Will we now abuse the abuser?

Hubby and I finally managed to get our act together and have officially moved cities. After an eventful move that included our truck tipping over on the motorway and our car getting stolen, we arrived in one place, found jobs, bought a new car, and have got ourselves a house. All that is left is the final unpack, buying a kitten or two (because...KITTENS), and finally sitting in our own home with a nice cold glass of something and curling up into the foetal position until the next time someone

needs us.

I have moved many times before, including moving cities on four separate occasions, so I thought I knew how this all went, and wasn't too worried about anything going wrong. 

Boy, was I wrong on that!

Everything that could possibly go wrong did. Though no one got hurt, the mental and emotional stress that we have been under is insane. Today, after we signed the contract for our house, both of us immediately felt exhausted. We had done it, but it had been a hard road.

God is good though, and through it all we have been blessed.

We have been blessed by the fact that we could stay with our parents and store our stuff for free in their garage while we sorted life out.

We have been blessed by the help we have received from family and friends in moving and through prayer and love.

We have been blessed that it really didn't take as long as we thought it would to get settled here.

Everyone, including ourselves, had predicted that it could take months to find jobs in a small town, and those jobs would probably pay a lot less than our jobs in the big smoke did. But this has not been the case. Both of us found jobs within a week of moving down and both jobs are at better pay than what we had previously!! In our minds this fact cemented that we are doing the right thing.

I am working now at a charitable trust for Maori. I process grants which help encourage the health and education of the local iwi/tribe. Though i may sit behind a desk, I find it very fulfilling knowing that I am helping a people that have had much work against them.

Hubby is working as a supervisor as the local Alternative Education centre. This is a centre for kids aged 13-15 who have effectively been expelled from the local high school and yet, by law, have to still be enrolled in school. They are all from rough backgrounds, most are related to gang members, and 95% of them are Maori. His job helps give my job even more meaning.

Needless to say, his work stories are far more interesting than mine, and far more heartbreaking.

He comes home with stories of drug use, abuse, crime, kids not having lunches, being picked up by the police, and getting in fights. They are hardened criminals, who also turn into excited little children when he teaches them ukulele. 

I breaks my heart when he tells me these stories. I mean, these are little kids and yet he laughs if I offer to invite them round for dinner. My instinct is to mother them. Yet, if I did that, we could/would be targeted by gangs intent of burglary or other devious crimes. They are children on the outside, and yet their lives have taught them only violence and crime as survival instincts.

I feel hopeless when I think about this. The reality is that these children are going to grow up and be, whether willingly or forced, part of a gang system that will feed them nothing but hate and drugs. And there is nothing I can do about it, because I can't get involved. Even hubby has limits as to what he is allowed to do within his role.

So how do you help a kid who you can't give things to, who it isn't safe to bring back to your house, and who you know is vulnerable and needs love? 

Does my safety trump bringing them home?

It messes with my mind when I try and bring my sacrificial faith face to face with the reality of what would happen. And I know what would happen. Hubby's mother works in the police down here and knows the families of these kids well. She knows what they would do. And it wouldn't be pretty.

So I pray, and I cry, and I physically ache for these kids. And I try my best at a workplace that would try and change the inevitable for these families. But mostly, if I am really honest, I try not to think about it. I don't want to feel hopeless and helpless, so I block it out.

Until I read an article like the one linked here.

If you can't be bothered reading the link, here is the cliff notes:

1. abuse is bad

2. here are some signs of how abusers act

3. abusers are out to get you so watch for signs

4. we will help you if you are in an abusive relationship

Now I agree with 3 out of 4 of these points. And point 3 is not explicitly stated, it is more the way that the author talks about the abuser, as if they were purposely acting in such a way in order to fool you.

I don't think this is the case at all.

When I hear about the kids at the AE centre, what I hear about are children who have been brought up in an environment perfect for producing an abuser.

They own nothing.

They lack love.

They respect no one (especially women).

Figures of love use violence.

Violence is how they solve their issues.

If they want something they take it.

This list is exactly what happens in an abusive relationship. But I don't think an abuser looks a someone and thinks "right, I want to abuse them, so I need to con them into loving me and then beat the s**t out of them."

Rather, what I think happens is that they are genuinely looking for love, it's just that they have been taught that love is possession and control. It's not that they necessarily WANT to hurt someone, it's just that they have no other tools in their emotional toolbox to deal with relationships, jealousy, love, anger, or anything. So they use what they know.

The sad thing about our society is that we demonise those that abuse. Yet they have often been at the hands of abuse for so many years that nothing short of extreme, extravagant, loving help is going to make any difference. 

But instead of help, they receive misunderstanding. Instead of compassion, they receive death threats. Instead of love, they receive hate layered on top of hate layered on top of hate. They are told they are devious and wicked, instead of being told that they too are a victim. They are told they are as bad as socio and psychopaths, instead of being nurtured into healthy communication. 

Society is trying to heal hurt and anger with segregation and hate.

It won't work.

And yet we persist in this kind of thinking and acting time and time again. Even if we go to something less extreme as abuse, and look at bullying, the same response dominates how we treat those who victimise others.

Case and point is the X-factor debacle that dominate NZ headlines recently. Cliff notes again, judges said nasty things to contestant, judges were fired. From that one, very brief, story, news agencies around the world went crazy.

And so did the responders to the judges. 

It is unfathomable to me how we can yell against bullying, but then do it by bullying the judges themselves!! Hate messages, mail and tweets poured out towards these two judges who, to be fair, had been told to be harsh to make good tv. What was said about them was worse that what was said by them at times.

Society thought it was permissible to abuse an abuser.

Why?

Why do we think that pouring out hate towards those who have shown hate can possibly rectify a situation?

Is it still a form of 'a tooth for a tooth' mentality? 

Because that is not what we are called to. Jesus refuted this way of thinking by calling humanity to something greater. Not a tooth for a tooth, he said, but love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Turn the other cheek to those who hurt you.

I AM NOT CONDONING ABUSE IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.

If you are in an abusive relationship then get out, so you can get help, and so that they can get help outside of the volatile situation that is your relationship. Neither of you will heal or grow if you stay where you are.

But as a society we are not called to defend the honour of victims by making more victims. We are called to show love and understanding in order to offer arms of healing. We can point out bad behaviour by refusing to take part in it. 

Be better than those who hurt others. Don't stoop to their level by showing only hate and refusing help.

I would like to finish with a quote by Martin Luther King Jnr. that pretty much sums up everything I want to say about this; why try say it better when a master has captured it so eloquently.

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, 

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. 

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar, 

but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. 

Through violence you may murder the hater, 

but you do not murder hate. 

In fact, violence merely increases hate. 

So it goes. 

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, 

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. 

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: 

only light can do that. 

Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

The Face I Can't Forget

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Treat 'Em Like A Lady

I don't know how far the story of 'Roast Busters' has spread. I don't know if anyone outside of NZ has heard this phrase or all that it entails, but for those of you who are currently sitting there with bemused expressions wondering if I am talking about some sort of comedic toasting of the rich and famous, here is the brief outline of what has happened recently in my little ole country:

It came to light a few weeks ago that two teenage boys were running a Facebook page called 'Roast Busters'. This is in reference to roasting a pig on a spit. This will become clear to you later will disgust you. Be warned. These two young men have been, for the last two years (!!!), getting young girls drunk, often under age, and then having group sex with them, filming it,then naming and shaming the girls online (understand the pig reference yet??). There have been some girls who have come forward to the police and have been told that their behavior led to the incident so it was taken no further. It has also come out that one of the young men is a police mans son. No charges have been laid as of yet.

That is the short version. I am cutting out the outrage that has been sparked across the country, the women that have come out speaking against, and for, the young men's actions, and the plethora of comments that have implied, or outright said, that the girls were asking for it by getting drunk. Never mind that sex with a minor if illegal anyway. Never mind that this is coercion. Never mind that the boys involved acted in a despicable manner.

But this is not another rant about that, there are many other people who have said all that and much better than me. I am praying that the outrage will cause some kind of action at a political and legal level.

What I am interested in is how these boys think that what they did was ok?

And this got me to thinking - have we as a society ever taught them any different?

Children in this secular society are brought up being told that each to their own, every body is allowed to believe what they want, act as they want, have their own morality. Our tv shows teach that women are property, that they are sex objects that are only worth the amount of sexual desire they inspire. Porn is now a norm for our teenagers, it is abnormal to find a teenager that hasn't seen porn, and these videos, often violent, show women being degraded and enjoying it and these videos are the first sexual education our children are receiving. Advertising teaches girls that they have to be sexy, dress provocatively, and be cute, rather than smart, to get attention. Tell me which a teenage girl is going to choose book work over a cute boy? Boys are taught to be strong, to go and get what they want, and that "boys will be boys". Girls are sluts if they have sex, boys are legends. Fathers who would kill any boy that comes within ten feet of their daughters will turn around and pat their sons on the back when they lose their virginity.

This is what those two boys were brought up with. And then when they live it out they are destroyed for putting it into practice.

Can we really be that shocked that this has happened? Angry, yes. Disgusted, absolutely. But shocked? And should we be angry at two young boys who are products of their society or at the society which created them? How many 'Roast Busters' have to happen before porn is made illegal and taken off the Internet? How many girls have to be humiliated and destroyed before the legal system becomes victim friendly rather than disbelieving? How many young boys become distorted and destructive men before we wake up and realize that we need to do this very differently?

I don't care what religious persuasion you are, all of us can realize that this behavior destroys our humanity. And it highlights the importance of community, and the responsibility we all have to each other. Where were these girls friends? Parents? Why are their parents silent? Do their parents know? What is happening at home that they will act like this at such young ages? Are the schools aware of at risk teenagers? Are the neighbors? When does it stop becoming 'their issue' and starts becoming OUR children, our country, our world that is being destroyed by this? 

I am so angry at this situation I can't even express it. It makes me feel physically sick. But I am just as sad for the boys as I am for the girls. They have ruined their lives beyond their understanding. They have destroyed something about their humanness by acting in such a way. They have made a country hate them and will, if justice exists, spend time in prison. All because they acted out what they learned.

Maybe boys will be boys because they were never taught to be men...

Wanting to Belong

(the second part of "why I can't be a Muslim....ever" will be posted next time but will be taking a break for this post)

This weekend just gone I had the supreme privilege of being asked to go down to New Zealand's most Southern city, Dunedin, to speak about my experience with mental illness and how the church can take part in the healing and reintegration of people with mental illness back into the community. I was there from Friday afternoon til Monday morning and managed to squeeze in six different talks to a variety of groups and churches.

Apart from being absolutely shattered I loved my time down there. It was an awesome city with an awesome vibe and beautiful architecture. Below is the main talk I gave on the Friday night to a bunch of different church people (along with pics of my time in the beautiful city). I hope you enjoy.

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Mary was upset. A man that she didn't like was whispering nasty things in her ear and touching her inappropriately, and she didn't like it. She told him to stop it but he wouldn't go away. So she started to yell at him, screaming at him to leave her alone. When I found her she was lashing out at the man and screaming at the top of her voice for someone to help her.

Natasha knew that she was sick. She could see it in the mirror every day. Her skin was starting to fall off her bones. She could see where it was tearing and bleeding and she didn't know how to stop it. She had been to the doctor many times about it but they kept telling her that it was ok. She knew it wasn't ok, and by the time I heard her story she was in a panic about how to fix it.

Mary and Natasha are real women who both experienced extremely traumatic events. However, both these women did not receive the help they needed to process what they went through.

For any other people these circumstances would have warranted counselling, church prayer meetings for the women, friends coming alongside to console and advice. Hey would have received medical treatment for their experiences and gained compassion and love from every quarter. Mary and Natasha didn't received any of this.

Because what Mary and Natasha experienced were hallucinations brought on by extreme mental health problems.

Tonight I have the privilege of being able to talk to you about mental health and the church. I can't do that without first telling you a little about myself. I am 28 years old, have been married for two years, am completing my Masters thesis and am looking at doing a PhD in mental health and theology.

6 years ago my life was very different. When I was 12 I developed early onset schizophrenia. By age 19 I lived with full blown psychosis, was in and out of the psychiatric ward at my local hospital, and had attempted to take my life numerous times. At age 22 my parents were taking care of me full time, I had ballooned from 75 kilos to a massive 200+, and I had been told that there was no cure, that mine was a life long sentence.

Enter the little old ladies on the church prayer team. Their prayers that day 6 years ago completely changed my life and thanks to the grace of God I am able to stand before you today free from extreme mental illness, free from medication, and able to share my story and give a voice to those who are often unheard.

My life is a life of terrible suffering and miraculous healing. 

While I was unwell for all those years I was actively involved in my church. This involvement did become less the more unwell I became, but what also became apparent was that I was more UNWELCOME the more unwell I became.

No one ever said to me “You are not welcome here.” I was never asked to leave or told I couldn't join a particular group. I was always greeted warmly at the door every Sunday, and prayed over when I received communion.

I was included. I just didn't belong.

People ceased to ask me out for lunch or dinner. I saw numbers dwindled in my home group and heard the whispers that it was because I made people uncomfortable. I wasn't asked to group outings to the movies or the pools. In fact, between Sunday and Sunday I didn't see anyone from my church. I was alone at home. I was at home, lonely.

As my mental health deteriorated so did my understanding of social niceties. I was a difficult person to be around. I never stopped talking. I would speak too loud. I would fall asleep at church and snore. I would eat anything that stopped long enough for me to grab it and put it in my mouth. I was bad at personal hygiene. I was big, loud, smelly, and an embarrassment to the people around me.

So people stopped being around me. I don't blame them, I really don't. It is really hard to spend time with someone that you can't relax around. It is hard to visit the house of someone who smells bad and won't let you leave. I exhausted people. I drained them.

Natasha exhausted people too. I met Natasha in the ward. She was a sweet woman in her 50's who had experienced a psychotic break with reality. She truly believed her facial skin was tearing off. I avoided her like the plague when I was there. If she could corner you she would tell you non-stop about her face and you would be stuck there for hours. She would follow you around too if you tried to walk away. She was embarrassing and exhausting and so I went out of my way not to talk to her.

I didn't care that Natasha was genuinely concerned about her face. I didn't care that she needed someone to talk to. To me she was a crazy old kook who I wanted to stay away from.

I still think about her and wonder what happened to her.

While in the wards I was exposed to many more people and behaviours that, in my early twenties, I was completely unprepared for. I watched a heavily pregnant woman attack staff and have a fire hose turned on her in an effort to control her. I heard the same lady describe her unborn child as a demon. In reality it was her fathers. I met a 17 year old boy who was dropped off by his parents for suicidal behaviour. He remained there for a week with no visitors. I was verbally abused by a man who thought I was his mother, and I was confronted by nurses who were in equal measure compassionate and careworn. When not in the psych ward I was a daily visitor at the day ward with other mental health patients in the community. Though this was a much more pleasant environment I was surrounded by people I did not know, that were usually much older than me, and by community workers who were understaffed and overworked. The people there embarrassed me with their weird behaviours and I felt left out and alone.

One thing that these people and I had in common was we were all identified by our labels. I was schizophrenic, which meant that nothing I said could be trusted as real. Others were bipolar, which meant you had to watch out for mood swings. Others had extreme depression so they were kept away from anything sharp.

Diagnosis of a mental illness alone creates greater issues for the patient than suffering the illness alone. Diagnosis locates the illness entirely with the individual, apart from their family and environment. It claims that there is something 'wrong' with the person that defines them as outside the acceptable 'norm'. This reduces hope of recovery, creates stigma from labelling, and turns a person into a category.

Currently in NZ today it is estimated that 1 in 4 people will suffer from a mental illness at some point in their lives. It is estimated that 38% of europeans, 62% of Maori, 59% of asians, and 59% of pacific islanders will be diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia, in their life time

I find that when I speak of my experiences with mental illness I am met with 1 of four reactions by the listeners. The first is ambivalence. These listeners cannot relate, or don't know how to, and so are quick to change the subject and to move out of the area of a topic of which they have no understanding. They may think that mental illness is “all in your head” and something that can be changed by will power, or they may simply have no interest in the matter.

The second reaction is nervousness and confusion. These listeners mean well but simply do not comprehend what mental illness is or how to respond to it. They may look at you like you are about to pull out a gun and start a rampage, or they may ask to pray for you to release you from the demonic stronghold over your life. These are the listeners that will offer to pray for you but end up lost for words as they become confused as to what to pray for. They often super-spiritualize your experience in order to bring the conversation into a language that they understand.

The third group is perhaps the most interesting of reactions. They are the group that leans forward with eyes shining lapping up every word. When you have finished speaking they will say things like “that is so cool” and ask questions like “so, you could actually see people that weren't there? Was that freaky and what did they look like?” They are curiously excited by what is being said and can ask insensitive questions about experiences in the psych wards. They will also be the ones most likely to call people with mental illness 'crazy' or 'psycho'.

The last group is the minority. They are the listeners who will find you alone later, share their own experiences, cry and pray with you. They usually have had an experience with mental illness and have genuine compassion for what I have been through. But these listeners are few and far between.

Unfortunately mental illnesses have stigmas attached to them that cause reactions of fear, disinterest, and wariness. People buy into the stigma that schizophrenics, and other mental health patients, are WORTHLESS, DIRTY, INSINCERE, DELICATE, SLOW, TENSE, WEAK, FOOLISH, INCOMPETENT, NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACTIONS, DANGEROUSLY VIOLENT and UNPREDICTABLE. It is my experience that these stigmas are found just as much within the church as from without, but the added labels of LACK OF FAITH, DEMON POSSESSED, and ANGRY. With these labels it is easy to understand why mental health patients find it hard to contribute in a world where the stigma of your illness is often worse than the illness itself. It is also easy to understand why mental health patients often talk of feeling isolated and rejected by their communities and churches.

The simple fact of the matter is, people do not know how to respond to mental illness.

Despite a quarter of the population having experienced one mental illness of another at some point or another, it seems to be a human issue that we cannot comprehend or relate to suffering that cannot be physically manifested. People will react out of fear and amusement, but very rarely out of genuine compassion.

And this is true of the church as well.

In the last six years I have had to relearn socially cues and behaviours, get use to being on my own with no other voices to keep me company, and to survive on my own outside of my family's care.

I carry with me the memories of people who have not been as fortunate as I. The haunted eyes of the lady that believed the baby in her womb was a demon. The dead eyes of the man that received shock therapy at age 8 and has been institutionalized ever since. The fear in the eyes of the lady who believed the skin on her face was melting off. The sadness in the eyes of the young teenager with suicidal tendencies. I hold in my heart the conversations we all had about being forgotten, rejected, hated by our communities. I remember the questions I received when I told the other patients I was a Christian as to why no one in my church came to visit me. I remember the loneliness.

Which is why when I met Mary I acted in a way that I had never previously acted. 3 years ago I heard screaming coming from over my fence at about 10pm. Concerned, I went over to see what was happening and found Mary, the mother of my next door neighbour, screaming at a man that I could not see, that did not exist. She had arrived to visit her daughter only to find the house empty, her daughter away for the weekend, and it was enough to cause a mental break with reality. In that moment I remembered avoiding Natasha at the wards and so I went and sat with Mary, listened to her worries, answered queries from other concerned neighbours, and called her daughter. I sat with her all night waiting for the mental health response team to arrive with her medication. I refused to let Mary turn into another Natasha in my memory.

Jesus is a friend to the broken.

I believe this with all of my heart. Yet is it so difficult to befriend a person who doesn't speak sense, who may not even notice your existence while you sit with them, who can act in a way that seems barely human sometimes.

Yet Jesus is a friend to the broken.

I knew this couple who had met in the psych ward, fallen in love and, against the wishes of their families, got married. Everyone expected them to spiral out of control mentally and end up back in the state's care. To everyone's surprise, they found a house, moved in, and, when I met them, had been happily married for 10 years. Their love and care for each other meant that they reminded each other to take medication and see the doctor. But the most profound thing that she said to me was “he makes me feel human, he doesn't care about my labels.” They had discovered in each other a person who saw and loved the intrinsic value that the other contained in simply being human. It was through this love and acceptance that they were able to move back into the wider community and form relationships there. Their mental illnesses didn't disappear or even get much better, but in being treated as human rather than as an illness they have been able to find wholeness and healing.

It was in their example that I saw a vision of what the church could be. Loving the broken is more than praying for their healing. It is more than listening to their stories. It is more than asking questions about experiences.

It is about teaching the church as a whole to view people as human rather than as broken. To value the humanness of a person is to see past the brokenness, the medical labels, the sad stories, and to see the heart of a person who longs only to be treated as worthy of attention. It is to act out the continuing mission of Jesus to all who are difficult to relate to and to understand and to reincorporate them back into the community.

In my experience I have seen this love of my humanness a handful of times. I saw it in my next door neighbour who would come over for coffee everyday and sit and listen to me ramble, help me clean my house, tell me off if I did something silly, and give me advise on my struggles. I saw it in a fellow student who discovered that I had difficulty in picking up social cues and developed a system of signals to tell me when I was doing something wrong. I saw it in one of my lecturers who let me breakdown in his office when things were getting on top of me.

These people listened, heard the issue, accepted it and worked with it, rather than trying to change it. For me, they were the church being lived out.

I still don't know how this love for the humanness of people works in churches. There is no 5 step program about reintegrating the mentally ill back into the congregation. But in a country where at least 1 million people will be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their lives, there needs to be a beginning of a conversation. And it is a conversation that includes those that it is about. They may be unwell, but they will be very aware of what they feel is missing, what they don't like and how they want to be treated.

It is hard to be friends with people that don't fit, that embarrass us, that are difficult to understand. But our mindset is fundamentally wrong. This was never about US. It isn't about our comfort or discomfort, but about loving people as the created image of God, as people who embodied the Holy Spirit, as people that Jesus came in form of and died for. If we get over our own embarrassment and start viewing all people, well or not, as as worthy of belonging as we are, then maybe, just maybe, people like me won't have to feel lonely anymore.

My story

I have been asked to tell my testimony a few times to various people and each time I have been humbled by the response to it, but I have always been to scared to say it on a blog because people might judge it or think I was making it up.

Today I am feeling brave.

Today I want to share my story with anyone who wants to read it.

I hope it brings hope to those who need it. It is all true and it is from my heart. Please feel free to share with anyone you think may need to hear it.

*Big breath in* and here we go:

I grew up in a Christian family. I went to church every Sunday, was baptized at age 10, and generally loved God. I was, in essence, the typical child you find at church. I appeared happy, sung the songs loudly, and got upset with anyone who swore.

Unfortunately things at school were a little different.

At school I was bullied relentlessly. I was called fat, ugly, cry baby. I was accused of stealing someone's lunch and was told off in front of the class. I was bullied for being a Christian and found myself alone most lunch times. Eventually I was labelled 'the loner" and would spend breaks alone in the library, reading, knitting, or playing with the younger kids. After discovering that people would get annoyed if I read the bible at school, I did it all the time. I was proud of my faith but I was miserable. I would cry at night and pray that God would send me a friend. I would daydream about a young girl coming to school and wanting to hang out with me. I found solace in my day dreams and fostered a healthy inner life that would keep me entertained while I was alone.

Unfortunately, my life was also affected by sexual assault - twice, once by a young male friend (age 5) and once by a strange old man (age 7 or 8). These events really shook my faith in people, and had the adverse affect of sending me into a guilt spiral. I believed that these events were my fault. This feeling was compounded by the fact that my parents did not talk to me about this - an action I misunderstood as them being angry at me but was in fact them trying to protect me from reliving a situation that I appeared not to be affected by. I began to hide my feelings from people, believing that they were disappointed in me, and guilt, helplessness, and fear got a stranglehold on my life.

At age 12 two things happened that had a major impact on who I was, what I believed, and how I developed. First, my eldest sister fell off a cliff while drunk at a party that she wasn't meant to be at. I was woken up at 2 am by repeated banging on the front door. As my bedroom was closest to the front door and, believing it to be my sister coming home and wanting to save her from getting in trouble, I answered the door and, consequently, I was the one who first saw the policemen on a front step. I had to wake up my parents and stood in the hallway as I listened to what happened. Though it was in no way my fault, I took on responsibility for this event, believing that I could have stopped it if I had tried, and the guilt of having failed my sister, my family, consumed me. I read in her every action afterwards disgust and anger, and in turn I began to hate her for the fear and guilt I carried with me.

Second, my home church, where my only friends were, fell apart due to some inconsistencies in the pastor's lifestyle. My parents were part of the group that brought it to light and as a result I was told that people I loved, who I had called 'aunty' and 'uncle', were no longer part of our lives. I didn't get to say goodbye to people I had grown up with. The worst part was that I watched my parents crumble and the passion that they had for church fade. No matter what church we went to after that, I never felt at home in a church again, or that I could trust church people again.

As I started high school I was desperate to be popular and I would have done anything to achieve it. Age 13 I started to smoke and hang out with girls that were influential and harmful. By age 14 I was sneaking out of home to get drunk with my friends and boys. I would sneak out, walk down our street in the middle of the night and then stay the night at boys houses. There were times that I was so drunk I have no idea what actually happened with the guy I was with, and I look back in horror at the people who I knew that passed out when drunk and were then left unattended to "sleep it off". At age 15 I was forcing myself to throw up in a vain attempt to control something in a world that made no sense to me. I was lying at school and to my parents about friends dying, being pregnant, and having sex with older boys.

Yet at the church we now attended I was a youth leader! I lived this crazy double life of trying to be 'cool' on one hand and on the other trying to be the perfect Christian, the perfect daughter and the perfect student. I lost weight and was praised by my father. I studied and was praised by my teachers. I lead youth group and was praised by my youth leader. I got drunk at parties and was praised by my peers. I felt like such a fraud and the guilt became overwhelming. Depression overtook me and I numbed my feelings anyway I could. I drank in secret, binged ate in secret, self harmed in secret...anything that would justify the pain I was feeling.

At age 16 I was sexually assaulted again, this time by a youth group boy. I was on a youth group camp as a leader and he was friends with my ex-boyfriend. I remember the fear I felt when it happened. I had been kissing him privately earlier in the day, and then later, in a fairly public manner, he decided to take more. He then spread it round school that I was a 'slut', and that I had given him what I had refused my ex - namely sex. I was pushed down stairs at school and into the mud as a result. I said nothing to anyone about how I hadn't willingly participated in the event until years later. I was ashamed and felt like I was to blame. I even told my sister that it was consensual - though I think at the time she found it suspicious. It also triggered a struggle with my own sexuality and all that meant, an issue that even now can raise it's ugly little head when I am not paying attention.

In my last year of high school I was determined to 'act right' and to leave behind all the people who had hurt me. So I began to study hard, all hours of the day, and I went to the gym for hours at a time, but my drinking had become a private, secret thing and I would perform sexual favours to guys at the gym who would buy me alcohol and keep it for me. Even writing those words makes me grimace with shame, but this was the sad reality of my life.

At age 18 I left school and went to Bible College in order to 'find' God. My teachers told me not to, told me I should pursue a different career, but I felt my life had gone so far off track that I didn't know who God was, didn't know who I was, and needed to find that again. Instead I found a husband. We were going out within the first week of the school year and engaged only 3 months later. My depression, instead of decreasing with joy, became worse and worse and I began to self harm and hear voices telling me to do things that I won't even begin to describe. I would see things that weren't real and I ballooned from a size 10 to a size 26 in three years. I argued that I didn't have an eating disorder if I wasn't vomiting it all back up again, but the binging increased and so did my weight.

I am ashamed of how my relationship started. It was mainly physical, with many elements of mental and emotional manipulation on both sides. We were both young and broken and unable to see that we were mutually destructive. My parents, perhaps seeing something we couldn't, begged us not to get married, but unfortunately we believed that they were saying that was that I wasn't good enough for him, which just made us even more determined.

He thought he could handle my mental illness. He was wrong. Soon after our marriage began, it fell apart. I won't go into details because it is unfair for me to talk about him without him being able to give a defense. Let's just say that we both couldn't deal with what was happening to me in appropriate ways, and we couldn't deal with the baggage each of us had, and our marriage became destructive.

During our short three years together I was in and out of psych wards as well as intensive care for suicide attempts. My medication dose went up to 12 pills a day, I smoked two packs a day, drank copiously, and I spent most of my time in my own little world talking to figments of my imagination. I was eventually diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia; an illness with no cure and no hope of recovery.

After three years I walked out of the hell we were both living in. I can only say that God gave me the strength to leave as there was no conceivable way that I could have done it by myself. It was one of the most harrowing times of my life, and yet also the most freeing. I ended up back at my parents, suicidal, depressed, schizophrenic, divorced. My mum chose to quit her job to look after me full time, a sacrifice that I am still humbled by. I was told later by someone that they were considering changing their wills so that I would be able to go into a home if they died because I was unable to look after myself.

8 months went by as my parents cajoled, argued and forced me out of bed each day. My mum made me go walking with her every morning and I began to lose weight, I just didn't care that I was. I was waiting to die. All I wanted was an opportunity to be alone so I could kill myself. They never gave it to me. I owe them my life. Finally my mum reached out to the church asking them to do something, anything, for the daughter she was watching self destruct.

Enter the little old ladies of the prayer team.

The funny thing was they didn't pray for healing, they prayed only for the peace of God to still my mind.

I wanted them to shut up and go away.

They kept praying.

And in less time than it takes to write this, I was healed.

I can't really explain how. All I can say is that one minute I felt like I was drowning and the next I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to be ok. It was like a really heavy wool blanket, one soaked in water, had been on me so long that I didn't realise it was there until it was lifted off. I knew in that moment that I was loved, I was healed, I was cherished by God! I knew I was forgiven and that he had cried for me and with me. I knew what it was to be free. My whole life changed in that second and I began to laugh. I was sane! I was healed! The little old ladies were shocked to say the least, and my mother wasn't sure what to make of it. I guess laughing and telling people you are healed when you have had issues like mine is more worrying to them than anything.

The next day I went to the psychiatrist and was met by the line "what's wrong with you, you're smiling!" I told her I was healed and that I was happy. She was skeptical to say the least! But by the end of that session she was crying to me about her worries for her cousin, even apologising and telling me that she never did this. I ended up counselling my counsellor! After several more sessions and one mental health class over the period of a month, I was taken off all drugs and was in full time work for the first time in my life. Three months after that I was living by myself in Wellington and working. Four months after that prayer I was an independent, clinically sane, employed women.

But God wasn't done with me yet.

I still had a lot of anger and hate towards the people that had hurt me so badly in my past. I was angry at God despite what he had done for me and I was still drinking heavily. I was messed up in my head and heart  and I tried to find love in all the wrong places, sleeping with men and drinking away the nights. I became so dependent on alcohol that if I slept longer than four hours I would wake with the shakes, so I slept with a bottle under my bed.

I was so angry at God that when my boyfriend of the time became a Christian and started going to church, I dumped him because I didn't want to have all that 'crap' in my life anymore. And yet God STILL wasn't done with me.

I moved back up to Auckland to be with my boyfriend (a different one this time) and was dumped by him the day I arrived (welcome home!). In my despair I went on a bender only to have a very good mate of mine, a youth pastor no less, confront me about my drinking. While he was talking to me I realised that I didn't need alcohol any more. All my reasons for drinking, all the anger and guilt and pain, had slowly been being healed over the last year. It was a crutch I no longer wanted and so I decided to sober up that night on his couch. A week of withdrawal left me shaken and weak but I haven't touched a drop since.

This same friend then invited me to his church to met his vicar, and I went, but only in order to applying for a job working with the music group. God had other plans. As soon as I saw the minister I felt the overwhelming desire to rip his throat out with my teeth and watch him die. I felt like a wolf. Little did I know that this man had a ministry in setting people free from demon possession. Before this moment I didn't even realise I had an issue in this area, but it became apparent as I physically reacted in ways that I had no control over. Three weeks, four prayer sessions and 7 deliverance's later I finally felt free. I was washed clean by God and he had given me my life back completely.

It was 3 months after getting sober and being delivered God told me to go back to Bible College to finish my degree. I was terrified. All the old professors were still there, people who knew me and my ex-husband, who had been at our wedding! I felt the old shame and guilt well up inside me again, but this time I did not let it conquer me. I went, kicking a screaming all the way, but I still went. On my first day, in my first lecture, my professor was asked what the worldview of a person with schizophrenia was like. He responded that no one knew because all the people who knew what happened in a schizophrenic's mind were in no shape to explain it. In the break I went up to him and told him that I was a healed schizophrenic and that I could tell him what the worldview was. He said "great, tell the class after the break is over." So on my first day I stood in front of a class of 200 people and told them about my struggle with mental illness. I discovered my love of teaching and preaching that day and also discovered a passion for God's word and for ministry that I never knew I had.

3 years went by with many highs and lows (mostly highs) and then I met Luke. After all the men who had used and abused me I finally met someone who loved me completely, who was funny and kind, and who would listen to me cry about all these memories I have that still haunt me. He was, and still is, the most Christlike man I have ever met. He always loves others, cares for me unconditionally, and  always puts God before everything else. I am so blessed to know him and to have him in my life and he is a constant reminder to me of the blessing and love that God has poured out on my life.

After a rough start I have found joy through suffering. I have been changed. I am a new person. I can love and know love. I have been forgiven and have learnt to forgive. And all because of Jesus. He met me where I was at; he didn't expect me to reach a certain standard of character before he loved me. He met me as a drunk, demon possessed, angry, hurting woman and turned me into a loving, caring, happy woman.

And the cool thing is is that he is just waiting to do it for you too.

For Any Woman That Has Been Abused

I am working through a book at the moment and wanted to share something with any woman who has ever been the victim of sexual abuse (please share this with anyone you think would find it helpful):

"I now know that I was used and abused, and it was not my fault. Nor was it the fault of being an attractive and healthy woman.

It is not bad or disgusting or dirty to be thin, vibrant and alive.

I have to stop judging myself.

I DID NOTHING WRONG!

I am worthy of dignity, respect and love.

I am here for myself, and I accept the qualities that make me beautiful and special."

You are not alone. God bless.