1 Kings 3:12 I have no bread, only a handful of meal and a little oil in a jar. I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may prepare it…and die.

The beginning of my descent into torment is crystal clear to me. It was not a gradual decline, but it was a fall down the side of a cliff. I am now 65 years old and as far as I know prior to May 2014 I had never experienced an episode of anxiety (what a woefully inadequate word for what it really is). This is not an enjoyable story to write nor will it be enjoyable to read. No one who has met me in the past couple of years would believe the words I am writing. The Holy Spirit wants to minister to others, like myself, who feel they would rather die than have their real experience with fear exposed. I was deeply ashamed of my emotional state. As I will explain in closing, this fear of the exposure of the fear is one of the main obstacles that kept me from recovering more quickly. It is a prime tool of satan.

It was a pretty spring here in the south. My life was good. I had a good family, healthy friendships, but most of all my hunger to know God was growing at a fast pace. I was very active in my Anglican church and had begun an intercessory prayer group that I was passionate about. I was a devout believer. I wrote a little prayer book for that group, that the Holy Spirit gave to me, prayers for the people under persecution for their faith all over the world. I really thought my best years had begun. But this storm came. It was like a perfect storm. On three fronts a lot of stress. Those three stressors are not important, but the importance is that the door was pushed open into a terror zone in my life I had never known. On that pretty day in May in the backyard, my husband gave me a solemn warning, that unless I got the fear in check things could go very badly for me…What he did not understand was that I had already crossed that line. It was hidden from him. And the worst feeling of aloneness and darkness I had ever not imagined into my life. There were going to be seven years of this famine.

Terror had not completely taken over my life and had driven out, one by one, just like the doors clanging shut inside a submarine, all the good and comforting things I knew. Every ability to think lovely thoughts. Every pleasure stripped away. The ability to read a book, to watch a film, to enjoy the beauty of a sunrise, or a sunset, or the beauty of a garden, or a family member, or a song, or a meal…every single good thing was sucked out very fast during that fall down the cliff. Dreading to sound melodramatic, I can only say from the depths of my heart that this extreme description is not even yet adequate to describe how devastating this passage was. Words cannot describe the hopelessness and the horror. Sleep was impossible. No relief day or night. My body was giving out little by little under this pressure. In one month, 23 lbs lost. Very quickly skin and bones. And the destruction just kept coming.

If this were the end of the story, it would be a story best kept unshared. This is not the end of the story. To anyone who has had the misfortune of reading this narrative and seeing their own experience somewhere within it, I am here to tell you that nothing nothing in heaven or earth can stop you from finding a complete total release and not only a return to the former life, but infinitely more. A new and brighter life that will find you no longer a candidate for satan to drag you by the hair of the head into the torment of an emotional illness. This new life is the work of the Holy Spirit and endued with power, the power to crush the enemy under foot.

About one year into my torment I was so blessed to find Pastor Buckley. God had not let go of me. At first his teaching on the finished work of Christ was so disheartening to me. I could hear the words but they made no sense. I never let him know this. I now realize the devil was literally holding onto my hearing. This is back to the number one reason I failed to get well in a timely manner. I was so ashamed to let Pastor Buckley see how sick I was. I feared rejection more than death. Over the next few years the Holy Spirit continued to illuminate those words into my heart. And now they are a living flame inside me. My new life in Christ. My new birth. No longer tied to my family blood line of destruction and mental illness here on this earth. To truly know that Jesus set me free, that He bore that curse for me which was madness, blindness, and astonishment, FEAR and TERROR. The Bible says fear IS torment. Jesus had indeed set the captives free, by freeing me completely from the lordship of satan over my life. The Holy Spirit was sent into my heart to teach me, to show me the way to overcome. He could not override my will, but He held on, He would not let go, He stayed beside me for the long haul, until I began to be able to get up to my knees, little by little. He’s teaching me. He applies the Blood of Jesus to my broken places. As whoever reads my narrative, may it be a comfort to know that I was a bad as a person can be and somehow still not in a mental hospital.

I used the scripture above about the widow of Zaraphath. During this ordeal I did not walk in perfect faith. I would see the light and fall almost immediately back into the darkness. Many thousands of dollars we spent to try and make me well. My husband sent me to an expensive private Christian treatment center early on, and I came out deeper in anxiety. He hired an exorcist in London who worked with me by Skype as I got worse and worse. There were a stream of naturopathic doctors and cabinets full of expensive supplements, as I continued to get worse and worse. There was acupuncture, all my mercury fillings were removed at a cost of thousands of dollars, and my conditioned improved not one bit. I kept running back to the world for answers, but still I took no medicine and bore a great deal of opposition because of this, but the Lord still sustained me.

I encourage every precious soul battling with fear and terror to hold on to Pastor Patrick’s teaching because this is the only way to wholeness and peace. Jesus is Himself the peace and the h ealing. My fixation on research and allowing the internet to consume me was a secret sin and another leg on the stool that kept me ill. Closeness closeness to the Holy Spirit so close that you can hear His breath…the doors in that submarine will start opening. It is not hard. It is an easy way. But the mind and heart has to be bent and stretched to become soft enough to lie down. It is the Word of truth that sets us free, but it is the lips of our God and Savior that are the source and the fountain of release. JESUS! As that widow did such a simple thing as to shut off her common sense and the running amok of her brain, and obeyed the prophet, her oil and her meal kept coming and coming.

I cannot say I am 100% free of anxiety. My body took a severe blow those seven years of famine. But I know God is rebuilding me and the healing of the disease and destruction in my mortal flesh is taking place. I am work in progress.

If you would like to speak to me about my story, please email [email protected]…..

There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Hebrews 9:9. This message is directed to every child of God who has found himself bound with chains immobilized by fear and terror. Feeling hopeless. This is a dark passage for the soul. There are a lot of empty cisterns and dry Wells in the world promising healing and recovery from the state of terror and fear. I do not call this anxiety because that is not an appropriate word. All those who have experienced this or are experiencing this comprehend my meaning. It is a prison. Through my journey of 7 years locked in those prison walls The Holy Spirit the God life will send me was continually teaching hovering over me. When I was too weak to feed myself my mentors were mother and father who transfused enough life to keep me from the place of no return.

No words can ever express that gratitude for that tireless patience and endurance with kindness and gentleness for a time period that was too long. My purpose in writing this is to share some of those truths I received in my journey that it may by God’s grace cut short the time of others who are watching at the gates for their deliverance. God has given us a Sabbath rest. Until we understand this there is no absolute release from this prison of darkness. Stating this very simply we are hindering the work of God by our own efforts to free ourselves. This is what more than anything else hindered my freedom and deliverance from this suffering. We live in an information age. We are bombarded with how to do things for ourselves and how to create our own well-being. The temptation is tremendous to keep looking for your own way out. This is the Great deception. It is only when we come to the end of ourselves and all of our resources and we see we only have one Deliverer. We see that everything else is really just a delusion. It is only as we see the brilliant illumination that Jesus is himself our Joshua who leads us over the Jordan into possession of all the blessings of his covenant that the door swings open and we are really free. Until that moment comes we will keep thrashing ourselves against the wall.

Do not despair on this journey. It is not a one-time event learning to be at the end of yourself and dependent totally upon Jehovah. Trust him he knows what he is doing. It is important to stop measuring the time. The Holy Spirit when he is given complete control communicates to the soul now resting in him what is his method for the release. Then the trusting soul has learned to walk in that and turn away from every other voice. It is simply following the shepherd. This way out is open to every single person. No matter how long or how severe the affliction. The rest belongs to us. God’s rest is given to us and we can all have it. It is just learning to trust the covenant. Learning what the covenant is. For six years I studied daily the work of Andrew Murray revealing the New covenant and the holiest of all. Revealing to me the blood of Jesus and his role as a high priest now for us in heaven. The Holy Spirit taught me the meaning of the covenant sealed in the blood of Jesus and the terms of that covenant and what it guarantees to us. Learning this is indispensable to our freedom. We must apply ourselves continually and be taught by the lord. It is not returning to the place you were before you were afflicted. It is coming out as a new person with a new life and a new ministry. It is now the life of Jesus displacing the old life and becoming the continual fountain of the new life. You are not who you were.
Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.