This may come in several parts, but having heard some of the issues you guys are dealing with, I feel led to share some of my life story with you. It is going to be VERY long, and I'll try my best to keep from rambling. Hopefully this will help some of you, even those that know me best, know me and understand me a bit more.
Well, let's see now, without revealing any "personal" information that could lead to identity theft, I was born in New York state and moved to Ohio the week of my 2nd birthday. Even though I don't remember New York at all, it is VERY memorable for my parents. At a VERY young age I had a reaction to one of the shots I received that caused something to happen in my brain, and I developed epilepsy. I say it that way, because I had gone about 7 months without ever having a seizure, and then for no reason starting having them VERY frequently, as in every 3rd day under normal circumstances, and more often if I got sick (especially anything that caused me to have a fever), or got stressed (be it eustress or distress). I just mentioned this, but just to clarify how severe it was, if my body temperature went up as little as 1/2 a degree Celsius, I would have a seizure, so the first sign that I had an ear infection, cold, or anything was that I had a seizure. My second seizure that I ever had (when I was 7.5 months old) lead to respiratory arrest (I stopped breathing) which then led to cardiac arrest (my heart stopped because there was no oxygen going to it). By the grace of God, our next-door neighbor was a CPR instructor, and he kept me alive until the paramedics could get there. At the hospital they tried three times to shock my heart into starting back up. For all intents and purposes, I would have died, because I went more than 3 minutes without breathing or having a pulse (other than that provided by CPR). For many years after that I had to wear a heart monitor whenever I slept, and I had to be under constant care of my parents or nurse. Another thing--my seizures wouldn't stop by themselves at this point either, so my parents had to be trained to give me injections of paraldehyde to stop my seizures. I'm guessing only a couple if any know what that is, so I've provided a link, but basically, it completely shuts down your central nervous system to prevent the seizure from frying your brain. So, I grew up staying with my parents most or nurses most of the time. Though that may not seem significant, this severely stunted my social development, as I never really interacted with groups of kids at all before school (I could never go to a daycare for instance, because if there was a kid that was sick and I caught their ear infection, pink eye, sinus infection, cold, flu, etc, I would have a seizure). So for those wondering why I have little to no imagination (like when you guys have random pillow fights in chat and I just sit there and don't do anything), the damage don't to my brain from the seizures plus the fact that my imagination wasn't really given a chance to develop is why.
So, now for a bit of transition. I grew up around my mom a lot. It's not that my dad wasn't there, just that he had to work a lot of hours to be able to afford to pay for the medical insurance and to pay the medical bills, and most of my nurses that helped care for me (when my mom needed to have a day to go shopping or at times when she had to work as well), means that I'm also much more emotional than the normal guy would be, and I didn't have any idea of the social norms to know when it was acceptable for a boy to get angry, cry, or anything else. My emotions really ruled me for a LONG time to the point where, as a young kid I experienced clinical depression, though it was never diagnosed for years. Don't ever let anyone tell you that kids can't have suicidal thoughts, because they can. I didn't know how to deal with my emotions, and that made the situation even worse.
I want to jump back a few years though, because I know some of you want to know about something else that I have skipped to this point. My parents were both Christians, and both of my older sisters were saved at a fairly young age. Although I used to think I was saved when I was 5 years old, I know now that that was the first time that I understood my need for a Savior, but it was not until many years after that that I understood what it truly meant to yield myself to the authority of the Word of God and to the Lord Jesus Christ. I say this because I know that although I understood the process of salvation, and had even said the "Sinner's Prayer" at age 5, I will leave it to say that I never understood what it REALLY meant to love someone until much later, and since that is the primary mark of a Christian, I can say that my faith that I thought that I had wasn't real until I learned how to love myself, love others as I loved myself, and love God who me just the way I was (and this was the hardest of all of them). For a long time, I was angry at God for making me the way I was. I thought that my disability was intensified because it could not be seen and no one understood why I was the way I was. This is brutally honest, but I almost envied kids that had a physical disability or where mentally handicapped in a way that was obvious. Though people were still mean to them, at least they and their parents knew what was wrong with them, and why they were they way they were, and society knew what to expect from them. I realize now how wrong a view that was, and I realize that God made them the way He did because a purpose He had to fulfill in and through them "for the praise of His glory," and He made me the way I was for a special purpose that I may never fully understand, though I have seen ways in which He has already used my epilepsy as a way for me and my parents to reach out to people. This is where my faith comes in. It wasn't until I let God deal with my dishonestly and my lack of integrity that I could understand that God's promises were sure, true, and trustworthy. A deceitful man trusts no one, because he knows that he himself is not trustworthy. I got to a point where all I had to hang onto were the promises of God and His character.
There is a lot more to come later, but I want to save what I have for now.