I was carrying around the brokenness of my parent’s divorce since I was 7 and in a new epidemic of broken families, it was assumed children were resilient and didn’t need any support.
While our parents were leaning on friends to unpack their marriage breakups, like many Gen X kids, the breaking children were told to go outside and play. My father, a kind and charming man was the love of my life and his leaving me felt like a death. When people asked where he was, I would just tell them he had died. It somehow felt nicer to say than, ‘he just left’.
Depression overshadowed my childhood after Dad had gone. I began to lack focus at school and my plummeting self-esteem was strongly fed by Mum’s early introduction to an abusive young man with many problems. A man who claimed to have taken “Dad’s place.”
Throughout my teenage years, I was invited to spend time with a Christian youth group and everyone there would talk about the wonderful love of a man called Jesus. At 15, I was baptized, I said The Lord’s Prayer of Salvation (several times) but something was still missing.
Now at 17, I was helping out at a local Christian camp called El Rancho as a Ranch Hand and I wanted that change and deep love. I pretended I knew it of course but my pride stopped me from admitting, I actually didn’t know it at all and I was beginning to wonder if everyone was making it up.
On the drive home, staring out a window in the back seat of my grandparent’s car, I listened to a well-known Christian music artist called Keith Green on the cassette player. They weren’t Christians but they let me play it anyway. As I took in the lyrics there came a deep revelation of what I needed to do to receive His love.
Surrender.
Surrender the way I lived my whole life, my choices, and my unforgiveness towards others. To promise to do his will above anything else, no matter how hard or what people would think of me. With all my heart, I gave Jesus, everything.
As though it was a soundtrack to a movie playing in real time, Keith’s song ‘Your Love Broke Through’ came over the speakers, and then, out of nowhere, The Holy Spirit descended, filling up every part of my being.
How long Jesus and I sat in that space over a 90-minute car journey is anyone’s guess. I had lost all concept of time. With tears streaming down my face, I got lost in an abyss of overwhelming joy and deep deep love. The King of Kings was so close and He was promising to be with me forever in return for my heart.
Who was I to be given this moment? Me? My encounter with The Living God changed my life forever. After a traumatic childhood, I was finally free. My pain had been lifted and I was no longer the same.
I Am The Woman At The Well 