My Testimony

Revelations 12:11 We overcome Satan because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of our testimony....

I am sorry to say that my life is not very unique. I say Sorry because it is a shame how many women suffered at the hands of a family member or so called family friend.
When I was a little girl I thought what had happened to me was so vile, and so shameful that I must be the only one in the whole world that must be going through it. Little did I know that I probably was sitting next someone in school just like me.

My step father began to molest me when I was 5. The guilt and the shame I felt, was the manipulation tool that he was able to use to keep me quiet. I finally told my mother at the age of 9, thinking my nightmare was over. Wrong. My mother stayed. Telling however did empower something inside of me and I no longer allowed him to do those things to me. I became very brazen and tough mouthed. He began to knock me around and the peculiar thing about that is that it almost made me feel better. Which I later learned was part of the need to self inflicting outer pain to numb the inner pain and to help subdue the guilt.

He also began to hit my mother which was something he hadn’t done before. I felt so guilty about that I would come out of my room and purposely antagonize him, he would leave her where she fell and turn on me. My mother would then get up and hurry to her room, locking her door behind her. He would hit me a few times then go away.
Probably the most painful thing I experienced was watching my mother at the kitchen table with her address book in hand calling everyone she knew from our church and elsewhere to see if I could come and stay with them. You see it was either me or him and she chose him. I was the “problem”. I didn’t realize how much that truly hurt my heart until I had my own daughter.

My real father was a cheater and an abuser. The only man that I trusted and that had been good to me was my grandfather and he died when I was 9, which threw me into a major breakdown that required I be medicated.

I began to drink when I was 15 and I drank nearly every day as a teenager and tried a few drugs but drinking was by far my favorite choice o f drug. I also loved working. As I grew older I had more of a problem with being a workaholic then a drinking “aholic.”

At the age of 16 I took a bunch of pills and ended up in the physic ward at citizens. Angry and bitter I really laid it on thick, and had my mother removed on more than one occasion from my room.

As I got older my drinking was more sporadic as opposed to daily or even just on the weekends. I could go years without drinking and then decide one day I wanted to party and would turn my life upside down, that was usually when my life was going pretty good. I became really good at self sabotaging myself.

My first love was with an addict/alcoholic. Found out I was pregnant at 17 after leaving him, I mean got on a plane and left him. I couldn’t leave him any other way. After some really disappointing let downs from him, his family and my mother of course (that shouldn’t have been a surprise for me then but it was.) I decided to have an abortion. I painfully regretted that decision, until I finally gave it to God when I was 30.

When life was chaotic I was strong and took charge of the situation but when life was good I was a wreck and mostly clinically depressed. My battle with depression began after I had my daughter. I was 20 years old. I would spend the next 20 years fluctuating from severally depressed to moderately depressed, but nevertheless depressed. Not a day went by without the sense of dread and sadness looming over me.

I married at 19 to a pretty nice guy, wasn’t much of a drinker and definitely no drugs. His issues came from a dominating father figure so he was very passive aggressive and I of course was aggressive / aggressive. Something I never realized until recently was that he was probably my bumper pad. Our marriage wasn’t bad but at every turn it was strained and pulled. Through the years he dealt with my partying binges, working constantly, moving from house to house. I couldn’t be still. When life got still I got moving. I was always mad about something. I put him down constantly. I probably even blamed him for my bad hair days. Now don’t get me wrong he wasn’t perfect. He had his issues.

I ran the house, the bills, the business, the raising and disciplining of our children. I was a major control freak, and walked and talked work. Nobody could do anything right.
I gave my heart to Christ when I was 30. I was healed instantly from depression and began my journey of forgiveness. My mother was the first one.

We hit church pretty hard at first but then life happened and I was the one they talk about in Matthew 13. I wasn’t rooted in the word and as soon as thorns appeared the word was choked right out and life as I knew it before began only worse this time. My depression came back with a vengeance. Satan was determined to kill me this time.

Our daughters started to get involved with drugs and alcohol when I was at the pinnacle of my business career and on the verge of franchising my company. My husband checked out. He had quit his job and spent most of his days playing on the internet bogged down in his own obsessions. And I could care less.

I was tired. I decided it was time to party. And on my 36th birthday I did just that. A month later left my husband and the girls.

4months after leaving him I met a guy. Cute, funny and he seemed really strong, a leader. He was totally opposite from my soon to be ex-husband. Boy that was the understatement of the century to say the least but I was also very wrong about his character. He was strong but not in a nice way and he could be really mean. He was the mirrored image of me in male form only worse. And if that were not enough he was a raging alcoholic and a closet drug addict.
Before I met him I hated women who stayed in abusive relationships. Remember my mother had stayed. I looked down on them and thought them to be weak. A year and ½ into this relationship, I finally understood the obsession. I had lost so much weight I barely crested 95 lbs. My 250,000 year business barely grossed 20,000. I had stopped talking to all of my friends and rarely spent any time away from this man. We fought fiercely. Remember I was the verbally abusive one in my marriage so this guy had met his match. We beat each other up verbally and even physically at times. I was more aggressive in that area then him but he was the master of manipulation. Even at my worst I was always an honest person, so he used that against me while he lied, schemed and deceived in almost every area of his life. His drug use finally came to light and then so did my youngest daughters. So I was learning and dealing with the both of them almost at the same time. My oldest daughter married an addict and thus my life had sowed its rewards. I and my daughters were in hell and I didn’t know how to get us out.

But God……

In Ephesians 2:Verses 1-3 Paul writes how God found us. Messed up and beat up, then in verse 4 he writes “ But God so rich is he in his mercy! Because of and to satisfy the great, wonderful and intense love with which he loves us, that even when were dead by our shortcomings and trespasses, he made us alive together in union with Christ.

When I cried out to him 3 years ago and spent a week fasting, he began to move in my life in such a mighty way. He moved heaven and earth to get me back to Victoria (a place I had vowed I would never return to. I grew up there and would literally get ill when I came to visit) He was bringing me to this very church and even though I was still living in sin he began to convict me and move me towards him. As I began to slowly obey and to start the process of surrendering my will to him, he began to fix everything in my life that was broken.

This is just a small list of what Jesus has done for me in the last two years:

15 years ago my real father gave his heart to Jesus and spent the last 15 years getting to know me and his other children. I was able to be at my father’s bed side when he died in April 08, which was a blessing to be able to care for him the week before he died. God healed a lot of wounds during this time. Just a few months before that God and I took a journey back through my childhood while taking a writing class. God used this class and my writing to bring back to life the little girl that had been stolen from me. He completely restored me. e He After burying my father God gently told me it was time to forgive my step-father and for the first time I was able to sincerely and truly forgive him.

My youngest daughter who I can now say is a recovered addict survived a drug overdose, spent some time in jail and in a rehab and is now living on her own and has a wonderful job. She is watching me, her sister, and her father who has also given his heart to Jesus and each day she is drawing closer to God. My oldest daughter is no longer with her husband and is a sophomore in college on her way to pre-medical school to study medicine. She loves God and is committed to a life of service to him. Neither of my girls graduated from high school and look at them now. I have a wonderful Grandson who loves God. My ex-husband and I are very good friends today by allowing God to show us each of our parts in the destruction of our marriage. and the ex-boyfriend? He is still struggling But God…there is that statement again. God has a done a beautiful thing. I have forgiven him for all he did to me and asked him to forgive me for all that I did to hurt him. God has allowed me to see his brokenness in a way that has allowed me to show him Jesus. He hasn’t used drugs in a little over a year now, although he still struggles with his drinking. I continue to pray for him and I know that God is going to restore him just like he has restored me.

I am now actively involved in helping other women find freedom in Jesus, through 3 venues. One is by opening my own home to women who are ready to transform their lives, Two is here at Celebrate Recovery and 3 through being one of the counselors at our church.

I know personally the transforming power of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is my passionate desire to see the broken hearted healed and the addicted freed. I know it is possible. I am a living, breathing example and have seen Jesus break bonds of those I love and know personally.

Don’t give up on God…He will never give up on you.