I was given an opportunity to share my personal testimony and experience with CrossCounsel International Ministries at their 13th annual Golf Golf Classic fundraiser event, and I was honored to be part of the experience. Below is the transcript of my testimony that I shared at the event:
Shane Buol - CrossCounsel Golf Event Testimony
Hi, my name is Shane and I’ve been coming to CrossCounsel since August of last year. I'd like to share with you a little of my own story, what brought me to CrossCounsel, and what this ministry has done for me.
I had a rough start to life, having young parents who both came from broken homes. I experienced a lot of dysfunction stemming from drug and alcohol abuse in my home, sexual abuse at the hands of a neighbor, and many other things. As a young man I started using various drugs to escape my reality. Thankfully, my parents eventually became Christians and did their best to clean up their lives. This helped to lead me to a place where I was able to accept Jesus as my savior too, although the core issues of my past had at this point still gone unaddressed. During my senior year of high school I was listening to some dark heavy metal music that triggered negative childhood memories and I suddenly realized that what happened to me wasn’t normal, and I sank into a dark depression. I began smoking weed just so I could get to sleep at night, and really just used drugs as much as possible to escape the memories and pain that kept replaying in my mind. I eventually confided in a friend that I was thinking about committing suicide, and he called my parents and told them he was worried about me. My parents quickly got me in for what would be my first counseling experience. Those experiences helped me to move forward without wanting to end my life, but they didn’t address the core feelings I had buried inside.
As an adult I found myself struggling with substance abuse in various forms. Over time I quit drinking alcohol, but traded it for a brief addiction to Adderall, and eventually would again settle on smoking weed as a way to manage my negative emotions for quite a few years. As time went on, I began to realize that this was not a sustainable pattern. In 2018, I had been working long hours at my job, and my mother-in-law passed away from cancer. I believe these events triggered a form of mental breakdown for me. I knew I needed help, so I set out to find a place that could help me sort through my issues. I went through counseling at two different places, which did provide some positive experiences by allowing me a safe place to share and work through painful memories. Neither experience really got to the root of the false beliefs I had internalized though, so I again found myself repeating cycles of past behaviors.
Around this time, I had begun to hear about CrossCounsel through a local men’s group. I began listening to the podcasts regularly and couldn’t deny the power of the testimonies I would hear on there. After experiencing more of the same behavioral patterns and continued use of marijuana to manage my negative emotions, I knew I had more work to do. This time, I set up my first session with CrossCounsel. To date, I have seen results in some form during each session, but I had a profound moment of truth I experienced in one of my sessions late last year. In that session I went to 4 or 5 memories from my childhood, and the Lord showed me that I had felt unsafe in all of them. After that, I felt the Lord tell me that He is safe. The effect this had on me was immediate. Although I had always known in my head that Jesus was safe, I knew that my heart just believed it for the first time as I experienced a peace and warmth that came over me.
In the months that followed, I eventually realized that I no longer had the instinctive reaction to smoke weed when faced with negative emotions, like I had done for years before. I still have other things I need the Lord’s healing for in more sessions to come, but for the first time ever, I feel ok to allow myself to feel negative emotions and not feel like I have to run away. This is a huge victory for me. It was something I tried to do on my own so many times before, only to continue to repeat the same cycle over and over again.
One thing I’ve learned from my time at CrossCounsel is that God’s healing is a two-part process. The Lord is the one who knocks on the door of our heart, but we have to open the door and let Him in. We have to invite him into the darkest corners of our minds, into the places where we often don’t want to go to ourselves. Jesus himself said in Revelation 3:20, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” In my story, I could hear God knocking on the door of my heart, but I could not see the door that I needed to open. I could not see how to get to that door due to smoke caused by years of emotional fires burning in my mind and heart that had obscured my vision. CrossCounsel helped direct me to that door. They could not open the door for me, but they helped me to recognize where the knocking was coming from, and how to turn the handle to open the door and let Jesus in. For that, I am extremely grateful.
I’d like to thank everyone here today for your donations and financial support for this life changing ministry. As someone who has personally been in a situation where I knew I was only a session or two away from healing but unable to pay for it on my own, I want to tell you how significant of a gift it is to provide that experience for someone.
Thank you for letting me share my story.
