I had this hatred for men.
I became the radical, lesbian, feminist, "We’re
gonna take over the world.
You better like who I am or get
out of my way," and that really
wasn’t who I was.
By nature, I’m a pretty mild-mannered person,
but I was just trying to find my identity,
so I tried looking in a lot of different places.
I was also developing this addiction to alcohol and this addiction to sleeping pills, pain pills, and different
things I could get my psychiatrist to give
me.
In fact, I got to the point where I would go into
college classes with bourbon and coke in my
hand and sit in the front.
and was really delusional, I suppose, because I thought
nobody noticed, but I’m sure they did.
Then at one point, I had a counselor suggest that
maybe I should try AA
There was one lady in particular. She sort became an unofficial leader of some of the younger women.
She would sort of take us under her wing.
I completely looked up to her because she
had been sober for ten years.
She was very sophisticated.
She knew a lot about literature and history
and all of these things, and I always had
this hunger for knowledge.
She would also talk about things like receiving
messages from her deceased brother and getting
messages from the dead and a lot of different things like that.
She would do hypnosis.
We sat down in her office in her basement at one point. I was alone with her,
and she began to do some hocus pocus hypnosis kind of stuff.
I literally felt some kind of cold force. I literally could feel it coming from the left side. I can still remember.
It was like something taking over me.
It's like at that point, I had no will to stop it.
It was like there was nothing in me that could disagree
with what she said.
There was nothing in me that could stop because I had given her power over my life.
That’s when the darkness began. That's when my extreme sickness began.
Within two weeks I was jaundiced.
I was having trouble seeing.
I was having trouble hearing.
I could not remember things from one moment
to another.
I would literally just lie on my bed with
my arms underneath me and
could hardly move.
It had taken over.
I can remember being at a place where I just wished
I could go back to those days of suicidal
thoughts and drug and alcohol rehabs because they seemed like a hay day. That was an easy time compared
to this literal torment that I lived with in
my mind.
One day my aunt came to town.
She was the aunt who we always thought was a little different, the one that I never would have listened to before.
As I sat in one of my other aunt’s living
room, she looked right into my eyes.
At this point, I was very physically ill.
Life had taken its toll. Everything I had been involved in
had taken its toll.
She looked right at me and said, “I’m really
concerned about your health, but I’m more
concerned about your soul.”
The moment she said that, it's like it pierced through me. Her words pierced me.
There was a time I never would have listened
to that, but I was so desperate.
When she began to share the gospel and share
her experiences of how Jesus had been real
in her life, suddenly it's like my eyes were opened,
my heart was opened, thinking, “You mean
this Jesus thing that I’ve been telling
everybody is a big hoax could actually be real?”
To the best of my ability I began to pray
like, “God, if you’re real, I’m open."
Finally, I was invited to a women’s prayer
meeting that took place in a courthouse building.
I didn’t know anything about worshiping
God, but these women were coming together
to study the Bible and pray.
I stood with them, and they began to close their eyes
and raise their hands.
I didn’t know anything about that, but I thought,
“Hey, I’m going to try this,” you know, and I did.
Suddenly I just felt the real power and presence
of God.
It was like fire and electricity just shooting
through my body.
I literally felt like there was this war going on between this force of darkness, this demonic force,
and the power of God and Holy Spirit.
What was amazing was I was very aware of this.
One would think it would almost be a frightening
experience, but I wasn’t frightened at all.
It was almost like, “This is really cool.
This is almost like a Sci-Fi movie, but something’s
happening here, and I know that the God of the
universe has stepped on the scene.”
It was really an instantaneous deliverance for me.
I am free from alcohol, from drug addiction,
from pills.
I’m now married. I have a husband.
I have two sons, and we all serve the Lord
together.
