My Earliest Memories....
I was molested at age 3 (I have no memory of what happened specifically) however I know CPS was called. I didn't see my bio dad for over a decade. During that decade all my mother’s boyfriends took turns on me. My father states often that I told him it was my mom’s boyfriend at the time... AND I now know he was convicted later of molesting both his son and daughter just a few years later.. So, I know it is credible.
Then at the age of 11, my mom’s 2nd husband raped me. She put me in foster care and that’s the only reason I got any justice as CPS pressed the charges. After that I pretty much felt like an unwanted and unloved misfit; in which I didn't even give a darn about anything. I never was sexual again, as I had no interest. But somehow at 18, I found a guy and fell in love. I gave myself to him willingly and unfortunately he then saw me as his to come find and rape any time day or night. He did this for almost 12 years. Even if I moved (even up to 6 hours away) he reminded me that I was his... I HAD BEEN BRANDED BY HIM. I was his and he meant it. Fortunately, and I don't know how or why it stopped just 6 weeks before I met the man I married. Regrettably by then I was so bitter and angry… thus, my marriage was doomed before it ever began. To be honest I always assumed that the guy from my earlier life would come and destroy things. But it wasn’t him… I destroyed it! All my mistrust, all my attitude, all my bitterness… I TRUSTED NO ONE! Especially not God.. I thought that if God was so all knowing and all seeing. Then he had allowed all these people to hurt and destroy me. And in his knowledge he did allow it. He didn't want it. However I now see that God knew that before he could ever show me his love. That he would have to crush my life before I ever sought him out. And for some reason I will only know in heaven he loved me that much. Think about it. Love so deep that he could allow my life to be destroyed that HE MIGHT DO THE HEALING AND HE MIGHT SAVE MY SOUL. Sometimes as parents we have to allow our children to receive the consequences of their choices however painful. That they may seek help, My heavenly father loved me that much it would just take me many years to understand that.
I had been brought up in a church going home. Mom insisted us kids go to church (mostly because it was 3 hours peace and quiet for her). In all by the time I was put into foster care there was 5 of us kids. I diapered them and bottle fed them all from the time they came home from the hospital until the time they were potty trained. I was the housekeeper, babysitter and maid. I was often told that’s all I would ever be good for.
In addition to sexual abuse I was mentally and emotionally abused by my mother for much of my life. Oh she’d say she loved me, she’d buy nice things for me, but she never was there to protect me, And the gifts usually followed times when she would beat me either physically or emotionally. My biological father states that many times he’d come to see how I was. He wasn’t permitted to talk to me or have contact, but he’d drive up and see how I was. He said he stopped doing that when I was 4 years old; when he watched for 8 hours as I stood in a bottomless wooden playpen out in the hot sun for the whole time with my mom never checking on me. He said he tried to take pictures and the judge told him, “I don’t care what you say… A CHILD BELONGS WITH ITS MOTHER.” That judge sentenced me to years of mental and emotional abuse. He single handedly stayed and allowed my mother to do horrific things I can’t even describe (the half of which I have not even written here). To name a few…: often telling me she wished she could have aborted me… to throwing knives at me if I didn’t wash them well enough... to making me deliver her marijuana to her customers (she would tell me, “No cops going to arrest a 5 year old girl”)... to leaving me to watch her other 4 children alone for over a week at times alone as she went off with some boyfriend (mind you I was under 11 myself)… To beating me with cast-iron pans when her boyfriends left her… As I was too disrespectful and didn’t obey the... YA MOM... I didn’t… they wanted me to have sex with them!
Finally after going to the emergency room where she took me when I told her that her husband had raped me, she told me later that she had taken me there to prove that her “sluttish daughter” was lying. It didn’t prove that. It proved that everything I said had indeed happened. The police were there that night taking her husband away and I remember seeing him in handcuffs; still being deathly afraid of him. He yelled right before they shoved him in the police car, “I will kill you when I get out” and my 11 year old self believed him… I don’t think I realized how much I believed him, until at age 16; 5 years later. I had a complete suicidal break down. I was smart enough to tell a pastor (my mom was friends with) and he took me to St. Francis in Olean NY where I was committed for 10 days. The first time in my life I felt safe; no one was going to hurt me. But unfortunately I was traumatized there by hearing all the people howling and screaming. I had somehow had an unconscious mental clock running in my head. I knew he had been sentenced for 5 years. Honestly 2 days after I got home from the hospital the county CPS worker called to let us know my rapist had been released 14 days ago. OH the irony was rich when I realized that I had been right…that he WAS out there…free to come get me. Thank the Lord, He never has…but I don’t go a night without having a big knife near my bed and I am 38 years old.
On to the bigger and more important things… In 2009 I found a wonderful church. I found a pastor who loved me and his wife who would pray for me, give me guidance and direction. Both of them and my church changed much about me. You see all my life the bitterness and hate and anger had been boiling up. I’d simmer like a hot pot and all at once, over innocuous small matters, I’d blow up. I became known as Mount Vesuvius. My pastor spent 8-9 years trying to teach me how to control my temper. But I honestly was a perfect trial to him. On one occasion we had a traveling missionary and his family come to the church. His wife wanted to tell me how I should be more submissive to my husband (he admittedly had called me a female dog). This woman had started chasing me around the church... I didn’t know her and I didn’t want her advice as she knew nothing about me, my marriage or my life and I had no interest in her input. She followed me from room to room for over 25 minutes, with me telling her to get away and leave me alone. At one point I told her husband to get her away from me or I’d slap her. He told me, “That’s no way for a Christian to act” and my reply to him was... Well that’s a good thing that I am not saved then…
Why do I share that moment of my stupidity and humiliation? The reason is because although was dressed just right and was in the church…what I had yelled at him was the truth… I HADN’T BEEN SAVED. I had deluded myself into thinking because I had said a prayer, some date in the past (I CAN actually tell you over 45 separate times when I made professions from the age of 7-36 years of age) that I was saved. I could quote all kinds of doctrines. I even went to bible collage from 1999-2001 at Word of Life Bible Institute. Did any of that make me saved? NOPE! There was no change. I have had evangelists wives tell me, “Oh it’s ok, women almost never have full assurance of salvation… You know women aren’t like men.” On another occasion I was told by a woman at the altar, “Just say you got saved or else everyone is going to watch you walking down the aisle back to your seat.” Another woman (at another time) when I was at a camp meeting told me, “Just pray this prayer and IF there is a God… You’re safe… If not... You lived a good life no harm no foul.” Another woman who was a pastor’s wife (at another local church we went to support their special meetings) told me, “Well you prayed the prayer so if you aren’t saved God’s a liar.” LIKE FOR REAL?! That’s heresy! But this is the kind of people who are talking to people about their salvation at these altar calls. Like I said at least 2 of the women here discussed are evangelists’ wives who travel all over our nation and keep track of the numbers of professions people make. I have been on their tallies at least once each, but wasn’t saved until Jesus convinced me of my sin against him.
He had to show me what it was about me SPECIFICALLY that was an offence to Him. That one thing, that had I gone heaven unsaved, would have made heaven into a living hell for all… God just wasn’t going to allow that to happen. So I had to agree with him that that piece of me was an abomination unto God and it was JUST for Him to keep me out of heaven over that… I DESERVED HELL!
But I was blessed beyond measure, because starting in 2009 I found a man who would shepherd my heart and my soul. He helped me stop being abusive to my children. I’d yell at my children and tell them all their failings. They’d do something one day and I’d bring it up to them for weeks. I’d scream and make them feel tiny and small. One day I went to reach for my son and he cringed away. At that moment I knew I had become as bad as my mother. Previous to meeting my pastor, I knew of no one who did it any better than I did. I had no one to give direction. So he, my wonderful pastor, started teaching on parenting. He taught me how to use biblical discipline, how to love a child, how to be a biblical mom. He taught line upon line… here a little and there a little. He taught me doctrine to replace the things of my childhood. But you see it took him so long… because like I said before, I had trusted no one. I had to learn to trust my pastor. He paid my cellphone bill for a year, to teach me that I could count on him, in a real life setting. I do know of one of them times that he used his families last few dollars for milk for the week (and boy did they need the milk). I was the unlovely sheep of his pasture. Most pastors would have kicked me out after that one episode (and justifiably so).
There were still many more episodes, because honestly, I HAD MADE myself so prickly and unlovely and miserable. I knew no one had ever loved me (but me) and I couldn’t count on one hand the people who had ever been nice to me and not wanted anything. The closer you got, the worse the wrath and anger was that you had to deal with.
The Lead Servant of our church and I fought a lot. It turned out she wasn’t saved for a great deal of the time either and yet she had prayed for me. She had been kind to me, but I had distrusted her kindness. I had just thought she was being nice to me so that she could brag about how much better she was than I was. However I was lucky… I had a church that LONG SUFFERED me and had been kind to me. I will probably never know how many times people went into the pastor’s office to complain about me. He’d always tell them, “If you kick her out, I will preach to her in the parking lot!” My heart would break to know how much shame I had brought to him. Even an evangelist had told me that “I should be lucky because he had been all over our nation and NONE of the pastors he had ever met would deal with me and long suffer me like Pastor John had done.” I knew he was right. Everyone in my life had abandoned me, run away or just forgot about any responsibility to me that they had…my mom, my dad (watching me in hot sun for 8 hours), my husband (constantly walking out of our relationship and moving in with other women and abandoning me and our children). I needed the lesson... I could have lived without the phone, but he showed me there that I was important. Oh it was years later before I learned how much it had cost him to love the black sheep, the unlovely young woman. But he did it because he knew my only hope was in Jesus. And he was right… October 20th 2016 I was CHANGED... Jesus stepped into my life! The bitterness DISAPPEARED! The ability to stop my anger began! I mean I just felt like a new person! And of course I was. “He washed my sins away… He washed my sins away… and now I am singing all the day!” Jesus told me that even if no one else had ever loved me that he had. Jeremiah 1:5 was the verse he gave me “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and it was followed by Isaiah 41:10 Fear thou not for I am with thee: Be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness...
If there is any one thing I wish others in ministry could learn from my story is that the lonely, hurt and abused often disguise themselves in the most unlovely manner. That doesn't mean they don't need your help. That doesn't mean they are beyond hope. What it means is you have to decide, is the job of sharing Jesus worth it to you? Is it worth getting around those who will act just like all the worst things in hell? But didn't Jesus die for their sins too? Isn't His blood strong enough to atone for their wrongs? I am here to tell you, HIS BLOOD COVERS IT ALL! We just need people who are willing to pay the price!
For all eternity I will Praise GOD That John Asquith and Ruthann Asquith loved the unlovely and were willing to bear the shame of my misery and disgrace.. They Knew Jesus could make all the difference!
I was molested at age 3 (I have no memory of what happened specifically) however I know CPS was called. I didn't see my bio dad for over a decade. During that decade all my mother’s boyfriends took turns on me. My father states often that I told him it was my mom’s boyfriend at the time... AND I now know he was convicted later of molesting both his son and daughter just a few years later.. So, I know it is credible.
Then at the age of 11, my mom’s 2nd husband raped me. She put me in foster care and that’s the only reason I got any justice as CPS pressed the charges. After that I pretty much felt like an unwanted and unloved misfit; in which I didn't even give a darn about anything. I never was sexual again, as I had no interest. But somehow at 18, I found a guy and fell in love. I gave myself to him willingly and unfortunately he then saw me as his to come find and rape any time day or night. He did this for almost 12 years. Even if I moved (even up to 6 hours away) he reminded me that I was his... I HAD BEEN BRANDED BY HIM. I was his and he meant it. Fortunately, and I don't know how or why it stopped just 6 weeks before I met the man I married. Regrettably by then I was so bitter and angry… thus, my marriage was doomed before it ever began. To be honest I always assumed that the guy from my earlier life would come and destroy things. But it wasn’t him… I destroyed it! All my mistrust, all my attitude, all my bitterness… I TRUSTED NO ONE! Especially not God.. I thought that if God was so all knowing and all seeing. Then he had allowed all these people to hurt and destroy me. And in his knowledge he did allow it. He didn't want it. However I now see that God knew that before he could ever show me his love. That he would have to crush my life before I ever sought him out. And for some reason I will only know in heaven he loved me that much. Think about it. Love so deep that he could allow my life to be destroyed that HE MIGHT DO THE HEALING AND HE MIGHT SAVE MY SOUL. Sometimes as parents we have to allow our children to receive the consequences of their choices however painful. That they may seek help, My heavenly father loved me that much it would just take me many years to understand that.
I had been brought up in a church going home. Mom insisted us kids go to church (mostly because it was 3 hours peace and quiet for her). In all by the time I was put into foster care there was 5 of us kids. I diapered them and bottle fed them all from the time they came home from the hospital until the time they were potty trained. I was the housekeeper, babysitter and maid. I was often told that’s all I would ever be good for.
In addition to sexual abuse I was mentally and emotionally abused by my mother for much of my life. Oh she’d say she loved me, she’d buy nice things for me, but she never was there to protect me, And the gifts usually followed times when she would beat me either physically or emotionally. My biological father states that many times he’d come to see how I was. He wasn’t permitted to talk to me or have contact, but he’d drive up and see how I was. He said he stopped doing that when I was 4 years old; when he watched for 8 hours as I stood in a bottomless wooden playpen out in the hot sun for the whole time with my mom never checking on me. He said he tried to take pictures and the judge told him, “I don’t care what you say… A CHILD BELONGS WITH ITS MOTHER.” That judge sentenced me to years of mental and emotional abuse. He single handedly stayed and allowed my mother to do horrific things I can’t even describe (the half of which I have not even written here). To name a few…: often telling me she wished she could have aborted me… to throwing knives at me if I didn’t wash them well enough... to making me deliver her marijuana to her customers (she would tell me, “No cops going to arrest a 5 year old girl”)... to leaving me to watch her other 4 children alone for over a week at times alone as she went off with some boyfriend (mind you I was under 11 myself)… To beating me with cast-iron pans when her boyfriends left her… As I was too disrespectful and didn’t obey the... YA MOM... I didn’t… they wanted me to have sex with them!
Finally after going to the emergency room where she took me when I told her that her husband had raped me, she told me later that she had taken me there to prove that her “sluttish daughter” was lying. It didn’t prove that. It proved that everything I said had indeed happened. The police were there that night taking her husband away and I remember seeing him in handcuffs; still being deathly afraid of him. He yelled right before they shoved him in the police car, “I will kill you when I get out” and my 11 year old self believed him… I don’t think I realized how much I believed him, until at age 16; 5 years later. I had a complete suicidal break down. I was smart enough to tell a pastor (my mom was friends with) and he took me to St. Francis in Olean NY where I was committed for 10 days. The first time in my life I felt safe; no one was going to hurt me. But unfortunately I was traumatized there by hearing all the people howling and screaming. I had somehow had an unconscious mental clock running in my head. I knew he had been sentenced for 5 years. Honestly 2 days after I got home from the hospital the county CPS worker called to let us know my rapist had been released 14 days ago. OH the irony was rich when I realized that I had been right…that he WAS out there…free to come get me. Thank the Lord, He never has…but I don’t go a night without having a big knife near my bed and I am 38 years old.
On to the bigger and more important things… In 2009 I found a wonderful church. I found a pastor who loved me and his wife who would pray for me, give me guidance and direction. Both of them and my church changed much about me. You see all my life the bitterness and hate and anger had been boiling up. I’d simmer like a hot pot and all at once, over innocuous small matters, I’d blow up. I became known as Mount Vesuvius. My pastor spent 8-9 years trying to teach me how to control my temper. But I honestly was a perfect trial to him. On one occasion we had a traveling missionary and his family come to the church. His wife wanted to tell me how I should be more submissive to my husband (he admittedly had called me a female dog). This woman had started chasing me around the church... I didn’t know her and I didn’t want her advice as she knew nothing about me, my marriage or my life and I had no interest in her input. She followed me from room to room for over 25 minutes, with me telling her to get away and leave me alone. At one point I told her husband to get her away from me or I’d slap her. He told me, “That’s no way for a Christian to act” and my reply to him was... Well that’s a good thing that I am not saved then…
Why do I share that moment of my stupidity and humiliation? The reason is because although was dressed just right and was in the church…what I had yelled at him was the truth… I HADN’T BEEN SAVED. I had deluded myself into thinking because I had said a prayer, some date in the past (I CAN actually tell you over 45 separate times when I made professions from the age of 7-36 years of age) that I was saved. I could quote all kinds of doctrines. I even went to bible collage from 1999-2001 at Word of Life Bible Institute. Did any of that make me saved? NOPE! There was no change. I have had evangelists wives tell me, “Oh it’s ok, women almost never have full assurance of salvation… You know women aren’t like men.” On another occasion I was told by a woman at the altar, “Just say you got saved or else everyone is going to watch you walking down the aisle back to your seat.” Another woman (at another time) when I was at a camp meeting told me, “Just pray this prayer and IF there is a God… You’re safe… If not... You lived a good life no harm no foul.” Another woman who was a pastor’s wife (at another local church we went to support their special meetings) told me, “Well you prayed the prayer so if you aren’t saved God’s a liar.” LIKE FOR REAL?! That’s heresy! But this is the kind of people who are talking to people about their salvation at these altar calls. Like I said at least 2 of the women here discussed are evangelists’ wives who travel all over our nation and keep track of the numbers of professions people make. I have been on their tallies at least once each, but wasn’t saved until Jesus convinced me of my sin against him.
He had to show me what it was about me SPECIFICALLY that was an offence to Him. That one thing, that had I gone heaven unsaved, would have made heaven into a living hell for all… God just wasn’t going to allow that to happen. So I had to agree with him that that piece of me was an abomination unto God and it was JUST for Him to keep me out of heaven over that… I DESERVED HELL!
But I was blessed beyond measure, because starting in 2009 I found a man who would shepherd my heart and my soul. He helped me stop being abusive to my children. I’d yell at my children and tell them all their failings. They’d do something one day and I’d bring it up to them for weeks. I’d scream and make them feel tiny and small. One day I went to reach for my son and he cringed away. At that moment I knew I had become as bad as my mother. Previous to meeting my pastor, I knew of no one who did it any better than I did. I had no one to give direction. So he, my wonderful pastor, started teaching on parenting. He taught me how to use biblical discipline, how to love a child, how to be a biblical mom. He taught line upon line… here a little and there a little. He taught me doctrine to replace the things of my childhood. But you see it took him so long… because like I said before, I had trusted no one. I had to learn to trust my pastor. He paid my cellphone bill for a year, to teach me that I could count on him, in a real life setting. I do know of one of them times that he used his families last few dollars for milk for the week (and boy did they need the milk). I was the unlovely sheep of his pasture. Most pastors would have kicked me out after that one episode (and justifiably so).
There were still many more episodes, because honestly, I HAD MADE myself so prickly and unlovely and miserable. I knew no one had ever loved me (but me) and I couldn’t count on one hand the people who had ever been nice to me and not wanted anything. The closer you got, the worse the wrath and anger was that you had to deal with.
The Lead Servant of our church and I fought a lot. It turned out she wasn’t saved for a great deal of the time either and yet she had prayed for me. She had been kind to me, but I had distrusted her kindness. I had just thought she was being nice to me so that she could brag about how much better she was than I was. However I was lucky… I had a church that LONG SUFFERED me and had been kind to me. I will probably never know how many times people went into the pastor’s office to complain about me. He’d always tell them, “If you kick her out, I will preach to her in the parking lot!” My heart would break to know how much shame I had brought to him. Even an evangelist had told me that “I should be lucky because he had been all over our nation and NONE of the pastors he had ever met would deal with me and long suffer me like Pastor John had done.” I knew he was right. Everyone in my life had abandoned me, run away or just forgot about any responsibility to me that they had…my mom, my dad (watching me in hot sun for 8 hours), my husband (constantly walking out of our relationship and moving in with other women and abandoning me and our children). I needed the lesson... I could have lived without the phone, but he showed me there that I was important. Oh it was years later before I learned how much it had cost him to love the black sheep, the unlovely young woman. But he did it because he knew my only hope was in Jesus. And he was right… October 20th 2016 I was CHANGED... Jesus stepped into my life! The bitterness DISAPPEARED! The ability to stop my anger began! I mean I just felt like a new person! And of course I was. “He washed my sins away… He washed my sins away… and now I am singing all the day!” Jesus told me that even if no one else had ever loved me that he had. Jeremiah 1:5 was the verse he gave me “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and it was followed by Isaiah 41:10 Fear thou not for I am with thee: Be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness...
If there is any one thing I wish others in ministry could learn from my story is that the lonely, hurt and abused often disguise themselves in the most unlovely manner. That doesn't mean they don't need your help. That doesn't mean they are beyond hope. What it means is you have to decide, is the job of sharing Jesus worth it to you? Is it worth getting around those who will act just like all the worst things in hell? But didn't Jesus die for their sins too? Isn't His blood strong enough to atone for their wrongs? I am here to tell you, HIS BLOOD COVERS IT ALL! We just need people who are willing to pay the price!
For all eternity I will Praise GOD That John Asquith and Ruthann Asquith loved the unlovely and were willing to bear the shame of my misery and disgrace.. They Knew Jesus could make all the difference!