I am on Cloud 9 after cleaning a friend’s beautiful house, but more importantly because Caralyn is engaged. Do you know what that amazing lady has come back from?! You can by reading this first. Her mental illness manifested itself as anorexia, and my mental illness manifested as depression. She has been a pivotal part of my journey through depression even though we have yet to meet face-to-face. She got engaged to an amazing man who follows Jesus,and I can’t wait to meet him as well.

Caralyn, I am welling up with tears of happiness for you right now because I can cry at the drop of a bucket for any reason, but when something Divine like this happens I just let the tears rain down. I’m not giving full vent to them because my girls are sleeping in two rooms next to this one, but there’s no way I wasn’t going to publish an essay about this eternal good news. What God has joined together let man not separate. Your struggle through this eating disorder has prepared you well for the demands of marriage, but from what I’ve read about your amazing fiancé God has prepared this man since before any of us was even conceived. Marriage is hard as hell, pardon my French, but you’ve already been to hell and survived. You will thrive in marriage. You’ve been thriving, and I suspect the angels in the heavens and on Earth are rejoicing about this incredible news. Your story inspires me to no end, and we are still in the early parts of what your story represents.

If Caralyn’s blog followers are any indication to the number of people she has helped through her ministry I can only imagine the number of people she has saved by the power of God from eating disorders. Caralyn herself was near death when she hit rock bottom, but God was far from finished with our newly engaged blogger. I pray from selfish motives that she write a tell all memoir because I’ll be the first to buy multiple copies to share with my friends and family. Caralyn’s turnaround came because she listened to the voice of the Father tell her who she was and is. All of us who battle an addiction or mental illness know that it’s a daily dependence upon God to tell us we are his. Satan and his network of angels, demons and humans aren’t omniscient or omnipotent like Yahweh, but they are a hell of a lot stronger than our human limitations. They don’t have to sleep and eat like us, so you can only imagine the destruction they can cause. They cannot be everywhere all the time like God, but their sheer numbers can no doubt decimate a city or town. We cannot leave to chance our own salvation, survival and thriving to the government, church or extended family. We must lean upon people like Caralyn, God himself, the Holy Spirit, Jesus and those we trust to lead us to where we need to be. Ultimately what will happen on Judgement Day will be a personal interaction with God about the things we did upon this Earth, and we won’t be able to blame anyone but ourselves for rejecting the times he sent something or someone to set us free from whatever chains bind us.

I cannot thank the Father for my sweet cyber friend Caralyn for opening my eyes to the healing power of Jesus Christ. There are many things God is working through to heal me from depression, but when I saw Caralyn got engaged on Instagram a flood of hope washed over me as you can see by my writing. I know writers are supposed to write, but as an unpaid writer many times I only write when epiphanies hit.

Caralyn’s love for people shines forth from her blog, and now that she is preparing for marriage she doubles that love through Jesus Christ in showing the world there is no greater love than the love of Jesus Christ.

Congratulations to the happy couple!