My Journey With God and Acne: A Personal Testimony (Part Three)

That summer of 2012 I broke down and admitted I couldn’t go on in life without Jesus Christ. I stopped some of my sinful habits, which were giving Satan a foothold in my life and started spending time with the Lord. Right after starting to do this, I suffered the worst series of panic attacks I had ever experienced in my life that left me fighting to breathe. Part of me wanted to give up, but God spoke to me and told me that the panic attacks were from Satan and that I had to keep fighting. So I kept at it. Around this time, I went to stay with my uncle out of state for the summer holiday. Since he had to work during the day, and had to use the only car, I had the days to myself and had plenty of time on my hands. I decided to use it wisely and started to delve even deeper into my walk with God. I spoke scripture over my life and mind, read the Bible and bound the various demonic spirits that were afflicting me with doubt, worry, anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, among others. After a few days of doing this, an overwhelming sense of peace and joy swept over me. All anxiety left me and I don’t think I had ever been more at peace in my entire life. Not only that, I could now touch my face and let other things touch it with absolutely no anxiety. I knew I had found the answer to my problems. For the next 5 months, I got even closer to the Lord and strived to hear his voice. I continued to be anxiety free. And even though I have had setbacks in the past few months with some of my addictions, I now feel I’m back on the path of God’s will. Through my faith in Jesus Christ, I believe that someday I will see a complete removal of these breakouts. Despite it being a daily battle of spiritual warfare, I am finally enjoying life once again now that I am free of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts thanks to Jesus Christ. My self-esteem is no longer tied into my appearance and I am finally moving forward. Through my faith in Jesus Christ, I believe that someday I will be healed so I can see a complete removal of these breakouts and enjoy the kind of skin God intends for me to have!  I believe God is calling me to get my masters in professional counseling so I can specialize in Christian counseling. I want to help people who are struggling through life like I was and help them find the love of Jesus Christ and his miraculous healing powers, both of the mind, spirit and body. I want to show them his goodness and his ability to break any kind of bondage they are experiencing. If he broke the heavy bonds that acne had me tied up in, then he can help you too. If you’re suffering from a skin condition and feel like there’s no hope, I implore you to give it all up to God. Turn all your hurt, embarrassment, shame, hopelessness, and grief over to him because he does care about your skin. You may feel like he doesn’t care about something like your acne, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, etc., but that is a lie Satan is telling you to make you feel alone. Jesus cares abouteverything you are going though. I encourage you to think about how and why God is using a skin condition in your life (Remember, God is NOT the source of illness, but that doesn’t mean he won’t use illness as a vehicle for spiritual growth in you). Could He be trying to get you to travel down a different path in life, to turn away from sin, and is using this as a wake up call? Could He be teaching you the importance of faith and trust in him for your healing? Could He be teaching you patience? Could He be asking you to finally surrender your “fight” to improve your skin and totally depend on Him for your healing rather than depending on your own power? Could he be trying to get you to stop idolizing and living for your skin (this is known as idolatry, which is a grave sin where you place more importance on something than you do God)? Or could He simply be using your skin condition to draw you closer to him? There could be any number of reasons why he allowed you to go through this ordeal. To this day, I am finding new reasons why God has let me suffer from acne, and although I would never want to go though it all again, I am so grateful I did go through it because I am such a better, more mature person because of it. I shudder when I think about where I would be today if God had allowed my skin to stay clear. I am so much closer to God and so excited to see where He takes me. It has been my pleasure sharing my testimony with you and I know you were led to this site by God so He can start to do wonderful things in your life. I know that with God, peace, joy and abundance lay in your future! Please email me if you want to talk more! May God bless you!!!!

 

Jamison

My Journey With God and Acne: A Personal Testimony (Part Two)

Picking up from where I left off, I had just decided to consult a psychic about my skin problems in a state of sheer desperation. I researched and found one who was thought of to be legitimate and then made my way north to go see her. After arriving, she greeted me at the door and led me inside. Once in, I got this horrible feeling and looking at portraits on her wall, I saw a strange, almost psychedelic portrait of Jesus Christ, which gave me horrible chills. She led me to a backroom and proceeded to shuffle and cut a deck of tarot cards. I sat there in shock. This went against everything I had been raised to believe, but my desperation to find out the root cause of my acne was so great I decided to go along with it all. After asking the big question to her, she gave an answer to me, which I prefer not to give here because I don’t believe in giving out any advice she told me. Afterwards, I left there elated, believing I had finally found my answer. It turns out that within two weeks after this visit, my skin cleared up perfectly. I felt on top of the world. I thought the nightmare was over. So I started classes on this high note and things went well for about a month. However, it didn’t stay this way. Before long, I started breaking out again. Very slowly at first, and the number of breakouts steadily grew for about two months until my skin was covered in zits completely. When I say completely, I mean it. My face was a dense sea of red and purple, cystic, pus filled lesions. My acne had never come even close to that severity. I remember looking in the mirror after avoiding my reflection for weeks and when I saw the face that was looking back at me, I am not kidding when I say I nearly passed out. I screamed out in agony and cried nonstop for at least half an hour. I had to sleep on my back because the zits were so tender it hurt to lay my face on a pillow. Despite crippling depression and embarrassment, however, I pushed myself to keep up with my studies. But this ordeal made me begin to question if life was even worth living anymore. That was how much my self-worth was tied into my skin. Basically, if I didn’t have clear skin, I didn’t want to live. These thoughts of giving up continued to increase until it all became too much to bear. On November 3^rd, 2010, I realized I couldn’t keep living the way I was any longer and that I needed to get help soon because I was dangerously close to suicide. I asked my parents if they would admit me into an inpatient-treatment psychiatric facility where I could get the intensive care I needed. My father, mother and I went to a hospital one city over, and after being accepted into the program after an interview, I vividly remember seeing my mother sob quietly as she said goodbye. My subsequent stay there for the next week was eye opening and life changing. I was able to be around people who had it way worse than I did, which helped a little to put things in perspective. But most of all, I was able to remove myself from my problems and deeply reflect on what truly mattered. I left there with some new friends and with a whole new outlook on life. I wish I could say this is where my troubles over acne ended, but in fact, they were far from over. For a while after my hospital stay, things were okay, but after some time, I fell back into my old ways of placing all my self-worth in my skin and I eventually became more suicidal than I was before. I can say without a doubt that the month of March of 2011 was the worst period of my life. Everyday I struggled with thoughts of killing myself, and one night, in a fit of utter despair, I left my house around midnight and walked over to the nearby freeway overpass where I sat and watched the cars travel by below. For an hour, I contemplated my death, but thank God I found the strength to return home. But once I returned, I then struggled with thoughts of taking all of the medication my family and I take and attempting an overdose. I remember sitting on the floor of my room, sobbing and crying out to God to take my life. But again, God gave me the strength to keep on going. Two things kept me going. One of those reasons was that I was scared committing suicide would send me to hell and the other, probably bigger reason was that I knew my suicide would destroy my family. They would never fully recover from the tragedy and I just couldn’t do that to them. That summer, through God’s help, I realized that a medication I was taking was making my suicidal thoughts much worse. Once they got rid of it, things got a lot better. Things were still bad, but nothing like they were that last winter. However, despite being less suicidal now, a new hell was emerging. I was now suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and anxiety related to the health of my skin. This anxiety centered on having to do everything perfectly so I wouldn’t break out. I had to apply my crèmes in a very careful and particular manner to avoid breaking out, I restricted my diet to exclude substances that are thought to cause acne, I had to take all the vitamins thought to help your skin, etc. etc. But above all, the OCD behavior that caused me the most anxiety was I had a horrible fear of anything touching my face. I thought that when something touched my face (my fingers, piece of food, tree branch etc.) that it would lead to a breakout. This caused me an insane amount of anxiety that never fully went away. I went everywhere with this fear of things touching my face. And when something did touch my face (which was quite often despite my best efforts), I would have a small panic attack. I was constantly miserable, but life continued to go on and I finished another year of college. But that summer of 2012 was when things finally began to turn around. Stay tuned for my final entry in my personal testimony!

Jamison

My Journey With God and Acne: A Personal Testimony (Part One)

 

I know what I’m about to say may sound crazy, but here it is: Acne, rather than ruining, actually saved my life. Some of you might be thinking I found some underlying, life-threatening disease that was responsible for my breakouts or that maybe I was forced to improve my diet to eliminate my zits, but I’m actually not talking about my physical life. Instead, I’m referring to my spiritual life. In order to fully understand what I’m talking about, let me start telling you my story from the beginning. It was the summer of ’09 and I had just graduated from high school. All throughout my high school years, my source of pride was my academic standing; in fact, I had achieved straight A’s in every class I had taken in high school. But now that those years were over, I realized that I would be going to a huge college where I would be just one in 25,000. Since I was so accustomed to being recognized for my book smarts at my high school, I realize now that the prospect of being a nobody played right into the self-esteem issues I had dealt with all my life. To go from being someone everyone knew to knowing nobody in a campus more than 90 times as crowded as my former one was nothing short of devastating for me. Since I couldn’t be known as the smart kid anymore, I made the decision to find a new way to feel good about myself and stand out despite knowing nobody. I decided I would try to improve my physical appearance, which was something I never really bothered with in high school since my studies took up most of my time. I figured working on my physical appearance could be my new hobby. So that summer, I ate a lot less, worked out like crazy and tanned (which at that time cleared my skin beautifully). When the summer was over, I looked like a totally different person. With this newfound confidence, I started contemplating dating, which I had never had the confidence to do before. Before long, thoughts of losing my virginity came to mind, until it was all that I could think about. I realize now that the real reason I desired sex (besides the whole biological part) was because I was looking to be wanted by someone else. As I said earlier, I’ve always had self-esteem issues, and I was looking at sex as the ultimate source of acceptance and approval, which I so longed for and which drove me to such extreme lengths to lose weight and improve my skin. In my false sense of reasoning, I believed that the more sex I had, the more worthy and valuable I was. When I finally arrived on campus that fall, these insecurities were greatly compounded because of the many attractive people who surrounded me. My resolve to lose even more weight and have even better skin grew. Throughout that semester, I never asked anyone out because I believed I still wasn’t thin enough or my skin was clear enough. However, I continued to work out and tan, and things that semester continued to go successfully. But it was in the spring of 2010 that my trouble with acne really began. Since it was around February, the sun wasn’t out much and I could no longer tan as much as I had been. This meant that my acne returned in full force. To say this was devastating is an understatement. My confidence that I had found during that previous summer vanished and depression set in. Suddenly, an overwhelming determination came over me to find the reason for my acne. I found this site called acne.org, which literally has thousands and thousands of posts containing information on possible reasons for your acne and reviews of different skin products. For most people, this site is an absolute blessing, but for me it was a curse. I would spend hours going through reviews of acne products and discussions on what approaches people have had success with in curing their acne. This put my overly analytical mind into overdrive. It became an obsession of mine to do research at that site. However, despite trying tons of different face washes, crèmes, lotions, diets, supplements, etc. for over seven months, nothing completely got rid of my breakouts. My entire life revolved around getting rid of my acne and each new breakout brought me into a deeper state of despair. Throughout the summer of 2010, I was in a constant state of depression. Then towards the start of my second year in college, I thought of an idea that I will regret for my entire life. I decided to see a psychic and ask them what the cause of my acne was. Stay tuned for the rest of my story!

To anyone suffering from a chronic skin condition, I have a message for you:

Have you been suffering from a chronic skin condition for what feels like a lifetime? Does the sight of your skin torture and depress you? Do you feel you can't make it one more day living with your skin problems? If you answered yes to any of these questions, I can relate. My name is Jamison and I have suffered from chronic acne for the past 5 years. I know the absolute hell of living with a chronic skin condition. But I have a message for anyone who has come to this blog: God cares about your skin problems. God cares about your acne. God cares about your psoriasis. God cares about your eczema. God cares about your dermatitis. God cares about your rosacea. And He cares about any other skin conditions you may be experiencing. You may think that God doesn't concern Himself with issues like your skin, but that is a lie the enemy is feeding you. If God knows how many hairs are on your head (Luke 12:7), don't you think he cares about something that is causing you immense sorrow and grief? God cares about everything going on in your life. Please, I can't stress this enough! God loves you more than you can possibly know, and He certainly cares about your skin! On the other hand, you may be angry with God for letting you be afflicted with whatever skin disorder you're experiencing. That is totally normal, I felt that way myself for a long time. But consider Romans 8:28, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." Skin disorders, like all illness, do not come from God, rather they come from the enemy. But that doesn't mean that God won't use a skin condition to better you or bring you closer to Him. That's what that scripture is talking about. God takes negative experiences in your life and uses them to bring about a positive change in your life, if you will let Him. Your skin condition may seem like it can't possibly "work together for good", but in later posts, I will explain to you the possible ways it can strengthen you and how it can enhance your walk with God. The Lord has very good reasons for allowing you to go through the hardships you're going through. I invite you  to ask God what His reasons are for allowing this trial into your life. Don't allow Satan's mission to destroy you via your skin condition be fulfilled! Allow God to use this trial to make you stronger in Him! I want to close this opening post with this scripture: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10). This scripture is telling us that Jesus came to earth and died on the Cross for us not just to give us eternal life in heaven, but also so we may live a victorious life while we are here on earth! Start believing that God has a wonderful future in store for you! I hope you will check back here to this blog every now and then to see my future posts about the various lessons I have learned from my acne! Please contact me if you would like to talk! God Bless!

Jamison