On this cool, crisp day in November, he’d asked me to meet him at a church in Sachse, Texas, where he had been invited by one of my new “Christian” friends and mentors, Angie – whom he’d also befriended – to a Power Team evangelism show where he’d be baptized afterward. He told me he had something exciting to tell me that night, and based upon the tone and context of the conversations we’d been having, I had every reason to believe he was going to propose to me. Imagine my surprise, then, when after the baptism I was led into a room in the back of the church where he was standing beside Angie and her entire family—people I had truly come to admire and respect. It was there that John told me he was “so sorry,” but over the months, “God had called them together,” they had fallen in love, and they had been hiding their relationship from me.

There I stood, just as twenty years before, numb and sick with the same stinging, disconnected pain just beneath the top layer of my skin on the day of the Spic and Span. I walked out of the church heartbroken and alone and just started driving on a 300-mile round trip to Oklahoma City and back. I had just danced with the devil – a narcissist of unspeakable proportion – who, after all was said and done, would “hoover me” for years to come. But that’s another story for another day.

When I arrived back in Dallas, it was almost time for the Saturday parking-lot meet with Christian and his dad for our weekend custody switch. I was wrecked beyond belief, but I was doing everything I could to keep it together for my son’s sake. I needed not to let what had happened the night before break me down completely, and by that stage in the game, I was already a pro at stuffing painful things down and pretending they didn’t exist. Despite my best efforts, though, I consciously picked a fight with my ex-husband so I could run away and avoid having to fake my way through a “normal” weekend visit with my son. I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, had just experienced the second biggest bombshell of my life, and, though I didn’t know it at the time, was less than fifteen minutes away from the first of my nervous breakdowns. I went back to my parents’ house, where I had been living at the time, and swallowed every single pill, capsule, and liquid medicine I could find in my bathroom. I JUST WANTED TO GO “HOME”!

The details of that morning were never very clear, but I do remember lying there, rocking back and forth and screaming that I wanted to be with God. It was my sister who first realized what I had done to myself and called 911. Meanwhile, my ex-husband and son had followed me home because he had sensed that something was just “off” at our meeting and had become worried.

My parents were ballistic as my sister frantically pulled me from the bed to the bathroom and tried to make me vomit up everything I had swallowed. While I cannot and will not ever say that I actually died that day, what I can say is that something did happen within my body and soul in that moment—something that defies not only logic, but also everything I had been taught to believe about life, death, and the “hereafter” in my cradle Catholicism. It was something. I went somewhere. Somewhere I still can hardly fathom. No, I never saw “the light at the end of the tunnel” people often speak of when they’ve had a near-death experience, because again, I don’t believe I was actually dying. Rather, there was a numbing, soothing, lulling void in my mind, as though I were being cradled in blissful nothingness by every single hand from every single shred of the universe at once. It was ethereal, to say the least, and even now, when I think of it, I want to cry—not in a sad way, but in a joyous one. That moment devoured and immersed me in something so much bigger than my simple mind will ever understand, yet at the same time, in some strange way, I very much do understand it.

Meanwhile, my Christian, a mere five years old at the time, managed to slip through all the chaos and come to me. He, too, was frantic and crying, but he had taken hold of my wrist and was patting my back as though HE were the parent consoling the child. Up until that point, I hadn’t been able to focus on anything in the room because everything around me was just dark, and yet I could hear everything my son was saying very clearly:

Mommy, God’s not ready for you to go Home. He wants you to stay here and be my mom.

It’s imperative to note that although I could see his mouth moving and hear the words he was saying, it was not Christian’s voice I was hearing. I firmly believe—and will never be convinced otherwise—that it was God. God Himself was speaking to me through my son. He’s real, my friends. HE’S REAL!

I remained hospitalized until the state committed me to a psych ward, where I underwent treatment for clinical depression, PTSD, and the much-needed rape counseling I had never received. My whole family was involved in this process, which was something we were all in dire need of by then.

Looking back, I realize I didn’t want to die that morning. I just couldn’t pull myself out of the black hole I was in. I was lucky. Very lucky. I made it home in time for Christmas that year feeling lighter and happier than I had in years—clear-headed, focused, and internally combusted with a fire in my soul of epic proportion. Despite the unbelievably selfish horror I had put them all through, my entire family welcomed me home again.

As for the devil? He never ONCE turned back to see what he had done. For him, it was easy—so easy—to discard me as unwanted “baggage,” just as he had once referred to my son. As for me? It was everything, because I loved him—or so I thought—trusted him, and had given him every piece of my already broken heart I could give. And as for her? Her betrayal of me “in Jesus’ name” literally murdered my soul and caused spiritual damage within my heart and psyche that took years to recover from. Perhaps you’ve heard it said:

The devil doesn’t come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you’ve ever wished for.

It took years for me to finally understand that they were two of the actual devil’s own: he, the consummate wolf in sheep’s clothing, and she, by the name of “Angela,” the most beautiful angel of Light I could have known—my friend, mentor, and “sister in Christ,” with a pit viper’s tongue, a knife in her hand, and a smile on her face as she plunged it into my back.

Indeed, it was my darkest hour to discover what really lied beneath the surface of two of the most truly evil “things” I have ever encountered. How starved these vile creatures must have been that my heart became a meal for his very small affect and her insignificant, insecure, thirsty, and insincere ego.

WHAT LIES BENEATH

Take a breath. Hold it in. Start a fight. You won’t win. Had enough. Let’s begin. Never mind. I don’t care. All in all, you’re no good. You don’t cry like you should. Let it go if you could when love dies in the end. So, I’ll find what lies beneath your sick twisted smile as I lay underneath your cold, jaded eyes. Now you’ve turned the tide on me ’cause you’re so unkind. I will always be here for the rest of my life. Here we go. Does it hurt? Say goodbye to this world. I will not be undone. Come to life. It gets worse. … Don’t carry me under. You’re the Devil in disguise. God sing for the hopeless. I’m the one you left behind.

{Breaking Benjamin}