Lanae' Hale

"My story began in the church," Lanae' explains. "I grew up hearing about God's love and grace but I couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that God could really love me. I thought I was never good enough or pretty enough or worth anything. So there was this constant fight in my life between the God I heard about in church and the world that was just devouring me on the inside. "At seventeen, Lanae' says "everything shifted." A long-time relationship with a serious boyfriend ended badly, and she entered her senior year of high school with all of her hidden emotions and insecurities finally beginning to spill out. She was desperate for a way to numb her feelings, and soon found one. "I had never heard of 'cutting'," Lanae' says, "but I had reached the point where I didn't like who I was and I was tired of living. I knew you could die if you cut your wrists, so I found a vein and started cutting. But when you do that, your body can respond to the physical pain with a rush of endorphins that make you feel good for a while. So that was where the addiction started. It got worse as it went on. The cuts got deeper. When I didn't want to deal with emotions, I would just cut them away. "Lanae' tried sleep aids and alcohol as well, but it was the knives she kept hidden beside her bed and in her car that she most often turned to for immediate relief. The crushing cycle of shame and addiction spiraled for three years, until the night Lanae' found herself in her college apartment holding a handful of pills, ready to take them all. "There was something deeper in my soul that just wouldn't let me do it," she says, "something that wouldn't let me die. I poured the pills out of my hand. I can look back at that moment now and know that it was God. Some time later I came across Psalm 147:3, 'He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.' It seemed too good to be true. I asked God 'Can you really do that?' because nothing else had worked and I desperately wanted to be healed. God was really beginning to use events in my life to break down my walls and reveal to me that I needed something more. Eventually, I realized how broken I was outside of Jesus. There was a moment when I finally fell on my face and offered the pieces of my life to God."