I opened my eyes one morning and realized I was still here on earth, in my bed.
Another dawn. Another unanswered prayer for pain relief.
After more than nineteen years of marriage, trying every way I knew to honor my husband and God, I had reached the point where I just wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to go home to Jesus. The pain wasn’t physical; it was emotional — layered, buried, and explosive.
For years I’d been told — directly and indirectly — that I was the source of pain in my family and marriage. I fought back, defended myself, pointed fingers, shifted blame, and spun harder. When my son left abruptly, another landmine detonated, and the spin cycle deepened. Finally, I decided to accept full responsibility — not as self-condemnation but because I had no escape. God wasn’t taking me home, so I had to face what was left.
That decision shifted me from automatic, defensive reactions into a more thoughtful response. But I still carried a lot of hurt, and my random “nuclear” meltdowns hurt my husband and children. They saw my yelling, door-slamming, or tears, but had no idea what was triggering me inside. The truth? I didn’t either.
I entered a program designed to save marriages. It wasn’t overtly biblical, but “Christ in me, the hope of glory” rang like a lifeline as I clung to Jesus, filtering every concept — keeping what lined up with Scripture, discarding the rest.
The most frustrating part? It was built around memory recall.
“When was the first time you felt…?”
I couldn’t answer. Whole stretches of my childhood were gone.
“How would I ever find the root landmine if I couldn’t remember?”
But through that program I began learning to discover and interpret my feelings. I’d spent years studying the Bible, memorizing verses, serving, praying — all trying to “deal with” my emotions. Honestly, I wanted to unplug them completely. Emotions felt like an affliction. Christian advice told me they were fickle and not to be trusted.
For seven years I prayed daily for God to stop the pain and take me home. He didn’t. Instead, He began showing me how deeply my childhood patterns had taught me to bury landmines — patterns of loss, abandonment, and survival.
When I was 11, my parents were killed in a head-on collision. Overnight we became wards of guardians who were already raising their own three children. We were an unwanted burden. Later my brother and I were sent to live with an abusive, alcoholic aunt and uncle. We ran away to a Christian family only to find more trauma, including sexual abuse. Each move left another landmine.
There were summers in Hungary with my grandparents, godparents who were never satisfied, high school in Kansas, college starts and stops, trying to raise my youngest brother at 19, a lost year as a traveling encyclopedia salesperson, promiscuity, an abortion, and another lost summer. Each season: another buried landmine.
And yet — even here, Jesus was present. Lisa, the friend who discipled me, became a gentle signpost. The night I almost drove off a freeway bridge, He pulled me back. I closed the door to suicide and began my search for a church home. Slowly, He taught me that being a Christian was not about joining a gang where everyone did the same things, but about a relationship with the Savior of my soul.
At the time, I still couldn’t see any lemonade in these years — only landmines. But looking back, I can see that even then, Jesus was planting lemon seeds. The patterns that felt like curses were exposing the survival wiring I would need to understand later. The emotions I hated were the very clues that would lead me to His peace.
Breadcrumb forward:
“The deepest landmines were still buried — and they surfaced years later at Elijah House.”
---If parts of my story sound familiar — emotions that feel like landmines, memories you can’t access, or meltdowns that don’t make sense — you’re not alone.
Jesus was with me even when I couldn’t see Him, and He is with you too.
👉 If you’d like a gentle first step, the free What’s Good About You? Quiz can help you discover how you naturally process emotions — and whether opposite world is still hijacking your story.
In Christ, landmines flip to treasure, lemons to lemonade, and the Peace Train keeps moving forward — carrying you into His wholeness.