My Name is Lindsey- My Testimony

I recently shared my testimony on my church's "Coffee With" podcast and invite you to listen here.

Read my testimony below or listen to it at the YouTube link below. 

(Though it's on YouTube, it is an audio version only.)

 My name is Lindsey. I’m a believer in Jesus Christ who struggles with food addiction, sexual immorality, and codependency.

I will be talking a lot about codependency and it took me a long time to accept that I struggle with codependency mostly because I was confused about what it really was so I want to take a moment to define it. In short, codependency is when your need for approval or validation allows you to be controlled or manipulated or causes you to control and manipulate others. Another helpful way of thinking about it that I’ve heard is, “Normal behavior just taken too far.” Some common characteristics of codependency are people pleasing, perfectionism, over-functioning to be valued or loved, controlling others, or tolerating mistreatment and justifying the behavior. For me, codependency also involved being so emotionally attached to another person that I would forsake my own interests and individuality in exchange for theirs.

If you know me, then you know that I’m the kind of person who likes control, structure, and order. I’m the kind of person that organizes the sugar and sweetener packets at a table in the restaurant. But my story is all about how God, in his great faithfulness, has consistently given me things in my life that I could not control. I was born into a loving, two-parent, Christian home. My parents took my brother and me to church every week and spent regular time with us discipling us in the word of God. I prayed to receive Jesus as my Savior with my mom one night around age five. I have great parents that were and still are there for me.

I was the oldest child and I wore that title well as I took pride, sometimes secretly and sometimes not so secretly, in being “the good child”- not only at home but also in school. I stayed out of trouble in school and usually felt awful over even a small reprimand. I was a perfectionist from a young age, a budding codependent. I was too hard on myself and had impossible standards for myself. Though my parents were very loving, I still felt the need to over-function to feel valued and loved.

Because of this, it only makes sense that for about as long as I can remember, I compulsively struggled with both food addiction and self-gratification which eventually led to other forms of sexual immorality. These were my methods of both comfort to feel better about my insecurities and silent rebellion against my own perfectionism. All throughout my childhood, I abused these comfort mechanisms in secret until they got more and more out of control. Unfortunately, I became pretty good at not getting caught so I carried these compulsive issues with me through life.

Despite these persistent secret sins, my relationship with the Lord grew. As early as second grade, I can remember saying that I wanted to be a missionary. And in the summer of 2008, at 15 years old, I was able to serve as a local summer missionary where I had the opportunity to lead several children to Christ. I was more on fire for Christ than ever before.

However, when I returned to school that year for 10^th grade, I ran into a spiritual dilemma. I had previously felt God telling me not to date anyone through at least my high school years. But when a cute guy liked me back, I made the willful decision to disobey God, date him anyway, and in doing so, rebelled against God in my heart. I continued in that heart rebellion for the rest of that school year. I never stopped believing in Jesus but I seriously doubted whether I wanted to follow him. I remember feeling hopeless during this time. Separating from the Lord and doing things the world’s way was not joyful, it was dark.

I went to a youth conference in April 2009 and the message was about three kingdoms you can live for: God’s, good, or evil. The speaker said that the Kingdom of Good was even more dangerous than the Kingdom of Evil because it fools you into believing you’re doing just fine. But true eternal life was only in the Kingdom of God. I had been living for the Kingdom of Good, not God. I responded to the altar call and rededicated my life to Christ that night.

After that moment, I had restored passion for God. But on May 31^st, 2009 I unexpectedly had a seizure in the church bathroom. Though I was alone when it happened, my mom found me and she and my dad took me to the ER where I later had my second seizure in front of them. I was diagnosed with viral encephalitis, a brain infection that causes swelling of the brain. I was in Children’s Hospital for 18 days. For a while we were unsure what kind of long term effect the infection would take on me. I remember being in the hospital one night and felt like I heard God ask me, “Do you trust me?” I didn’t answer him. As I look back on that moment now, I can see how that was only the beginning of a long journey of God giving me things in life that forced me to place my trust in him. But this was the first moment my happy little life had been turned upside down, and I did not like it.

Psalms 46:10 comforted me during this time, “Be still and know that I am God.” I didn’t understand why this bad thing had happened but through it, I was learning how to release control to God and be at peace. Without realizing it, it was the start of working the first step. Ultimately I realized that I could have easily died from this infection. At the very least, I could have suffered significant physical or mental side effects. But after just a couple months, I was living a fairly normal life. The doctors were consistently impressed at how well I was doing. Through this, I was learning that God can turn life’s biggest trials into his blessings.

I was able to resume school normally for my junior year. I struggled to live wholeheartedly for the Lord. I would talk about Jesus on Facebook and with some of my friends but I was also swearing and making dirty jokes with them in order to feel like I fit in. I struggled with loneliness through much of high school. I had friends but never really found my place in one group of friends and because of that I was excluded often. I was still struggling with my secret, sinful compulsions. Because I was overweight, I also struggled with body image and low self-esteem. I tried to resolve this issue by finding love and approval in dating relationships. One relationship in particular lasted a year and a half and in my codependency and loneliness, I allowed this boyfriend to become my “everything.” We quickly became physically impure. I fooled myself into believing because I hadn’t “gone all the way,” I was doing okay.

I hated the sin I was living in. I felt guilty and ashamed of what I was doing in secret. But I felt I couldn’t reach out for help or tell anyone in my church for fear of what they may think. My pride and perfectionism told me that I had to keep it a secret to maintain the image of being a “perfect Christian girl.” And to me, that meant I wasn’t allowed to struggle with this kind of sin… not publicly anyway.

That relationship ended just before I left Pittsburgh to move to Binghamton, New York to attend Bible college where I was working towards the goal of serving God in vocational ministry. My insecurities flared in that first semester as the methods of blending in I’d used to get along with people in my public high school only made me stand out there. I was still carrying the guilt and shame from that impure relationship I’d just left. So I did the only thing I knew how to cope with this: continued in my compulsive sins and sought out new a boy to date.

I knew God had forgiven me for the impurities that had taken place in that relationship but I had not forgiven myself. I said that to someone at that time and he responded with, “You don't forgive yourself… God already has on the cross. Trust that!” I tried, but my perfectionism was keeping me in a cycle of guilt and shame. I found comfort in 1 Corinthians 10:13 during this time in my life, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind...” I reminded myself that as much as Satan tried to make me believe it, I was not a freak for struggling with these things.

One night at the beginning of the second semester of my freshman year, I spent some time praying and meditating on God’s love. Though I had always known in my head that I could not earn God’s love, I didn’t truly believe that in my heart. In my codependency, I was trying to fix myself and present myself a certain way before God as if I could somehow make him love me more. That night the Holy Spirit revealed to me that I needed to focus on loving God and he would take care of fixing me and also that God loved me so much that it was impossible for him to love me anymore or any less than he already does. I did not have to, and in fact could not, earn God’s love. That was a major revelation for me.

As time passed, both of my compulsive sins worsened with the increased freedom in college. I failed to spend time with God regularly. I bought whatever unhealthy snacks I wanted for the dorm and binged on them with no regard for my health in addition to eating out with friends regularly. And over time, my struggle with sexual immorality expanded into a problem with pornography as well. But I attended Bible college, went to church regularly, and even began working for a children’s ministry. I didn’t like the sin I was living in, but I was stuck in it. I’d reached out to one or two trusted friends for “accountability” but it wasn’t working. And I didn’t believe it was “bad enough” to merit needing any sort of group help. So I stayed stuck.

In 2014, the man that would one day be my husband started attending the same college as me. The first thing I’d heard about my husband was from his cousin who was one of my best friends, and it went something like, “My cousin is coming here next year, he’s a drug addict and he just recently got sober.” Despite this, I was very taken when this mysterious “cousin” showed up to campus looking and acting like a regular southern gentleman.

We were dating within a month. But it really was different this time. This wasn’t just one of those relationships. He was open with me about his past but also how his sobriety was different this time because he had rededicated his life to the Lord. I also shared my own struggles with him and he was understanding and nonjudgmental. We shared a passion for ministry and the word of God. I knew this was the kind of man I had been waiting for. He proposed a little less than a year later and we got married a year and half after our first date.

About a year after we were married, I unexpectedly had a seizure. It was the first seizure I’d had in eight years since my brain infection. It was eventually determined that the scar tissue on my brain left from the brain infection had caused epilepsy. After those first couple of seizures, I struggled to trust God. I didn’t understand why he was allowing this to happen. But I remembered that question God had asked me back in Children’s Hospital that day, “Do you trust me?” As I was in the ER after that first unexpected seizure, I reminded myself of the lesson I’d learned eight years ago. As I made the choice to trust God even though I didn’t understand, I found that I had peace that I had never before felt. Even when I would go to the neurologist and get met with more bad news or have another seizure, I knew in my heart that I would be okay. I knew I had peace that surpasses all understanding as spoken about in Philippians 4:7.

The thing about epilepsy is that not only is there no cure, but even the medication to prevent seizures isn’t 100% effective. Things as simple as lack of sleep, stress, hormones, sickness as simple as a common cold, or certain antibiotics can trigger a seizure in spite of taking the medication. There is no way to be in complete control over epilepsy. Though it has not always been easy, I now thank God for giving me a trial like epilepsy because it has strengthened my faith and has shown me how to trust him with things that I cannot control. I would need that kind of faith for what was coming in my life. Praise God, I have not had a major seizure since January 2019.

When I got married, I had in mind a pretty solid five-year plan of what I wanted our lives to look like. My husband would finish college, then we’d move somewhere to serve in ministry, take a year to get settled, get financially secure, probably buy another car and maybe a house, then we could start having kids. Instead of my perfect five year plan, on year three of our marriage, I watched my husband die.

At first we did follow the plan. After my husband graduated, we moved to Birmingham, Alabama where we were working with a church plant. As that didn’t pay much, we both also had full time jobs. We bought a house that was big enough to start a family in and even got that second car. It felt like the start of our future. However, it was a stressful time for both of us.

My compulsive sins continued. We made excuses to pick up fast food because of our busy schedules which only fueled my food addiction. I continued in both self-gratification and pornography use in secret. Though I’d been honest with my husband about how I struggled when we’d started dating, I hadn’t told him I was still struggling. I felt like a hypocrite as I was now serving in church leadership. My devotional life was non-existent. God had become my job but not a relationship. I lived to serve him but I wasn’t spending time getting to know him. My spiritual life was a wreck because of that. I was simply going through the motions.

I was also struggling with codependency and perfectionism. I didn’t have a good balance between my full time job, which regularly asked me to stay late, and my job at the church which barely paid but also needed my attention. I was eager to please my pastor, prove my worth, and show him I could do a good job but I was stretched too thin. Birmingham was not a bright time in my life.

On April 1^st, 2019, I entered the hospital for some planned epilepsy testing. My husband was acting strange that week, nodding off to sleep often, breathing heavily, sweating a lot. I assumed he was just tired and stressed from my week stay in the hospital. But in the late evening hours of April 6^th, I heard him collapse in the bathroom of my hospital room. Thankfully I was able to unlock the door from the outside and calmly used my nurse call button, not realizing this was an emergency. Over the next couple minutes, he stopped responding entirely and started aspirating. The nurses pressed the code blue button. I watched as every available doctor and nurse flooded my room, got him turned over to see he was blue in the face, grabbed the oxygen tank off the wall, and started chest compressions. I heard them all saying things like, “Not breathing” or “No pulse.” I understood there was a serious risk of losing my husband forever, but at that time I didn’t understand that he had actually died for several minutes on that hospital floor. For my own sake, I’m glad I didn’t. It was later revealed that he had scored some heroin from a homeless man on the streets around the hospital that was laced with fentanyl. He came back to the bathroom of my hospital room where he overdosed. By the grace of God, they were able to revive him and they rushed him down to the ER. I firmly believe that if we had not already been in the hospital, my husband would not be alive today.

There had been an incident two months prior where he had wrecked one of our cars while driving intoxicated and I had become aware that he had been abusing his prescription painkillers, but I had convinced myself that this was just a minor slip up and not an actual relapse.  The time for denial was over. I realized he had been acting strange that week because he had been continuing to abuse his prescription in addition to other pills. The next few days were spent with my husband’s family, getting him checked into the 30 day rehab at the hospital, which at that time I believed would be enough to get him back on track. But during those 30 days, I did some digging and discovered that he had been struggling much longer than I had been aware of. I found out about drug abuse related secrets that went back years. I was devastated. The little trust I may have still had in my husband was absolutely broken.

In my codependency, I wanted to find a way for him to come home at the end of those 30 days anyway. Thankfully, I had people around me at that time that helped me face the hard truth and see that I needed to do what was healthy for me. And at that time, living with my husband who I could not trust and still was not being fully honest with me, was not healthy for me. After seeking godly counsel from my pastor, my parents, and a pastor of counseling with experience in addiction from my parent’s church (whom they had promptly connected me with), I made the decision to leave Birmingham and move back in with my parents in Pittsburgh. I was so blessed to have people in my church in Birmingham that walked through this devastating time with me. They helped me be strong when I had no strength left.

I made the decision to move back to Pittsburgh on a Friday and left on Monday. In order to make the move back, I had to scrap both our cars, the one that had been wrecked and the other was too old and rusty to make the trip. I quit both jobs on the spot and packed my stuff. My pastor drove me back to Pittsburgh where I moved into my parent’s basement. I had a letter delivered to my husband explaining my decision and requesting that he come join me up north by going to Adult & Teen Challenge where he could get long term help for both his spiritual and addiction problems. After a lot of arguing and discussion over the phone, he did agree to check into Adult and Teen Challenge.

Shortly after all this, the church plant we had been working with in Birmingham closed its doors. That was a sign that God was closing the doors on our chapter in Birmingham. However, we had purchased the house there. After owning it just eight months, we put it back on the market. It entered in and then back out of contract five or maybe six times (I lost count). That meant I was paying the mortgage on it during this time as well as trying to pay off multiple other debts that we had let get out of control.  I had no car, thankfully my brother and sister-in-law work in Japan as missionaries and I am able to use their car. I got a job working in another daycare... which is not my dream job but is something to pay the bills. In short, I was an adult, married woman living in her parent’s basement, paying the mortgage on a house I couldn’t live in while my finances were already a wreck, and my marriage was falling apart. To say that I was at my lowest point would be an understatement.

The most common piece of advice I got during this time was, “Now is the time to work on yourself.” I understood what they meant. I needed to “put the oxygen mask on myself” before I tried to take care of anyone else, especially my husband. But in my codependency, I didn’t really know who “I” was. I had lost myself. My life had become all about work and my husband. I went to work and then mindlessly watched TV until he got home. I had no hobbies or interests aside from him. He had become my only real friend. So now that he was out of my everyday life, I had no idea who I really was if I wasn’t getting to “be” his wife. I realized “working on myself” was going to take a lot of intentional work.

In my desperation, I finally turned to God. Thankfully, my parents had already been attending a great church for several years and it was easy for me to start attending and get plugged in. This church was like a drink of cool water in the desert that was my spiritual life. I am so grateful for the preaching directly from the word of God and the passionate worship that I found. It was pivotal in helping me get my spiritual life back on track. I also finally got serious about reading my Bible. I started reading through the Psalms each day and rewriting them as my own prayers. As I did, I learned how to lament. I learned how to cry out to God in my pain, talk to him about it, and rely on him for help. Common themes in the Psalms like God is my rock and my firm foundation, my refuge and my salvation, my redeemer, the one I can trust in times of trouble- all helped me remember that God had not forsaken me at my lowest point. As I clung to God through this time, my relationship with him grew.

Very shortly after my husband’s overdose, I came across Philippians 4:4 somewhere, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” My honest initial thought was, “Well surely that doesn’t apply to me right now…” Right after I thought it, the Spirit convicted me. It says always and then it says rejoice again. As I looked up the passage in context and I realized it was a familiar passage. Philippians 4:4-7 says, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I made the choice to try to rejoice in the Lord and his goodness even though my life was not good. When I made that choice, my anxieties began to go away and that same peace that surpasses understanding started to come back into my life yet again.

I had gone to Al-Anon a couple times to try to find support from others who have family members in addiction. I decided to try out Celebrate Recovery as a Christian alternative. As I attended these meetings, I secretly kind of kept hoping to find the meeting that would finally let me just vent about all the garbage my husband was putting me through and talk about how bad he was with people that would understand. But both Al-Anon and Celebrate Recovery, had these pesky guidelines about keeping your sharing focused on your own thoughts and feelings! Today I am so glad I never found that meeting. Healing only came when I shifted the focus inward and worked on myself and my own issues. I remember saying to my dad early on, “My biggest hesitation about Celebrate Recovery is that everyone is referred to as being in recovery. But I think that’s probably why I need to keep going.” It was true. I needed to get out of the mindset that recovery was only for my husband because he was the addict. I need recovery too.

Around this same time, I attended the Life Action Conference at church and heard a message on “Refueling Your Freedom” where the pastor said, “You don’t have to sin anymore. You don’t sin because you have to. You sin because you choose to. But you can choose against sin and self. You are free!” He explained because we were set free from sin by the blood of Jesus, we were able to choose not to sin. I felt challenged by this idea that I was not a slave to my compulsions but rather these were things that I chose to do and I could learn how to “put these things off” and “put on” new and healthier habits as it talks about in Ephesians 4.

At that point, I had already lost about 25 pounds just from the change in habits that moving back in with my parents had brought in addition to no longer having the financial luxury of eating fast food all the time. On September 19, 2019, I’d decided to use that as a spring board to keep going and started watching what I was eating. But my sin of sexual immorality was still ongoing. Even after hearing that message at the end of October of last year, I can remember at least one time that I gave in, thinking, in self-defeat, “Well I guess I’m choosing this then…”But then something started to change.

In addition to attending CR faithfully, I continued to read my Bible and journal my prayers each day. And one day, I was at a CR meeting and I realized during chip time that I was pretty sure I was approaching 30 days free from sexual immorality. I stopped to think about it and I couldn’t remember giving in for at least the past month. To this day, I don’t have an exact date to celebrate as an anniversary for freedom from sexual immorality because one day I just stopped. It’s not that I haven’t ever felt tempted since then, but when I have, I have been able to choose not to give in. I was also continuing to have success at healthy eating. It was no longer an uphill battle as it had been before.

During this time, I was reading “Soul Keeping” by John Ortberg which helped me understand what was happening spiritually in my life. He explains your soul needs a center. But in order for the soul to be healthy and for your mind, will, and body, to be correctly aligned the soul must be centered on God, its creator. But sin, or centering your life on anything that isn’t God, leads to a disordered life. Ortberg writes, “So if everything is working right, if you are as God created you to be, then your body will be the obedient, easy servant of your mind and your will, what you choose. Your mind also will think about and feel those things you direct it to.” As I read that, it clicked. When I clung to God at the lowest point in my life, I was finally getting my life, my soul, centered on Christ. So for the first time in my life, I had a healthy soul and my body was now obedient to my mind and my will. I was no longer trying to center or fill my life with these counterfeit gods of sexual immorality or food addiction. When I centered my life on Christ, those chains that I had been dragging behind me for my whole life fell off.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was working the first three steps. When I turned to God in desperation, read my Bible, and journaled through the psalms, I was admitting I was powerless over my own life and realized that only he could restore me to sanity. And somewhere in that process, I turned my life and will over to him, and in doing so, my soul was centered on Jesus. The steps are a wonderful tool to help you center your soul on Jesus and keep it centered on him.

As I continued working recovery and eventually got started in a step study, I also began to work on my codependency (though I was still hesitant to call it that at that time). The first step is the one I go back to the most often, “We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.” Even as a codependent, understanding that I am powerless is actually comforting to me. Releasing things I was never in control of anyway, to God, who has always been in control of them, brought me so much peace.

Through working recovery, I have come to understand that I am powerless to control my husband and his choices. I can only control myself, make my own healthy choices, and set boundaries to protect myself. I have come to understand that I am powerless over the things that happen to me in life but I can have peace knowing that God loves me, he is in control, and he will work things out for my good as I follow him.

It took a whole year for my house in Birmingham to sell. Right before it sold, a tree fell on it and I had to deal with an insurance claim that prolonged the process and cost me more money. I won’t lie, I was frustrated with God about the tree, we talked about it. But ultimately I was able to be at peace because I knew these were things I had no control over but God did. The house would sell when it needed to sell and God would take care of me in the meantime. The house sold two weeks before I was furloughed for three months due to Covid-19. God is so good!

A year and a half later, from the outside looking in, my life is still a mess. Most of my outward circumstances have not changed but my inward heart condition has changed completely now that my life is centered on Jesus. By the grace of God, I’ve been able to pay off a lot of our debt and am now saving towards getting a car and moving out of my parents’. My husband completed the year long program at Teen Challenge and continues to work on himself. We are working towards marital restoration through marriage counseling. While I hope we never have to go through another relapse, I am confident that because of the work I have done on myself, I will be okay no matter what happens. While we are rebuilding our relationship, he is no longer my only friendship. Through CR, I have made friends and have a community of people who care about me. And the accountability that I have found at CR has been amazing. I regret all those years I spent thinking I wasn’t “bad enough” to need group support.

Today I am over a year free from food addiction and have lost about 95 pounds and gone down 12 pant sizes. One day at a time I am still going by the power of the Holy Spirit in me. Today I am about 11 months free from all forms of sexual immorality. There was a time where I thought I may never be free from either of those things. Today I am free because my life is centered on Jesus and the Holy Spirit gives me the power to live for him daily and choose not to sin. And while I’m not working in vocational ministry as I once thought I would, I serve on the Celebrate Recovery leadership team and I am so excited to see where God takes me in that as I share this story of hope and healing that he has given me with others. Thank you for letting me share it with you.