Hello, I’m ERA, I’m a grateful believer in Jesus Christ who is celebrating recovery from Co-Dependency and struggling with OCD.

   I was born a LONG time ago.  My family lived out in the country, in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road off another dirt road.  My Daddy was in WWII.   Today we call what happened to him PTSD.  Back then they called it Shell Shock.  He was in a mental institution for years; in fact, that’s where I was conceived. 

   Living out in the country in south Alabama, we had snakes – lots of them.  We had a small pond in our pasture that dried up one hot summer and all the snakes, moccasins to be exact, were moving toward a larger pond.  The problem was our house was in their direct path and they stopped by our house for water. 

   That summer, I often awakened to Mama screaming, “Snake in the house, snake in the house!”  I’d jump up, stand on my bed and not have a clue which way to run. 

   Once washing dishes, I reached under the sink to put away a pan.  There was one of them under there.

   Another summer morning, I’d reached under the heater in our living room to retrieve a crayon but withdrew my hand quickly because I thought I’d touched a nail.  My hand had two puncture marks on my thumb, and I thought nothing of it.  That is, until that evening while eating in the kitchen.  We watched in horror as a large moccasin crawled out from under that heater.  We used pewter glasses, and my dad quickly drank his entire glass of milk then threw his glass and killed that snake! Then I realized that perhaps the snake had begun to bite me, but I had yanked my hand out before any venom could be injected.  I never told anyone.

   During that summer, I watched as my mom killed snake after snake after snake.  I learned how to do it and killed several myself.  Always the length of a hoe away, cutting off their heads.  (Sorry snake lovers)

  My mom had two little girls and needed my dad to come home, so she signed him out of Bryce mental hospital in Tuscaloosa.  He was angry and scary.  He would try to choke us with a handkerchief around our necks and he’d almost drown us by holding our heads underwater.  This was before there was such a place as CPS.  I remember at the age of about 3 hiding all night in the woods behind fallen trees with Mama trembling and whispering, “Be still…don’t move.” And I’d follow her eyes and see my Daddy hunting for us with his shotgun. 

   Another night when I was around 5, my mom had taken us two girls to my grandfather’s shack he’d bought to rent out.  It was several pastures away, a long walk at night.  Before he bought it, it was a place where people made moonshine and had prostitutes there, but he had cleared those people away recently and now it was empty of everything.  My mom, my sister and I were sleeping on the floor in the only other room from the entrance when we heard loud banging on the door.  Mom looked out the grimy window and saw a group of men trying to enter.  Apparently, they had not heard that the prostitutes had moved away.  She was fearful and looked at me and said, “Era, I want you to go to the door and tell them your daddy is trying to sleep.”  She was hoping that would make them go away.  I said I was too scared.  She said, “Well, they might hurt me or your sister – who was 7 – but the men out there won’t hurt a little girl.”  She shoved me out and locked the door. I tried to bravely walk toward the door but just laid down on the floor in the entrance room and went to sleep.  I heard someone over me talking and saying, “Well, we better just leave.” 

   We had an outhouse which was about a half of a football field’s distance from our house.  To get to it, I had to walk through tall grass that was up to my hips.  And it was full of snakes – moccasins.  I was petrified of going out there.  I would be so careful to open the door slowly and make sure none was in the little outhouse. Always looking down into the disgusting bottom to be sure none were in there either.

   One summer when I was around 7 and sleeping early in the morning, my dad yanked me by the arm and pulled me all the way from my bed through the tall grass and to the outhouse.  He was furious.  There on the seat was a ton of feces smeared all over it.  I was horrified and had no idea how this happened.  My dad, with fury in his eyes yelled at me, “Did you do this?!”  I said, “No sir!”

   He yanked me by the arm flung off his belt and began beating me.  Again and again, he yelled, “Did you do this?”  Again and again, I tearfully told him, “No sir!  I didn’t!”  I don’t know how many times this repeated itself till the truth hit me in the face:  He will continue till I said, “Yes, I did it.”   I finally did just that.  Now my father was completely enraged and beat me till it was impossible to even stand up.  He left in a fury with me lying in the grass.  My main takeaway I was telling myself was, “Now I know I’ll go to Hell…because I had lied and said I did it.”  My mom told me after he had gone to work, “He’s just crazy!” But for a long time, I remember being depressed and convinced I would go to Hell because I had lied.  Being raised in a Hell Fire and Damnation Church with its legalistic doctrines had done a number on my seven-year-old heart.

  That began to plant the seed of, ‘I would do anything, be anything, if only I had a family that loved me’.   This type of thinking caused me to seek to be accepted so greatly that I, at some point, developed a deep seeded case of codependency.

   One night when I was 12, I simply could not stand the depression, rejection, lack of concern from my family.  My mom would say to never take pills in the medicine cabinet.  Her words were, “It’ll kill you!”  At bedtime I went into the bathroom and counted out 12 pills believing since I was 12 years old that should do it.  I was so sad and disappointed the next morning when I awakened to another day of the life I had been given to live.  But I never told anyone.

BUT I KNOW ONE THING:  GOD DOESN’T ALLOW ANYTHING IN MY LIFE HE CANNOT HEAL.

   On Christmas mornings my mom always had presents for us under the tree and treats.  We were so excited.  My dad had a rule that on Christmas morning we had to stay in bed until he came to each bed and in order to get up, we had to drink a half cup of castor oil with nothing afterwards.  We hated it and it was so hard to do but we had no choice or say so.  My mom said he knew we’d be eating a lot of sweets and probably was worried about that.  One Christmas morning I was laying down watching my older sister swallow hers down when a mouse suddenly jumped out from somewhere and ran up my dad’s pants legs.  He dropped everything including the castor oil and went yelling down the hall taking off his pants.  That spilled bottle of castor oil was a true Christmas gift for me.

   Like I said, we lived way out in the woods.  Our closest neighbor was an elderly lady who had a grandson that had recently gotten out of prison.  Word was from all the people in our area, that he roamed through the woods all night with no clothes on.  Sounds like a scary movie, right? 

   When I was 16, my older sister that I shared a bedroom with left for college.  Our bedroom was far from everyone else’s. 

    One night shortly after my sister had left, as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard a knock on my bedroom door.  That door led into the kitchen, and then outside.  Back in those days, we were so poor that we had no locks on doors or windows. 

   I was literally petrified.  Because I was unable to move or even to speak.  I was totally unable to get up and run to my parents’ room.  Whoever it was eventually left.  I did at some point go to sleep although I tried so hard not to.

   The next morning, I told my mom about it.  She said, “No, you were just dreaming.”  I told her I wasn’t dreaming at all.  But she just laughed it off.

   This occurred for about 2 more nights.  Yet, no matter how hard I tried to get my mom to believe me she just laughed it off.

   I think whoever was knocking was testing things out and had every intention of coming into my bedroom. 

   God knew all about it.  When you don’t have a parent who parents you, God has ways to step in.

   Around the third night, for some reason my mom got so angry at my dad that she came to sleep in the double bed with me.  She was infuriated over something he had done or said.  I was just so grateful that I’d finally feel safe enough to sleep.  She hadn’t laid there too long when the knocking began.  She jumped up and screamed.  She ran to get Daddy, who grabbed his shotgun and ran toward my room.  Whoever it was had gone.  Then my parents had a loud argument.  My dad telling my mom, “No wonder the kids are afraid with you acting like this.” 

   Now it was my mom’s turn to try to convince my dad that no, there really was someone there.  Suddenly, she was not mad at him and not wanting to stay in my bedroom but went to the other end of the house where they had their bedroom.  I told her, “You know someone was here, yet you are okay to leave me alone?”  She said, “Well, whoever it was will be too afraid to come back now.”  I think she was right.  But in my adolescent mind I never felt safe and realized I didn’t have a mom or dad that were even willing to go buy a lock.  But God was my parent that night.  A father to the fatherless.

   These types of events, I believe, shoved me toward trying to be perfect and developed into intense OCD practices which is what I’m working on now.  I believe I have forgiven this and other similar incidents that caused the seeds of OCD to grow but still I have yet to fully overcome the mindset that is so deeply rooted in me.

   Every summer before school began my mom would drive into Mobile for school clothes.  My sister, Carole, and my mom went into a place called Robert Hall and shopped for hours.  I wasn’t even allowed to get out of the car.  And it was parked on the street in the hot south Alabama sun.  They’d always come back laden with so many bags stuffed full of new things.  They would put the bags in the trunk.  When I’d ask to see what my sister had gotten, my mom would say, “No – you’ll just be jealous!”  She was right.  I never even got a single pair of new socks.

  My dad, if any of us had less than all A’s, would line us all up kneeling against the couch, have us pull down our pants and beat us all…even the ones that did have all A’s with a razor strap until our legs bled.  

   I know that I fully have forgiven both my mom and dad and believe they are both in heaven.  Yet the degree to which these actions scarred my mind and my heart left lasting ways of coping with life that I am still fighting against with the help of CR.

    One weekend when I was around 20, two of my sisters and I went to a friend’s wedding in Mobile where my grandmother lived.  There I saw all the confident well-dressed girls, but I mostly stood looking at my feet too embarrassed to look up or even hope that anyone would speak to me.

   That night, I went into my grandmother’s purse and took a variety of pills from several bottles she had in there.  We were sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags and I was again hopeful my pain from rejection would finally end.  But, just as before, I woke up, very groggy but alive.  Feeling so disappointed that I was still living the life of an unwanted and unloved girl.

 BUT I KNOW ONE THING:  JESUS NEVER ALLOWS ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE HE CANNOT USE FOR YOUR GOOD.

   After college, I moved to Stamford, CT with a bunch of other new graduates from church colleges of our denomination.  We believed people in other denominations were not really saved and all headed to hell, so we went there in order to build what we believed was a true church.

  I moved back to Alabama and got a job as a Dun and Bradstreet Marketing Representative and later a 3M Marketing Representative covering four states.  I had a company car and went from city to city training various companies’ sales staff on how to market our products.  On weekends, I’d come home, and to get some form of exercise I became involved in Karate and met my husband in class.  He didn’t have a job and had nowhere to live so he was sleeping on someone’s porch.  I thought to myself (literally)!  “Wow, I could never get someone great or even normal to marry me…but I could just marry him if only he’ll have me!!!!!   He got a job as a clerk in a hardware store.  We went on dates but did not really communicate.  He was extremely negative and criticized me constantly, making me feel right at home.  We had to use my car because he did not have one.  I was 31 years old and would have married anyone but believed that only a homeless person would even consider marrying me.  He got a repairman’s job and we married though he never did propose, he just assumed.  I told myself he just was not a big talker…he was the silent type.

  We had moved in together prior to our marriage and I drank alcohol and smoked marijuana as well as sleeping with someone I was not married to yet.  The shame was so great, but I just wanted someone who I could be a family with.   I was still in the same church and felt so much guilt that I could not bear it.  So, I bought a handgun and went into the woods behind my apartment complex and tried to pull the trigger aiming the barrel at my head.  I knew nothing about safeties on guns, so it did not go off.  The next day I took it back to the store and they showed me how to take the safety off.  But the week prior to this, I had tried to make an appointment for counseling since I knew I was seriously depressed.  They didn’t have one available.  However, I got a call the day I’d been shown how to take the safety off.  They said that someone had cancelled their appointment at the last minute, and for me to come in after work.   It was at Briarwood. I’d been too ashamed to call my church for counseling since I was living in sin.  But I figured all the people at different churches were all sinners anyway and going to hell so I could admit my sin to them. 

BUT ONE THING I KNOW:  THE HOLY SPIRIT WILL NEVER ALLOW ANYTHING IN OUR LIVES HE CANNOT USE FOR HIS GLORY.

  The associate pastor had me pray a prayer and I meant it with my whole being.  Telling the Lord, I was a sinner and asking Him to come into my heart and make me new.  As I left, I thought to myself, “Big Deal.  I’ve prayed all my life — prayed for someone to love me, prayed to not be alone, prayed to be included and accepted.”  But that evening I drove the same route to my house as I always did.  I stopped at the same traffic light; I saw the people from the same bus stop crossing the street in front of me.  Daily when this had happened, I’d always become annoyed with them, saying things in my head like, “Move it, fat cow!”  This day, I found myself praying, “Lord, that woman looks so tired.  Please give her rest!”  This startled me.  It was foreign, like an alien had invaded my body.  The next day I pulled into the same parking place I’d always parked in at work, and for the first time I noticed there were pansies of many bright colors.  I drew my breath in.  They were so beautiful it almost hurt my eyes.  I looked up at the blue sky and was overcome with the Lord’s goodness to me.  I realized these same flowers had been there a good while, but I’d never noticed them.  That afternoon upon arriving home, I read the next chapter in my bible as I always did.  That day, as I read, I was amazed – the topic was precisely what I’d been wanting to hear and needing to understand.  The chapter fit my situation to a T!  I told myself, “Wow, talk about coincidences!”  But the next day, there was a different problem I was concerned with, and it, too, was addressed exactly.  I was beginning to get the idea that this bible I’d marked up was a Living Book.

  Even though everyone kept quoting to me about ‘Do not be unequally yoked together with non-believers’, the draw to have my very own person and be in a family overrode that scripture.  Sadly.  So, I married a professed non-believer and had 2 beautiful girls.

  When I married, I’d fully expected to be beaten and to be cheated on.  I was amazed that didn’t happen.  I think I was so hung up on SUBMIT, SUBMIT, SUBMIT from 12 years of going to Bill Gothard seminars that I’d prepared myself to just take whatever as long as I just had a family of my own.  So, I developed a prayer I said first thing in the morning and last thing at night, as well as all day every day.  It was, “Lord, just let me be a servant in my home.”  I meant it with my whole heart.

  When my girls were in high school, I worked full time for my husband Taylor’s business.  I told them, “I will iron your clothes if you give them to me the night before.  But I’m too busy making breakfast for everyone and getting ready myself to do it in the mornings.”  Jenny would wait till the morning, wad up her clothes she needed ironed for that day and get within a foot of her dad and throw them in his face, screaming, “Iron It!”  He always did.

   She complained to her dad that she didn’t like me yelling down the stairs telling her to get up for school.  She informed him what she really needed was for someone to come down and gently massage each of her fingertips in order to wake up calmly.  So that’s just what he did.

  My mom found out she had terminal ovarian cancer.  On one of her trips to Birmingham to see a specialist, she came by and told me, “I’m so sorry about how I treated you when you were little.  You see, we didn’t have any Dr. Dobson books back then.”  I assured her it was fine and that I loved her.

   After 29 years of marriage, Taylor went to his 40^th high school reunion out of state.  Coming back, he announced he was engaged to his high school sweetheart that he’d always loved.  She’d finally divorced the guy she’d married instead of him.  I asked him what I could do to change and make him want to stay.  He insisted there was nothing I was doing wrong…he had just never loved me.

  As Taylor and I went through the divorce, he finally admitted what the real problem he couldn’t take any longer was that he was sick of the Lord having his life.  He wanted it back!  He was done with Jesus, done with God, done with the Bible, the Church, and the Holy Spirit.  When he rejected me, that was so painful; but this was like a death blow to my heart. 

   It took two years before I realized that God knew what He was doing and what He was allowing in my life.  I needed to become a real person.  God knew I was only an attachment to Taylor, not standing on my own two feet before my Lord. 

  During the weeks we were still living in the same house waiting on the court date, I went to Celebrate Recovery with a friend that I met at Divorce Care at Brook Hills Church.  I became friends with several ladies in that class and we’d meet for dinner every Friday night.  We’d cry and tell each other what was going on in our lives.  That was 17 years ago.  Now when we meet, we laugh and tell each other what’s going on in our lives. 

  At my first visit to CR, I went in with Emme who’d invited me to the Co-Dependent group.  I had NO IDEA I was co-dependent.  Until they read the list of characteristics.  I was stunned.  Then it was time to go around the room.  I loved that I could tell what was happening in my life to a group who heard me and yet didn’t give me advice or a scripture they were sure would fix me right up.  I wasn’t told to pray more…I was heard.  And, you know what, I was INCLUDED…and didn’t have to be a servant!   That was a very good feeling.

   But a word of warning…even after we get our breakthrough, we must keep being diligent.  At least that was true of my journey.  I hadn’t really done the work of overcoming codependency…my husband left, the kids grew up and left.  So, it wasn’t possible to live each day for them – the Lord freed me.

  BUT, a few months into rejoining CR here at Metro as I’d say, “I’m celebrating recovery from codependency” in our introductions and the Holy Spirit would whisper, “Really?  When Emme didn’t want to go to the place you wanted to go to for lunch this week – did you speak up?  Did you remind her that she always choses where to meet for lunch?”  I was startled because it had never occurred to me.  But I let it go.

    The next week during our introductions again, after my telling about overcoming codependency, the Holy Spirit whispered to my mind once again, “Oh really?  Because after driving across town to her side of town for Saturday lunches, and you asked if she could come over closer to your house, she said, ‘No, that’s just too inconvenient for me.’  Again, I’d never even noticed.  The role of servant or doormat was very comfortable to me.

    This went on week after week with many such issues until I began to see that I hadn’t really done the work of confronting and verbalizing the treatment from Taylor…or even identifying it.  I’d only really been rescued by the Lord out of a home situation that I’d found ideal and wonderful!  So, the question now was, “Will you confront?”  Sadly, the answer was “No”.  Why?  Because I was just a coward.