.. My Testimony

I grew up in a very scarred and dysfunctional non-Christian family. My childhood was a continuation of the wounding and pain my parents experienced from the atrocities of occupied Holland in the Second World War. My parents fled Europe and wanted to start a new life in Australia. They did this in 1961 but could not outrun their demons.
From my earliest memories I experienced overwhelming fear. I suffered from emotional, spiritual, physical and sexual abuse. The physical and emotional abuse were present from my earliest memories, and I was child who would cower in terror in the presence of my mother.
The sexual abuse began when I was seven years old and stopped in my early teens. There were three separate perpetrators of the abuse. I tried to run away from home when I was 11 years old but was apprehended by the police the next day. I was given warning that if I tried to do it again I would be placed in a children's home. I reluctantly conceded that home was better than an institution, and bided my time until I finished high school.
The damage continued however and I replaced my childhood addiction to food (after the sexual abuse) with cigarettes. Soon after my last high school exam I ran away from home for the second time. This time no one could legally apprehend me. I was 17 years old.
My options of a place to live were very limited as I had no job when I left. I ended up moving into a communal type house full of drugs and users and soon added marijuana, to my addictions. I also experimented with acid, speed and magic mushrooms.
The drugs achieved my aims of anesthetizing my soul and there was a period of six months during this time that I was constantly stoned. In spite of that fact I became fascinated with suicide and self harm. The thoughts of suicide constantly tormented me and I could not get rid of them.
I began my first common law/defacto marriage at age 19 in 1985 but it was a relationship based on fear and mutual desire to escape reality. At the same time one of my brothers was smoking a lot of drugs and he opened a doorway into the demonic realm. This began a series of demonic manifestations in my life and the life of three brothers. I witnessed strange guttural voices being spoken by one brother. That same brother would turn up at the door of my apartment at 2am in the morning with sunglasses on and speak in voices that were not his own.
A while later I was directly attacked by a demonic spirit who attempted to take over my soul. This was witnessed by another brother who said that my face looked like the personification of evil. Needless to say I took these occurrences as a wake up call.
I gave my life to Jesus at age 19 in 1985 and soon started to attend a bible believing Church. I soon came off cigarettes and drugs but all this did was lift the lid off all the repressed pain I had tried to bury. My soul was in agony. I felt like I could not fit into the church, or relate to anyone. i tried to reach out to a few people for help but they were not equipped to deal with me. Within a year I left the church and returned to my old life. Within a year after this I went back to my old addictions, and added even more.
I tried to go back to my old boyfriend even though he had moved on and the conflict degenerated into violence. I was beaten a number of times, once left out on the street in the middle of the night until I came through. I was in so much emotional pain that I took a knife one day and stabbed myself in the leg. I was told I just missed the sciatic nerve and could have done permanent damage. Eventually I could take the pain no longer and found my second common law/defacto partner.
This man was not violent but he was controlling and obsessive. I was with him for nearly two years, but God would not stop speaking to me. One day in a drug induced state I had a vision that it was judgment day and I was not ready. I was terrified. Eventually I decided I needed to return to the church. This was in 1989. My adversary, Satan was not going to let go of me easily however.
The man I tried to leave would not accept that I had gone back to God and began to stalk me and harass me with phone calls. He also tried to run me off the road one day in his car. I had two friends in the car at the time and they were in total shock. Furthermore, he contacted various members of my family and tried to turn them against me. Eventually my family saw through the ruse and a few months later the behavior ceased.
This time when I came off the drugs I was a lot better equipped to deal with it and received intensive ministry through the church. This was in 1989, and I have had no addiction to illicit drugs since. My addiction to cigarettes however, remained.
The following few years were the golden period of my life. I made a lot of Christian friends, received prophetic words that God has a call on my life for ministry, and took my first overseas trip to the USA, Canada and Mexico. Whilst overseas I felt God stirring me to get equipped for ministry. After I returned home,I could not settle back into my old life and enrolled for bible college six months later.
I commenced Tabor Bible College in 1992.Looking back at that time, I now realize that I was not completely emotionally or spiritually healed. I did not realize this at the time however. Again, I felt like an outsider at college and did not trust authority. I drifted toward the other fringe dwellers at the college and commenced a romantic relationship with another student.
I knew this man from my home church and naively thought that since he had been a Christian for a while and was at bible college he must be okay. It wasn't until I was already emotionally attached that I realized that he had a life controlling condition called Bi-Polar disease, and he had regressed back into a heroin addiction. I tried to rescue him. Needless to say I started to buckle under the pressure of bible college and this relationship where I was carrying everything.
During my final year at bible college in 1994, I commenced field work in a church that was being planted, where my boyfriend was already a member. As I buckled more the more spiritual attack I experienced. Later in that year I told the pastor of that church what was happening in a desperate attempt to stop my slide down. All that achieved however, was turning the pastor against me. I then approached my principal at bible college who took me under his wing and counseled me every week. He could see that I needed to get away from the church and the boyfriend and advised me to leave both. This meant that I had no place to conduct my fieldwork and that I would not graduate that year as I was suppose to. God came through for me however, and my work on the college magazine was allowed to count as fieldwork. I did graduate in 1994 solely due to the grace of God.
After I left college things got a whole lot worse. I no longer had the fellowship and support of people at the college, and was more or less alone in a strange city. I was attempting to settle into a new church but my ex boyfriend would not accept it was over. It was hard to repel him. In 1995 I became pregnant with his child and gave birth to a beautiful boy called Joshua in September 1995.
I had saved up some money to buy things for the baby as I had not worked most of the time I was pregnant. To more horror, my son's father stole all the money and spent it on heroin.The hospital staff approached me one night and complained that the father was being very aggressive toward them and that if he continued the behavior he would be banned from visiting. By God's grace, nearly everything I needed for my son was provided by friends and family and I felt the Lord had truly rescued us.
I suffered a lot of judgment from the church I was attending for this and eventually decided I could not take the rejection anymore. I was so wounded my perception of everything was askew. I tried another church but I felt a lot of judgment there too so discontinued after only a few visits. I left the church completely in 1997. I felt very disillusioned, and thought I will rely on myself and no one else. Again God would not let go of me.
I thought I was doing pretty well after I left the church. I was in well paid secure Government employment, I was striking in appearance, I had brains and I had drive. I put a down payment down on a house in 1998, and was achieving a level of self sufficiency. I was a fortified island!
Looking back, I totally appreciate the saying that "pride comes before a fall". God started to take away all the things that I relied on outside of Him, so I would come back.
The first major battle came in 1998. The developer that sold me the house contravened planning laws, and I and several other purchasers were hauled into court. All except for myself were already in their new residences and I was disallowed from moving in. The bottom line was that I was nearly financially ruined as I had to pay rent in one house while paying the mortgage on another. One day a friend came around and there was not one thing in my house to eat.
I then had to take my builder to court as he was also accountable for the mess. I decided to represent myself in the second trial as I could not afford a lawyer. God in his grace provided someone from the legal fraternity to assist me and by grace I won against the builder. I moved into my new home in 1999.
I separated finally from my son's father in late 1999, but again he would not accept it. This began a campaign of harassment and stalking by him against me which lasted about one year. I was inundated with phone calls, threats and gifts.
I made the near fatal mistake of allowing my ex to come around on the eve of 2000, so he could see in the new millennium with our son. Toward the latter part of the evening, he became aggressive and started to slash his chest and arms with a knife. At one point I was also cornered in the house with the knife and thought I was going to be attacked and stabbed. My son screamed at the sight of all the blood he saw on his father. I tried to get near the phone to call the police but he guarded it like a hawk.
I managed to alert a friend on the internet from New Zealand to what was happening and he called the police in New Zealand. They thought this was a prank and only after a series of calls to verify this did they act. The Australian police were called and some hour later a veritable swat team turned up and surrounded my house. By this time my ex was passed out on the floor, and to the police it appeared he was dead. I let them in and the first thing they said to me was "Get over there away from the body!" To my relief they quickly realized he was only asleep. It took four police to restrain and drag him out of the house. He was taken to a Psychiatric Hospital and placed on suicide watch.
To my horror the hospitable would not hold him and none of his family could be contacted. It was basically put to me that if I did not come to collect him, he would turn up in a taxi and I would have to pay for it. I reluctantly collected him.
I'd like to say that that was the end of the abuse but it continued for about another nine months. I brought my son to a psychologist as he would continue to scream every time he saw blood.
In 2001 all of the stress finally started to take it's toll and my health started to deteriorate. I was a very attractive and tall person and all of a sudden I was feeling fatigued all the time and started to put on weight. My doctors failed to diagnose for some 9-12 months that I had hashimotos disease. This is where an overstressed immune system gets its wires crossed and basically eats your thyroid gland up. I put on some 35 kg (80 pounds). I started getting a lot of pressure from work because I was taking time off for being sick and I became a virtual hermit as I was so ashamed of my weight gain. I finally had that diagnosed in early 2002 and began treatment when I then had an accident which broke my ankle and badly damaged my back.
Most of 2002 was a blur because of the painkillers I was on. I was also away from work for roughly a third of the year. I had to rely on people to come around and clean my house and I could only drive my car short distances. I had no family in my city to support me.
My health, my looks, my steady income, and my independence had all been taken away. You would have thought this would have had me crawling back to the church, but my distrust of Christians and the church was greater than my fears of being alone. I was so stubborn I still resisted returning to the church.
In early 2004, my ex partner kidnapped Joshua and they were both missing for 10 days. I tried to prevent this but my ex partner threw me to the floor and ripped out my telephone so I could not phone the police. He then rolled my car down my driveway (it was blocking his escape) and left it in the middle of a busy road. I was frantic because my ex partner was driving under the influence of heroin.
When the police finally came around to my house, my son was long gone. As I did not have court orders to say I had sole custody, there was nothing they could do to retrieve him. I was forced to go to court and get orders for his return. Just before the court date my son was returned.
I have continued to fight in the Australian Family Court for sole custody of my son. It took nearly two years for the court to become convinced that my ex partner was not fit to have unsupervised contact with my son. My ex continually delayed proceedings and lied to the court about his history of violence, heroin habits and psychological state. I finally had a major victory in late 2007 when it was found that my ex had been convicted yet again of heroin possession, and obtaining goods by deception. I am still fighting to remove an airport watch he had the court place on Joshua.
When my son was kidnapped in early 2004, I finally fell to my knees and returned to the Church. This time I was led to some very mature people in God who helped me back onto my feet and helped me mature in Christ. They allowed me to preach, and to minister prophetically there.
In 2005 I received some more prophetic words. These were:
"I hear the Spirit of God saying, I've been speaking to you about areas of avenues of service......things that go beyond what you believe you are capable of......things that actually go beyond what you believe that you can actually enter in to, that there is a whole lotta baggage that you feel like you got on and you haven't been able to get rid of it and you haven't been able to be free of it to do what God wants you to do.......but I see God coming in and it's like He's got a big pair of scissors and He's just beginning to clip all of those things that are tied to you.....and this is a season of becoming free.................it's a season of freedom but it's not just a season of freedom so that you can just run out and say, I'm free!!!!!!!! ................to do whatever I want to do .............but it's a season where He's been speaking to the depth of your heart about things that you want to do....................and things He wants for you.....You're going to become one who sets the captives free....there is a season coming to you where God wants you to begin to set people free from that which is their baggage, that which is bogging them down and this is a season where you need to really press in for that.......and let God do that and get that work done that needs to be done and its been happening but its gotta come to a culmination where its no longer.....I'm being free but I'm setting you free......its a change of role, it's a change of place......and I hear God saying to you that this is a season to pursue that.........get yourself free.......you know there are some things......but don't take this harshly.......but there are some things you just need to get over......there's some things you need to get on with.......there's some things you need to decide it's not worth it and cut it off and walk on...........Hallelujah!!"
In 2007 I took a huge step of faith and traveled to Europe and the USA. This was partly vacation and partly to check out things I believed God may be calling me to in the USA. Whilst there I can only say I felt like Joshua and Caleb. I saw giants in the land that needed to be overcome in God's strength and grace.
I recently started at another great church and am greatly encouraged to see people with the ability to discern the true intentions of peoples' hearts, rather than how they appear on the surface.
I still work for an Australian government department and have healed up a lot. I have not had an addiction to cigarettes for six years. I am not yet perfected but have overcome a lot in God. I am still working through some strongholds in my life, and look forward to increasing freedom in Jesus Christ. I am also still battling permanent injuries in my back, but most of my health has been restored. God and I are working on the finishing touches as I write.
My son and I have been indeed been blessed through our many struggles, and he gave his life to Jesus in 2004. I am also working toward serving God in "setting the captives free".
God refused to give up on me, even though I gave up on Him and myself many times.I would like to share some of what I have learned on this page in the hope that you too will be set free.
I have put some links to ministries which offer free resources, below my testimony.
I also want to say NEVER judge a book by its cover.When it says you will know them by their fruits, sometimes people are actually showing the fruits of sin committed against them. You can ONLY spiritually discern in the power of the Holy Spirit and in LOVE!
Too many people judge with the eyes of the flesh. This has produced many wounded people in the church, discourages those who want to enter the church. Wounded people, wound other people! This vicious cycle plays right into Satan's schemes. It is my heart to see this scheme totally defeated. I know this is an impossible dream but remember we serve the God of the impossible.
Remember also, Jesus Christ died a victim, but rose as a conqueror. This is God's will for all of us.

TO HIM BE ETERNAL GLORY AMEN.
< ***I would like to point out that I have no official affiliation with these ministries; nor have they endorsed me. I have just found them an excellent resource in my own journey to freedom***

*Hills Christian Life Church*

*Extreme Prophetic*
*Kanaan Ministries - Possess the Land God has for You*

*Fighting the Jezebel Spirit*

*Christian Dreams and Visions- Tellilah Ministries*

*Spiritual Warfare Series on Great Online Bible Study*

*Communion with God Ministries

*Dream Dictionary*

*Prophetic TV*
*Strongholds*
*Battle Child*
*
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You are Proverbs.
You Are a Prophet Soul
You are a gentle soul, with good intentions toward everyone.
Selfless and kind, you have great faith in people.
Sometimes this faith can lead to disappoinment in the long run.
No matter what, you deal with everything in a calm and balanced way.
You are a good interpreter, very sensitive, intuitive, caring, and gentle.
Concerned about the world, you are good at predicting people's feelings.
A seeker of wisdom, you are a life long learner looking for purpose and meaning.
You are a great thinker and communicator, but not necessarily a doer.
Souls you are most compatible with: Bright Star Soul and Dreaming Soul What Kind of Soul Are You?
Your Hidden Talent
Your natural talent is interpersonal relations and dealing with people.
You communicate well and are able to bring disparate groups together.
Your calming presence helps everything go more smoothly.
People crave your praise and complements. What's Your Hidden Talent?
Your Personality Profile
You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant.
Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle.
You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs.
For you, comfort and calm are very important.
You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection.
You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong. The World's Shortest Personality Test
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