Part Five  

As I was writing the last entry the Lord showed me a root that I didn’t even know was there.

Mistrust, neglect, and abandonment came in when I was a child because I felt like no one protected me from the abuse, interaction with older men, and poor choices. Much of my life I felt like I was left to make my own choices and I felt like I had a lack of guidance. This led to a root of neglect, mistrust, and abandonment. The lie was created that no one saved me so I could not trust anyone but myself. I always connected this to God because I knew I struggled with that toward Him, but He showed me it also effected how I saw other people and how I felt about them. It is also why I have struggled to fully trust Ronnie with my heart, decisions, wellbeing, emotions, etc. I spent time in repentance for believing those lies, asking God to uproot those negative emotions, and asking Him to heal me fully from those areas. God totally uprooted those things in me. It is amazing what He can do with one revelation.

I want to make it clear I do not hold bitterness or angry toward anyone in my family. I fully know and understand they did the best they could with the knowledge they had and where they were at in life at the time. We have all grown and it is easy to look back and say should have, could have, would have with knowing what we know now, so I am not pointing fingers or blaming. I was not an easy teen to parent at all. However, those are areas that the Lord showed me because He knew they were there, even when I don’t even know it, and He wanted to heal them. Even when I didn’t know they were there they were still affecting my life, my marriage, and my other relationships. I could not fully trust Ronnie to have my best interest in mind which is ridiculous, and I had no idea where it came from, but now I know. I have released that to God and He has fully healed that place in my heart.

Married Life with Ronnie

I left off the last entry with me getting married to Ronnie. He was a breath of fresh air in so many ways because he was kind, gentle, and very easy going. We did not date very long before we decided to get married. I think from our first date to our wedding was about six months. From our first date we spent every day together and one day he said, “you are always over here so we might as well get married.” I agreed. He was not a romantic at all in case you didn’t notice! LOL! But he had so many other great qualities I didn’t even notice the lack of romance. I knew as soon as I was divorced from my first marriage that I did not want to stay alone. I wanted to settle down and get married because I loved being married. I just wanted to find a safe person and Ronnie was definitely that person for me.

Little did we know how much damage and baggage we were both brining into the marriage. I am not going to share much of his story because that is his story to share. We are planning on doing a live video on Facebook and share about both of our backgrounds, how that affected our marriage, going through deliverance, and Gods miraculous healing power in our lives. Ronnie has never shared his testimony before, so I am really excited for him to share and see what all God does with his story! Until that time I am going to focus on my point of view. His story is his to share when he is ready.

We both brought a lot of baggage and effects of childhood trauma into our marriage. He also had trauma from the war he was in. When Ronnie and I first met I was still on an emotional high from escaping the domestic violence in my first marriage. I had started going to the gym, lost a lot of weight, and felt amazing. I thought that was my new norm, but little did I know the depression was about to come back with a vengeance and bring a few friends with it. Almost as soon as we were married I began to decline. I have few memories from back then, but Ronnie has told me a lot of stories. There were times he would come home from work and find me curled up in the floor rocking, crying, and asking for “mommy”. There were other times he would come home and find me hiding in the closest. Other times he would wake up in the middle of the night and find me either sleeping in the closet or under the bed. There were many nights that I was terrified of our bed, and I would hear what I thought was my bio-dad coming down the hallway. I slept with a knife under my mattress and Ronnie slept with one eye open because he never knew if I was going to have a nightmare or fall into psychosis. I also started getting very paranoid and thought people were talking about me and that they were out to get me. We could go into a store, and I would feel like everyone was watching me. On numerous occasions we would go shopping, but we would just end up having to leave because I felt like I had to get out of there. I even felt that way around family and my church family. It is hard to explain this part, but I often felt like a small child that needed to hold Ronnie’s hand for security and if he got out of sight I would panic. When we were in the stores I was very drawn to children’s toys especially stuffed animals and dolls. Ronnie bought me several soft toys to have at home and when I was having a very difficult day I could hold them and they would make me feel better. He tried to do and get whatever he thought would help me, but he had no idea how to really help because he had never been around someone with mental illness as severe as I had it.

He also bought me coloring books, markers, crafting items—anything he could think of to give me moments of enjoyment and escape from the mental torment. I know he wanted to rescue me, but all he could do was watch me slip deeper and deeper into mental illness and the effects of the trauma. There were times I had body memory of the abuse, and my body would hurt as if I was being abused all over again. I had so many triggers I could never even attempt to name them all.  

Ronnie covered so much for me because I didn’t want anyone to know how bad I had gotten. I made him promise not to tell anyone. There were so many times he would run interference for me by answering the phone and saying I was too busy to talk if I was having a really bad day. I also made him promise if I ever could not fight the urge to kill myself that he would do everything he could to cover it up and never let my son find out. There were days that I was mentally slipping away, and I was terrified of never coming back. The truth is I often needed hospitalized, but there was no way I could do that because of the situation with my son and his bio-dad. Right from the beginning of the divorce my son started showing signs of trauma after visits with his bio-dad. He was having nightmares, always seemed on edge, and when he started talking about not wanting to live anymore at the age of six I knew something was going on. We immediately got him into therapy, and he disclosed that his bio-dad was physically abusing him and putting him in very unsafe environments. That was a huge trigger for me, and it brought back so much from my childhood. I felt helpless in keeping my child safe and that took me right back to being a child and no one keeping me safe. No matter how bad I got mentally I did not want anyone to know, and I did not want to do a hospital stay because I did not want to give my ex anything to hold against me in court.

I documented every single thing possible, and I took his bio-dad to court every single chance I could get in the attempts to keep my son safe. It was a three-year battle that felt like a lifetime. During that time I kept it together as best as I could, but I spent a ton of time in bed just not feeling like I could even do the bare minimum of living. It took every ounce of energy I had to stay alive and keep going. I know I was not the parent to him that he needed, and I was never the step-mom that Ronnies kids needed. I barely had enough to keep myself alive and going so that didn’t leave anything over for a husband or kids. I was very irritable, manipulative, controlling, and grumpy. I wanted to control my environment down to every single little detail because that was the only thing in my life I could control. I could not control my emotions, my triggers, or what was happening to my son, so I become obsessively controlling over the things I could control even though that was painful for my family. I wanted to take my sons pain away, but I had no idea how. I honestly was a very emotionally neglectful mom because I never had anything to give. I took care of his physical needs, and I loved him more than anything else, but I just never could put it to action. It was like all I could see, and feel was pain.

After about a three year long battle his bio-dad signed over parental rights and allowed Ronnie to adopt him, but so much damage was already done. My son suffered from the physical abuse by his bio-dad, the emotional neglect from me, and the emotional distance from Ronnie. Ronnie is a wonderful man, but due to his past he has struggled to connect emotionally with others including me, our kids, and everyone else in his life. My son’s story is his so that is about as deep as I am going with his life, but I did want to discuss my short comings as his mother as a result of the trauma I went through. I think the old saying, “hurt people, hurt people” is so true and I had no idea how to break the cycle when I was in the middle of it.

Ronnie and I struggled so much in our marriage. I think he had no idea what he was taking on when he married me because I was at a much different place when we first married. I also had drastic mood swings and there were times he was talking to me that he knew it was not really me because I was so different—I talked different, looked different, my eyes changed colors, and I was very different sexually. I don’t want to get graphic at all, but I did and said things in the bedroom that he knew were not me. He had no idea what to do with me when I had the drastic changes, and he didn’t know how to help me. I don’t remember a lot from that time frame, but I do remember having visions and thoughts of wanting to kill him in his sleep. I loved him and didn’t want to hurt him, but something in me would tell me that he was mean, didn’t love me, and that I should hurt him. I never went through with it, but it was like a movie that would play in my head that I would have to fight and fight to get to shut off. He was by no means perfect, and he had his own struggles, but he was not mean to me at all. The voices were nothing but liars. They also told me that everyone hated me, and that people were out to get me. They always tried to get me to kill myself and it was a fight to stay alive. God used my son as my anchor to life. Every time the voices would get louder, and louder God would remind me what it would do to my son if I killed myself and I could not do that to him. He had already been through so much and lost so much. I could not bring myself to cause more pain in his life.

Form the very beginning of our relationship Ronnie and I enjoyed the same type of movies and books. We loved horror, mystery, and fantasy. At one point we owned over 300 movies and most of them were horror. The crazy part was we would watch those movies and then I would be so full of fear I could not sleep. I struggled with fear anyway all of the time, but when I would watch those it got way worse. I can remember laying awake so many nights drenched in sweat but not being able to uncover my head because I was so afraid. There were other times my bed would literally shake all night long. I knew it was demonic torment when that would happen, but I didn’t know how to make it stop. Ronnie was also having a lot of experiences that made him fearful. One time he was in the bathroom and the shower curtain opened all the way from one end to the other. Another time he let our dogs out and when he came back to the door to let them in they were already inside sitting down with the door closed like someone else had let them in.

It kind of became a family joke that no matter where I went I was a magnetic for demonic activity. My family and I would talk about it a lot and the only thing we could think of was because I had been introduced to the occult at such a young age by my bio-dad I was kind of known to the demons so they followed me. No matter where I lived or even stayed I always experienced demonic torment. Before I became a Christian I thought it was ghosts, but afterwards I knew it was demons. Even though I knew what it was I had no idea how to deal with it and the church had zero answers for me, so I continued in torment for years.

My mom and I spent a summer going to auctions and selling the items we bought on eBay. It was so much fun, but one experience stands out to me that was not so much fun. I found a vintage picture of a child that I bid on and won. It looked like it was from the 1800’s. I brought it home and almost immediately we started seeing what looked like little shadow kids running around our house. They would peep around corners and look at us. I knew it was connected to the picture, so I took it and burned it. We stopped seeing what looked like little kids, but we continued to hear things, have our things moved around, felt a dark presence, and saw shadows that looked like people in our home. My husband often told me that he had never experienced anything like that until he met me. By that time in my life I was pretty used to it. I had been experiencing it for years. It kept me in extreme fear, but I had no idea how to make it stop so I just tried my best to ignore it. When you are not equipped in spiritual warfare it is impossible to live a life of victory over demons and that is exactly where I was at for many years of my life.

This is a good stopping point so let’s stop here for now. If you are reading my story and relating to anything in my life please stick it out with me for the whole story. Hope, freedom, and deliverance do come to my life, and I have never been the same since that day! Joy is on the way!

Blessings,

Nichole Henson

Fullness of Joy Ministry