Testimony Blips (this page is a work in progress)
In the Beginning
I grew up in a God-fearing Christian home. My parents & father's parents were Baptists. My mother's parents were Methodist.We would go to Sunday School and church every Sunday. My mother and grandmother were Sunday School teachers, my grandfather was a deacon and treasurer and my father was a dedicated do whatever's needed person.
Like so many young children do, I slept on the pew at church or fought with my sister. As I began to turn a teenager, I started paying a little more attention to what the preacher had to say about this Jesus. At alter calls, I remember I would feel something on me (which I know now was the Holy Spirit) and would fight against Him and what I felt. I would literally shake my body, trying to get this feeling off of me. I didn't want to loose control. I didn't surrender to Jesus and say yes to Him until a few years later.
At age 16, I attended a Billy Graham crusade in a football stadium. There were thousands of people in attendance. The Lord touched my heart through the message and I went down to the field and gave my life to Jesus. There was a man there who prayed with me, gave me a booklet and took my phone number. He was to call me and encourage me in my walk. The young man called a few times, but after speaking to him once, I started refusing his calls. Looking back, it might have helped if he had passed me on to a woman to call me since I was under age.
That first week or so after I was saved I was so on fire for Jesus, or so I thought I was. I grabbed as many teaching tapes as I could and listened to one after another, probably 10 or 15 within that time period. But very quickly, that fervor I was feeling started growing cold. In my zeal to listen to tapes, I had neglected to concentrate on reading the Word of God and seeking Him through prayer. I just didn't understand how important it was. Approximately a week and a half later, I wasn't listening to teaching tapes. Was I even praying? Maybe, but obviously I didn't dig in deep, for I was already back to my old ways (and loving it) of listening to hard rock music, drinking, drugs, smoking, sexual promiscuity, etc.
Little did I know that the woman I began dating just a few weeks later would become the person that would mentally, physically, verbally, and emotionally abuse me for the next 10 years. The enemy knew that I had suffered rejection all my life from my family and so he used this woman to give attention to me that I so desired. Be careful anytime someone wants to be with you all the time or be on the phone or computer with you all the time. It gives you no room to think about anything else or to listen to God's voice. If I had not given her so much time in my life in the beginning, I probably would have heard the Lord warning me to be careful or to step back from my relationship with this person. At this point in my life, if the Lord had given me any type of warning I wasn't listening because I was so hurt I rebelled against authority already.
Don't Look Back
Some say there's no harm in verbal abuse. I disagree.
You get to where you can't make decisions on your own. A verbal abuser is all about control, and God wants us to be led by Him, not some abuser. Even just verbal abuse causes you to live in fear, wondering what's gonna happen, but God didn't give us the spirit of fear.
After my abuser wined and dined me and reeled me in, then we moved in together. As soon as that door closed, they knew they had me & verbal abuse came - I was told I was stupid every day, that nobody else would ever want me, that I would never amount to anything, that I could never make it on my own, they would curse and scream at me ... literally destroyed my soul. Separated me from my family, my friends, all to try keep me dependent on them. They wanted to be my savior.
Physical abuse came later, throwing chairs, raping me and laughing while I cried, beating my head against the wall dozens of times during each episode, beating me repeatedly in the kidneys, telling me how to dress & what to do, would hit me over the head with a cast iron skillet if I didn't put my clothes in the hamper, would take me on suicide rides in the car and try to kill us, would sit me in a corner and throw knives at me, would push me out of the bed after we had had sex because they didn't want to sleep with me, would throw me out of the car and leave me, one time they let me out with some friends of theirs on the side of the road and then told them to gang rape me. They ran me and my mother off the road (we were all in separate cars) and at my mothers once they broke in to try to pull me out of the house.
Once God removed them from my life (I finally defended myself and then hi-tailed it out and never looked back) I didn't see them for another 10 or so years, and that was just in passing. God protected me ... because IT WAS TIME and He said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. All their threats to kill me and my family were hogwash. Not that it always is, but when He says go or kick em out - do it. My experience has been that eventually the Lord removes one or the other cause He doesn't want to see us suffer. He says in His Word that He'll only allow the innocent to be taken advantage of for so long. Anyway, as you can imagine, I don't have a lot of sympathy for abusers, verbal or anything else. FYI - 9 out of 10 verbal abuse leads to physical abuse.