Yeah, I used to…

This could get a little scary.  A little emotional.  A little unbelievable. Be prepared is all I can say. My life hasn’t been pretty. God delivered me from some pretty serious stuff, and has brought me a mighty long way.

There are a lot of things that used to be a part of my life… I think sometimes we forget where we came from. We lose sight of all the things we had to go through to become who we are. We look at others and act like we don’t understand why they do the things they do… but at the same time, we look back and don’t understand why we did the things we did… so in a way we should all understand that there are times in everyone’s life that they do things they never can explain later. I am so sick of condemnation from oh so holy sanctified individuals. Too-religious folks who run away other children of God because they aren’t ‘ideal’ Chrisitans… HELLO – baby, you weren’t always so “Christian” yourself, and if you call yourself sizing anyone else up and writing them off based on who they are, then you should evaluate just how Christian you really are; and you should consider where you would be if CHRIST sized YOU up and wrote YOU off every time YOU deserved it.

No, this is not a angry post. It’s a WAKE UP AND COME TO JESUS POST… how can you expect to show the LOVE OF GOD to anyone when you make them feel horrible for who they are? Trust me… if they are anything like I used to be, they feel bad enough about themselves – they don’t need any help. I have been through things – and OVERCOME things – that many people probably would have given up and given themselves into. Satan had such a hold on me that I felt as though I was choking. I have been to that point where I felt I had gone TOOOOO far and could not find my way back home… but then one day I realized that “home” had been following me all along. We get saved and we start to act like we’ve always been saved. We get saved and we start to look at people funny – we start to think we are something even though just a short time ago, we were LOST! I’m here to say that I don’t feel the obligation to paint a pretty picture about my life pre-Christ. My life was horrid. *I* was horrid. I’m not perfect – never have been… it’s time that we as CHRISTIANS actually admit that we were MESSED UP. Just for the record, if you have never been through anything, trust that in due time, God will BLESS YOU with your own testimony so just keep going to bed and waking up in the morning.

Yes, I did it. I smoked weed just about every day. Scratch that. I did smoke weed every day. I ran away from home. More than once. I had a terrible relationship with my mother and I worried her half to death. As a matter of fact, I am part of the reason she suffered from depression. My sister was the other part of the reason. I skipped school. I sold drugs – AT school. I got caught. I got expelled. Twice. I got locked up… more times than I care to remember, let alone share with anyone. I did time in juvey. I spent years on probation. I did time in boot camp. Spent a year on parole. I hung with the wrong crowd. I chopped up pills on the back of an old sports car fin and sucked them up my nose – paint and all. I know what it’s like to taste cocaine or crystal when it “drips”… I know how it feels to have a “bad” trip. And I don’t mean on the road. I know what it’s like to see things that were never there – things that don’t even exist. I know what it’s like to stay up for days on end, begging yourself to just go to sleep…

You see, what many people don’t know is the Cassie before the Kathleen. Anyone who actually has known me long enough knows that I have tried just about everything. Let’s start from the beginning. I grew up poor. When I say poor, I mean grandma-made-my-summer-clothes-and-we-lived-off-of-ramen-noodles-and-pancakes-and-brownies poor. I mean knowing-what-a-hot-check-was-by-the-age-of-seven poor. I mean poor. A LOT of what I had made me richer than most kids – a loving mother who nourished me with the Word of God; a grandfather who more than took the place of the dad that was never there; a grandmother that taught me everything about what family meant. But of course, being young you can’t really know how to appreciate the things that REALLY make you rich – you think “rich” people have a lot of toys and nice cars and big houses and things. As I grew up, my views changed. My mom was a single mother trying to make it through college working her butt off with what seemed to be more than one job at any given time to make a better life for my sister and I… she was working toward med school. Me and my sister did a pretty good job of screwing that up for her, and she never made it. Momma, I’m sorry.

My dad was never around. I don’t knock him for that… whatever the reasons were, it is what it is. Just stating facts. To this day, I am 24 years old and there is a hole where he should have been. Scratch that. Where he could have been. I still cry about it. But then again, anyone who knows me knows that I cry about almost everything. My Pastor has gotten so used to it that in vacation Bible school this year, he said, “I see it in your face you are about to cry already – I will come back to you!” LOL But anyway… Throughout my life, I watched periodically from halfway across the country as my dad raised two children – was there for them, provided for them, had a nice house – nice cars – I assume Christmas was pretty sweet for them. I watched as his daughter, my sister… got braces, which I also needed but we couldn’t afford them (that was a HUGE issue for me… I am still self conscious about my smile, big time). I watched as my little sister lived the life I wondered why I wasn’t good enough to have – why he stayed with them, but left us behind. I never understood. But, like many people have learned… forgiveness is only the first step – it takes a while for the pain to go away. Not letting yourself be “angry” about it doesn’t necessarily instantly make it easier. As I reflect on who I have become because of my life experiences, I realize that maybe I was better off with him NOT being there.

My older sister never cared much for me. When she acted like she did, I always found some way to screw that up too. My mom used to make her watch me; take me places… she used to absolutely hate it, which really crushed me because I kind of idolized her… she was beautiful, popular, always invited to everything, always placed in the beauty pageants… as I grew up though, despite all the advantages I thought she had, I realized that she never even understood her own worth. To this day, we’ve never had any type of solid relationship and now we don’t even speak. At all. Mostly due to me and my frequent stupid screw ups… which eventually she chose to stop forgiving. We don’t know each other’s kids… we don’t talk on holidays, let alone visit. It’s as though neither of us exists to the other.

Back up a little… when I was little, somehow my mom would make sure that she had enough to keep me in gymnastics – it was my passion! I loved it… it took my mind off of the things that made me sad. Even as a little child, and even though I never had my father, I knew there was something missing and it hurt me to see other people with their families… complete families – with both parents. At 7, after a lot of debating whether or not it was just ‘growing pains,’ I was diagnosed with a bone tumor in my left leg. It was worse than having all four of my children combined. When I was eight, they shaved out about a 4-5 inch portion of my bone to remove it. How many people showed concern? How many people called to see about me? I could count them all on one hand… and I could see the anguish and hurt in my mom’s face because of that. When I was nine, they diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia – a musuloskeletal disorder which is aggravated by stress, and characterized by pain they cannot explain or cure. Obviously, any chance I had of getting back into gymnastics was diminished greatly so the only thing that had brought me purpose and comfort was wiped out. By the time I was 12, I felt like my whole life was cursed and I blamed God. I felt like if He did exist, He was definitely not happy with me and had been out to get me for quite a while. I would cry all the time, wondering why He ever made me… and I got more and more angry about it as time went on.

At 12, we moved from my hometown to a little country town in South Mississippi. By that time, I felt as though there was really no one who cared about me. In reality, there were… but even so, there were actually very few. I would safely say there were 4 – my mother, my best friend Veronica, and my grandparents. My self-worth was nothing. I honestly did not care whether I lived or died, and most of the time dying seemed easier than living. The pain from my “disorder” was pretty constant, and nothing really helped. My back, my legs, my head… it seemed like everything would hurt. Once we moved to Wiggins things were normal for a while… when I was 12, I had been smoking cigarettes for almost a year and I started dabbling in drinking vodka and tequila from my two best friends’ parents’ stashes (Shantell’s dad and Jennifer’s mom) and smoking weed after I discovered a dugout filled with it in my mom’s briefcase. Then I turned 13 and I met my new friends…. cocaine, meth (crystal), pills, and amnesia. I made actual living “friends,” of course – but they had been in that lifestyle long before I made it there and were on to bigger and better things though – like heroin. And no, I don’t mean with an e. I mean with a needle.

At this point, my life was on a downward spiral and somehow I enjoyed the ride. It wasn’t long before I was kicked out of school for selling illegal/controlled substances at school… ironically, when I was caught I was also in pretty serious trouble for being intoxicated on school grounds – and by intoxicated, I do NOT mean drunk. I mean so-depressed-and-uncaring-that-I-took-God-only-knows-how-many-pills-and-hoped-I-wouldn’t-make-it-through-the-day intoxicated. That ended up with a charcoal drink, a tube down my throat, and a nice lengthy stay in a hotel with cushioned walls called Sand Hill Mental Health Hospital. A month later, my grandfather died. My world took on a whole new meaning, or lack thereof. When he died, it killed every piece of me that was left. He was my everything – the only one who actually ever REALLY showed me love and I lost him without any warning. My mother had always done her best to show me how much she loved me, but I wasn’t paying any attention to that – it gave me comfort to blame her for never having my father – for the pain I felt seeing how happy his ‘real’ kids were… so when I lost him, I wanted my life to end. Again, I ended up in Charter Mental Health Hospital for ‘observational’ purposes… but still no resolution.

I suppose by this point, most of you are thinking, “Where was her mom while all of this was going on?” My mother did everything she could to give me a stable, happy, comfortable home and a solid spiritual foundation… However, she was already stretched pretty thin and it was all more than she could deal with. I was impossible – some would say my mother should have put a good whooping on me and let me know who the parent was. My mother was the 5-1, 120 pound sensitive, nurturing mother of a 5-4, 130 pound rebellious child who was strung out on drugs and wallowing in her own self-pity and anger and to be honest, I was always up for a good fight. My mom was remarried by this time… and I had made an enemy out of my step-dad, and actually had the cops called on me for trying to attack him. There was no one I was going to listen to… the mentality that I had was that when I made my mind up to do something, only jail or hell would stop me. Well, whether you understand it or not, my mom had sacrificed so much and been taken advantage of so much by my sister and I by that time that I believe she had literally just given it to God to handle. Which was wise. And He did handle it – MUCH better than anyone else could have. My mother had signed me over to the courts after getting expelled from school and was paying for me to go to a private school which was the only other option… I continued to stay in trouble with the law and eventually was sent to boot camp.

It is strange revisiting my past. I had, like so many other people… written it off and tucked it away… done my best at forgetting it, and never telling a soul who didn’t already know. I would stay away from home for days on end… apparently, looking back – God really did love me. He kept me safe through some very stupid situations I put myself in. I could have really gone through some terrible tragedies, but I didn’t… trust me, I have my list of tragedies I DID experience, but it coulda been much worse. I had wayyyy too much freedom, and waaaayyyyyyy too little supervision and those are two things that don’t mix well with a child who was as gone in the head as I had become. All along, I was trying to find a reason for living… and in my mind, I never found one. Looking back, I think that nothing would have satisfied me. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to be destructive. I wanted to be everything that I was. I say this because I have always been a very strong-willed and strong-minded individual and if I wanted my life to be different, I would have stopped at nothing to make it that way. Instead, I stopped at nothing to put myself in as much danger and as many compromising situations and I could possibly find. I can say I was quite successful in this area. All in all, I just wanted all the constant attention – I craved knowing that people were concerned for me. In some morbid kind of way, it thrilled me to know that people worried if I was dead when I disappeared for days without calling.

I felt like I was nobody. I didn’t care what damage was done. No one else seemed to care about me. My biggest question was, “Why should I?” In my mind, there was no reason for me to feel any differently. In actuality, I was selfish, stubborn, hateful, and evil. I cared about everyone else more than I cared about myself, but even so – there were very few places that I actually felt like I fit in… I am happy now. I love my mother dearly. I have forgiven my dad and I am working on getting closer to him. I love my sisters and my brother very much. I can’t wait until the day that I can spend time with my brother and get to know my little sister – and until my older sister starts talking to me again. My life is wonderful – I love God, my children are awesome even though they drive me nuts… I have a wonderful church family, a close relationship with my Pastor, a loving husband… I can say I am TRULY blessed. All I am saying in all of this is that I know what it is like to not care about yourself. I don’t mean having low self esteem. I know what that is like too, but I mean to the point where my life had no value to me. I was destructive and lived for the moment, hoping that it would all just go away.

I stole, I cheated, I lied, I hurt people on purpose – emotionally and physically – and I was proud of it. I don’t think I have ever admitted this to myself and definitely have NEVER said any of this to anyone else including my husband but I was barely a teenager and I was a junkie. I was addicted to pushing everything in my grasp to the limit – including myself. I would be the one to half-and-half an 8 oz glass with Jose Quervo and Taaka and soak up the amazement on everyone’s faces as I ingested it. I got so used to hearing the phrase, “What were you thinking?!” that it meant nothing to me anymore. And all of this was by the age of 14. Yes, 14. I still to this day have marks on both of my wrists from lighter burns I did to myself – on purpose. I would carve things on myself with razor blades and watch myself bleed. When we went swimming at a river or pond, I was the one who would jump in first so everyone could make sure there weren’t any snakes. I just simply did not care… It made some people uneasy… others admired what I guess they considered to be my “free spirit”… I suppose I was beyond what most people consider crazy. I just existed, and I didn’t want to… everyone else hurt me, so I hurt me too. What brought me out of it? A miracle. From God. I owe Him my whole life. I refuse to keep everything bottled up any longer… if I don’t give Him the glory, then everything I went through – everything I experienced in my life – was in vain. I am not willing to allow myself to have felt all of that pain and anguish, all of that heartache and confusion, for nothing. I guess all of this is a portion of my testimony. Yes, just a portion.

I guess I will say this: I’ve had some good days. Everything wasn’t all horrible. I had birthday parties; I had Christmas presents; I had friends… but most of the friends I had turned their backs on me, talked about me, betrayed me. And after the birthday parties and Christmas presents, I felt bad because I would notice my mom struggling to cover hot checks; trying not to lose it when her best never covered everything; trying to keep it all together despite the bills pouring in and the collection calls ringing off the hook. Even when I was high on weed or downers or geeking or tripping… even when I shot drugs in my veins – or had others do it for me because I just couldn’t get it “right” – God’s presence always surrounded me. I had spiritual experiences even then, but I didn’t recognize them at the time, except once – and that was so painfully obvious I could not ignore it. But once I “came down” I chose to ignore it. The experience I had with God that night seemed to go on for hours – Him giving me message after message, me screaming at Him, trying to figure out what it all meant. Then to find out this episode was only a matter of minutes. It still baffles me, even today.

Y’all, I hid all of this from everyone for a VERY long time… well over a decade… but for some reason, God wanted it to come out tonight and here it is. It used to embarrass me so bad that I simply let that girl die within me and a new woman appeared. But that is impossible, because all this time, I’ve been haunted by the child withheld. This is not a testimony I ever planned to share, but I know it isn’t up to me anymore and no matter how much judgment comes from this post, someone needed it… so here it is.

This post has several points… here they are:

1. Don’t ever judge a book by its cover. Just because it looks nice and the back reads well doesn’t mean that it is gonna be great from beginning to end. But watch this: THE BEST BOOKS ONLY HAVE ONE AUTHOR; EVEN IF THE CHARACTERS AND PLOT SEEM TO BE UNCLEAR AT TIMES. Ok, some of y’all missed that, huh? lol Read it again.
2. Don’t ever lose sight of where you came from. God brought you through the things He brought you through so that He could use you to bring someone else through what He brought you through. If you didn’t catch the lesson the first go round, He may give you the opportunity again. It’s best to learn the first go round. Some of y’all may wanna read this one twice. Or more.
3. Don’t be so ashamed that you hide things away. God is the only one who can judge you – the only one who matters. And HE allowed you to endure and experience everything in your past, both good and bad. He already knows about it all – knew about it before it came to pass. So who are you hiding from? Revelations 12:11 – look it up.
4. No matter how far you have gone off track; no matter how lost you may be, it is never too late to find your way back home. It’s always where you are anyway – right inside you, screaming… but its sound is drown out by the demons holding you down. Home is God… and His spirit is always with you.

There may be more later, but for now it’s 2:30am and I have church in the morning. I have to go let my Father know how glad I am to know how good He has been to me. No, I don’t think this post was meant to inspire. It was meant to reveal. Some will judge and look at me sideways next time our paths cross. Trust me, knowing all of this doesn’t make ME any different – the only difference is now you actually know what makes me “me”.

Unfortunately, some folks will miss the mark.

Until next time...



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