Powerful testimonies:

It’s the Lord’s unraveling that mends our brokenness.

 

The evening my husband confessed he had betrayed our family and children by having an affair with his assistant and shared that she was pregnant with his child was the longest two hours of my life.  As I painfully sat at our dinner table and tried to comprehend how my reality and the destiny of my family’s life would forever be changed, I felt frozen and dead to the core.  Every shared moment over the course of 14 years, the joyous moments with our children and overcoming life’s typical struggles of finances and career choices, had been shattered in one conversation.  My life and our family felt reduced to a pile of meaningless moments that even God himself had zero regard for.  I questioned my faith in God, my own existence as a woman, as a mother and even as a daughter.  My heart ached so deeply and I felt my life had been reduced to a complete failure.  

 

There is a belief that we have two responses to a traumatic event.  We respond with “flight” or “fight.”  We rarely talk about the other response which is “freeze.”  For me, that’s where I lived for years. My frozen minutes turned into hours, frozen hours turned into days and frozen days turned into months.  My grief consumed every inch of my body.  I felt embarrassed, forgotten and alone in our tight-knit community.  Wonderful people tried to counsel me and reach out, but I couldn’t even find the inner strength to respond.  I lacked faith that life would get better and lost hope that God had a plan for me.  A week in a trauma center couldn’t heal me, my closest friends couldn’t console me and my family couldn’t save me.  Although my body was moving and I was existing,  I lost hope for happiness and my spirit was dead.  

 

What I didn’t realize at the time was that God had never given up on me, and that his plans for me were bigger than the dreams I had created for myself.  My state of being frozen was merely a holding pattern for something and someone to walk into my life when I least expected it.

 

One morning during the winter freeze of my life, I found myself sitting at a restaurant having breakfast with Jodi Handran, President of Gates of Hope Ministries.  She wanted to meet and thank me for our corporate donation to her non-profit.  I’m not proud to admit it, but I almost canceled on her at the last minute because I found myself thinking “what’s the point?” and I was numb to meeting anyone new let alone hearing about a program about healing.  Within fifteen minutes of talking with Jodi, I knew this was not going to be just an ordinary “get to know you” meeting.  

 

I felt God at work over our cups of coffee.  Something began to stir within my heart as she spoke about the people that would be helped with our donation.  As Jodi spoke, memories I had buried so deeply in my soul and body began to unravel in my mind.  Memories from childhood distracted me from Jodi’s words; memories that I had never shared and planned to carry with me to the grave.  As the floodgates of my past continued to unravel in my mind as we sat in our booth, tears began running down my face.  I tried taking long sips of coffee, but the lump in my throat would not go away and the tears kept falling.  As God used Jodi’s words at breakfast to share his message of hope, healing and recovery, I realized He was working on me.  He was challenging me to unravel the pain of my childhood so that I could carve out a new path and recover from the deeply hidden struggles that had probably been holding me back my entire life.  

 

When our breakfast and time together was coming to an end, Jodi’s divine intuition led her to invite me to be a part of one of her “Restored” group workshops.  With immense reservations, feeling vulnerable and afraid, I committed to confidentially spend eight weeks with the most incredible 4 women who changed my life and relationship with the Lord.  Through the sharing of experiences I had long buried and kept to myself, guided by Jodi and her teachings of scriptures from the Bible, I was beautifully and gently reminded that I am not alone in my pain and grief. I could feel God at work inside of me each week.  I learned Jesus loves me.  He truly loves all of me.  And he truly loves you, too.  

 

My hope in sharing my testimony is that you allow yourself to surrender to the Lord.  We are not meant to carry the pain, and God wants us to trust in him.  If you have buried the pain, I pray you will trust in God and the process of healing through Jodi’s “Restored” program.    Kim

 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him; and He will make all your paths straight.  Proverbs 3: 5-6

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The Restored bible study was a powerful tool God used to put the finishing touches on my recovery and healing from sexual abuse. I have participated in several other recovery programs.

 

Having been sexually abused as a small child, I spent most of my life thinking I was bad and that it was all my fault. After completing Restored, I now walk free from guilt, shame, and condemnation. I know God uses all things together for good and will use my testimony to help others find freedom from the trauma of being sexually abused.

 

I highly recommend this study to anyone wanting freedom from the pain of their past regarding sexual abuse.

Woman of God, age 59

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Gates of Hope Ministry Testimony:

Through a series of circumstances one Sunday morning God led me to a meeting with Jodi. 

I was driving to church and every song on the radio was speaking to me about healing and letting go of my past. The thing is I had zero idea of how to actually do that. After being introduced to Jodi and sharing a brief account of my past she invited me to join a 9-week small group study she was starting. I was very intimidated about being a part of a small group. I didn’t want to tell my story in front of others! What would they think of me! How would I be able to face the shame, anger, and resentment I had held onto all these years?!

However, by the grace of God I did it! Looking back, that was the best decision I have made for myself in a very long time. I didn’t notice an immediate change in myself but I did the homework required each week and looked forward to our weekly sessions. The weeks flew and before I knew it the study was complete. And so was I… the shame, anger, resentment and a whole lot of other emotions and memories were exposed and reconciled.  I was complete, whole, and healed. 

No longer do I hold onto the abuse of my past and allow it to affect my future. I am a child of the Most High God and I am free. My past no longer has a hold on me and even though I will always have the memory of the abuse I endured it does not define me or control me. 

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31

Thank you, Jodi and Gates of Hope Ministry, may God Bless you greatly as you continue to help others in need. 

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An encouragement for men considering meeting with Gates of Hope for healing from past sexual abuse:

I was where you are right now, not very long ago. It was a confusing place- I didn't really feel like I had answers to the questions I was being asked.  What I discovered as I continued to wrestle with discerning what was truth, what was a lie, whose fault was it, and the need to process anger and so on--is that my struggle was rooted in me having left part of myself in that place so many years ago. In childhood. Hidden and forgotten along with the things done to me.  My method of coping saved me, but it required me to go back- now that I am able to find the ME that was left there. There was a cost in ways I didn't understand then- but I do now.  Stay the course my brother, there is a reward of discovery that has been safeguarded until now inside of you. It may feel like you are walking through thick mud up to your waist; exhausted by the process that is before you.  Step by step, each week, you will feel yourself rising out of that mud. You will feel the life you didn't know you were missing come into you. The knots will untie and your sight will be refreshed to see as you are supposed to. Man of God, age 57

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