Blog 1...My Testimony
So let me start out by telling you a little bit about myself. My name is MANDIE!...spelled and punctuated exactly like that and I am a freshman at ORU. The purpose for my blog is that I have so much good news to share these days that is doesn't satisfy to just tell everyone I know.
I first off like to tell you my testimony. I was born into a Chirstian family, there was never a second in my life where I couldn't remember that God was the almighty savior of my world. My family is very adament about following where God leads, therefore I rarely spent more than a year in a single church. My family was regularly called to go to a different church to help them start their ministry. And sometimes we were kicked out of churches for our radical methods, known best by the term "worship music". Many churches I attended were afraid to move beyond the hymnal book.
As a little girl, I began to noticed that living as a loudly declared Christian casued kids at school to shy away from me. They wouldn't talk around me because they were afraid to offend me and they would not invite to things because they believed I would find an excuse that involved it wouldn't be the Christian thing for me to do.
I became very angry about all of this. I wanted to fit in with kids at my school. I wanted to be pretty, popular, and perfect. So, I began to dress the way I thought other girls dressed and hide Christianity away. But, the end result was that I became extremely depressed for nearly three solid years. No matter what clothes I wore, what I said, what I did to get noticed by everyone, no one seemed to care. And being more sheltered in a Christian family, I didn't know what I was dealing with was depression, or that people would cut themsleves or even kill themselves to try to get rid of it.
It all changed when my mom brought home a CD my eighth grade year. She told me that it had some Christian rock on it and I might enjoy it now that I was getting older. I had never been exposed to the concept that there were other genres of Christian music out there than worship or contemporary. Listening to that CD, I was shocked when the soft guitar sound suddenly changed into heavy power chords and vocals turned into screaming. The band was called Underoath. I was so shocked that this craziness was considered Godly music. I was even more shocked that I like it. I went online and read about them and others...discovered that this was called Christian metal.
I decided that day that there was more to a Christian life than just being an example of good by being peaceful and quiet and conservative. These rockers were covered in tattoos, wearing crazy clothing, and jumping up and down, hands raised in the air as if they were grasping fro the hand of God. That day was the first day that I knew I was going to live my life for God. God said I was to live outrageously for him.
Over the course of many years, I went from a dress wearing, long haired, Christian girl to an anticonformist Christian teen. I sported a mohawk with every color you could fathom in it. I began to wear colorful eyeshadows that would go all the way up to my eyebrows and down my cheeks. I got a tattoo. Every thing in my wardrobe was positively and absolutely neon. As for my CD collection, it was full of new Christian heavy metal artists.
My life looked up for a while.
Then, my family and I began to attend a new church. I was just hitting the part of my life where I had to discover my own beleifs about God and life. God began to show me that religion was something that was created by people, not by God. It was something that kept Christians from truly enjoying the love of Christ. The church that I was attending was in a word "dead". There was no hunger, no love, and no wanting to have God. Even though through worship my family taught them about how to lay down their troubles and worries in to the hands of God, they showed no attempt to do so for several years.
I beleive in the supernatural and the prophetic. The years I spent in that church all I could see in visions were demons, chains, and evil. Then, God finally told me it was time to leave. In order to learn from Him, I needed to free myself from this thing that was in the devil's grasp. But, I loved singing on a stage, because of that I was not willing to get away. The scariest thing in the world was the day that I got up to lead worship and nothing would come out of my throat. I walked off the stage and out the door.
That night I told my parents that I was leaving that church and I did not plan to return. My dad had a suprising turn on me. He said that he had the authority to tell me whether I was allowed to stop attending church or not, and if I did not go, I would not be allowed to have a liscence, a computer, a camera, any instruments, any clothes besides a tshirt and jeans, any music. All I would be able to do would be go to school, do homework, and sleep.
After several long arguments and a week of trying this Amish like lifestyle, I went back to the church, but refused to participate in anything. I became extremely depressed. I could not understand why my God would lead me one way and then set my father up to lead me another.
After several weeks of fighting, my mom finally stepped in. She fought at my side because she had been experiencing the same evil that I had in that church. In the next few months my entire family was separated and awkward. We all went to separate churches.
My dad would constantly emotionally abuse me. He would tell me that I wasn't a strong enough Christian to hear the true word of God about that church and that I was afraid and making up thing in my head. He would also tell me my radical way of dressing would push people away, that I wouldn't have any freinds. I developed a hatred for him. Something that welled up in my heart for the next two and a half years.
I was so depressed, sometimes I just had to cut myself to releive the pain.
Our family lived separatley from each other. It was filled with tension. Soon, I was excepted to college. I chose ORU because I wanted to surround my self with Christian teens who were as on fire for God as I wanted to be.
My parents thought that in order for me to attend ORU I needed to cut down on my anticonformist act. I need to put the neon in the back of the closet and sell the metal CDs, because these Christians were not going to tolerate me like this. That was the cherry on top of my icecream of depression. Couldn't they see that I was living my life to get people to except the wild ones as Christians. I belive that you don't have to sing hymns and stay reserved to be a Christian. And I beleive in being nothing but myself no matter what it costs.
All the anger and sadness was almost too much for me sometimes. I would spend hours in the bathroom when no one was home with a handful of pills or a razor blade thinking if I live will this open their eyes to all
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Author: thejesusfreak
Location: Tulsa OK USA
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Blog Entries: 1 (archive)
Blog Comments: 0
my name is mandie! i am a freshman at oru as a vocal performance major and thats all im gonna say because my biography is yet to come!......
view full biography
so let me start out by telling you a little bit about myself. my name is mandie!...spelled and punctuated exactly like that and i am a freshman at oru. the purpose for my blog is that i have so much good news to share these days that is doesn't satisfy...
view full testimony
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