Testimonies

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MY LITTLE GIRL DREAM….
A Testimony Of God’s Unfailing Love & Faithfulness

It started about forty years ago, when a little girl’s life was shattered, forever changed by the enemy’s evil plan. She never realized that one day her oldest daughter would start telling their amazing testimony.

My life was pretty “normal”, until I reached my teens and realized my whole family is crazy, or maybe, I was crazy. Family for me is Dad, Mom, me, two younger brothers and a younger sister. We were a pretty traditional Christian family, we didn’t really attend church, so we never had a support system, Christian friends who could pray and share our troubles with us. People thought we were the typical ‘picture perfect family’. But there were times when my mom got a weird look in her eyes which scared me – she would speak and act like a different person. We knew that certain things upset her so much that she would become hysterical and run away, she would disappear for hours sometimes, so we were very careful to not make her angry. She got angry anyway. It would be years before we finally understood the pain and trauma behind The Look.

In the meantime my own frustration grew. I’m an artistic person, who loved to dance, draw pictures and make things. School however, didn’t offer any of those subjects, as we grew up in a small town with very limited opportunities for anyone who isn’t a farmer, miner, or rugby player. My family never had lots of money, which meant no private lessons were ever possible. I hated school and I was cut of from friends since we lived on a farm. I withdrew into my own fantasy world, dreaming of becoming a dancer, or famous artist. The dream started fading as I grew older and realized that little girl dreams don’t come true.
When I was about thirteen, grade eight, my mom had to start working with my dad, who had started a new business. After having my mom at home all my life, that security and safety was suddenly pulled out from under me. At a time of so many changes already taking place, my whole life fell apart. By the time I was sixteen, I hated my parents, I hated myself, my life, I basically hated everything around me. Demons were mocking and torturing my thoughts, haunting my dreams and confusing me to the point where I would become hysterical. I never understood the dreams, the things I saw, or the presences I felt that left me so deathly afraid of the dark and of being alone. My ultimate goal in life was to run away to a foreign country and start a new life where no one knew me. My mom and I had terrible fights regularly, my dad, being an introvert, became more introverted and hardly ever said a word.

Then when I was seventeen, my life changed forever. Running away from emotions and problems I didn’t understand, and desperate for love and acceptance, I became pregnant the December of my final year of school. It was a massive shock, and I hated myself and my life even more. This was not the little girl dream that I had before. I kept the baby however. It was a beautiful baby boy who had my eyes and hair. I didn’t want to get married just because I had a baby, but I did live with the dad. After a year or so we got married, because we “were living in sin” and guilt was piled on our consciences. It was a big mistake, and minor fights from before turned into devastating rows which often included physical abuse towards me. Depression clawed it’s way into me so deeply, that I couldn’t see any way out. After another year and a half had passed, I gave birth to another boy and for a few months I believed we would be a happy family.
The abuse however, never stopped. My husband and his family destroyed me with verbal, emotional and physical abuse. I knew I had no reason to live, apart from somehow being a mother to my boys, the demons were mocking and haunting me all the time, still torturing me in my dreams. I hated myself for what this life was doing to the boys. My family tried desperately to help, but my mom had finally started to go for prayer ministry, and she was unlocking terrifying memories from her past and had her own nightmares to try and deal with. It seemed that my whole life was a useless mess, and I finally tried committing suicide by overdosing on pills. God intervened, and after spending a night in hospital I went home. My body was fine, but my emotions were in a thousand pieces. I had no self confidence, or hope left.

After being married for nearly three years, I finally gathered up enough courage to walk out and filed for divorce. Then started the fight for custody of the boys, for maintenance, and an ugly picture turned even uglier. My life was a disaster. My family wasn’t really in the position to support me and two boys, and the salary I was earning wasn’t nearly enough to cover all the expenses. Emotionally I had no idea where or who I was.
My parents had started going to church in the meantime, building up a desperately needed support and prayer group. Seeing the road my mom was walking though, going through excruciating pain, trying to get healing for her own brokenness, I refused to go for counseling or any prayer ministry. We did eventually realize however that the road she was walking, her history and the way that they enemy had used to try and destroy her life, had had a direct influence on the road that I was walking, and that the enemy had a much stronger grip on us than we ever realized. The tormenting dreams and demonic presences finally started making sense and we could start working on emotional healing and deliverance when I finally agreed to see a counselor.

Then I lost my job. My ex-husband started to fight for custody of the boys again. I had no home of my own, no car, no income, no hope, and I didn’t care. The day I packed the boys’ stuff for their dad to fetch them for good, my heart died completely. I spiraled off of the bit of direction that I still had left. A small part of me realized I needed help, but I was too hurt and there were too many strongholds on my life to break out of it by myself. It was a frightening time. Memories linked with my mom’s childhood creeped into my dreams and ministry sessions, my own demons feeding on them and driving me nearly insane. After about another year and a half of trying desperately to find my feet, to get healing and to become free of pain and torture, while drifting from one abusive relationship to the next, it all became too much and pills were the only way out yet again.

It was in the hospital that God finally got through to me. While changing shifts, the Christian staff started singing and praying in their native tongue, and suddenly I was in tears. I could feel God’s presence, and I knew I wanted to live, to do something more with my life. I finally decided to let go and let God, to really find what He wanted me to do.
Through searching and praying I learned about Youth With a Mission, YWAM, from one of our local churches. YWAM is an international organization with the focus on missions. Through the 50 years that YWAM has existed however, they have started hundreds of different schools and ministries all over the world, and through that have created opportunities for anyone, of any age, with any gifting, to find God’s calling and to become equipped in order to live out that calling.

In July 2010, I packed my bags and flew to Muizenberg, Cape Town. I didn’t have the money to do my first level school, the Discipleship Training School, but I had been accepted and I figured once I was on their doorstep they would have a hard time trying to send me home!
It was the best decision I ever made. I received more healing, freedom and joy in the six months of DTS than ever before. There were a lot of tears, praying for complete healing, and also for the money to finish the school and to be able to go on the two month outreach to Southeast Asia. God came through every time. My school fees were paid. My life long dream of being able to travel the world had started to come true. The broken pieces of my life became a beautiful mosaic as God put them back together. There was still the longing to be creative again, to dance, to draw and paint and to be me, the person who the little girl used to be twenty years ago. I just kept praying that God would give me the desires of my heart.

It’s 2011. I am now part of the short term volunteer team at YWAM Muizenberg. I am taking ballet classes every week, and God also literally “dropped” me into a group who is doing campus ministry around Cape Town, and who uses worship and dance to reach students! I am also part of a three month Prophetic Art mentorship program, with the aim to use arts to share God’s love and dreams with all people.
My vision: To reach the lost, especially those who are or who have been involved in the occult, by creating a healing ministry, using the arts and inner healing, to tell them of God’s love, to share the joy that I am experiencing, and to help them receive the same healing that I have received. I had given up on every single one of my dreams, since I believed that at the age of twenty six I was too old to ever learn to dance or to do art. But God has resurrected my little girl dreams and they are coming true one by one. It’s a process, walking through discouraging times of pain and strongholds that are still surfacing, but God has proved to be the supreme power, the ultimate authority, the King of kings and His overpowering love is destroying the works of the enemy one by one.
My mom is still walking the road to complete healing and freedom, as is the rest of my family. But broken relationships have been restored fully and even though suffering and problems are still a part of our lives, my joy is complete.

As I so often now stand barefoot on the beach, the ice cold sea water washing over my bare toes, the sun shining down on me and the Muizenberg mountain smiling majestically behind me, I know that there is a God. A God who loves me above anything I have ever done, a God who has held every single tear I have cried in His hand, a God who is turning those tears into the most precious gifts I have ever received. And my little girl dream is winking cheerfully at me from the future God always had planned for me.

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