Delia's Story

...he who began...
In reflection, I can see how the Holy Spirit has worked in my life to reveal, restore and protect His plan, regardless of the enemy's attempts to mangle and destroy it.

Church was a familiar place to me. It was like a home away from home for my three siblings and me. My parents were going in two different directions. My dad spent most of his time working, and there were some nights he didn't come home. In spite of my parents' differences, the foundation of God's love was instilled into my heart. I can vividly remember kneeling down at our wild 1970's printed couch with my mom when I was five years old and giving my heart to Jesus. Jesus was very real to me then and I knew that I wanted to live the rest of my life for Him.

My mom's devotion to God bubbled out of her. She taught me the importance of not living for myself, but for the purposes of God. My dad grew farther and farther apart from the family and when I was seven, my parents divorced.

We spent weekends visiting our dad. But it seemed he was always working and we never established much closeness with him. Looking at the history of my relationship with my dad, it was the perfect breeding ground for lies to take up residence in my mind. I felt like if I was to gain my dad's approval or his attention, I had to do something to earn it--something to make him stop what he was doing and notice me. The lie: "my identity comes from what I do, not from what God says about me" became deeply rooted in my heart.

A few years later, my mom met a Christian man who was in prison. We visited him nearly every Saturday. Although we grew fond of Larry, it was a bit of a rough transition, seeing our mom with "another" man. The four of us kids sat with our arms stiffly crossed, sulky little mouths and glaring eyes. After Larry was released from prison, he and my mom were married for five years before they were divorced.

The scripture says Satan is the father of deception and as he whispered lies to me--a vulnerable child--it became ingrained in my mind that "if the people in my life really knew who I was and how I felt, they would reject me." My mask of "act like everything is OK, be what you think others want you to be" became my way of dealing with the chaos and fear of rejection inside of me.

With the great gift of being a twin, also came the painful experiences of continually being compared. That too, became an area of unrest for me. I continually strived to be just as good as my sister, so I wouldn't feel the pain of being "less than" when people compared us.

The enemy had successfully planted many seeds along the pathway of my life that I took for truth… my truth. The lies became so solid in my mind that the truth actually felt more like lies to me.

In the midst of this taking place in my heart, God still led me by His grace. At the age of 21, I married my high school sweet heart. Together we began a Christian ministry. Those years were fruitful as we were able to help many young people choose to follow the Lord; yet at the same time, there was a definite war that was waging within me. I continually dealt with a buried anger that seemed to consume me at times. I battled a sense of failure that in turn fed my self-hate. Personal strife and an ongoing drive for acceptance from other people preoccupied my mind and heart.

I felt like my "mask" was getting thicker and thicker. Here I was in the trenches of ministry, helping other people and my own heart was a mess. I remember crying out to God, "Help me, God! I'm so angry inside." But I kept on smiling and acting like "Pattie was supposed to act."

Our family, which now included three small children, returned to Washington. I entered a season that was very painful and self-revealing for me. The foundation of lies that I had based my "truth" on began to crumble. The basis of my foundation was head knowledge that Jesus loved and accepted me--wrapped up in striving to earn the feelings of love and acceptance through my appearance and accomplishments. God loved me so much, that He allowed the foundation that I had erected to fall apart.

...a good work in you...
I hated life. I hated looking in the mirror at myself. I didn't know "who" to be. I questioned if I should be the person I knew I was on the inside or the person I appeared to be on the outside. Now, the mother of four children, I remember collapsing on my huge pile of dirty laundry and crying out to God, "If this is what my life is going to be like, I don't want to be here." I was losing the will to live and the lies were becoming more and more real to me. I entertained the "what ifs" of dying and lies like, "my family would be better off with out me." Not only was I falling apart, but my family was too. I was barely functioning as a wife and mother. I desperately begged my husband to do something to rescue me. I thank God now that he remained constant in his love, but kept out of the way of what God was doing.

It was about this time--God's time--that I heard about healing prayer. I had gone to counseling a few times before, but was still tormented by deeply-planted roots of anger and felt like my life was literally being sucked away from me. I knew that I had to make the choice to live. Nobody could make that choice for me.

The Lord opened the door for me to begin meeting once a week with a prayer team. It was terrifying to my flesh. I began taking an honest look inside myself and felt the temptation to slam the door on what I saw. I felt so ugly and ashamed inside. I thought, "if these ladies really knew how I feel and where I've been they would get up and walk away from me." I knew that if I didn't fight to apply God's truth to my life, I would be destroyed by the enemy, so I decided to take the risk.

But let me tell you!! God so amazingly met me right where I was! I have never known and felt the love of God like I experienced it there in those times of prayer! It seemed like to the degree that I was willing to trust God and reject the lies and garbage I had been feeding on--to that same extent was the depth of freedom that began washing over me like waves from the ocean.

On May 24, 2001 (I could almost tell you the time!) the Lord so miraculously delivered me from the bondage of rejection, fear, self hate, hate towards men, unforgiveness and doubt of God's Word. I felt like I had just given birth to new life! I had!! All the lies that had been twisted around my thinking and belief system were snapped right off of me! By the power and the blood of Jesus Christ, many of the dark things that I had been oppressed with throughout my entire life were dealt with and it was the most powerful and assuring love of Jesus that I have ever experienced! God had brought me to a place where I was tired and done with "living, but not really living," but then he gave me the strength and courage to apply the truth to my thinking and the way that I viewed myself and my world.

It was only the beginning of a new life for me. Just as a physical house doesn't stay clean all by itself just because you've cleaned it once…so it is with one's spiritual house! It's a process of learning how to maintain that house. I began that process through healing prayer. I had to lay down unbelief and doubt. The Word of God became my standard of the truth, rather than my feelings or the opinions of others.

I now have more of an ability to be a life-giver to myself, my husband, children, family and the world. I know what it's like to be so wrapped up in the lies that you don't want to go on living, and I can say, two years later, that there is life in Jesus! When we adopt God's truth as the absolute truth, there is no competition with that! Amen!! "No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me," declares the Lord. Isaiah 54:17

- all of the names used in these testimonies and articles are fictitious -