By June 2017 I was utterly exhausted from the daily battle of incessant panic attacks and never ending anxiety. Every day for several months I was pleading and begging for it to stop, crying out to the Lord to help me understand why this was happening to me. Why was I so afraid all the time? Why were these terrifying thoughts replaying over and over? Am I going to be okay?

Being pregnant, just numbing my emotions by going on medication wasn’t an option for me, but I was desperate for some relief. I just didn’t know how much longer I could take it. Even in the scariest of moments, I held onto hope that somehow, I was going to make it out of this. That my Heavenly Father knew what was going on, and He had a purpose for it. Even if I didn’t understand.

It’s like the more I ran away from it the worse it got. If I ever wanted this nightmare to end, I was going to have to face the truth. I eventually accepted that something did happen, I just didn’t care to know what that was.

The fear of the unknown and remembering what it would be like held me hostage. Will it be scary? Am I going to feel like it’s happening? What if I remember wrong? There’s something really difficult about knowing something devastating happened to you, when you were in the most innocent and vulnerable of states, but not really knowing the details.

So it was, that after months of being like a child who writhes and squirms and kicks and screams against their parent who is just trying to help them, I wore myself out in the fight, and I gave in. I collapsed into my Father’s arms, the very arms I’d been wrestling against all this time.

And I saw it. I saw myself in bed, staring at the green and yellow border on the wall, tractors, I think. I saw how the small sliver of light from the hallway slowly got bigger as he entered the room. And now I know why I haven’t been able to let my husband come to bed in white t-shirts. I was told we were going to play a game but quickly found out this game wasn’t very fun. All those glimpses and pieces from before finally came together in a cohesive memory. It was strange, like I was watching it in the third person.

After I saw it, I thought, wow, that’s really sad… but I’m okay! Remembering wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be. A peace fell over me as I walked through the steps of forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit connected all the dots as to just how much this impacted me. From my self esteem, my promiscuous teen years, the birth trauma, it all had roots in this incident. It’s like everything clicked and made sense for the first time.

So, it’s over right? I thought since I finally let that memory come , walked through the steps of forgiveness and let the healing in, that this nightmare was over. I was wrong.