- Feb 22, 2005
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I've spoken to rmw8855 and she's going to sticky this. It is a thread for testimonies only.
My Testimony
I was born in 1953. My mom was an only adopted child. My dad was the oldest boy of eight children. I'm the oldest of four.
I suppose my childhood was normal until I was seven. I have next to no memory of it. A memory of being locked in a closet at my grandma's and I see pictures and I kind of can almost remember. I remememer my first day of school and a few things, but not much.
My first real memories start somewhere around seven. There are not many good ones ... mostly fear of the unknown ... fear of making a mistake ... and fear of what was going on around me. Somewhere in this time things in our family spiraled into hell on earth. My mom was drinking and running around and my dad was frazzled and angry. It just got worse and worse. Then my mom left. Just left. The first time she was gone for three days ... the next time it was forever. I've seen her once since. My dad decided it was for the best if we didn't see our grandparents, either.
Somewhere in this time frame God introduced Himself to me and I've held on to Jesus with everything I've had since. I started walking myself to different churches and things. I just loved the Lord so much. No one planted that. It was between me and Jesus from the start.
My dad is a good man who loves the Lord but the years after my mom left were very lonely and confusing. Not long after my mom left I was molested by a neighbor girl's boyfriend. We had been through a string of babysitters from hell. Dad had finally decided when he worked graveyard we were asleep and better off without a sitter. And there was a lot of truth in that. He gave the key to a neighbor girl in HS that babysat us sometimes in case of emergency ... it was her boyfriend. Anyway in my little world of trying to survive I decided we were moving to a neighboring town in a few weeks anyway so I'd just get through until then and put it behind me ... and the memory was erased until I was 12. The time until then was spent learning how to live without a mom in a word of people who persecuted our family for what happened. When the memory came back a new battle began ... a battle of tics and twitches and all kinds of embarrassing things ...
meanwhile I was dealing with the mind heavily. I kept seeing Jesus in a horrible sexual way ... I spent a long time overcoming that and the nervous tics and the now intensely cold home I lived in. We had good times occasionally when dad could step outside of his pain but mostly it was coming home everyday wondering what mood dad was in ... and there were months he didn't speak. It was a good solid life ... for sure all of our flesh needs were met.
I was painfully shy ... I could not even look at boys until I was fourteen ... I didn't know what to say ... I thought they just caused pain and I was just plain scared to death of them. Then along came Doug. From the first time I met him I loved him. And I wasn't afraid of him for some reason. We went together for two and a half years ... it was so good! I felt loved. And safe ... and I knew it was real.
One day I went to school and I knew something was wrong and no one would tell me. I finally found out Doug had gotten another girl pregant and their parents made them get married. I was devestated to say the least. I cried until I was eighteen ... then I just got mad. One day I met this guy who was seven years older than me. I had absolutley no idea of evil until after that. He wooed me and made me feel special. We became common law married. I felt I needed to make it work ... that it was a marriage and that was that.
Seven years later I was brought to nothing. He beat me and tortured me for all those years and then took my children from me. I had no guidance or help or any way to help me and the kids. I finally found a job at a bar. I'd been living on the street for two months. I just needed a job. Through the job I met a man who decided he was going to marry me. He followed me around until it drove me nuts. I didn't want no part of men. They just hurt you. I kept trying to deal with not seeing my kids and started drinking heavily. One day I got tired of the man following me and said fine ... let's just get married then ... I just didn't care anymore.
We were married in a drunken jaunt to Idaho. We had two children and were married 21 years. He wanted no part of church or the Lord. He always said he had enough of that shoved down his throat growing up. I was too young and naive to know the danger in that. The last ten years were very lonely. My children were busy with their high school years and my husband just ignored me.
It ended because I start seeing Doug again. We could spend all day on the rights and wrongs. The truth is my marriage couldn't have worked because it wasn't a marriage the Lord could bless. I didn't even want it at the start.
The mistake I made was that I was tired of the cold way people treated me and openly defied God. I remember the day I did it. I was standing in the business I owned so tired of being so unloved. I just said to God. I'm going back to the last time I felt loved. (That was Doug) I said I know this is the wrong way and I don't care. I'm doing it and I'll fix things with God later. No. God fixed me later and it wasn't pleasant. I should have revered the Lord.
I went and found Doug and he was married but they hadn't lived together for over two years. For some stupid reason I thought that made it ok. Not for me ... I knew I was wrong ... I was married ... but for Doug. Before it was better I lost my twenty-one year marriage, my home, my health, my business, my self-respect, you name it. We began a relationship that was great for a while but obviously couldn't be blessed. I got a divorce and he kept putting his off. Not because of her. But because he kept saying the Lord knew who his wife was and truly didn't see the problem. Meanwhile his other ex-wife and the still wife were constantly disrupting our lives. I wanted to follow the Lord and kept getting sicker.
I went to a healing at the church and came home and asked Doug to move out until he got things squared away and me too. He did and it was a pretty rough few months. The Lord came to me in a dream and told me it would be but a short while before Doug was back with me. And he was.
The pain I deal with daily is the pain of the damage done to my relationship with my children that were forced from me. They were told many lies and to this day they live but a few miles from here and I can't see my grandchildren and my children think horrible things about me. My son who loved me died a few years ago. I only had a short time of restored relationship with him before he died, Praise the Lord! My ex's family made me stand behind my other son and their dad while they did the twenty one gun salute. They cremated him, which he didn't want, and I am the one with no ashes. That's alright. He isn't here anyway. He's with the Lord. To be absent from here is present with the Lord. It just would be nice at some point to be treated like I'm human. My children were taken 28 years ago and people still bad mouth me here. I didn't run somewhere else. I don't live my life according to what they think. I don't waver easy as some think.
My two youngest from the next marriage are difficult relationships. My youngest and my dad think I'm not smart enough to understand God's word and love me but make sure they know I know I'm not smart enough. My one daughter is here but is a very difficult (since she was born) child. She loves me but has an impossible time trusting anyone and is full of rage since she was born. Complications at birth now combined with a harsh life. She has a son, Kayden ... I love him so much and watched over him for almost three years until I got sick last fall and they gave him to his dad in Portland because I couldn't watch him. I believe that is when my heart really broke. I could feel Kayden's pain at being taken from me and it just started the cycle of pain all over ... The same pain I could feel from a distance when they took my children. It was from the pain ... nothing else.
While I was fighting for my life last fall (I was very ill for a long time) when Doug would go to work ... I couldn't take care of myself and no one came to help. I took so loving care of all my children yet my children just did not care and my one who did was in her own world of hurt over losing Kayden ...
We still don't understand why the court didn't make the father pay child support so she could be with him. The minimum wage in this state is nothing less than inhuman so she had to work too many hours so the courts thought it wasn't enough time with Kayden left. What a joke. Just more pain.
I've struggled and struggled with why I'm not allowed to have anyone in my life to love me. Doug is with me now and we are married and I know he loves me. I try for that to be enough. But this is what I know. I know that every single person that loves me is taken away. So I sit in fear of the day he is gone, too. I fear God because He has the power to make my life something other than painful. I fear the day I will do something so wrong He casts me away forever. I know that's not true but I can't stop the fear. I trust Jesus, though. I know He loves me and I know there is a reason and I know someday it will all make sense. My big goal in life is to see heaven and know it was not all for nought. I know God loves me and I love Him and trust Him so much ... that's the thing ... it's a journey ... it doesn't happen overnight. My second goal is to never make anyone feel the guilt and hurt and pain I live with.
I work every day to overcome these feelings of worthlessness. It's just really hard sometimes to see a reason for me. Look at the list of those missing in my life. My grandparents, my mom, my children, my grandchildren. I look around every day and see families with love and they have relationships with their loved ones. Last year my oldest had a daughter born on Jan. 1. It was in the papers and a big tadoo. I wasn't named as family. I haven't seen her yet. Her brother is five. I've seen him once.
Then there is the pain of watching them do this to my dad, too.
This is what I live with every day. Daily reminders I'm not good enough for this world. I must always remember I'm good enough for the Lord. I have 21 offspring and nothing close to a relationship with any of them. I don't understand and I know when I fall into despair it's what the enemy wants. More guilt. I can't stop the fear and despair. I do really well for a long time and then down I go again. I think it hurts most when someone says I despair too easily. They just don't know what it took for me to break. So now I'm working my way back up again. I believe we're not lost when we fall ... we're lost when we don't get back up.
The moral of my story ...if there is one ... is this life will not break me. God does not give us more than we can take. I don't know why I have to feel so much pain all the time but I do know there is a reason and I know that the rare moments of feeling loved and safe are in my time with the Lord. He is the good part ... not the bad. Some say "just rest in Jesus." They never tell you how. Faith isn't easy. Today I understand some say those things to me because they truly don't get that you just can't tell someone to do those things. Just like that. Right now. Just rest. What I know is this. There is nothing in this horrid, hateful world that will make me leave God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. They are the ONLY thing to get me here so far. And maybe someone will find peace through this testimony that it is so important to keep fighting ... no matter what anyone tells you think you're doing wrong or not smart enough to understand or not good enough. Those are just lies. If there was one thing I would say to others it's that it is SO very important to be VERY careful what we say to others. That if someone is hurting it doesn't have to be because they aren't doing something right. We must spread words of love not words of guilt and condemantion.
Some say grace is sufficient. That is true. It just isn't the end of the story. There is much more. They just don't know. And they just can't feel the pain. God loves me and Jesus loves me and the Holy Spirit loves me ... it's me that hates me. I understand that that's the bridge I have to cross. I know in my mind Jesus is that bridge. I just can't seem to get over there. But I will because I have those rare moments of Amen (absolute knowledge of the Lord's goodness) to hang on to. Because I tell you here if it were ok to just end this life that is a bridge I would have crossed a long time ago. If I can do just one right thing it will be to not cross that bridge. And that's the bridge that tells me how strong I am in the Lord. I WILL be here in spite of me until the day the Lord chooses otherwise. Sometimes I just want a mom to love me the way I would love my children if they would have me. I was 38 years old before I even mourned for my mother. It never even occurred to me I missed her that much. It was more about survival without her.
God bless and I pray this helps someone. in Jesus name ... Amen.
My Testimony
I was born in 1953. My mom was an only adopted child. My dad was the oldest boy of eight children. I'm the oldest of four.
I suppose my childhood was normal until I was seven. I have next to no memory of it. A memory of being locked in a closet at my grandma's and I see pictures and I kind of can almost remember. I remememer my first day of school and a few things, but not much.
My first real memories start somewhere around seven. There are not many good ones ... mostly fear of the unknown ... fear of making a mistake ... and fear of what was going on around me. Somewhere in this time things in our family spiraled into hell on earth. My mom was drinking and running around and my dad was frazzled and angry. It just got worse and worse. Then my mom left. Just left. The first time she was gone for three days ... the next time it was forever. I've seen her once since. My dad decided it was for the best if we didn't see our grandparents, either.
Somewhere in this time frame God introduced Himself to me and I've held on to Jesus with everything I've had since. I started walking myself to different churches and things. I just loved the Lord so much. No one planted that. It was between me and Jesus from the start.
My dad is a good man who loves the Lord but the years after my mom left were very lonely and confusing. Not long after my mom left I was molested by a neighbor girl's boyfriend. We had been through a string of babysitters from hell. Dad had finally decided when he worked graveyard we were asleep and better off without a sitter. And there was a lot of truth in that. He gave the key to a neighbor girl in HS that babysat us sometimes in case of emergency ... it was her boyfriend. Anyway in my little world of trying to survive I decided we were moving to a neighboring town in a few weeks anyway so I'd just get through until then and put it behind me ... and the memory was erased until I was 12. The time until then was spent learning how to live without a mom in a word of people who persecuted our family for what happened. When the memory came back a new battle began ... a battle of tics and twitches and all kinds of embarrassing things ...
meanwhile I was dealing with the mind heavily. I kept seeing Jesus in a horrible sexual way ... I spent a long time overcoming that and the nervous tics and the now intensely cold home I lived in. We had good times occasionally when dad could step outside of his pain but mostly it was coming home everyday wondering what mood dad was in ... and there were months he didn't speak. It was a good solid life ... for sure all of our flesh needs were met.
I was painfully shy ... I could not even look at boys until I was fourteen ... I didn't know what to say ... I thought they just caused pain and I was just plain scared to death of them. Then along came Doug. From the first time I met him I loved him. And I wasn't afraid of him for some reason. We went together for two and a half years ... it was so good! I felt loved. And safe ... and I knew it was real.
One day I went to school and I knew something was wrong and no one would tell me. I finally found out Doug had gotten another girl pregant and their parents made them get married. I was devestated to say the least. I cried until I was eighteen ... then I just got mad. One day I met this guy who was seven years older than me. I had absolutley no idea of evil until after that. He wooed me and made me feel special. We became common law married. I felt I needed to make it work ... that it was a marriage and that was that.
Seven years later I was brought to nothing. He beat me and tortured me for all those years and then took my children from me. I had no guidance or help or any way to help me and the kids. I finally found a job at a bar. I'd been living on the street for two months. I just needed a job. Through the job I met a man who decided he was going to marry me. He followed me around until it drove me nuts. I didn't want no part of men. They just hurt you. I kept trying to deal with not seeing my kids and started drinking heavily. One day I got tired of the man following me and said fine ... let's just get married then ... I just didn't care anymore.
We were married in a drunken jaunt to Idaho. We had two children and were married 21 years. He wanted no part of church or the Lord. He always said he had enough of that shoved down his throat growing up. I was too young and naive to know the danger in that. The last ten years were very lonely. My children were busy with their high school years and my husband just ignored me.
It ended because I start seeing Doug again. We could spend all day on the rights and wrongs. The truth is my marriage couldn't have worked because it wasn't a marriage the Lord could bless. I didn't even want it at the start.
The mistake I made was that I was tired of the cold way people treated me and openly defied God. I remember the day I did it. I was standing in the business I owned so tired of being so unloved. I just said to God. I'm going back to the last time I felt loved. (That was Doug) I said I know this is the wrong way and I don't care. I'm doing it and I'll fix things with God later. No. God fixed me later and it wasn't pleasant. I should have revered the Lord.
I went and found Doug and he was married but they hadn't lived together for over two years. For some stupid reason I thought that made it ok. Not for me ... I knew I was wrong ... I was married ... but for Doug. Before it was better I lost my twenty-one year marriage, my home, my health, my business, my self-respect, you name it. We began a relationship that was great for a while but obviously couldn't be blessed. I got a divorce and he kept putting his off. Not because of her. But because he kept saying the Lord knew who his wife was and truly didn't see the problem. Meanwhile his other ex-wife and the still wife were constantly disrupting our lives. I wanted to follow the Lord and kept getting sicker.
I went to a healing at the church and came home and asked Doug to move out until he got things squared away and me too. He did and it was a pretty rough few months. The Lord came to me in a dream and told me it would be but a short while before Doug was back with me. And he was.
The pain I deal with daily is the pain of the damage done to my relationship with my children that were forced from me. They were told many lies and to this day they live but a few miles from here and I can't see my grandchildren and my children think horrible things about me. My son who loved me died a few years ago. I only had a short time of restored relationship with him before he died, Praise the Lord! My ex's family made me stand behind my other son and their dad while they did the twenty one gun salute. They cremated him, which he didn't want, and I am the one with no ashes. That's alright. He isn't here anyway. He's with the Lord. To be absent from here is present with the Lord. It just would be nice at some point to be treated like I'm human. My children were taken 28 years ago and people still bad mouth me here. I didn't run somewhere else. I don't live my life according to what they think. I don't waver easy as some think.
My two youngest from the next marriage are difficult relationships. My youngest and my dad think I'm not smart enough to understand God's word and love me but make sure they know I know I'm not smart enough. My one daughter is here but is a very difficult (since she was born) child. She loves me but has an impossible time trusting anyone and is full of rage since she was born. Complications at birth now combined with a harsh life. She has a son, Kayden ... I love him so much and watched over him for almost three years until I got sick last fall and they gave him to his dad in Portland because I couldn't watch him. I believe that is when my heart really broke. I could feel Kayden's pain at being taken from me and it just started the cycle of pain all over ... The same pain I could feel from a distance when they took my children. It was from the pain ... nothing else.
While I was fighting for my life last fall (I was very ill for a long time) when Doug would go to work ... I couldn't take care of myself and no one came to help. I took so loving care of all my children yet my children just did not care and my one who did was in her own world of hurt over losing Kayden ...
We still don't understand why the court didn't make the father pay child support so she could be with him. The minimum wage in this state is nothing less than inhuman so she had to work too many hours so the courts thought it wasn't enough time with Kayden left. What a joke. Just more pain.
I've struggled and struggled with why I'm not allowed to have anyone in my life to love me. Doug is with me now and we are married and I know he loves me. I try for that to be enough. But this is what I know. I know that every single person that loves me is taken away. So I sit in fear of the day he is gone, too. I fear God because He has the power to make my life something other than painful. I fear the day I will do something so wrong He casts me away forever. I know that's not true but I can't stop the fear. I trust Jesus, though. I know He loves me and I know there is a reason and I know someday it will all make sense. My big goal in life is to see heaven and know it was not all for nought. I know God loves me and I love Him and trust Him so much ... that's the thing ... it's a journey ... it doesn't happen overnight. My second goal is to never make anyone feel the guilt and hurt and pain I live with.
I work every day to overcome these feelings of worthlessness. It's just really hard sometimes to see a reason for me. Look at the list of those missing in my life. My grandparents, my mom, my children, my grandchildren. I look around every day and see families with love and they have relationships with their loved ones. Last year my oldest had a daughter born on Jan. 1. It was in the papers and a big tadoo. I wasn't named as family. I haven't seen her yet. Her brother is five. I've seen him once.
Then there is the pain of watching them do this to my dad, too.
This is what I live with every day. Daily reminders I'm not good enough for this world. I must always remember I'm good enough for the Lord. I have 21 offspring and nothing close to a relationship with any of them. I don't understand and I know when I fall into despair it's what the enemy wants. More guilt. I can't stop the fear and despair. I do really well for a long time and then down I go again. I think it hurts most when someone says I despair too easily. They just don't know what it took for me to break. So now I'm working my way back up again. I believe we're not lost when we fall ... we're lost when we don't get back up.
The moral of my story ...if there is one ... is this life will not break me. God does not give us more than we can take. I don't know why I have to feel so much pain all the time but I do know there is a reason and I know that the rare moments of feeling loved and safe are in my time with the Lord. He is the good part ... not the bad. Some say "just rest in Jesus." They never tell you how. Faith isn't easy. Today I understand some say those things to me because they truly don't get that you just can't tell someone to do those things. Just like that. Right now. Just rest. What I know is this. There is nothing in this horrid, hateful world that will make me leave God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. They are the ONLY thing to get me here so far. And maybe someone will find peace through this testimony that it is so important to keep fighting ... no matter what anyone tells you think you're doing wrong or not smart enough to understand or not good enough. Those are just lies. If there was one thing I would say to others it's that it is SO very important to be VERY careful what we say to others. That if someone is hurting it doesn't have to be because they aren't doing something right. We must spread words of love not words of guilt and condemantion.
Some say grace is sufficient. That is true. It just isn't the end of the story. There is much more. They just don't know. And they just can't feel the pain. God loves me and Jesus loves me and the Holy Spirit loves me ... it's me that hates me. I understand that that's the bridge I have to cross. I know in my mind Jesus is that bridge. I just can't seem to get over there. But I will because I have those rare moments of Amen (absolute knowledge of the Lord's goodness) to hang on to. Because I tell you here if it were ok to just end this life that is a bridge I would have crossed a long time ago. If I can do just one right thing it will be to not cross that bridge. And that's the bridge that tells me how strong I am in the Lord. I WILL be here in spite of me until the day the Lord chooses otherwise. Sometimes I just want a mom to love me the way I would love my children if they would have me. I was 38 years old before I even mourned for my mother. It never even occurred to me I missed her that much. It was more about survival without her.
God bless and I pray this helps someone. in Jesus name ... Amen.
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