Speaking from personal experiene, being a woman who has gone from victim statis to being a survivor of child abuse, God is the only way to fully heal. It took me 10yrs to figure that out. I went through a lot of emotional pain, physical pain, and spiritual pain. Emotionally I was so depressed that I turned all that emotional trauma into a three year drug addiction. Which in turn did not help me at all in the areas written above, if anything it made life a lot worse. Drugs was just the crutch to try and fix the pain, but NO it didn't work. Meantime during all this I was raising a little boy. My drug addiction started in 97 shortly after that i became pregnant, I quit all things that were bad and vowed to never pick them up again because I was going to be a mommy and that was more important than anything. I had him in April of 98, approximately seven months later I started using again. It took almost three years for me to hit my rock bottom, and that didn't come along until I hit the County jail. God threw a huge wake-up call my way and yes I grabbed a hold of it and never let go. That all happened in July of 2000.
Now during the time of being pregnant with my son I attended church on a regular basis and after I had him I still went to church every Sunday faithfully with my parents. Even on drugs several times, but that I am not proud of. Once I really started using I quit going because it didn't feel right and by all means it shouldn't have. So my walk with God ended there for awhile. Even though I walked away he was never far away from me. I just chose not to reach out to him. Even through all that he still loved me and accepted me back into his grace. ROMANS 3:24 "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." God is great and his love is everlasting.
Just to encourage you, there is hope for the end of the emotional pain. We can take a stand as abused women and either define ourselves as a victim or say "NO I AM NOT A VICTIM ANYMORE I AM A SURVIVOR" and if you choose to be a survivor then choose God to help you through it. I am telling you without the Love of my God I would not be where I am right now. All the therapy in the world will never give you that complete peace. Therapy can help, I know I went through many months of therapy and it helped a lot but when I decided to go back to church God carried me the rest of the way. 1 PETER 5:7 "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." It's like my Pastor taught me, if we want God to work in our lives and truly transform us, we have to remove our grip on our life and allow the Lord to lead with his hand, then and only then will you see the change come about. Then you will see the peace fall onto your life, then you will see the love of God at work, then the idea of forgiveness will become bareable. All you have to do is put all trust and faith into the Lord, what do you have to lose?? PSALM 37:5 "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass." GALATIANS 2:20 "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."
This is just a small portion of my testimony, soon there will be more to come. Love is just one of the many ways to overcome the strongholds of abuse in a woman's life. Faith in God will be my next testimony on overcoming the strongholds of abuse.
WRITTEN BY: DANIELLE WALKER
