I grew up in a small town in Arkansas with my parents, older brother, and sister. At that time, there were only around 500 people, and there wasn’t much to do in that town. The closest city that had things to do was nearly an hour away. This little town was called Bradford. At the time, there was only a gas station, a small grocery store, a hairdresser, and a video rental place. I think I am telling my age here. Eeek! My father was an entrepreneur, and he traveled a lot out of town, putting siding on houses. My dad didn’t make much money, but he was a hard worker. For the first seven years of my life, my parents lived with my grandparents because my father didn’t make enough money to buy a house, but instead, my grandparents allowed us to live there until my father could save up enough money for land. Eventually, my father bought 2 acres and a small trailer for us to live in, which over the years my father added additions to the house, creating a much larger living space.

Things Changed…

When we lived with my grandparents the, not so not-so-nice side of my dad was hidden. My father would be out of town most days of the week, but I would dread when he did come home on the weekends. I was only 8 years old, and I would get so anxious I would throw up or just get severe stomach aches just thinking about him coming home. My dad loved to drink, so by the time he would come home on Friday night, he would already be drunk, and he would be very mean. My father came from a traumatic background as a child, so he was repeating the behavior that he had experienced. When my father would drink enough to remember all the bad things, he would take it out on my mother and me. There were times he would shoot the gun in the house, break glasses in rages, and pick fights. There was once I remember, we were on a rare Sunday drive on a dirt road, and my dad hated fast drivers, especially on a dirt road. This truck was behind us and had a teenage boy driving. This boy thought that it would be okay to pass my dad, and it enraged my father. All of a sudden, my father is on a chase to run this kid down. I am screaming because I am just 8 years old and have no idea what is happening. My father is telling me to shut up, and he can barely keep the truck on the road was we are going so fast. My father catches up to the truck, which has pulled into this kid’s driveway, and my dad grabs a handgun, gets out of the truck, and puts the pistol to this kid’s head. I then saw the grandmother run out of the house, begging my dad not to shoot her grandson. My dad agreed if she didn’t call the cops, and if she did, he would finish the kid. It was like the devil was coming through my dad. After that, my dad gets in the truck and we start heading back home. THEN my mother, as we were driving home decides she is going to open the door and fall out the moving truck. My dad slammed the breaks, and I thought my mother was dead. I was screaming, “YOU KILLED HER!” Luckily, the stunt she pulled didn’t land her in the hospital, but it all left me fearful and anxious.

My mother is another story. My mother was a very over-protective mother to the point of it being child abuse. I wasn’t allowed to go outside, play with friends, or go to friends’ houses. In third grade, my mother pulled me out of school, and she said she would homeschool me, but she didn’t. I eventually taught myself and was able to get a high school diploma later on at age 16. My mother also loved to drink, and when she did, she often would go into rages, making things up in her head about me and then becoming violent towards me. You might be asking where are my brother and sister in all of this? My brother and sister are 14 and 16 years older than me, respectively, and because of our mother’s behavior, they left home very early on and established their lives in other states, so I was left behind. My siblings would threaten my mother that if she didn’t treat me better than she treated them, they would find a way to take me away.

As I grew older nothing changed; they didn’t change, shoot they didn’t want help to change. Every weekend was a fight: them drinking, going off, throwing things, screaming, and yelling. All my life, I was neglected and emotionally abused. They didn’t hug me or tell me they loved me. I spent most of my time hidden in my room, and they couldn't have cared less. I remember one time I was in my room, and my mother wouldn’t come check on me to see if I was okay but instead come into my room and accuse me of something that I was never doing. One time, she came screaming at me in my room, saying, “I know you’re doing witchcraft in here! Where is it?!” I remember feeling so alone as a child because I had no one but myself. I was allowed to have one friend, but she was far away and would sometimes visit in the summer. I will call her Mandy. Mandy’s grandparents lived next door to us, so she would come to stay the summer, and I was allowed to go next door sometimes because her grandparents were best friends with my parents, but as far as having anyone else, she was it.

When I thought nothing could be worse…

I was 11 years old at this point and Mandy wanted me to go with her grandparents that were coming to her house and have me stay the night. I got excited because I didn’t get to go anywhere or do anything but live in my room. The only place I went was to the grocery store and my grandparents, that’s it! I had never seen a movie theater till I was 13, so you can imagine how excited I was. But my mother wasn’t having it, she said NO! I got so mad and I purposely picked an argument with her because I was determined I was going. My mother finally got mad and said go, and I grabbed some clothes, threw them in a bag, and walked across the field to their house. As I am walking across the field my mother screams, “You will regret it!” And all the sudden, I get this feeling of dread, and even though I want to go, something is saying don’t do it. I tried ignoring this feeling but it wouldn’t go away. I knocked on the door, and the grandparents said Come in. The grandmother was in the kitchen, and the grandfather was on the couch. I sit in a chair, and the grandfather says, Come sit on the couch, I won’t bite. So I said ok and went and sat on the couch next to him. He immediately started to touch me forcefully and tried to drag me to the bedroom that was on the other side of the couch. I was able to get him off of me, and I ran into the kitchen and told the grandmother I was sick and needed to go home. I ran home but I didn’t go inside my house. I didn’t even tell my parents because I felt like I couldn’t. I was already broken and neglected; now I feel dirty and nasty, like I deserved what happened. I ended up calling my sister and telling her what happened, and she was so angry, something our mom should have been when I told her, but she wasn’t.

My sister convinced me to tell our mom, so I told her. Her words were, “I told you; you would regret it.” There was no consoling, there was nothing. She then said, “I was molested, grandma was molested, you just got to forget about it like I did.” My mother did eventually tell my dad, and this was his response to me: “Kid, if you would stop wearing shorts and make-up, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. That’s just the way guys are.” So my father told me it was all my fault. No one tried to press charges against this man;, for the next 3 years, my father invited him in our house and never cared how I felt. My father was best friends with him till the day he died several years ago.

What the devil meant for evil God turned to good

That was a devastating year when I was 11. But I made a commitment that I would become close to God, and I really did. I started reading my Bible and filling my days with him and my nights with him watching CBN and just learning different things. That year had plenty to go wrong, and I was also dealing with sickness. I had chronic tonsilitis that would get so bad I could hardly breathe or swallow. My parents didn’t have insurance so doctors visits were only on a had to basis. One night, I couldn’t sleep because my throat was so bad. I was watching Pat Robinson on CBN, and it was around 2-3 A.M. and the broadcast was coming to a close with him praying. So I closed my eyes, and I was just praying along with him when he said, “There is someone out there right now who has an infection in your tonsils, and God is going to touch and heal you right now.” I said out loud, I receive that in Jesus's name and all of a sudden, I was paralyzed, and this peace it me and fire started going through my body from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and I felt my tonsils open, and I could breathe! I was healed! I was so excited I jumped out of bed and ran to my mom’s room and woke her up to tell her but she didn’t care. I have never had tonsilitis ever again since that miracle and that was 32 years ago.

It’s time to leave

When I turned 15, my sister decided that it was time to get me away from our toxic parents. She worked hard and got a house, a car, and a stable job that paid well. We tricked my parents into letting me go for 2 weeks to my sisters in Houston, but really it was about me going before the judge asking if my sister could have custody of me. There were arguments between my sister and our parents, but they eventually gave her temporary custody till I was 18, and I decided to leave and live with my sister for a few years before moving out on my own.

Trauma opens doors to demonic oppressions

I am now in my early 20s, and anxiety and fear are now playing a huge role in my life. The anxiety and fear came in as a child with my father, and now it’s getting harder to manage. I hear many voices that sound like me but are negative. It was sometimes hard to go into public places or places that had a lot of people. I loved to go to Starbucks so that was a place I felt like didn’t have a lot of people. I met some people there, and we hit it off and we all became really good friends. This was shortly after 9/11, and I felt bad for this group of people and how they were treated because they were Muslim. I believe that not all Muslims are the same. Just because of what happened in 9/11 doesn’t mean that all of them are out to kill us or kill Christians. Or so I thought. I ended up getting involved with this one guy, and he was so nice and good to me, from buying me gifts to taking me on trips. Nothing out of the norm spoke to me besides the fact that he couldn’t tell anyone that he was dating Christian women. We will call this man Sahim. Sahim and I dated for about 18 months and he started falling in love with me, so he decided he was going to finally tell his parents that he wanted to be with me. So he told his parents, and he called me, and I could hear them screaming at him in the background, and he tells me he can never see or talk to me again and hangs the phone up. I am devastated, and I am sobbing, and then I get angry. I get in my car and head to his house because I want to know the WHY his father is doing this. So I get there, and the father answers the doo,r and I start demanding answers. His father says, “If his family in Pakistan knew he was with Christian women, we would have to send our son over there to be killed.” Then slams the door in my face. I was in total shock and disbelief. Would a father kill his own child over religion? I get back in my car and I get on the freeway, I am sobbing, and all the sudden I start to go numb and I feel like pins and needles all over my body. I am looking for an exit, and I get off and it happens to be a hospital. By the time I got the car stopped, my body had locked into a fetal position, pain running all through my body, and I couldn’t move. What I would later find out is I had a severe panic attack. These panic attacks would continue to rule my life for the next 9 months, leaving me housebound because I feared another attack. I didn’t drive for 9 months, all my friends left me, and I couldn’t do school or work. It took me 9 months of fighting the demon that was oppressing me.

Fast forward to age 33. The fear, anxiety, and panic are now at an all-time high. I am married to a great man with one child at the time, and I am sobbing over my husband, and I said, I can't do this anymore! I can't function, and I feel like something dark is always around me. Then my husband told me to contact our pastor. So the next morning I reached out to him and laid out my whole life story thinking there has to be something there. It was at that moment that the Lord started teaching me that this panic, anxiety, and fear was actually an oppression. The pastor told me I needed to be delivered, and I was like, but I have accepted Jesus in my heart; I can't be oppressed. He then began talk to me about the difference between oppression and possession and how a person can't be possessed if they have accepted Christ. This sent me on a journey with the Lord in learning what all this meant. I started hosting people that knew more than me in my home and deliverance and healings would break out. I was learning that trauma had opened the door for the devil to come in and torment me. I had to go through multiple deliverances, and there is a reason for that, but the Lord showed me through all this that you don't have to suffer. I now have a no mind chatter, no anxiety, and no panic attacks in over a decade, it's ALL GONE! I live a very peaceful and joyous life, and now God has called me to help other women have the same freedom from the trauma, from the anxiety, fear, and panic, and live the life Christ has called them to.