Had I known how long this healing process would take, I would have said forget it. I’m out. That is way too long. The promise I held onto from that Kay Arthur study was comes from the Book of Joel, in the Bible, Chapter 2 verse 25. It said “I will restore the years the locust have eaten.” What this verse meant is that, God was promising me that the bad stuff that happened to me, God had a way to make it right. I didn’t fully believe it. I wanted to believe it. I hung on to it and kept hoping that this was indeed a promise from God to me.

Over the next few years I participated in several Bible studies to help me with the issues I had from what I had gone through. I went through one called “Sexual Healing”, of which later on I became a leader/facilitator to help other women who had been wounded sexually. I went to inner healing seminars and studies to help me control and properly deal with my anger.

I went through what is called deliverance ministry. This is where you deal with the spiritual aspects of trauma and life hurts. There is more to pain than how it messes you up on the way you think. In what you believe and how you act. It also has a spiritual component. Just as real as God, Jesus and Angels are. There is a real devil and real demons, who seek to steal, kill and destroy the things of God and the people of God. The demons that came to afflict me in my life were the ones related to anger, self-hatred, timidity, fear, anxiety, depression. And the ones that try to convince you that God made a mistake in who he made you to be.

I do not subscribe to the ideology that every one has their own truth. I believe we all have our own experiences and our perspective on life is skewed by those experiences. We each have a story, a story of our hurt and the lies we have believed about ourselves and others. We can own our story. No one can take that away from us or challenge it. However, the plumb line for truth, is God’s word. Anything that challenges or goes against what God has said, is wrong and needs to be removed from our thinking. This is what the Bible means when it tells us we need to take captive our thoughts and cast down the thoughts that are in opposition to God’s word, God’s truth.

I had demons come into my life and lie to me. They told me things like, I was nothing and nobody, I should have been born a boy, God made a mistake when He made me. That I was “SO, NOT a girl,” because I hated all things “girly”. I hated dresses, girly shoes, make up, tea time, and playing Barbie. They down right repulsed me. I loved sports. I wanted to work with power tools and build things. I loved action movies where in the bad guys always got what was coming to them. Justice and usually death. I dressed in tennis shoes or boots, jeans and t-shirts. I steered clear of clothing that showed off any curves or girl parts. I sought to be unseen by men. Because to be seen was to be wanted in sexual ways.

Thankfully the world I had these thoughts and feelings in, did not affirm these thoughts and feelings. They were inaccurate and there was no truth in them. I had several people in my life assume or down right say I was a “dike” (their word, not mine). I even had family asked me if I was gay. My answer was always no, but for a brief time, I wondered, “do they know something about me, that I don’t know about myself?” I looked around and wondered, could I be attracted to girls? I was draw to certain ones, but it was because I wanted to be their friend, not because of any attraction. If I had allowed what other’s thought of me, change what I knew about myself, my healing journey would have taken longer. It would have caused another chasm between God and myself.

God got a hold of my heart by the time I was 5 years old. I prayed with my mom, in my bedroom when for Jesus to come into my heart and save me from my sins. Some may scoff and say, what could a 5yr old possibly know about Jesus to make this a real decision. I knew Him to be the one to take away my pain. I knew Him to be the one with me when I hid behind the couch, or in the closet or under my bed.

This step of faith at such a young age, led me to a foundation steeped in God’s word. Knowing what those that belonged to God did and did not do. What lines those that professed faith in Him did not cross. I tell you this to say, that my faith is what kept me from listening to the voices around me telling me I was gay and asking me if I was gay. I knew I wasn’t, because I couldn’t be. God said this was not okay and it was something that would hurt me, so not to do it. In my mind for most of my life, I did not think a person could be a true Christian and be gay. You could not love Jesus and do things that would hurt Jesus again and again. He already suffered more pain than anyone by dying for me and my sins. He did for all of us, so that we all could be in right standing before God. I knew because of my love for Jesus, this was not true of me.

I thank God for the day my mom smacked my butt for trying to stand and pee like a boy. “She said sit down, you are a girl, you are NOT a boy.” I thank God I had his word to keep me from causing myself more pain and rejection, struggle and self-hatred. Today’s world would have affirmed me and it would have caused me more harm. It was loving of God and of my mother to set me right in my wrong thinking and in what others spoke over me. I am thankful that I was allowed to just be a “tom-boy”, and act like I was tougher than I really was. I am thankful I was allowed to protect myself in the only way I knew how, to be more boy like than girl like. In my young mind, if I had been a boy, I would not have been sexually abused. The truth is, it could have happened even if I was. I know that now, because I have know several men to whom it happened.

Part of my journey to healing included learning how God did NOT make a mistake in who he made me. God made me with a purpose and HE made me with a heart like his own, to love people with. It was ok to like “boy” things and not “girly” things. It was ok to not like make up or high heel shoes, but high tops and baseball hats. I was no less a girl for the things I was interested in, or not interested in. I could not embrace this until my late 20’s. That I was ok just the way I was. I was not made wrong or built wrong. God made me a girl for a reason. God put in me my interests and abilities long before I was grown. He put in me all that I would need to make it in this world and fulfill the purpose of my life.

I highly recommend the book, “Captivating”, by John and Stasi Eldredge. It is this book that taught me the ways in which I was uniquely like God. This book taught me what it meant to be God’s “workmanship” (work of art/Poem). This book told me so many things I did not know I desperately needed to hear. The number one thing it taught me was, “God formed a special attachment to me when He was putting me together in my mother’s womb. My life story is a love story, wherein God pursues me and my heart. Like any true love story, there is a villain, the Devil that wants to rob us of the things and truths of God and keep us from Him. That I have innate value because God made me and decided that this world would be incomplete without me.

This is true of you as well, this great big world would be incomplete without YOU! You are God’s masterpiece! You have innate value!