Several weeks have now past since the conference and just wanted to let you know how my life has changed. I had wrote to you after the conference about my battle. It started the day after. I could not believe all the things that had been loading me down: physical, sexual and mental abuse from my childhood serviced along with the continual abuse in my first marriage, abandonment of my parents through divorce and alcohol abuse and the death of my son.

Through the participation on my part of the conference I let it all out. I truly didn’t know all this “junk in my trunk” was having such a stronghold on me. I was angry with God and asked him question after question,while crying and sometimes raising my voice at him.

When I went to church on the Sunday after the conference I did not want to be there period. I did not want to praise him let along sing in joy. I stuffed my hands in my pockets so as not to lift my hands in praise. I actually left and walked out and got a cup of coffee. As pastor gave the sermon I had a question for almost everything he was talking to us about:

• where is my passion?
• am I part of what God is doing here on earth?
• how does God speak to me?
• how does he show me the direction to go?
• do I trust God?
• am I doing what God has called me to do?
• where is my faith?
• value?
• how does God want me to respond?
• what is my focus?
• what am I battling?
• what am I dealing with?

These are just a few of the questions I wrote down during the sermon:

• Nothing is impossible for God
• Peace in life comes from the prince of peace
• Where is my rest and peace?

As the day progressed on Sunday God took me on a journey of healing. Healing all those wounds and pain. Healing!!!! I was on 3 different anti-depressents and multiple pain relief meds for my RA, OA, and fibromyalgia.

No more pain! No more pills! Amen brother! Amen! The names I had wrote down was in a round about way, the long way to lead me to my identidy….VICTIM.

Funny I Never seen myself as a VICTIM.

My Secret Name is El-Nathan-N’Qamah…Defended from Isaiah 25:4

You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall

I am very grateful that God placed this conference on your heart. I am so FREE! I had to shout it out loud outside with my hands lifted God Loves Me!!

God Loves Me!!

How freeing.

I am sharing this conference with many and I am sitting down with my Pastor next Wednesday to share this conference and how it has forever changed my life and understanding of who I am in Christ.

God Bless You Brother

There were many times I found myself standing on the side of the road, closing my eyes as the downdraft of passing trucks rippled through my hair, thinking that just a few steps into that busy street would make everything better.

It wasn’t some singular event that brought me to the darkest point of my life, but an accumulation of sadness that left me feeling buried alive. I was already in a coffin, why not make it official; this wasn’t living. My mother and stepfather couldn’t see the sadness that haunted me, but my grandmother, a strong Christian woman whom I saw maybe once a month somehow knew.

I never spoke about it while it was happening, but in hindsight I know the signs were there if anyone had bothered to look: the lack of friends, the fear of men, the fact that I cried myself to sleep every night. It wasn’t until 8th grade that I called my mom from my father’s house in North Carolina and begged her to come get me. I don’t remember why she didn’t, but I do remember having to suffer through the rest of the week before my father drove my brother and I home.

For every other holiday and 5 weeks every summer my father came to collect my brother and I from our humble Ohio home and take us away to his three story mansion in another state. He was wealthy. He only wanted my brother, but I came with the package. I was lucky he remembered my name; he couldn’t remember my birthday or how old I was, and he had no qualms about reminding how I was a burden. He had demanded that my mother abort me, but I thank God to this day that she said no to him, if only just that once.

When I was two, he left my mom for another woman. My father had a lot of women, and a lot of girls. For years I stayed silent while he molested my cousin and I, while he groped other women who were not his wife, and while he tried to brainwash us all into believing some theology taught by him. We weren’t allowed to leave the house without him, we weren’t allowed to watch tv or listen to music, we weren’t allowed to go to church or celebrate Holidays, we weren’t allowed to wear certain clothes to bed.

He held gatherings in his house and would invite certain people over to listen to him teach. His theology was based on the bible, but only the parts about sex, rape, and punishment. His choice of punishment was a beating from a wire hanger twisted into a rod…and some reference to sparing the rod and spoiling the child.

He made me feel dead inside for so long, so that all I could do was cry and never feel relieved. When I was seventeen, I couldn’t take it anymore. Knowing that he still had my little sister and I couldn’t save her, that he hadn’t been punished for what he’d done to me or my cousin, and that I would always be afraid and never be able to love a man made me feel hopeless. I was tired of crying and feeling empty.

I was raised a “Christian”, but after my father’s insane cult-like teachings, I was afraid to trust in God. There’s an amount of subservience, fear and humility required in Christianity, and I didn’t want to love someone else who was going to make me feel small and worthless without him. I didn’t want to feel insignificant or afraid. I just wanted to feel whole, and I didn’t want to hurt anymore.

I decided not to step in front of that truck. It was in my living room, far from the road or coffins that I found peace. I gave up and I broke down, and I cried like I had never cried before. I asked God to save me and fill me with his love, and I was shocked at how immediately I felt fulfilled and at peace. Whenever I find myself questioning or doubting God, I remember that day when I decided I would rather live than die and He was there to help me do it.

Every day I pray for my father. I pray that God will save him, because in doing so, so many other innocent lives will be saved. I know there is nothing God can’t do, and even though my father seems like a monster, he’s not beyond help. I don’t know if I can ever truly forgive him, but God can, and I try to every day.

With God I know, I am not Abandoned, I am Remembered. I am not Broken, I am Whole. I am not Suicidal and Depressed, there is Hope. And I am not Fearful, because God is always with me.

I started cutting after my senior year of high school. I was tired of feeling alone. I didn’t let anyone in. I put on a mask of happiness, love, Christianity, and joy. You could have asked anyone at my church, my friends from school and even my parents and they would have told you that I was the “perfect Christian girl.” I mean I didn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs. I went on missions trips, went to youth group, and went to church camp every summer.

Deep inside I knew I was missing something; I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

I was yearning for love, but I was looking in the wrong places. I looked to the people of this world to find my joy and happiness and acceptance, and when I didn’t find it…

I struggled with EDNOS which is an eating disorder that isn’t classified as anorexia or bulimia, though it contains parts of both. I starved and if I ate, it didn’t stay down for long. I considered myself ugly and fat and unlovable. I had friends, but none that were really close that I really trusted. Eventually I just started blaming myself for anything and everything. That would be when I started to cut. If I cut a word into myself, it was ugly. I hated my appearance.

It’s really hard to explain exactly why I cut because honestly I don’t have to words to say how I was feeling. I cut really deep a couple times and realized I should probably stop, so for a while I did. Then I relapsed.

I had a guy friend that I shared a lot with. He helped me feel needed, but he took advantage of the situation and raped me. I felt completely hopeless and alone. I was so angry at myself for being there and not stopping him.

I had a friend that called me the night I relapsed with cutting just to make sure I was alright. I hadn’t told him anything had happened. The Holy Spirit used him to lead me to the Lord.

My Father who loves me unconditionally! He has helped me so so so much to see just how blessed I am and that I am free!

I still feel the need to cut at times, and to be honest, I have relapsed since then. What I really need is to fully embrace His forgiveness; I just haven’t yet. But I know that God’s got me. He will protect me and he cares about me! I’m His child and He will never leave me!

The first time I was called a slut I was 12. 

I am not sure why they called me that. I wasn’t flirtatious and I still looked like a little girl.  At 14 my sister called me a whore because some boy like me instead of her.  But I stayed pure. 

At 20 I married my husband and I were both virgins. But those names would not go away. I always wondered if that was what I really was. Then one day a few years later, something horrible happened. 

I blamed myself. 

I felt what everyone was saying about me was true.  After all if I wasn’t a slut and a whore, it would never have happened to me.  I never told anyone for 7 years. When I did finally tell, my husband was wonderful. However, our pastor didn’t believe me. Even though the man who victimized me had victimized others.  He told me I was to blame.

They ostracized our family. 

I lost all of my friends.

Even my sister said, “She is just my sister, but you are my pastor.”

The rejection was horrific. We finally moved away from the small town.  Yet, the Lord was faithful. I began working for a ministry that helped to heal me.  Yet, my self-esteem sank.  I could not trust people. I kept men and women at arms length. I felt betrayed that God would allow such a horrible thing to happen to me. I kept him at arms length.

But He refused to let me go. He sent wonderful people into my life.  He slowly drew me back to Him.

Then tonight I discovered, I was never a slut and never a whore. These were lies. That is not who I am. Christ knows who I am. He gave me the name Beloved. The test gave me the name Washed. 

I am His Beloved and He has Washed me from from the filth I thought was me. He has known all along that was never me. 

He knew.  He loved me, even when I didn’t believe He loved me. I am no longer a victim. I am no longer in prison. He knows my name. He knows my heart. He knows who and what I am…clean and loved.

I cannot begin to scratch the surface of what God has done in my life. The profound way Jesus has taken me from a woman with the label as failure to a Beloved of Jesus!!! I grew up in an abusive home and was a cutter. Depression and hopeless was my life. I was saved but never truly discovered God’s love for me.

I took the lie that I was a failure and damaged goods into my marriage and 7 years into it I filed for divorce while in the midst of a wicked affair. God worked nothing less then a miracle in my marriage and in my life. It was at that point that I began to discover who I was in Jesus. About a year ago the Holy Spirit told me to stop everything, and write my journey. The journey was my discovery Jesus’s passionate and profound love for me, that I was His beloved! 

I began to blog this journey and a year later women from all over write me to ask how they can also discover His love! It ALL happened when I discovered Jesus’s name for me!

I think it is absolutely AWESOME that someone has discovered the power in discovering who you are in Christ!

Thank YOU!