Essentially my breathing tube just below my vocal cords is narrow. He scheduled me for a procedure to open up the narrow area. I was also diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Wegener’s granulomatosis polyangitis, which is what causes the subglottic stenosis. This was towards the end of 2016. In April of 2018, I was scheduled for another opening of the narrow area, but it couldn’t be done, because it had gotten too narrow. I had to have a trach put in. That was an extremely rough time in my life. I was in the hospital for over a week. During that time in the hospital I had to be rushed back to the operating room because I had developed an internal bleed where the trach surgery was done. I was coughing up blood so bad, I was almost choking on it. Recovery from that surgery was very hard as well, but it was during this time that I really started paying attention to my diet, and my exercise. I wanted to take care of my body more. I had the trach for a little over a year and a half. In November of 2019 it was removed, and I could breath again. Of course we all know what happened not too long after that. Covid hit, and the whole world was thrown into chaos. 

In 2022 my husband and I had some issues. Some of them had to do with in laws. My in laws don’t understand or respect boundaries, and they still think of us as children that they have to tell us what to do and control. Some of it has to do with me and my past trauma, and my own sins and issues that I hadn’t dealt with. I moved out and found a rental. Thankfully we were able to work it out, and he moved into the rental with me, the other house was surround by in laws. Around this same time, I started having gastrointestinal issues again. Not as bad as the ones before in 2004, but they were bad.  I started out talking with my primary doctor, we tried a few things, nothing worked. It took until Summar of 2023 for me to, finally get an appointment with an gastroenterologist. He did a colonoscopy, endoscopy, a test for celiac disease, and one for microscopic colitis. No other tests to test to see if the Crohn’s disease was active again. The celiac was positive, everything else was negative. I thought “ok, I will go gluten free and I won’t have GI issues anymore”. Nope, no such luck. The GI doctor wasn’t much help, and I didn’t like the way he handled the celiac diagnosis, so I put off going back to him. Finally, I decided to try a different GI doctor, I actually ended up with a GI nurse practitioner. I went into that appointment prepared with previous labs and test results printed out. I got told I had IBS. I knew that wasn’t right at all. I was still so nauseous, diarrhea all the time, stomach pain, and an ever growing list of foods I couldn’t eat. I started doing my own research, and found something that fit my symptoms. Exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. Essentially that is where the pancreas doesn’t make enough digestive enzymes so the body cannot digest foods properly. So I made another appointment with the nurse practitioner, I told her I thought it was exocrine pancreatic insufficiency and I asked her to test for it. She agreed and also added another test, one that tests for inflammation in the colon, which could be a sign that the Crohn’s disease is active again. Both of the tests came back positive. She put me on prescription digestive enzymes, and told me of the GI issues didn’t stop that she wants to do a colonoscopy to see what’s going on. Guess what! The GI issues haven’t stopped. I am still waiting on my follow up with her on that. 

While I am waiting on that I have also been experiencing recurring sinus infections since November, it is now March. Chronic sinus infections are one of the symptoms of the Wegener’s graulomatosis polyangitis, the autoimmune disease that causes the subglottic stenosis. My ENT is on the case, and is working to get it taken care of. In the meantime, I have an infusion for the Wegener’s tomorrow, so hopefully that will help as well. I’m also dealing with a lot of arthritis pain, I’m not sure if it’s osteoarthritis pain, or inflammatory arthritis due to the autoimmune diseases flaring up. 

I have been through a lot in my life, but one thing I know, is that God has been right there beside me through it all. He has given me strength to keep on goin on. He has been faithful, He has kept His promises, and He will continue to be faithful and keep His promises. I never would have gotten through any of it if it wasn’t for God being right there beside me.