Incest
“There is no such thing as an ‘instant fix’. My Dad who was a very prosperous farmer sexually abused me. My mother had died. I was just 10 and used to help with the milking. I was his only daughter and when I turned 12, one day in the barn he forced me down and raped me. He gagged me so that no one could hear my crying. Then he threatened me and warned me not to tell a living soul. He then slit the throat of a calf and as I stood there paralyzed watching it’s blood flow unto the barn floor my father said, “This will happen to you if you say a word.” I was obedient, I never said a word. Today I am a very successful businesswoman. Meridel helped me come to terms with my past. Even though my father is dead I was stalked by fears so many fears all of my life since that day. I could never forget this horror nor could I erase it. I could never marry or have a male friend. All I can tell you is that after the hours of teaching and counseling, and working with Meridel, the raw pain is gone. I am free because I have been warmed up on the inside with the knowledge of God’s love for me. Evil people do evil things. I am not held accountable for what he did to me. I am accountable for the hatred I harbored against him for years.  I am getting rid of it now.  I can still see what happened all as if in a dream, but pain can no longer reach me, and control my life. He has separated me from the abuse and stands as a Protector between me and that awful experience. I opened my mind to accept His loving kindness for my own life. That was not easy because I always felt I was a worthless mistake. I realize that I am very vulnerable, but Meridel gave me the tools to bring me back into life. I have the Bible as my guide now.”

Sibylle 42 years of age. Switzerland

Touching 
“When I saw the pictures that Meridel showed of kids playing in the park and getting taken in by a puppeteer who could trick kids with his evil motives. I began to shake with fright. Meridel was able to see how scared I was and after her teaching she came and talked with me. I told her that I had been caught just like the kids in her picture. “The man caught me and forced me  to remove my underwear and lie down. He put one hand over my mouth and with the other he invaded my private parts. He warned  never to tell anyone and believe me I was too terrorized to say a word I until today. My Dad didn’t even know. I feel better now because I got rid of my secret.” Meridel completely understood and helped me out of the hole I had been caught in. I Dad was shocked when I told him.”

Kristel (not her real name) is ten years old, her father is a Pastor of a large church in Germany.

A gay Synagogue
“My whole focus and desire in life was to see a gay synagogue built. I am Russian by birth and a new immigrant to America. Everything changed when I heard Meridel teach about being the person we are created to be. She taught me how to take my will back from the boys who took advantage of me sexually when I was very young and under their control. I was a believer but she gave me the tools to unlock my life so that I could will to live fully in my God given manhood. I have come to know that I was not born to be gay, no matter what the geneticist say. I willed to have my life back from the lies and abuse heaped upon me from childhood.  Yes it is possible to change, and yes it is a choice. But I will help my brothers in any way I can to make similar choices. I feel that all of life is before me now.”

Alexander. 31 years of age. New immigrant to the USA.

Incest 
“I had been under the care of nurses 24hours a day for five years in my own home because I was suicidal. I became totally dysfunctional andtried to commit sucide because of incest. The nursing sisters taking care of me heard about Meridel’s seminar and took me to hear her. I listened to the teaching for two solid days and I was amazed in my mind. I said to myself, this is the first person I have ever heard tell me to fight this thing and not to put up with it. She spoke the truth, I resonated with it deep inside, no matter what I looked like on the outside, life and hope were coming into me. Then I requested to sit with her and her husband Jay one afternoon after the morning session, I got my life back. It was like I crawled out of a deep dark cave filled with the horror of being surrounded by dead children. That was 15 years ago and I have never looked back. I have been able to mother my 4 children and care for my aging husband. What you don’t know is that my own father a very wealthy man, repeatedly sexually abused my sister and I from the ages of 6 to 14 years. I was so desperate as a child that I used to lay down on the street and pray for a car to run over me. No one saw my situation, no one came to my rescue. I wanted to die until the Rawlings brought me back. They taught me how to choose to live and I have to give all of the credit to Jesus. I even look completely different.”

Christiana age 53 years. Switzerland.

A Pedophile speaks:
“I am serving a 23 year sentence for child molestation. When asked what kind of child I would look for to abuse I would say: an innocent looking one. You don’t want to go near a kid that will fight or scream, you want the quiet loner, usually shy and easily controlled.”

A pedophile – US penitentiary.

Touching in Playschool 
Karl came home from playschool sulking, withdrawn and irritable. He was normally a cheerful little fellow full of questions and stories. He became morose as the week drew to a close. I was visiting his home and after breakfast he laid his head on the kitchen table and cried, “I’m so sad.”
“What is someone three years of age so sad for?” I asked.
“Sammy put his hands in my pants!” he blurted out.
I immediately taught him how to take his will back from the evil intent or will of Sammy. Later his mother confronted his teacher, who vehemently denied that anything could have happened. I accompanied his mother to the school and insisted, “little ones don’t lie about something like this!”
Then after a few moments seeing that I wasn’t backing down, the teacher admitted: “Sammy, ah, you said Sammy, yes,” she paused and drew a breath, “we did have a Sammy here but he was sent away for psychological reasons.”
Mothers, I challenge you to find out how your children copes at school each day, and watch for any signs of change as in withdrawal, sadness, rebellion, anger or rage.

Karl, age 3 at local Playschool Canada.

Brokenness 
Think of a tender rose bud just about to burst into bloom. Now picture a rough hand tearing it open. Not a pretty picture. The flower is permanently damaged, drastically altered. At the moment of sexual abuse, very negative forces invade the young life, forever changing it. Childhood has been lost. It is a tragedy of major proportions. There is something else that takes place. The mind will reach outside of itself and begin to question and look for the rhyme and reason of life. Out of chaos will come a hunger to know truth, to find meaning, to create order. This is what happened to me. Often the intense spiritual pain of an abused person works on the mind. This pain will be played out in very self-deprecating behaviors such as anorexia, bulimia, lying, multiple personalities and suicide. The pain is so great that there has to be some kind of escape.

My story is wonderful in that the God of all Creation stepped down and surrounded me physically with His love. Yes, it was a real experience, I so desperately needed to be loved and cherished and the love of God that King David writes about in the Psalms, and Christians sing about found me. It held me, and I felt so relieved and protected. Along with this love came a gift, a very powerful gift of discernment. I could sense danger, and was able to get away, to keep myself out of compromising situations. I could discern the intents of people’s hearts and yet I was so naive and still compromised by some of the men in our religious family. Religion can be a cover up for many dark habits. I moved past religion into a relationship with the LORD God. I needed a Father I could trust.

War Rape
Greta had been a member of the choir for as long as anyone could remember, since the end of the WWII. Her face seemed frozen in time. She looked pretty good for her 75 years, but there was an undeniable sadness about her whole demeanor. I had been teaching that morning and she came for prayer. I asked her what she needed and that was the key that unlocked her emotions. The sternness gave way to a flood of silent tears. “I was a young teen here when the Russians liberated us the spring of 1945, eight Russian soldiers raped me. I have never been able to get over the pain and humiliation of it, I have never married, and I never feel clean.”
I taught her how to take her will back from those harsh and brutish men. Through the power of prayer Greta, a believing woman for over 50 years learned how to free her imprisoned life from her tormentors. She became a new woman and now the light shone out through her face from the inside out.

Greta, Former East Germany.

Kindertransport Child 
During our Secret Place Seminar in Scotland I had the privilege of getting to know Doris a ‘kinder transport’ child. She was one of 10,000’s of Jewish children, who were sent to Great Britain from Nazi Germany just before WWII broke out. Childhood memories of her family, who were all lost, are rekindled when she looks through the photo albums her mother thoughtfully packed into her little suitcase back in 1938 before bundling her up on the train never to see her again. She told me that the last train in 1939 with 300 children never reached its destination before the gates were shut. She has carried a deep longing mingled with sadness, desiring to see her loved ones again. At the end of the seminar she stated that now she was encouraged to attend her local synagogue in Glasgow and enjoy her Jewish heritage. Her adoptive parents were Anglicans. Holding a photo of herself as a tiny girl of five, she said publicly, “this seminar has given me a new sense of my own identity that I had lost.”

Dorith Scotland

Incest, Depression 
Another lady who attended our Secret Place Seminar was a devout Christian who could not get over depression. It plagued her for years. She had lived under this heavy spirit most of her life and had spent years locked away in an institution. We asked her simply. “Have you ever been abused?” she said, “Yes.” Her uncle had abused her and from this relationship a child had been born. She was unable to be free even though her uncle had died. We taught her to choose life by confronting her past, and taking her will back from the evil will of her uncle. She got a separation, or a release or deliverance, whatever word fits the best, that she had not been able to get any other way. Light just flooded her soul and shone through her eyes and face. She was released from the shame and humiliation and guilt. What a gift!

Control
A retired white-haired farmer came for help said that he had not been sexually abused but his father had been an authoritarian. He could not remember ever receiving one word of encouragement or praise from his Dad. No matter how hard he worked to please him it was never good enough. That was an emotional abuse that scarred him for life. His life had been spent believing that he was a second-rate person who never deserved to excel, or be happy. As we prayed, tears rolled down his lined face and he found release. He cut off the evil influences of this inordinate control upon his spirit. He prayed in Jesus Name as was his custom and asked to take his will back from the father who never showed acceptance to him. This area of brokenness in his life was healed and tears spilled out of his eyes and splashed down his face for the first time in his life.

These are just a very few of the hundreds of personal stories we have had the privilege of working with. Some of you children are 80, 60, 30 years old. And still walk around with hurts sustained from your fathers (parents or authority figures). Your inheritance in the LORD includes healing the broken relationships. This delicate inter-personal work is the very character of our Father God’s heart. It is His desire that all of his children find their way home.

“See I will send you the prophet Elijah
before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.
He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children
and the hearts of children to their fathers,
lest I come and smite the land with a curse.”
Malachi 4:6

There is a returning of the hearts of the children to their fathers and the fathers to their children. This lets us know that there can be healing from theses impossible kinds of abuses, that it is possible to have a restored relationship. May we all be able to sing with the psalmist David:
Bless the LORD O my soul
And forget not all His benefits:
Who forgive all your iniquities.
Who heals all your diseases.
Psalm 103:1b, 2