‘accepted Jesus into my life....’

This is what people do
in order to become
Christians. Recognising
that Eleanor had fallen
short of what God wanted for her, and realising that she could be redeemed through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, Eleanor surrendered her life and her plans to God, so that God could be in control. She would live the life that God wants her to live, and to live devoted to God

He was peaceful and trustworthy; he made me feel I was worth something, even just because he did not point out everything that was wrong with me, even just because he showed me love. When my mum told me he had died, I did not move from where I was sitting for three hours, I just went completely numb for weeks. I couldn’t cry or do anything for myself and stopped caring about everything. I don’t remember much about that time, I just remember thinking about the injustice of being left with a man who hated me when no one else was around while one who genuinely loved me was gone forever. During those weeks, I only ate or got out of bed or went to school or did anything at all if told to by my mum, meanwhile at school a guardian angel called Ms. Ancock took daily care of me. Without them I sometimes think I wouldn’t be here to write this now; but with their help I was able to get through the depression after a couple of months. I was filled with a new determination to fight the oppression of living under my father: before I simply battled through life without allowing myself to recognise the damage done; however, as I could no longer pretend I had not been harmed, I refused to remain silent in the face of his anger and lies. I told him that nothing he could say or do to me could destroy my spirit, and this defiance of his tyranny further provoked him. He became desperate and began to do things overtly in front of my mum so that she realised he had not changed from the violent man who promised not to touch her again before I was even born. A year to the day after my granddad died, my father left home; two years to the day after my granddad’s funeral, the final decree for my parents’ divorce came through the post. My mum later said it was like God wanted us to know granddad was smiling down on the beginning of our freedom.

Liberty is not just a fact; it is a state of mind as unnatural to the institutionalised as an artificial leg is to someone who can’t walk. I had to learn how to be free, to be myself; and this took months. After a lifetime of having to tiptoe around my own home, trying not to tread on mines but waiting for the inevitable explosions, the prospect of being free to laugh and to live as I pleased was almost frightening. Before I knew where I stood, I anticipated daily rage and knew its fear. When this had gone I did not know what to expect. For weeks on end adrenaline pumped uselessly through my veins; where once it was necessary for survival, it suddenly had nowhere to go. My decision not to be in contact with him infuriated him because I was insolently being living proof that the marital breakdown may have been partially his fault; for the first time he saw that I could bring the threat of exposure of the man beneath the persona. He tried to force the situation, coming to the house to ‘tell me off’ – whatever that meant to him – and I had to hide at friends’ houses on these occasions. It was only when he finally realised I was not going to be forced into collusion anymore that I could start to discover who I was. I began to tell my Mum the truth of how he had been with me behind her back. She wanted to understand why I didn’t want contact with him and I needed to break through the terror that had kept me silent all my life. It was a horrible process because I was breaking my Mum’s heart; she felt she had failed to protect me and I hated the guilt this gave her. I was irritable when she asked me to go into detail: I was giving her the facts but was not ready to face the emotional side of things as I was determined not to fall back into depression. I became very ambitious; I wanted to prove to my father that I could be someone great in the eyes of the world despite how worthless I was in his. I threw myself into my education, believing it did not matter whether or not I missed church once in a while if it meant I could get into Cambridge University – there would be time for God later, but I would never get another chance to establish myself, I felt this was an opportunity I could not afford to miss.

By the time 2007 had begun, I had stopped going to church altogether. I went to a weekly Bible study at school but apart from that did not read the Bible at all, rarely prayed and did not think it mattered how I lived as long as I still believed in the right God. Incidentally, I am now quite glad I did not have a boyfriend at this time and that I lived too far away to go out late with some of my friends as it is almost certain I would have made wrong choices, fallen further from God and caused myself greater damage. Looking back, I realise I had to go through this journey of self discovery before rediscovering my faith and that if I had not distanced myself from God, I would not have distinguished the immensity of the power of His love. It is what happened over the summer just passed where He revealed this to me, and every time I think of the chain of events that unfolded, I marvel at His timing and the potency of the work He has been doing in my life.

It was at the beginning of June when I met up with one of my closest friends and she confronted me about my absence from church in the preceding months. Thankfully I received her words with a soft heart and knew immediately that I had been wrong in my behaviour. The next week was when some people from re:generation came to my local church and invited us along to the evening service on the following Sunday. This I went to, and the message was that ‘consistency is key,’ which again I found to be a direct challenge to me, I found myself greatly ashamed that I had so neglected my relationship with God in my pursuit of education and made the decision during that service to go to every possible church-related event. I felt very welcome at re:generation and made friends quite quickly in going to all the Bible studies and social events they put on over the summer and managed to get a place on the Soul Survivor trip at the very last minute.

The first morning at Soul Survivor, I was trying to choose a seminar to go to. None of them grabbed my attention in writing so I went to Ruth because I somehow knew I wanted to go to one of them and that she would help me pick the best one for me. She read through the options and recommended one titled ‘God as dad or dad as God.’ My reaction to this was to say “Erm, I think that might be quite inappropriate,” because I thought it would be an hour listening to someone going on about how great dads are and how important they are in our spiritual growth and lives in general and subsequently did not feel too warm towards this seminar. Thankfully the Lord had mercy on my ignorance and prompted Ruth to encourage me to read more about it before I completely decided against going. It said it was for “anyone who has a great dad, a terrible dad or no dad at all,” which completely changed my initial response to the title and convinced me to go. Katharine came with me and I was very glad of her company.

I knew immediately that this was the right decision to make when the seminar began, and if there was some way for me to contact the speaker and tell him just how significant his talk was to me, how deeply healed I was that morning, I would because I know through him the Spirit spoke to my heart and did a work that would change me and, I am sure, my life. He told a story of two families on a beach: one with a dad playing rounder’s with his two daughters and even though I had never met them, I felt jealous of those girls; the second was one I could relate to where a young boy was striving to gain the attention and approval of his dad. It was during this story the first tears came as I realised for the first time that I envied people who had healthy relationships with their fathers; I was so sure before that I did not need my dad and wanted to prove this, so I refused until then to really see how much I still yearned for his love – a love he could not give me because he did not feel it, but nevertheless a love I had tried to earn. Throughout the seminar, the speaker said many things which I really needed to hear, and as it progressed, the Lord really opened my eyes to the bitterness and resentment I bore my father; to the pain that still was there. I had tried for years to ignore these things because I did not want to seem weak in allowing my father to have a lasting effect on me. It had come to the stage where this rock, this burden caused by the pain my father had brought on me seemed to be a part of me. It prevented me from forgiving him, from moving on and healing from the damage he had caused me and becoming the person God meant me to be. I was shocked to find it there, and the moment I saw how deeply scared I remained and all the awful feelings I had been holding onto, I just wanted to be rid of them forever. We were invited to stand and pray together, and as I stood, I asked God in my heart to take away this burden and make me whole again once and for all. The moment I prayed this, I felt a powerful wave of love from Heaven rush into my heart and was unable to remain standing. I sat on the ground and cried the tears I had been made to suppress throughout my childhood, I grieved the lack of a real father in my life while Katharine comforted and prayed with me. I was surprised to find that I felt no shame in crying in front of others.

As I sat there, crying unstoppably, I heard the speaker talk of how many of us at that seminar will have been let down by our earthly fathers; not loved as we should have been and hurt. He said that no matter how we had been treated, God still loved us: God is our Father in Heaven and holds us in His heart in a way that no man could. For the first time in my life, that incredible love was being revealed to my heart – I could feel Christ crushing the burden I had been carrying, taking it from me through the power of His love for me. I had been brought up a Christian and accepted Jesus into my life many years ago so I have long been aware of God’s love as fact: I knew He gave His Son for us; but I had never realised He so loved me for who I am and had never experienced such great love before. As the speaker told us that God was our real Father, I knew his message was from God and was true, a message directly for me (and for others there, I am sure) and I knew at that moment that for the rest of my life I just wanted to be as close to Him as possible.

Then an elderly man was invited to come up. He said, “I am a father, a grandfather and a
great-grandfather and I speak on behalf of all the men that have done you wrong, who have let you down as fathers and who cannot say sorry. I am sorry, I am sorry. Your Father in Heaven is sorry. He is sorry for all the damage done to you, He is sorry and He loves you.” This, of all that was said that morning was the most profound. My father does not accept that he has done me wrong, he holds that I am a liar, or brainwashed by my mum or that I have plotted against him from birth; he refuses to acknowledge that I have suffered at his words and hands. I had been unable to forgive him because of his lack of remorse, because my pain was so insignificant to him and this was tearing me apart as a person. When this man apologised so many times I was able to let go, I knew that whether or not my father knew or cared about the harm he had done and how he had hurt me, God knew and God cared and that was all that mattered because His love is so infinitely more awesome than any earthly love, I could need no other.

God destroyed at that moment all that held me bound by the past; I had been trapped because I could not forgive and when I gave it all to God; all the bitterness and pain, I was set free. Even as I write this I find myself crying. I am overwhelmed each time I contemplate the depth of God’s love for me and His mercy. From the first worship meeting after that seminar, I felt God filling me with His Spirit; filling that place where once was rooted all the sorrow and anger that He relieved me of; filling me up with love and an everlasting joy. Since that seminar I find the Lord working in me, transforming me as I walk with Him in a way that would not have been possible before I surrendered my burden to Him and He healed me. I no longer wish my father harm, I no longer wait for him to feel remorse and I longer feel the need to prove myself to him or anyone else because I know God’s love for me and I need nothing else. I used to fear my father to the point of illness but now I feel protected by Christ and pray instead for chances, however small, to show him the truth – not for my sake anymore but because no one should deceive themselves into living a lie. I do not, however, depend on this transformation in him; I leave it up to God and whether or not my father ever does come to terms with the truth of the past will no longer make a difference to the person I am. I used to be entirely against the idea of marriage: I would not be caught in the same prison my mum was in, as I could trust no man. I now put all my faith in God: if it is His plan for me to marry, He knows the right man and I don’t automatically mistrust men anymore but know that if I follow God’s path for me I will be put through no ordeal that He cannot heal me of. I don’t
have to do things in my own strength now; I know that through the Lord all things can be done and I will never go wrong if I follow Him.

God is present in all things; even during the worst times, and He is always at work – His timing is immaculate, but sometimes this is only apparent in hindsight. Growing up with a man like my father, you learn how to hide things; you learn how not to show pain and eventually how not to feel it. He refused to acknowledge any fault in himself or any hurt he caused others: to live with him was to be insignificant and to be taught by him was to learn to overlook. This meant that when the pain he inflicted on me mentally and physically over the years manifested into a ball of contempt, fear and self-worthlessness. I did not notice – it was natural to suppress.

Then when I was thirteen, my granddad died. He had been a beacon of hopefor me: he was a grown man who thought the world of me, who adored me and who would do anything for me.