My Youth

Hello everyone, my name is Catherine, and I’m here for you. Everyone has a desire to feel valued, respected, and understood. In short, to feel unconditional love. Agape love. In my life, I have been through a lot of challenges. Some of these were harder than others, but looking back I can see how the Lord has used even the smallest of things to get me where I am today.

I grew up in a large, Christian family of seven sons and two daughters. I had the best most authentic and amazing parents I could have hoped for. I myself, until my 18th year, had a pure love relationship with Jesus. I was one of my Grandpa’s favorite (Shhhhh) and this brought many blessings. Piano and guitar lessons along with theater visits, dinners out, plays and musicals, and so much more. Straight out of high school, I joined the Army National Guard. After a practice field mission gone wrong, I was medically discharged. That is when I first started therapy.  I moved in with my future husband and I was pregnant soon after, and before my son’s first birthday, we got married. I stayed home with my son until I went stir-crazy. I got a job with the electrical union and excelled. I had free schooling through the VA so I decided to use it. I got an associate’s degree in electrical engineering. Before graduation, I had already been offered a job as an electrical technician with an amazing starting pay!

Now through all of this, I had struggled with an extremely deep and dark depression. It started at such a young age. I remember barely being able to see over the counter, and I would take out a knife, and hold it to my wrist, wanting to kill myself. By the age of 25, I had made multiple suicide attempts and I had been hospitalized more times than I care to remember. Shortly after I took my first job, I had a particularly bad attempt. God is the only reason I survived. After being released from an extra-long stint at the VA in-patient unit, I met my new psychologist. She introduced me to the diagnosis of bipolar and recommended that I join this group therapy called DBT (dielectric behavior therapy). This was a blessing from the LORD. I loathed group therapies, but I was at, what I thought, was rock bottom, so I went for it. From that point on, my mental health only improved.

 I ended up getting a different job as an electrical technician at an industrial factory. After a particularly tough marriage, I filed for divorce. What followed were some of the hardest years of my life, but also the best. My ex tried to use my mental health to get full custody of my son, and at my new job, two of the guys on my team drugged me while I was at work, I was later informed that they did this on purpose purely for their enjoyment. I lost two days of my memory. They not only allowed me to drive in this state, but I also was driving my son, those two days, to and from school. I separated myself from them, and with the encouragement of another employee, who later became my partner, I decided it was time for me to excel in the company. I did just that and was on my way to having my own department when things changed again. March 6th of 2022 is when my migraines started and every day, every hour, the pain existed, wrapping me in constant agony. The doctors tried everything but with no relief. My partner and I found a remedy to lower my pain, but the medicine was expensive and I couldn’t work while taking it. I did return for a couple of months and tried my hardest to keep my job, but within a few months, I got the boot. I was desperate, in debt, and scared out of my mind. My partner and his kids moved in with me and my son, but my fear and desperation persisted eating a hole in my chest. I knew if I showed my depression, or God forbid had another suicide attempt, my ex would try to use it to take my son.  I decided to do “adult” work. I enjoyed the activities and I was good at it, so why not make money doing it? My first job was a mix of pictures and adult content creation. As I was leaving, the photographer told me he thought I could make decent money doing modeling work. I didn’t know anything about the modeling world, but I didn’t figure I had anything to lose at this point.  As I progressed and was starting to be successful, I was grateful, but still worried that I didn’t have a steady income. I started taking…….darker…..modeling jobs. I went to deprived and perverted places, but I thought I was having fun. I thought I was doing ok, but I wasn’t.

          It was December of 2022, and my migraines were still out of control, along with my depression. I had recently had another suicide attempt and had turned to drugs and alcohol to help numb my pain. This is when I met a man named, Richard. He saw something in me and started investing his time and money into helping me heal. He bought me a website and company name and motivated me to be a better person. He told me he felt he was supposed to help mentor me. He showed me love in a way I had never experienced. He ended up taking me to an energy healer. The healer told me things about my body and described where my pain was and about my bipolar. He said he could help with my depression, healed a torn muscle in my hip, and healed my broken tailbone. Something deep inside me recognized his gift and what he was doing. A voice inside me said, “I can do this. I could learn how to do this.”

I decided to start a “rent a friend” business. I wanted to start to clean up my act…..kinda…..I wanted to want to, and for God, that is enough. An idea started to form. I imagined if I could go to school for massage therapy, it would be a job that I could do while under the influence, and charge more on my side jobs until I went legit. I decided to see if I could get the military to somehow pay for massage therapy school. So in the summer of 2023, I reached out to the VA and within two weeks I was registered for school and classes started on September 15th! I knew it had to be a God-approved plan because paperwork never moves that quickly, let alone through the VA!

School started my journey of trying to self-heal. I honestly had NO idea what massage therapy school would be like. I didn’t know we would be learning anatomy. Like EVERYTHING! I didn’t know it was going to be the hardest thing I had done in my whole life! I almost quit multiple times. Thank you, Jesus, for helping me through! I started learning about energy, water, crystals, herbs, food, and holistic care along with learning how to give a massage. I was being given access to all these natural beautiful healing practices and ideas that I didn’t even know existed. Again, something deep inside me recognized these things, and said they were our own. I started down the new age path. Learned how to meditate, learned about crystals, and started my own collection. I started “teaching myself” (it was actually the Holy Spirit guiding me, I just didn’t recognize Him at the time) how to use energy to heal people. I knew there was something I was missing so I kept searching. I started to explore green witchcraft, astrology, and tarot cards. I debated learning to astral project. I watched so many different ideas and theories about what was going on in the world. Who are we? Where do we come from? Are there aliens? Are WE aliens? Are we God? I started to remember Jesus.

We are going to backtrack for a second. When I was 18, and near the peak of my relationship with Jesus, I asked Him if I could marry my husband. He had said, “Yes, but it will be hard.” What I didn’t realize at the time, was that when I chose to marry Ken, that I would be, in a sense, walking on my own. Not by myself, but by my own strength. I told God, I thought I could do it. God let me try. I tried and tried, and I never once asked Him for help. He let me struggle, and get distracted by the world. Then, at the end of December 2023, God spoke/called me. I had been watching a bunch of doomsday videos and I felt called to meditate/pray about it. I took it seriously and went all out! I used every trick I had learned to try to communicate, and for the first time since I was 18, I actually asked God to talk to me. I didn’t even fully realize what I was doing, until literally this moment in time while I was typing on this date, 2/23/2024. God showed up BIG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He woke me up and started teaching and slowly revealing the truth to me. He showed me the path I was on, and also the path He had planned. He showed me how certain things in my life were hurting me and my body and were holding me back from achieving His plan. He showed me proof and then asked if I was ready to work with Him. I was sobbing. Like UGLY sobbing. I was so tired. Exhausted beyond expression. The depression had been eating me alive, and I had been poisoning myself with drugs, alcohol, immorality, lies, selfishness, gluttony, and every other sin. I was broke and in constant anxiety about finances. I was barely sleeping, and trying to work so hard to pay for everything. I was BEYOND done fighting. I was so lost and blind, I didn’t even realize that I was fighting or blind.

I fell into His loving arms. I repented and told Him yes. That day He delivered me from my depression and bipolar. He rescued me from addiction of nicotine and alcohol. He welcomed me home with more Love than I could have ever imagined and continues to blow my mind day after day. His love knows no end, and He is revealing to me more and more every day how He has, is, and will continue to answer my prayers. He told me He kept them all. The seeds of my prayers had taken time to sprout, but they had grown when I wasn’t looking, and were now were starting to bloom. I had BIG prayers when I was younger. I knew my God was bigger than anything and I believed His words to be true. I prayed to be His hands and feet. I prayed to be His eyes. I prayed that He would move me as He moved. I Dreamed and believed that I had the faith of Abraham, the courage of Shadrack Meshack and Abnego the strength of Samson, the loyalty and bravery of Esther, the wisdom of Solomon, the love like David, the relationship like Paul, and the healing hands of Jesus. One thing I had never asked Him for though, was Love. To have His heart. Haha I asked Him to break my heart for what breaks His, so maybe I did ask for love, but I just didn’t realize it. Welp, here we are in April of 2024 and all my prayers are coming true.

While I was in the desert I extremely rarely asked the Lord for anything, because I knew I wasn’t doing what was right. If I did ask for anything, it was for Him to help someone else. I could feel my heart wasn’t right, even if I couldn’t see it with my eyes. Even if I was too scared to look at myself, my mere denial to look, was evidence, but now, thanks to Him, I’m not scared anymore. He is making me bold, and more confident than I was even before I wandered. The faith of my youth is blossoming into the belief that comes through experience. My relationship with the Lord is so amazing and beautiful. He has been teaching me every day how to walk in His will by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit and the Truth of the Bible. He is the ultimate teacher. Now He is teaching me to ask and I shall receive, because now, I am praying His Will, so it will come to pass. Thank you, LORD for keeping Your promises. Your ways are perfect.

I’m now reading or listening to the Bible daily. I’m trying my best to prioritize my relationship with our Creator, YHWY, as best as I can.

Trying not to sound corny, but I have a dream. The Lord has given me a heart for the children because HE has a heart for the children. Who are the children you may ask? We are the Children. 1 John 3:2 says, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Our identity as a child of God means that we rely fully on God and trust in His plan for our lives.” His people are the downtrodden, the abused and broken, the lost and lonely, the hopeless, hurting, the fatherless, the sinner. Those who cannot stand up for themselves. Those whose voices have been silenced or stolen, and when we honestly look into ourselves, confronting the truth, wouldn’t that apply to all of us? The way is the way of the Spirit, to the Father, through His Son, Jesus Christ, who lives forever and ever, Amen.