my forty days

Every year my church engages in a communal fast. The sacrafice of this year's fast was to give up for forty days "that thing" that you believe comes between yourself and God. During this 40 day period, I had an amazing encounter with God. The following is a letter that I wrote to my Pastor a week after the fast ended. "my forty days" was written in November of 2008.


In the days leading up to the “forty days of dying”, Pastor, you preached a sermon that convicted me. The title of the sermon was “You are not the light.” As I look back on it now, God in all His wisdom knew what he was doing when he revealed that massage to me. The next forty days became a pivotal shift in my life. I wrestled with the message of this sermon for days, dissecting it, receiving it, doing some self reflection. If someone is self reflecting, it’s only natural to look at their past, so that is what I started to do. Then I stopped, I realized where this was going, but as much as I tried to avoid it, there was that strong push for me to go back there. I had to look at my past. If it were left up to me those doors would have remained shut forever, (that place was just too painful). I thank God that they were pushed open, because during the next forty days it led to my breakthrough.

I began looking ay my early childhood, my life, in Trinidad. The day my mother left to come to the U.S. how sad I was that day. I was eight years old my brother was six. My mother left my brother and myself in the care of family members. We eventually joined our mother in the U.S., but it took ten years before we were able to. The process of getting a green card took that long. I’m not sure when this first started, I can’t remember if this was something that was built up gradually or if it started happening as soon as my mother left. I remember being abused constantly; physically, verbally, psychologically. Suddenly I was the target of all this hate, rage and resentment, by the person that I was left in the care of. My brother did not receive this treatment; I don’t know if it was because he was younger, it was all directed towards me. I wasn’t a bad kid, I never got in any form of trouble, did not speak back to my elders, but this was now my world.

As early as I could remember, I’ve always loved drawing, in addition to being a hobby, I think my love for art took on a second role; it now became a way of coping. On many days I would stay after school and go to the art room to paint. Painting literally became my escape; it allowed me to go anywhere I wanted to be, anywhere but home. Home meant beatings, being told the worst things about yourself, being taunted by people that were supposed to protect you, so I painted a new reality. If I felt like sitting on a mountain today, I would paint it. If I felt like visiting the beach, I would paint it. I can’t tell you how many warm cottages on the banks of tranquil lakes that I’ve painted. There were many, it was where I wanted to be. The more realistic I could create these images, in some strange way it made my chances of going there that much more real; I tried hard to give them life.
Looking back on it now, I believe that my art teacher knew something was wrong at home, I could still see him there, sitting at his desk reading a newspaper and never once did he say “OK, I have to go!” he allowed me to stay as long as I wanted so that I can have use of the facilities. It was only when I was ready to leave that he finally packed up and went home himself. As time went on, my after school stays became longer and longer, my teacher unable to outwait me, began giving me the keys to the art room. He would say “when you’re finished, just lock up.” When I got tired of creating, I would just walk the empty school grounds, moving from class to class, sitting at the teacher’s desk, drawing on the blackboards, discovering every nook and cranny of this big, empty school. I believe it was here that my mind began to associate loneliness with power. No one can hurt me here! It felt safe. I was about twelve years old when this new phase of my life started.

As I got older, the abuse continued and to anyone on the outside that may have observed me, things may have looked normal, but on the inside I was changing, social environments felt more and more foreign to me. I began to pull away from people and more and more fully embraced the safety of isolation. I must have been in my late teens when I finally realized that there was something very wrong about this way of living, but, by then I felt it was too late. As hard as I tried, I just could not readjust socially. Loneliness put an end to one world and gave birth to another. I began to notice in detail everything around me. Everyday things that people seem to walk past held my attention; the shapes of things, the colors in things, the patterns of nature. I’ve managed my way through the social stages of life; high school, college, different places of employment, but through it all, the need for solitude dominated my life. If I did not wish to deal with a particular situation, it worked perfectly, and on many occasions it became an obstacle.

In my early twenty’s something drastically different began to happen, there was something so wrong about the way I was starting to feel. There were physical manifestations of sudden heat and cold in my body, constant shaking, I had blisters in my scalp. As time went on, new ailments began to emerge. For three years I visited numerous doctors and they ran every test that they could think of. Under normal circumstances, to be told by a doctor “your test results are normal” is welcome news, but to hear that same line over and over became so frustrating. I felt anything but normal. One day, on my way out of another fruitless doctor’s visit, I was standing in a Hospital lobby, while waiting for the elevator, I began reading different flyers on the wall, and stumbled unto a poster, there it was, all the things I’ve been feeling listed right there in front of me. It was depression. Through my haze of suffering came a ray of light, I can finally get help, but that happiness was short lived. Three years slowly turned into twelve years and the pain just got worst with each passing year. For someone that has not been through severe depression, it is a difficult thing to truly describe; you are in a constant state of sadness and worry, it is like every thought that you have is being sent through a thick, dark cloud in your head. Over the years I was given different medications and none worked. Therapy didn’t work; tried different churches and that didn’t work. The pain just intensified with each passing year. My depression manifested itself into new branches of anxiety; panic attacks in public places, O.C.D. repeating actions over and over and not knowing why I’m doing it, pulling my hair out. There were days when my legs for reasons unknown would just stop working, I would lay in bed unable to walk, my vision at one point started to go, (everything became blurry) there was paralyzing body pains, at one point even the desire and ability to draw and paint was gone, no matter how hard I tried, I could not do it. And if the assaults on my mind were not bad enough, then came the additional voices. I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, and one of the things that you learn is if someone commits suicide, they go straight to hell. Over the years I fought against the thought but the voices became more and more frequent and it started to ware me down. Voices in my head were constantly saying “kill yourself.” A task as simple as drinking a glass of water was now a full personal conversation of panic; “Drink the water! No, don’t drink it! Why is it in a glass? It should be in a cup”! I can’t tell you how many days I’ve spent banging my head into walls hoping that whatever switch was knocked out of place would just switch back. With all that suffering, there was also no shelter from the borage of family issues unfolding around me. I watched my mother get hooked on drugs and deteriorate to the brink of insanity. There were many nights that I could not sleep because I knew that any minute the phone was going to ring with someone saying they found your mother dead in an alley somewhere.

And as I’m sitting at home during these forty days of dying, reliving my past, I said to myself, “GOD! Why so much pain?” By me saying those words, it triggered a memory. I suddenly remembered that in the height of my depression I would cry out to God, that very question over and over and never get an answer. I don’t know if I blocked it out, or if that memory gradually faded with the fog of that period, in any event it was fresh in my head again and with it came the feelings that I had at the time. “GOD! Why so much pain?” No answer. “God, you’re supposed to love me! Why put me through all this?” No answer. Finally, I got tired of asking and I became angry, I wanted God to feel some of what I was feeling. How can I make God feel pain?! He is God, so I tried to make Him feel the only thing that I could think of, and that was my disobedience. I didn’t care anymore. If death came while I was in this state, so be it. I felt at the time I will just be trading one hell for another. Twelve years locked in a head that did not belong to me and while all this is going on there is still that rational, logical part of me, locked in there as well. I was watching the madness unfold.

In discovering this memory, I also discovered that that anger was never really dealt with. This unresolved anger was so well hidden, it was hidden from me.
Many days I would leave church feeling absolutely great, on cloud nine “Pastor Walrond brought the word today!” and totally unaware that my Christian walk was being built on the foundation of these unresolved feelings. Suddenly, the reasons for certain habits that I have today was starting to make sense. On some days, if I felt God’s requests of me on that particular day were too much, even though I felt guilty, I was still able to override those feelings. God would say “GO LEFT” If going left was too difficult, I would either stay put or move right, “DID YOU PAY YOUR TITHES TODAY?” “Ahh… I will pay it next week” “DID YOU READ YOUR BIBLE TODAY?” “I’ll do it tomorrow” I believe that I was tapping into that subconscious anger as needed.
As you know, two months ago, my brother died in a motorcycle accident (he was living in Florida at the time). A couple weeks ago, I was on the phone with his best friend; they had been friends since high school in Trinidad. They spoke on the phone almost everyday. He began telling me things about my brother, things I never knew. I was in a state of absolute shock by what I heard. He said “your brother was always sad, and spoke about dying on his motorcycle almost every day.” Exactly as my brother would describe it, is how it happened (Speed… Impact…Die instantly) I asked him; when my brother spoke, did it sound like he saw it happening or he wanted it to happen? Somehow, I already knew the answer to the question that I asked, it was a little of both. He said “I don’t know” He said, my brother would lock himself in his apartment, pull down the shades and in the darkness, lean against the walls and cry for days at a time. He would always ask my brother what was wrong. My brother would always respond “I don’t know.” I asked my brother’s friend “how long has this been going on?” he said “man, this has been going on for years.” I knew what this was.

I got off the phone, shocked, and began comparing the timeline of events between my brother and myself and also remembering that at the time my mother was strung out on drugs. And then it hit me, wait one minute. I got on the phone with my mother, I did not tell her what I just learned about my brother, I knew it would be too much for her to handle. I finally confessed to what I went through for those twelve years, my mother said “Nigel….I was going through the same thing, that’s why I took the drugs”. I was floored; floored… by… the… broadness of the attack, the absolute vicious intensity of it. The enemy attacked my entire family with the same thing, at the same time, each one of us totally unaware that the other was going through it, and all three of us dying alone. In my case, counting just the first three years, none of us knew what this was; we had never experienced this before. I try not to think about it, but occasionally it pops in my head, did my brother really die in an accident? God, only you know.

GOD! Why so much pain? I’ve asked this question over and over for years, and never got an answer. Then, God finally answered me……..………………………I was not prepared for what I heard, God said, “TAKE ALL THAT ABUSE, ALL THAT LONLINESS AND ALL THAT SUFFERING, NOW, PAINT IT!”…. what? God said “PAINT IT!” The next few seconds was a mixture of feelings all balled up; disbelief by what I heard, excitement that He finally answered me, even anger stared creeping in, you mean all this suffering was so I can paint? He said, “I’VE BEEN SHAPING YOU TO MINISTER TO PEOPLE’S PAIN, FOR YOU TO DO IT, YOU HAD TO KNOW IT” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. God finally answered me! Maybe He had been answering for a while; I was just too busy to hear Him. I sat there with tears in my eyes; then it all started to make sense, the last pieces of this puzzle started falling into place. Throughout my lifetime, if I wished to draw or paint something, I would receive that image in one of two ways. I can either consciously think of it and build it in my head while putting it on paper, or the second way (which I have no control of); A fully formed image would appear in my head out of nowhere, I would close my eyes, look at it and retain it; if I ever choose to create it in the future. This usually happens when I’m not even thinking about art. For the past year, year and a half, the images that I’ve been receiving have been different. I remember telling both you and Reverend LaKeesha months ago about this. These images look different, they feel different. Most of the time as I close my eyes to examine them, I would just break down crying, it almost feels as if I can feel the people that I am seeing. This has never happened before. As I receive these images, I would write them down in a book. I went for my book, If I saw what I think I was going to see, I would just fall out, I opened the book and confirmation was right there in front of me; the homeless man, starving children, the prostitute, the molested girl, I had written down over sixty concepts for paintings and every last one of them dealt with pain. I’ve never connected these dots until now…God has used all my suffering to shape in me, not only the gift of art but also a unique way of seeing.
While I was in it, all I could see, was pain; God punishing me. Now from where I stand, it’s so clear that my life has been one huge, divine, orchestration to get me to this point and now into my calling. There was a time when I was so angry at God; I turned my back on Him, today I can’t stop saying “thank you” because I realize now that He never turned His back on me. Forgive me God.

As I’m typing these words I can almost feel the enemy looking over my shoulder. Lucifer? I know you’re there. Lucifer? Or should I call you Lucy?! (Because you fight like a girl.) I thank you for confirmation. Over my lifetime you threw everything you could at me and look, I’m still here. Lucy is angry, he’s angry because I was not supposed to make it this far, he’s angry because he realizes he should have killed me when he had the chance. Pastor Walrond, The devil is angry because it’s been three years since I’ve had any kind of depression or anxiety, my mother is no longer using drugs, my brother is in heaven and God has placed me under your teaching, preaching and guidance. But, I’ll tell you why he’s most angry, the devil is most angry because for the first time in my life, I Know Who I Am! And what God has created me for. During these forty days God has revealed to me that I am to capture visually the ministry of Jesus, not as what’s been shown thus far. I am to show those scenes as God will reveal them to me.
These forty days were not easy; it truly felt like I was in the wilderness. Moving from conviction to revelation, from revelation to confirmation involved some tough battles with the enemy, he attacked my mind every, single day, but through it all I heard the voice of God, it was the most comforting thing in those tough moments. God spoke to me through sermons, scripture, meditation, conversations with people, and the television. It got to the point where I stopped being shocked when I heard His voice, I began anticipating it.
As I closed out these forty days, it truly feels like I’ve stepped out of a furnace. While I was in there God was burning things off of me, and as I stand here now I do feel stronger than when I went in. I see ten times clearer. I know I still have a lot of growing to do spiritually and I’m sure that I will have to enter that furnace again in the future. I will become stronger with every burn, and will endure it as many times as required to get closest to God.

The thing that I gave up during these forty days was art, I was not allowed to create it nor think about it. I gave up art to spend more time with God.

nigel morgan.

Quote:

Lucifer? I know you’re there. Lucifer? Or should I call you Lucy?! (Because you fight like a girl.)

Love it!

Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world. Continue your fight for health.

I love this story...Thank-you so much!

Thank-you so much for sharing your story, it was so inspiring! I too feel like I'm being attacked by Satan and fighting. I can relate, although what I've went through is minimal in comparison to what you went through.

Thank you for your testimony! I too feel like I've been and still am being atttack by Lucy! But I know that God is greater and soon I will be giving my testimony!! I know it feels good to be free from depression, and I am anxiously awaiting the day that I get there too (real soon)!

Great story and testimony to God's glory and giving you the insight and meaning at the end. "All things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." And as you related, His purpose He showed you; God uses everything as we love and Trust Him. You are to minister to those in pain, because you know.

God is so awesome!! I received a deliverance from debilitating depression just in the last few weeks; but I did study diligently all God's promises on Healing and a 17 part series, "God's Will to Heal" online, from a ministry I follow.

He gives each of us our healing and victory in unique and individual ways. I'm so happy for you. "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all." (sorry I don't have the actual verses cited here)

Keep going with the painting; I paint too. God delivered me by the power of His Spirit and the shackles on my mind fell away, along with any left over anger, angst, unforgiveness, grief, guilt and strife. I had an abortion when I was 31 and could never forgive my family for "supporting" it and the shame and struggle to forgive them for attacking my life and offspring was unbearable; like they disempowered my very identity and biology as a women. God gave me two beautiful daughters after that.

Peace to you in your victory over the world, the flesh and the devil.

Hi Tohelpafriend, thanks for the reply to my testimony, God is awesome, He has shown me so much more of His grace and ways in the last year. I am happy to hear that you have also beaten depression (what a journey) Sorry about the circumstances that led to the abortion... though that life can never be replaced...God has seen it fit to bless you with two more . I would love to see your artwork if you have it online, you can view some of mine on www.keeptrustinggod.com (I'm still working on the site though) Thanks again for your kind words and stay blessed and encouraged.

nigel

Begin sharing your testimony already! It's the best way to get stronger and overcome depression and Satan!!