Testimony

My father was brought up with his grandparents who taught him that everything was his. When he married and had a son - me - he resented that, and felt rejected. I never felt loved or wanted. My childhood was hell. I had all kinds of fears and phobias, and experienced emotional damage and rejection. I did not do well at school and left with no qualifications. Work was no different. I could not keep my mind on things. So I began to drift from one job to another job. That's the way it was until 1983-4 when both my parents died in the span of ten months. My father left me a lot of money, but I had a few fair-weather friends who ripped me off quite badly.

1985 was the worst year of my life. My situation was hopeless, so I said to myself, "Why don't I just kill myself and be done with it?" It was then that I heard a voice deep inside saying, "Hold on, everything is going to be all right." I thought, "That's it, I've totally lost it, now I'm hearing voices." But the voice seemed so warm and reassuring.

Then I began to drift even more and I became homeless for the first time. Then in 1993 I came to Oxford after walking 67 miles from Birmingham. I went into the night shelter for the homeless. It was a hard time in the night shelter because you had to sleep with your eyes open, because people would steal everything you had. I got a room in a place on Divinity Road and started going to the soup kitchen run by Sister Smith and people from other churches. At the soup kitchen a woman by the name of Janet started talking to me about Jesus.

I thought Jesus belonged to the exclusive club of Peter Pan, Superman and Ewoks out of Star Wars. Two weeks later I was working down by Bonn Square and saw some people from the soup kitchen. They were dancing, singing, doing drama and having a good time. So I walked across the road to where they were. I started talking to two women and told them about my back and how sore it was. They prayed for me and while nothing happened right then, from that time my back started to get healed.

What happened next was very strange. It was as if something reached inside of me and cut me open. All of the rejection, hurt, pain, insecurity and loss came to the surface. I burst into tears, which is something I had not done for about ten years. I was in a lot of pain at this time and the girls prayed for me again. Then, what I can only describe as waves of liquid love just washed over me and washed all that painful stuff away. I felt so warm and loving. I'd never felt anything like it in my life. At last I felt as someone loved me.

I then found out where their church was and went along twice, and to a couple of midweek meetings in peoples' homes. At the second one I gave my life to Jesus. Again nothing spectacular happened. But in the morning I thought I must have died and gone to heaven, because all the weight that I had been carrying had been picked up by Jesus. I felt as if I could float up and kiss the ceiling. There have been good times and not so good times since, but God has always been with me. I am going through a period of transformation at the moment and sometimes it is not easy, but I know that God is with.

While I have been a Christian God has been dealing my emotional damage suffered in the formative years of my life. I used to be dominated by the people around me, crushed, oppressed and depressed. God has been working through these issues in my life at a very deep level. I still struggle with these issues and it is only recently God has been revealing them to me. I need the constant healing touch of God to overcome these problems that still affect my life today.

At last I can see God’s pattern in my life I have been reading the book by Neil Anderson called Bondage Breaker. In this book Neil Anderson shows that we must move in authority that God gives us and healing will come. Last October I was diagnosed with clinical depression and gave it to God straightaway. It was like God uncorked me, since then it is like God has put me back in the front line again. He has given me a new gift of painting, creative writing, leading worship, telling my testimony and writing reviews for the gatehouse for the homeless people. God has done the healing in his time. God has done a lot of healing in my life and I feel there is a lot more for him to do, but I believe that God will finish what he has started.