Jill's Story

How did you feel early on in your life? Did you feel safe, secure, loved? Did you feel valued, significant, confident and like you had a purpose? Were you given encouragement and praise?

My story is somewhat different from this.. my life, my identity, my innocence, my chance to be who I was intended to be was stolen from me. A normal relationship with my siblings was impossible. We were all just surviving. The home we grew up in was full of anger, fear and physical violence. We lived our lives behind closed doors and no-one ever asked questions. I was bullied in and out of school and was sexually abused both at home and elsewhere. It felt like I had a sign on my head saying: ‘Come on, abuse me’. My parents had come together bringing their negative emotional baggage into their marriage and this spilled out onto the family.

I lived in turmoil, constantly afraid. I slept little for fear of nightmares that plagued me. The abuse I suffered outside the home was very real to me, but I remained silent and dead inside. I buried the sexual abuse I suffered at home deep inside my subconscious. In order to survive my mind protected itself by anesthetizing the pain. Hence nightmares replaced reality. I thought it was all a terrifying bad dream until at the age of 38, fed up with being a victim of my past, I had some counseling and prayer. I remembered the changes I'd seen in my sister's life when she became a Christian at 16. I had wondered why she bothered coming home to visit us in our hell-hole. She told me about Jesus and how he had died on the cross for my sins because he loved me unconditionally and wanted me to love him, so that I too could find freedom from the pain and trauma as she had.

It was another 10 years before I found Jesus. I was running from myself, hiding the pain in drink, drugs and numerous relationships that I hated myself for. I abused myself as well as allowing others to do so. It was all I had known. I was searching for love to fill that big hole of emptiness and loneliness.

When I did ask Jesus into my life things began to change, but now I had to live with the truth. It was shattering. In order to be free from the ‘victim mentality’ that had caused me to remain stunted in many areas of life I had to deal with my emotions. I needed to start trusting people. I began making good friends and enjoyed work. I felt loved. Over time, as I faced my fears and dealt with my emotions, healing came. My greatest release was from the nightmares that had plagued me most of life and the fear that kept me imprisoned. After friends had prayed for me and said ‘It is finished,’ something inside my mind agreed: ‘It is finished’. It was a revelation that freed me completely.