Testimony

.... from the newspaper. The little girl then yelled to her mother,"she is going to hate her dad forever!" Her mother quickly came into the living room and sit me down on the couch and put her arm around me, and looked me straight in the eye and said,"Oh no honey, you need to forgive your dad for what he did." It would be many years later that I would remember what she told me.

There are fourteen children in my family and I am the eleventh child. It would take me many years to get over the shame, embarrassment and all the other damage that my dad caused from his actions to our family. My life begin to change when I accepted Jesus in my heart in 1982. I knelt down on a bathroom floor, after reading in a local Christian yellow pages how to receive Him in my heart. It was powerful what happened next. All of my life up to that point, I had been afraid of the dark, because my dad almost always started his abuse at night. That evening at bedtime, my husband John went to turn on the bathroom light for me and I told him to turn it off. The Lord healed me of being afraid of the dark and He will watch over me in the night now.

Then a year later in 1983, I was watching a Christian talk show and that morning I heard a woman tell her story how she came to forgive her five year old daughter's rapist and murderer. It was at that point in my life I realized I needed to forgive my dad for what he did and the abuse to our family. That day I experienced the same forgiveness both those women had experienced and not only did I forgive my dad, but I learned to love him also. In all the eight years I had with my dad he never told me he loved me, nor I to him. God called me to go out and share my story in 1983, with the public. In 1999, He gave me, "Roadblock Ministry" which is a powerful ministry that He uses to help people forgive the past and take down their roadblocks and move on with their life, finding their destiny in Him. Please view my web site further to find out more about my guest speaking ministry.

Val's Testimony continued ...