“I had a very close family and very close friends, but none of them could heal my heart...”

My dad was super protective. He wanted so much to protect his children from the hurts and pains he'd experienced through his life. But dad would drink a lot and when he got drunk, he just couldn't protect us the way he wanted. We would often have people staying with us or just visiting and it was always an opportunity for the adults to drink. This became the perfect setting for sexual predators and, as a result, I was awakened sexually at a very early age. I would initiate sexual activity with other children and, although this stopped as I became an older child, I was still very much enslaved by these desires. I would often escape into my private struggle.

Because of dads heavy drinking, home became a place of fear, especially if he was violent. Although my mum and my older siblings would bear the brunt of this, I hated my dad and vowed he would never hurt me. When I was still little my mum became a Christian and started attending a local church. It was a very different setting to what I was used to but I was impressed by my mum's commitment in attending, even at the risk of my dad’s wrath. I now saw in my parents two different lifestyles and I wanted what my mum had. She had found something that seemed to carry her through the toughest situations of our home life and it deeply impressed me. We became regular attendees of the church but growing up it was nothing more to me than just another part of our routine.

When I was about 8 or 9 I had a sexual encounter with an older relative and I remember feeling so dirty afterwards. I ran into my house and got into the shower. I sat there for a long time, trying to feel clean. But I couldn't feel clean inside. I didn't even know what it was to feel clean inside. I was devastated too when another relative would try to get me alone for the same thing. I loved this person and my heart sank that someone else I trusted would also treat me this way. I never told my parents what was happening, looking back I wish I did, but I was so ashamed and scared about how they would react.

Through all this I faithfully attended church with mum. It seemed I was living two separate lives because life at church and life at home were so completely opposite. I found church and school places of escape where I could create my own ideal world. I became a terrible liar to keep this world in tact. For some reason a few people from school thought I came from quite a well off family so I would blatantly lie about where I lived etc which was 'fine' until someone would see me at my house or in my car and the facade would shatter, so I’d have to try and rebuild it some other way.   I was desperate to get approval from my peers and my teachers. If I received a compliment I would relish it for days and conversely if someone said something critical or nasty, it would take a long time for me to get over it. It seemed whatever anyone thought of me, good or bad, shaped the person I felt I should be. I wanted so much to be accepted and often went out of my way to be good and to act the way I thought they wanted me to.

When I was 16 I got into my first relationship. I really grew to love my boyfriend and gave my heart to him but was often so terribly insecure.  I would become jealous of my friends and felt so inferior to them, especially if any of them got on well with my boyfriend. I tried to keep these feelings to myself but sometimes they would just come out and then I would feel embarrassed because it showed my weakness. After being together for about 5 years something happened between my boyfriend and I that confirmed all these feelings of insecurity I had.  It was one of the hardest times in my life and my heart literally felt that it had been pulled out of my chest.  I sobbed myself to sleep for weeks trying to get over it. I had a very close family and very close friends but none of them could heal my heart of what I was going through. It was at this time though that God began to make Himself very real to me.  I found that the Bible verses I had learned and the Bible stories I had heard at Sunday school were more than just stories and nice poetry. They were the personal words of an all-powerful God to a broken person like me. When I read the Psalms in the Bible I could see the writers knew how I felt.  More amazingly was that God Himself, Jesus, totally understood my pain and offered me comfort. This may sound a bit weird, but although it was the darkest time in my life because of what had happened, it was the brightest time because of what I was experiencing in God. But I still didn't know how to totally surrender my hurt to Him and so I would try and deal with some of the hurt myself.  Before this I never cared about my weight.  I was a bit chubby because I loved food but I never thought I had a weight problem. I found myself starting to think that if I was pretty or skinny or anything that I felt I wasn't, maybe this wouldn't have happened.  I loved food so couldn't become anorexic but thought maybe I could vomit up my food and then I could have the best of both worlds.  Something that started off just as an occasional thing soon became more regular and then to the point where I didn't want to stop and found I couldn't stop.  

My boyfriend and I actually got back together some time after this and decided to get married. But a few months into our engagement we postponed the wedding, unwittingly ending our relationship. It was another devastating and humiliating time for me but strangely I felt relieved and knew it was the right thing to do for both of us. Breaking up with my fiancé opened up a whole new can of worms and I knew that God wanted me to start dealing with my past abuse. I had no idea where to start but He amazingly brought my way a Christian lady who had been through the same thing I had and much worse, but whom Jesus had been leading on the road to healing for several years already. This began a painful yet liberating journey to freedom. Once again God comforted me through the Bible and assured me He would take care of me if I would learn to trust Him. Trusting was difficult for me because key people in my life had broken my trust, yet God was so patient and showed me His trustworthy and persistent love through other people and through His words in the Bible. It hasn't been an easy process nor has it been a short process but it's been a sure process, and Jesus has been all that He promised He would be.

He promised forgiveness. I needed His forgiveness. I saw that even though I had been wronged, I had wronged others, and I had especially wronged God. And when I came to Him willing to give my life over to Him, He accepted me! All because Jesus was willing to take the punishment for my sin!  God Himself became human like me to reach me! 

He promised power to forgive others. I hadn't realized how much I’d blocked my heart to loving my dad but when God touched my heart with His love I was able to really love my dad and to forgive him for not protecting me as a kid and for the pain he caused my family through alcoholism. I wrote my dad a letter about what happened to me and when he read it he came into my room and told me he was sorry and cried for me. I never see my dad cry and it was such a special time for me that God used as part of my healing.

He promised deliverance. I needed deliverance from habits I couldn't break. He set me free from the sexual struggle I had since I was a child and then from bulimia!  If I had doubted the reality of God before this, all doubt was expelled when I saw His power to deliver me from sin.

He promised to be with me. Even when dealing with my past seemed too much for me, He gave me the strength and the vision to keep going. I knew Jesus understood what I was going through because of what He suffered. He, more than anyone knew heart pain. He was hated, rejected, abandoned, abused, misunderstood and unwanted from those closest to his heart.

He promised freedom from shame. Jesus not only dealt with my sin and my past on the cross but He took all my shame! So that today I can tell you my story and feel no sting from the memories.

He promised to heal my broken heart. My heart was broken from abuse and rejection but His love melted my heart and made it soft again to love, and strong enough to reach out to others.