Our Story God Has Composed
Here is our story that God has created for us. It's detailed but read all the way through if you want to know more about us, where we came from and the trials we've come through by on His grace. I still can't believe it's our story, I wouldn't change a thing! All of this, all under the age of 30! What else could He have in store?!
He was 15 as was I. I went to church with his best friend (Jeremy Willet) and Jer's girl friend (Kat) who is now my kindred spirit in life. Neal was playing in a Christian band with Jer and they were playing a show one summer afternoon. Neal was playing drums and it was like the sky parted and God pointed Neal out to me. He was cute and a musician! Oh my. I had just made a commitment to God to focus on Him instead of a boyfriend until He showed me the 'right one.' So after the sky parting and a heavenly light shining down I left it at that, trusting God with my heart.
Our path crossed a year later when our parents were in a band together and we were both asked to join. I walked in and there was that amazingly handsome boy from a few months back just standing there with a guitar! My heart started racing but I wanted to focus on worshiping God during the band practice, as did Neal. At the end we made small talk and it was certainly 'love at first sight.' We always said our hearts knew from day one that we were meant to be. Neal's mother and my father encouraged us to get to know each other, that certainly wouldn't be a problem. We started courting and my heart just melted when Neal's father told me how 'smitten' his boy was with me. There was no ounce of a doubt we were designed to be high-school sweet-hearts then husband and wife. In fact, it was my senior prom night that we both agreed we were going to marry each other. We were both 17.
We courted three years and the night Neal proposed I had to choose him, choose love. The night of our engagement I was given the ultimatum to continue with the engagement and be kicked out of my house or to cancel our union. This wasn't a decision to even weigh. I chose Neal. This was the first of many situations I would have to fight for life and happiness with him. So life and love continued as did our wedding plans. There was a lot of heartache and stress on my end due to the lack of support from my father in supporting his oldest daughter in her wedding but life went on.
We married and 11 months after Neal joined the Maryland State Police where he lived at the academy for six months while I worked at the local school system being a sign-language interpreter. Before he joined I had a 'gut instinct' as people would say, that this career would be brutal on our marriage. I still remember to this day the conversation in which I made him promise me that if it came down to our marriage and his career that he would choose our marriage. Now back up a minute, I didn't know it at the time but this 'gut instinct' is a prophetic gift from God. Jessica is derived from the Hebrew name Iska which was Abraham's niece and it means 'foresight' or 'foreknowledge.' I can not begin to list the times where God has given me the gift of just knowing what was going to occur in our lives before it happened.
Between six months to a year of Neal being a MD State Trooper he started changing from the godly young man I met, fell in love with and married. Something was wrong but I couldn't place my finger on it. He went from being passionate about God, music and life to being distant, self-centered and an arrogant Trooper. No conversation I had with him made any break through to his heart and my heart quickly started sinking with his. I lost hope of the man I fell in love with and what made me so mad was that God refused to give me an answer. I'm someone who seeks equations to life to make sense of our life here on earth so God's reasoning of, 'Jess, something is wrong with him and you've got a choice to make. Keep the covenant you made with him and myself or to walk away' didn't comfort me very much. Oh so many times I just couldn't see my life continuing as it was with him but deep down I still had a love and hope for him that I could not just walk away from. God revealed to me that something was going on with him, emotionally and spiritually, so how could I walk away from my husband (the person I'm one with even though it certainly didn't feel like it) when he needed me the most? So I would die to myself and decide to follow God's design for marriage, forever.
Our first child was born in 2007. I dealt with postpartum depression and grieved deeply for my lost love. I had been praying for years and believed God would come through and save the day (or my husband and marriage to be exact) but I didn't want to wait for His timing. Who wants to wait 5+ years for an answer to prayer?
After five years of heart-ache and distance from the man I loved, all the dark shadows and pain surfaced. This was a good thing because God started revealing to me how all the shattered pieces fit together and told me that Neal had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. So the very next day I gave Neal an ultimatum, 'Go see someone for help or else...' I sincerely didn't mean the 'or else' but he did and that was the fear that led him to help where he was diagnosed with PTSD.
God was showing his faithfulness to me because months back we had to move out of our home into my in-laws basement to try to keep our home by renting it out in due to the economy hitting our now one-income family due to my calling to be at home with our child. This was a blessing in disguise because once Neal started getting help for PTSD is when life got really hard. I had a young child, was dealing with depression myself, family that wanted me to leave my husband, financial issues that had no end in sight and a husband who needed me to be strong, to help him fight the demons of PTSD and claim God's victory over his life. There were so many countless nights of panic, sheer terror, flashbacks and days filled with depression that I couldn't have juggled it all on my own if it were not the help of Mom and Dad being there to keep an eye on Neal so this is why it was orchestrated for us to move into their basement. It was harder taking care of Neal than our toddler and being his warrior when he didn't have the strength. And when I didn't think I had the strength to do another minute of that life, God gave me His strength. There were so many nights that I would lie beside Neal, place my hands over his head and plead the Blood on his mind and body. Walking him through a panic attack by prayer, a calm voice and a loving-tender hand caressing his tense body. Those nights I would wait for him to fall asleep before I drifted off to sleep because I couldn't fall asleep knowing my other half was beside me struggling so much, I wouldn't allow him to do this battle alone. Night and sleep quickly become the enemy when you battle with PTSD. Other enemies, to name a few, were certain smells, tv shows or scenes from movies, driving past the MDSP barrack, driving by a certain house or spot on the highway where he encountered a traumatic scene. Our life was so different from any one else's and that's what was so hard. No one could understand what my husband was going through. I was the closest thing he had of understanding and I didn't even have a clue other than from watching his behavior and what the Holy Spirit revealed to me. We were all alone in this battle and it was such a lonely and heart-wrenching battle but it was beautiful because God was turning my cold heart toward Neal into a compassionate and loving heart again.
July 2009 Neal's gun and badge were stripped of him and if you know a cop, you know this is your identity, your life, a cop's crown of achievement especially for someone who dreamed of being a MD State Trooper since a young boy. That day, driving home, Neal said, "I have a feeling God is going to use all of this to provide an income for me to support my family so I can be in ministry like I should have been all along." Later that day he was sent home where another trooper would come into his parents house where we lived and comb through their home to make sure all guns were locked up and out of reach of Neal since people with PTSD are often suicidal. No support or care from the people who claimed to be his brothers in the field. We were left to do this all on our own which is not how God intends life to be lived. It's now all okay because God had a plan for Neal to find his true identity and healing for us both. September 2009 he applied for a special disability retirement on the case of his PTSD being job related.
So between applying for retirement in 2009 and following God's blind call to middle Tennessee he was put on 1/3 pay and wasn't granted permission by MDSP to get a second part-time job in order to pay our bills. So we lost our house and had to declare bankruptcy. The red tape of MDSP was so harsh to us but God can truly work anything out for good. Hitting 'rock bottom' financially was really such a freeing experience for us. We were not tied to the 'Jones next door' and we truly were learning the lesson of what really mattered in life.
March 2011 a general retirement was granted but not the special disability retirement that he deserved because the state said that Neal's PTSD was not job related. Talk about pouring salt on a wound! So we fought the system. We had a couple psychologists that said his PTSD was in fact job-related but the one psychologist paid by the MDSP of course said it wasn't true and you can guess which professional opinion the state went by. It was such an injustice to my husband and so discouraging.
By this time in our life God led us to TN after visiting one time and falling in love. His scripture about Abraham's calling to go out from his father's land to a foreign land was burning on our hearts so that was clearly God's guidance to Franklin, TN. The sixth day of living in TN we were led to a church right around the corner. Tracy Cameron was preaching and Josh Harman was leading worship that Sunday. We walked out looking at each other and knew without a doubt we were meant to be at this church. God placed us in a home group that didn't just change but transformed our lives by the Biblical community outlined in His Word. There we learned God's Word that went from our head to our heart. There is where we learned about true, Christ-centered Jesus family as I call it and discipleship.
After about a year and half at this church God started knitting Tracy and Neal's hearts together in friendship. I had a feeling God would be calling us to leave our comfort zone of our church and that Tracy was somehow in the picture. Things fell into place and we prayed for confirmation and sure enough God gave us dreams. Dreams of Tracy and Neal working side-by-side in ministry.
Our hearts were so set on God, His will and what new adventures He was calling us to in ministry that we came to the point of surrender for our legal battle over a special disability retirement. We came to the peace that we only wanted His will and if this special retirement was not His will then we would trust in His goodness. This was the exact sense of peace we had when we had a miscarriage a few months back.
So we sent out our letter to our church home explaining God's calling us to support Tracy in his new ministry at a new church. I kid you not, the very next day Neal gets a phone call from his lawyer saying, 'I've never heard of such a thing in my career but somehow the assistant attorney general of MD got a hold of your case and granted your special disability retirement. It's all done, it will be effective in a few weeks.' Neal's response was, 'I know how this happened. I serve a big God!' I'd like to mention that a few nights before I had a dream that his special disability retirement was just granted, out of the blue ;)
So here we are at our new church where Tracy is the led minister, Josh is the worship leader. Neal is in ministry, what he has been called to do since birth. Would we take back our trials and incredible, almost intolerable heartache that was centered around a career in MD State Police and led to PTSD? No way! It's God's incredible testimony of His justice, faithfulness and goodness. I just love our story because it points to our Abba Father.
This is our story, this is our life. It's a story of 'for better or worse, in sickness or in health, in richer or poorer.' We're not even 30! I can not wait to live out the rest of my days God has ordained to see what else He has in store!
He was 15 as was I. I went to church with his best friend (Jeremy Willet) and Jer's girl friend (Kat) who is now my kindred spirit in life. Neal was playing in a Christian band with Jer and they were playing a show one summer afternoon. Neal was playing drums and it was like the sky parted and God pointed Neal out to me. He was cute and a musician! Oh my. I had just made a commitment to God to focus on Him instead of a boyfriend until He showed me the 'right one.' So after the sky parting and a heavenly light shining down I left it at that, trusting God with my heart.
Our path crossed a year later when our parents were in a band together and we were both asked to join. I walked in and there was that amazingly handsome boy from a few months back just standing there with a guitar! My heart started racing but I wanted to focus on worshiping God during the band practice, as did Neal. At the end we made small talk and it was certainly 'love at first sight.' We always said our hearts knew from day one that we were meant to be. Neal's mother and my father encouraged us to get to know each other, that certainly wouldn't be a problem. We started courting and my heart just melted when Neal's father told me how 'smitten' his boy was with me. There was no ounce of a doubt we were designed to be high-school sweet-hearts then husband and wife. In fact, it was my senior prom night that we both agreed we were going to marry each other. We were both 17.
We courted three years and the night Neal proposed I had to choose him, choose love. The night of our engagement I was given the ultimatum to continue with the engagement and be kicked out of my house or to cancel our union. This wasn't a decision to even weigh. I chose Neal. This was the first of many situations I would have to fight for life and happiness with him. So life and love continued as did our wedding plans. There was a lot of heartache and stress on my end due to the lack of support from my father in supporting his oldest daughter in her wedding but life went on.
We married and 11 months after Neal joined the Maryland State Police where he lived at the academy for six months while I worked at the local school system being a sign-language interpreter. Before he joined I had a 'gut instinct' as people would say, that this career would be brutal on our marriage. I still remember to this day the conversation in which I made him promise me that if it came down to our marriage and his career that he would choose our marriage. Now back up a minute, I didn't know it at the time but this 'gut instinct' is a prophetic gift from God. Jessica is derived from the Hebrew name Iska which was Abraham's niece and it means 'foresight' or 'foreknowledge.' I can not begin to list the times where God has given me the gift of just knowing what was going to occur in our lives before it happened.
Between six months to a year of Neal being a MD State Trooper he started changing from the godly young man I met, fell in love with and married. Something was wrong but I couldn't place my finger on it. He went from being passionate about God, music and life to being distant, self-centered and an arrogant Trooper. No conversation I had with him made any break through to his heart and my heart quickly started sinking with his. I lost hope of the man I fell in love with and what made me so mad was that God refused to give me an answer. I'm someone who seeks equations to life to make sense of our life here on earth so God's reasoning of, 'Jess, something is wrong with him and you've got a choice to make. Keep the covenant you made with him and myself or to walk away' didn't comfort me very much. Oh so many times I just couldn't see my life continuing as it was with him but deep down I still had a love and hope for him that I could not just walk away from. God revealed to me that something was going on with him, emotionally and spiritually, so how could I walk away from my husband (the person I'm one with even though it certainly didn't feel like it) when he needed me the most? So I would die to myself and decide to follow God's design for marriage, forever.
Our first child was born in 2007. I dealt with postpartum depression and grieved deeply for my lost love. I had been praying for years and believed God would come through and save the day (or my husband and marriage to be exact) but I didn't want to wait for His timing. Who wants to wait 5+ years for an answer to prayer?
After five years of heart-ache and distance from the man I loved, all the dark shadows and pain surfaced. This was a good thing because God started revealing to me how all the shattered pieces fit together and told me that Neal had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. So the very next day I gave Neal an ultimatum, 'Go see someone for help or else...' I sincerely didn't mean the 'or else' but he did and that was the fear that led him to help where he was diagnosed with PTSD.
God was showing his faithfulness to me because months back we had to move out of our home into my in-laws basement to try to keep our home by renting it out in due to the economy hitting our now one-income family due to my calling to be at home with our child. This was a blessing in disguise because once Neal started getting help for PTSD is when life got really hard. I had a young child, was dealing with depression myself, family that wanted me to leave my husband, financial issues that had no end in sight and a husband who needed me to be strong, to help him fight the demons of PTSD and claim God's victory over his life. There were so many countless nights of panic, sheer terror, flashbacks and days filled with depression that I couldn't have juggled it all on my own if it were not the help of Mom and Dad being there to keep an eye on Neal so this is why it was orchestrated for us to move into their basement. It was harder taking care of Neal than our toddler and being his warrior when he didn't have the strength. And when I didn't think I had the strength to do another minute of that life, God gave me His strength. There were so many nights that I would lie beside Neal, place my hands over his head and plead the Blood on his mind and body. Walking him through a panic attack by prayer, a calm voice and a loving-tender hand caressing his tense body. Those nights I would wait for him to fall asleep before I drifted off to sleep because I couldn't fall asleep knowing my other half was beside me struggling so much, I wouldn't allow him to do this battle alone. Night and sleep quickly become the enemy when you battle with PTSD. Other enemies, to name a few, were certain smells, tv shows or scenes from movies, driving past the MDSP barrack, driving by a certain house or spot on the highway where he encountered a traumatic scene. Our life was so different from any one else's and that's what was so hard. No one could understand what my husband was going through. I was the closest thing he had of understanding and I didn't even have a clue other than from watching his behavior and what the Holy Spirit revealed to me. We were all alone in this battle and it was such a lonely and heart-wrenching battle but it was beautiful because God was turning my cold heart toward Neal into a compassionate and loving heart again.
July 2009 Neal's gun and badge were stripped of him and if you know a cop, you know this is your identity, your life, a cop's crown of achievement especially for someone who dreamed of being a MD State Trooper since a young boy. That day, driving home, Neal said, "I have a feeling God is going to use all of this to provide an income for me to support my family so I can be in ministry like I should have been all along." Later that day he was sent home where another trooper would come into his parents house where we lived and comb through their home to make sure all guns were locked up and out of reach of Neal since people with PTSD are often suicidal. No support or care from the people who claimed to be his brothers in the field. We were left to do this all on our own which is not how God intends life to be lived. It's now all okay because God had a plan for Neal to find his true identity and healing for us both. September 2009 he applied for a special disability retirement on the case of his PTSD being job related.
So between applying for retirement in 2009 and following God's blind call to middle Tennessee he was put on 1/3 pay and wasn't granted permission by MDSP to get a second part-time job in order to pay our bills. So we lost our house and had to declare bankruptcy. The red tape of MDSP was so harsh to us but God can truly work anything out for good. Hitting 'rock bottom' financially was really such a freeing experience for us. We were not tied to the 'Jones next door' and we truly were learning the lesson of what really mattered in life.
March 2011 a general retirement was granted but not the special disability retirement that he deserved because the state said that Neal's PTSD was not job related. Talk about pouring salt on a wound! So we fought the system. We had a couple psychologists that said his PTSD was in fact job-related but the one psychologist paid by the MDSP of course said it wasn't true and you can guess which professional opinion the state went by. It was such an injustice to my husband and so discouraging.
By this time in our life God led us to TN after visiting one time and falling in love. His scripture about Abraham's calling to go out from his father's land to a foreign land was burning on our hearts so that was clearly God's guidance to Franklin, TN. The sixth day of living in TN we were led to a church right around the corner. Tracy Cameron was preaching and Josh Harman was leading worship that Sunday. We walked out looking at each other and knew without a doubt we were meant to be at this church. God placed us in a home group that didn't just change but transformed our lives by the Biblical community outlined in His Word. There we learned God's Word that went from our head to our heart. There is where we learned about true, Christ-centered Jesus family as I call it and discipleship.
After about a year and half at this church God started knitting Tracy and Neal's hearts together in friendship. I had a feeling God would be calling us to leave our comfort zone of our church and that Tracy was somehow in the picture. Things fell into place and we prayed for confirmation and sure enough God gave us dreams. Dreams of Tracy and Neal working side-by-side in ministry.
Our hearts were so set on God, His will and what new adventures He was calling us to in ministry that we came to the point of surrender for our legal battle over a special disability retirement. We came to the peace that we only wanted His will and if this special retirement was not His will then we would trust in His goodness. This was the exact sense of peace we had when we had a miscarriage a few months back.
So we sent out our letter to our church home explaining God's calling us to support Tracy in his new ministry at a new church. I kid you not, the very next day Neal gets a phone call from his lawyer saying, 'I've never heard of such a thing in my career but somehow the assistant attorney general of MD got a hold of your case and granted your special disability retirement. It's all done, it will be effective in a few weeks.' Neal's response was, 'I know how this happened. I serve a big God!' I'd like to mention that a few nights before I had a dream that his special disability retirement was just granted, out of the blue ;)
So here we are at our new church where Tracy is the led minister, Josh is the worship leader. Neal is in ministry, what he has been called to do since birth. Would we take back our trials and incredible, almost intolerable heartache that was centered around a career in MD State Police and led to PTSD? No way! It's God's incredible testimony of His justice, faithfulness and goodness. I just love our story because it points to our Abba Father.
This is our story, this is our life. It's a story of 'for better or worse, in sickness or in health, in richer or poorer.' We're not even 30! I can not wait to live out the rest of my days God has ordained to see what else He has in store!
It's an amazing story and I am so blessed to know it!! =)
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