spaghetti-botticelli:

moderndayoutsider:

my testimony

I grew up in a home with two parents who love me dearly, and knew of Jesus - but didn’t know Him personally.

Like all parents they did what they believed would be right for me, and they provided, but the older I got the more distant we were from each other.

My relationship with them was really rough and it didn’t affect my life outside of the home very well.

In school I had a relative amount of friends, but I was often bullied and never stood up for - primarily because of my loud voice and sense of humour. I felt ashamed of these aspects of myself that I thought I could be proud of and it all ended up making me feel even less like I belonged than my home environment did.

When I got into middle school my mom and dad bought me my first laptop computer, and I ended up lurking on the internet a bit… I ended up starting to pursue digital art, but while I was at it I came across an online ‘community’ of people around the world (including here in Canada) and they took me in. It was a huge relief to me at the time; I was only 12, extremely insecure and it seemed like they actually wanted me there and so I put a lot of my sense of security in them.

Unfortunately I became so comfortable with them that someone in that community ended up deciding to ‘make a move’ - more or less. He told me all kinds of things, flattering me and being there for me whenever I was going through a rough time and I fell for his antics; I never realized at the time that it would lead to 2 years of brutal mental and sexual abuse, happening behind my bedroom door everytime I got home from school without my parents ever knowing.

When I turned 14 and was leaving 9th Grade something inside of me sort of ‘clicked’ and realized that what was happening to me was wrong. Filled with hate I literally told this guy to burn in hell and shut down my account for that online community I was a part of and decided to try and just live my life apart from it all. I barely even begun to understand what I actually experienced and I ended up trying to deal with a severe case of PTSD on my own without even knowing I had it to begin with; as a result I came to absolutely hate and distrust men, and I’d developed an immense sense of rage that would often result in me getting into fights.

I also ended up falling into a deep state of depression, severe anxiety, and engaged in self harm. Feeling ashamed of my body and sexuality I became really sexually promiscuous hoping that it would give me some sort of fulfillment, pleasure - or make me feel beautiful. And it eventually got driven to the extreme. I ended up stumbling across another ‘community’ that I felt accepted by - and even more so now. Many of these people I’d met went through the same things in school that I did; many of them had been abused like I was, and the list goes on…

By the time I was 15 years old I came to believe that I was homosexual, and then it escalated into me believing that I was not - in fact - a 15 year old gay girl, but a 15 year old straight guy trapped in a woman’s body, and I was desperate to transition. I developed an addiction to pornography and became more promiscuous, and engaged in more self harm in an attempt to cope with the fact that I couldn’t transition (since my parents forbid me to).

My relationship with them grew worse and worse as a result of all of this, and on top of that their marriage was falling apart and that didn’t make things any better.

Little did I know around that time, though, that my parents were actually referred to a Christian counsellor and his wife, and by God’s grace, those two first introduced the truth about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The Spirit entered into their hearts and over the course of a couple of months their marriage started coming back together the more they pursued Christ; but I was just getting worse and worse; it actually got to a point where I was so desperate for relief that I actually purchased illegal testosterone from a friend and was going to take it by myself without doctor’s supervision.

This was sometime in early 2016, and my mom found out. She grew so incredibly concerned about my condition to the point where she willingly plead with God to either take my life away before I forfeit my chance to get to Heaven, or to just transform my heart as soon as possible. Along with that, she plead with church members (and some of my friends in my highschool friend group) to pray for me. And it was long before I began to start to reconsider my identity - without even knowing that any of this was going on.

I gradually started to return more and more to my more ‘effeminate’ mannerisms, style and what not and by spring time I had come to fully accept that it was absolutely no mistake that I was born a woman and that (despite my hatred) I was generally more drawn toward men. About a month after that realization came my friends invited me to YC 2016 where I experienced the peace of the Holy Spirit for the first time, and that’s when I decided to give faith in Christ a try.

And it was hard… Really hard… Even if I didn’t want to transition anymore, I was still dealing with the shame of sexual abuse, a porn addiction, depression, anxiety, etc. wrapped up together to make up PTSD and its symptoms - all at once. And so amongst those emotions it was super difficult for me to accept that God really loved me and that I wasn’t condemned.

Thanks be to Him that I made gradual progress…

that He taught me the importance of renewing my mind in Him (Romans 12.2), coming to Him constantly no matter how I felt or what went through my head (Hebrews 4.15-16), and trusting in His promise that He would help me in my struggle - because He knows that by myself I am weak, but in Him I can be strong (Isaiah 41.13, 2 Corinthians 12.9-10)

Then August 2016 rolled around and my friend invited me to their youth summer retreat, and I could not believe what I was about to experience.

August 24th, 2016 was the night when I experienced one of the most powerful Holy Spirit encounters I’ve ever had. I could feel God literally reaching into my heart and tearing out every ounce of shame and guilt and condemnation that I felt. It was painful but so worth it…

After that my life took a complete and utter 180. The day after that encounter - at 16 years old - I knew that God was calling me to minister to the masses and to use my loud voice and quirky sense of humour to change lives by His grace. I spoke my first word in front of a crowd that very same day and I still remember the one thing I said to them that I still repeat to this day, “I am NEVER going back, because my King is moving me forward.”

And He has and is. My relationships with guys have healed and are beginning to flourish; my relationship with my parents and younger sister has reached a place of integrity and love that I couldn’t even imagine possible. Though I still experience mental illness I am learning to lament and rejoice in my God Who loves me more than I can ever imagine. And I am studying (in prayer and in academia) to become the leader in ministry that God has called me to be, that I may teach others of that amazing, welcoming, sin-liberating love and lead them to the Kingdom; God helping me.

This is so amazing! Thank you for sharing!

Finally done with chores, time to do other things.

Long day doing chores. Still not done.