On June 12, 1994, my life was turned upside down.
This normal, private kid growing up in Dana Point, California, 6.30 in the morning, I
get woken up to screams, screams that are beyond your wildest imagination.
I woke me up and all of a sudden I saw Denise scream and cry and she went into her son's
room and I followed the cry and the scream and I remember her, she was sitting next to
Shawn, her son, and I was like, what's going on?
I had just woken up and she said, Coco's dead and that's what the kids called Nicole, that
was her little nickname.
And I said, who?
And she said, Coco, and I still, it still couldn't register.
And she said, Nicole, your sister.
I was just in the state of disbelief and shock that I, how can this happen?
Other people die, not people in my own family and not when they're so young.
The moment that I heard about Bill's death.
It's one thing to be blindsided and have your spouse die, but to run in front of a 400 ton
moving train was beyond anything that I thought I would ever be able to comprehend.
Hi, I'm Tanya Brown and I'm here with Christie Huggstad and for the past six weeks, Pastor
Rick Warren has been taking the Saddleback community through the stages of how to get
through what you're going through.
We're here to share our stories of our own personal tragedies.
Mine was the suicide of my husband and Tanya's was the murder of her sister.
These are not real easy situations to grieve.
They were sudden, they were without mourning and we didn't have the opportunity to say
goodbye.
It was pouring rain that morning and all I kept thinking is I cannot live with this.
This is bigger than life.
I wanted to crash into another car, I wanted to go off the road, I wanted somebody to take
me out.
So I immediately called my mom and my sisters and I sat in the car in the rain waiting for
them to come and when they got there, they opened the door and I was hunched over the
steering wheel sobbing violently thinking my life is over.
I was so angry, I thought, God, what have I done to deserve something like this?
You know, Christy, this happened to her nine months ago.
My event happened 20 years ago and I'm so proud of her wanting to walk through this,
walking through the sorrow and walking through the pain.
I didn't.
I stuffed.
I neglected to feel that sorrow, I didn't feel the pain.
All of this stuff started festering inside of me and then on October 9th, it exploded.
My wedding was canceled four days before in 2004 and it spiraled me down into a tornado
of self-destruction, popping pills, drinking wine.
It was awful.
I went to my room, poured the bottle of Kalana Pin in one hand, bottle of wine in the other
and I said, I'm done.
I am done.
Like I just don't want to face one more loss, one more struggle, one more pain, one more
sorrow experience, like I was done.
I wanted to do myself in and that's how I'm sharing it with you because I was tired, tired
and immediately my sister walked in and I scooped up the pills and I said to her, get
me in a safe place.
I had to really ask with intention, God, help me see the beauty in all of this.
I know I need to be here in this room and in this psych ward, but help me see the beauty
in any of this because I'm not seeing it.
And you know what?
The minute I asked, because I got mad enough that I needed help, but the moment I asked,
I saw that butterfly, all of a sudden I saw the dogs play, I saw the waves crash.
When you're wanting to face that struggle and you get mad enough about hurting, you start
asking.
I've come to the point where I needed to surrender.
I needed to let go of the past.
I can't change it.
I kept trying to change the outcome.
If I only had called Bill 20 seconds before he ran in front of the train, he would be
alive if I only taken him to the psychiatrist or if I'd only, only what if I should have,
I could have.
So for me, I had so much guilt and I felt responsible.
So in surrendering, I've learned to transform my worrying into meditation where I am now
researching God's word and spending time every day just being alone with him.
If you transform the way you think with God's help, it'll change your behavior.
I think the hardest phase for me right now is the sanctification and how can I be more
like Jesus?
I grew up in a small town in Minnesota in a small little Lutheran church.
We went to church every Sunday and confirmation and Bible study.
I could say the books of the Bible backwards in 60 seconds.
I thought I was a Christian and I had faith of anything happened I was all dialed in because
of my upbringing.
And now when I look back, I knew about Jesus because we studied it, but I didn't know Jesus.
And I think it took this kind of suffering for me to kind of get a wake up call and by
relating to the suffering and the pain that Jesus went through, now it's changed me and
I've developed more character and I'm a better person and I relate to people in a completely
different way.
The thing that matters most to me is I had friends and family who not only were there
for me, but they shared in my pain.
They held me, they hugged me, they cried with me and they didn't try to solve it.
They didn't try to make it go away, but they were just there and they shared my pain.
For me, my little hidden treasures were unbeknownst to me were the staff at the psych ward.
That was my family.
My family didn't get what I was going through.
They thought it was just a breakup of a relationship of a marriage and that wasn't the case.
It was pain, struggle for so many years.
So my heart goes out to the people at Mission Laguna and Behavioral Health that were my
friends and my fellow colleagues, my fellow patients, those people were my family.
For Tanya and I, God is using us right now to use our pain and share our stories to help
others.
But for us, service to God is not optional.
It's something that we need to do in the hopes that we can help one person out there and
make their pain or their suffering just a little easier and know that they're going
to come out okay and they cannot go through it alone.
God bless you.
God bless.
