Beginning

The magnitude of writing all of this out is quite daunting, but it is a challenge that I know God will help me with. My biggest hurdle is always, where to start... My head is going so fast that slowing it down enough to catch a thought & get it captured is pretty tough. You see, I am a systematic kind of person, I love order & systems to create calm & peace. Trying to figure out how to write this in some sort of order that will make the most sense is proving rather difficult. The best way to write this is to just start, so here it goes.

I was born on a pew. Ok, not literally, but I was in church from my earliest memory. All of my childhood memories are centered around church & I have never known a moment in my life where God was not the focus. Even as a small girl I loved to climb the trees in our backyard & I would just pray. My favorite time was around dusk when the air would be still & warm; I could just feel God's presence in my life. When I was 10-11 years old, we lived on an acre of land & at the back of the property was an old fence. Every evening I would run to that fence to watch the sunset & pray. That intrinsic desire to know Him & be in His presence was deeply in me from my earliest memory.

Along with my desire for His presence came an annoying side effect that I did not particularly like; His hand of protection was on me & I could not get away with ANYTHING. From my earliest memory I knew I was different. Now I know that may seem arrogant or snobby, but I assure you it is not. I knew I was different & I hated it. I desperately wanted to be like everyone else, to be normal. I yearned to be normal so much that it hurt. This desire for normalcy even caused me to get feisty with God at twelve. There was this boy, who mind you was eighteen years old, yeah I was twelve, anyway... I was in love with this boy & he knew it. He took advantage of that & would "make out" with me. Now when I say "make out", it was more like him shoving his tongue down my throat & me gagging. It wasn't very nice, but I wanted his love even if that "love" was his lustful groping, I would take that. One particular time when we were making out, he began to go much further, but being young & naive, I had no idea where he was going. Well at the exact moment when things were going to go very *wrong*, a fellow church kid walked in on the room where we were. He did not see me, but he knew that the boy was in there with a girl. He ran out to tell & I ran away in fear of being caught. I remember going to the girl's bathroom & having an angry rant towards God. "Why can't I just do what I want?? Why do you have to stop me from having fun? You always keep me from being normal & doing what I want. Take your hand of protection off of me."

I would never dream of saying that to God now, but back then in my foolish adolescent way of thinking, I truly believed God was just stopping me from having fun for His own weird game. This is just a small viewpoint of how warped my thinking was. As weird or horrible as it may sound, I genuinely did not know that God loved me & that everything He did in my life was for my good & His glory. Instead I had a terribly warped viewpoint of God & I saw Him as more of a disciplinarian than a gentle & loving Father. May I go as far to say that many of our viewpoints of God are defined by the way we are loved by our parents or by our elders in our lives as children? It is very rare for me to encounter anyone who has a healthy & un-tainted mindset about God. Whether He is a disciplinarian to you or a genie who gives you things to make you happy, they are both unhealthy & inaccurate. This warped thinking would dictate much of my life & self esteem even to this present day. In fact, the depths of how deep the vein of my warped thinking went much further back then I knew. Generations before me had been in bondage to chains in the spirit realm that were stronger than I could have realized.

Thus begins mine & my family's journey to freedom from warped thinking & into a healthy relationship with God.

~Danielle

Into the Light

It seems so simple, but doing this scares the snot out of me. These words seem so small, but the depth of what is behind them is beyond this simple black & white text. Years of pain, fear, shame, hurt, anger, self hatred, loneliness, failure, depression, & intense insecurity are behind these simple words. I pray that as you read my story, that the words will not fall flat & just be another "nice story", but that the depths of the Power of our Loving & Almighty God, who is able to do EXCEEDINGLY, ABUNDANTLY, ABOVE ALL that you could ASK OR THINK, would penetrate your spirit & birth new hope in you. My family's & my story is one that is still being revealed, but we hold firm to the glorious truth in Philippians 1:6, "Being confident of this, that HE who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

Our testimony is the culmination of 28+ years personally & 58+ years for my family. Why I am writing my/our story you ask? Because if I had known that there was a woman who has been where I have been & a family who had gone through what my family has gone through, & those people received TOTAL & COMPLETE HEALING & RESTORATION, my life & mindset would have changed dramatically. In today's age of cynicism & doubt, I personally know that we are all hungry & starving for a tangible miracle from God. There have been countless times where I would read a story in the Bible with great miracles & I would say to God, "I know that you are the same God yesterday & today, but why don't we see these kind of miracles in the church or in our lives anymore?" Let me assure you, we serve a miracle God who is causing His plans & purposes in our lives to work out for His glory & our good. We may not be able to see that plan & perhaps it does not look the way we want it to look, but our God is weaving a beautiful tapestry out of every trial & triumph in our lives.

I am sharing our story for one simple truth, Revelation 12:11, "They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony;". The enemy's power over us is destroyed when we drag out that which he wants to stay hidden & in the dark, & we bring it into the light. This blog is that light.

~Danielle