My Full Testimony to Date
How God Has Always Been There
“There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:42
New Revised Standard Version
Hello, and welcome to The Better Part podcast with me, Carol. In this episode, I will speak about something that has been on my heart for a while. This is partly why it's been a while since I recorded and uploaded a podcast.
I’m going to share my testimony. I touched on it in the first episode, but I’ve been led to share it so far. Our testimonies are ever-changing, evolving and being added to, and we have to be open to that happening to continue to grow in our faith.
I want to add a disclaimer here that I will be mentioning topics that may be triggering for some people as I speak about my past, including domestic violence. If you are triggered by anything I say, please stop listening. Look after yourself.
In 2007 I was looking for a new job as I wasn't happy where I was. My boyfriend at the time found a job advertised for a new outdoor clothing and equipment store that was going to be opening. I applied and got a job.
My mum had been trying to tell me for years that guy wasn’t any good for me. But I didn’t want to, or couldn’t hear her because he’d manipulated me so much. I had been with him for almost ten years when I started the new job he found for me.
Over that first year, a colleague helped me see exactly how he treated me and that he was jealous, controlling and manipulative. The best thing she said to me was that if I needed anywhere to say that, I could stay with her.
I believe God orchestrated my ex finding me that job so I could hear from a colleague up to five days a week that he wasn’t a nice guy, as I wasn't hearing my mum tell me that exact same thing. I would always defend him and his actions because that's how manipulated I was at the time.
On a Tuesday morning, around thirteen months after starting that job, in June or July, I can never remember which. I packed a small bag of stuff, walked out on him and never looked back.
I returned a couple of times to collect more of my things, once during work time when the manager let the assistant manager and I leave to get more stuff, so I had more than a small rucksack of my belongings.
I agreed to meet and speak with my ex; he was in tears and holding my hand, saying how he’d changed and realised how things had been. But I felt like an empty shell. I didn't want him to hold my hand. I didn't want him to touch me. I had given him everything, and I had nothing left inside me, he’d taken everything.
I stayed with my mum for around nine months before getting an opportunity to move into a house share with someone my cousin knew through work.
That December, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety due to the abuse I’d suffered during the relationship. I had counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy and was put on antidepressants.
A few years later, I was diagnosed with PTSD and was recommended to have EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) which was brutal but effective in helping me for another few years.
On April 9, 2018, I hit live on my first public blog post after many months of internal nudges to start a blog, but I had no idea what I would write about. Then it came to me to share my mental health journey with depression, anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from abusive relationships. It helped me by writing a finished piece about my journey and story compared to fragments in my journal.
In May 2018, I embarked on my first-ever solo holiday to Edinburgh and took the train there as I love a train journey. My seat was opposite an older lady reading her Bible, and she spent some time looking up bible verses from a small printed booklet she had.
Then in August 2019, I was prompted to start reading the Bible, classing myself as more spiritual than religious for many decades. It took a while again for me to hear and some time to convince me to listen.
I was raised in the Church of England, but we were never weekly churchgoers. I was baptised as a child and confirmed, but at that time, I believed in a higher power or being that had created us and the world, but that’s about as far as it went for me.
By November of that year, I regularly watched online sermons and began to look for a local church to see if this being a Christian thing was really for me.
On the first Sunday of 2020, I walked through the doors of a church, and I felt like I’d come home. Everyone I met welcomed me like family. Ten weeks later, the world went into lockdown, and God knew I needed a church community because He took away my work one. Towards the end of that year, I discovered that many church people had been praying for me ever since that first visit.
In September 2019, I asked for more help with my mental health by referring myself for more therapy and asking to be put back on antidepressants. In April 2020, I began more treatment to help me with my mental health, and being part of a church family helped me so much during it all. I was very fortunate that my housemate stayed with his girlfriend for the first eleven weeks of the lockdown, and as I work in non-essential retail, I had nothing but time to work on my past trauma.
That first lockdown was such a blessing for me because I could focus on what had happened to me and begin to work through it more. Healing from trauma is like pealing a never-ending onion working through each layer until you can peel it back and work through the next one. Some layers keep repeating as more healing and work is needed in certain areas. It's not fun; it’s horrible, challenging work but so very necessary.
I’m not always great at remembering to pray, but over those next few months, I would, every day and often multiple times a day, ask God for help with my anxiety and depression. For Him to take it away. For His will to be done. I often cried when I asked for His help because I couldn’t do it alone and wasn't ever meant to. The situation wasn't mine to carry, so I repeatedly gave it to God for Him to do His will.
One Friday in June, during the first lockdown, we were doing Church on Zoom when one of the leaders was praying. I can’t fully remember the details now, but I think he asked for comfort for those who had lost someone to the virus that shall not be named. My cousin-in-law had passed away a few weeks earlier from it, so tears started to fall.
They also mentioned those suffering from anxiety, and that was it. I lost it. I was in floods of tears. I prayed again to God for Him to help me, and I felt an actual weight get lifted off my shoulders, and I knew it was God. He was waiting for me to be in the right place for His will to have the most impact on me in this situation.
That night I had a game-changing dream about my ex where I was dominant in a situation, and my abusive ex was submissive—complete role reversal. I felt that God was helping me to see that my ex no longer had such a hold on me.
Such an answer to prayer.
Then in January 2021, during the last lockdown, I found out that the store where I had worked for 14 years and had helped set up was going to have to close because of a decision from the landlord not willing to renegotiate the lease, which was due to run out in May that year.
I had met so many people within the company who had helped and supported me on my mental health journey after leaving my ex that it was such a shock to me that it would be over. I’d been applying for new jobs on and off for the last five years but hadn't succeeded. I was still there for a reason. He had a better plan.
As no jobs within the company were nearby, I took redundancy and could work my 13-week notice during the lockdown. Then March came around, and I started worrying about what I would do. I only had a few months to find a new job. Then I remembered that the situation wasn’t mine to control. Again, I had to put the situation into His hands. And I had to learn to trust Him.
In hindsight, because my ex had found me that job, its ending was God not only closing the door to that part of my life but also locking and bolting it as well. That part of my life was over; there was no going back, and I could only go forward.
I was looking for a new job one day towards the beginning of April 2021; there wasn’t anything suitable for me that day. So I looked at my saved jobs; one was from a few days earlier. I thought I had nothing to lose, so I applied for it.
That was a Wednesday. Two days later, on Friday, I had a call from the store manager for a telephone interview. He wanted to get me in for an in-person interview on Sunday, but we were still in non-essential retail lockdown, so I had to get permission from the divisional manager.
That Sunday, I went in for my interview, and I don’t like interviews, as I dislike being the centre of attention and always get nervous and feel like I do or say the wrong thing. But I had complete peace about the interview, being calm and confident throughout it.
The following Tuesday, I had a call from a lovely lady from the company’s recruitment department offering me the job.
Well. I was speechless and had to keep checking my phone for the next few hours to ensure the call had occurred. I just couldn't believe it!
But it had happened. I had a new job!
It was seven days from applying for the job to being offered it, and I realised God used the same amount of time to create the world.
On Monday, April 19th 2021, I started my new job, my current job. Within a few weeks, I learned that a colleague I worked with twice daily for over a year is also a Christian. What are the chances? From a team of around ten at my last job, where the closest I had to fellowship was a former Vicar, to a group of four where one was a brother in Christ.
God works in wonderful and mysterious ways.
This job has dramatically helped and changed me: my anxiety, patience and confidence. He always knows what we need so much better than we do.
The first 20 months in my job haven’t been easy as it’s my first sales job, and I have struggled most months to meet my targets.
Since the beginning of 2023, however, it’s been very different. I tracked my sales from the previous year, compared them to this year, and saw constant improvement, which helped boost my confidence.
I didn’t reach my January target, but I beat some of my best sales from the previous year that month. Exceeding my best-ever sale amount, my best-ever day, and my best-ever week twice and doubling my sales. I’ve also reached my February, March, and April sales targets, so I am ahead for the year!
Such an improvement from the same months in 2022!! It’s like night and day, and I contribute more to the store than ever.
A few things have helped this turn around. The main one, I believe, is on my prayer walk to work, where I put my day and life into God’s hands and ask that I be a blessing to all I speak to that day, that His will be done, not mine. That all I do that day is for His glory and Kingdom, not mine.
It’s incredible to look back on my life now I’m a Christian and see God's fingerprints all over my life.
Heaven came to fight for me. He fights for you.
We just have to trust Him.
If anything I've shared has spoken to you today, if there’s something specific you’d like me to talk about more from my journey, either DM the podcast on Instagram @thebetterpartpodcast or email us at the better part podcast at Gmail dot com. The links for both of those are in the podcast description.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you think this could benefit someone else, please share it and don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode.
