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In My Garden by Joe Medrek
How it all began. I was an only child not able to have friends over. My mother cussed a lot, and was preoccupied with problems she had with the neighbors, and she took it out on me. She was controlling and manipulative. As soon as I could I started spending more time away from home. I got into fornication, drugs, alcohol, and nicotine at an early age.
As far back as I can remember I had lived a very isolated life being the only child, but whenever I got a chance I would go off and make friends and stay at people’s houses so I could have contact with other people. My parents didn’t like for me to have friends spend the night, have birthday parties, people over for dinner, encourage me to join extra-curricular activities at school, proms, etc. I was a loner.
I would choose to associate with people who were like misfits, those others wouldn’t choose to be friends with because of their appearance, emotionally unstable, drug users, liars, you name it! It wasn’t because I couldn’t make friends with those who were popular, because I had several of them as friends, but I chose to go with the other type of people. Come to think of it I know the Lord has called me to minister to the “hard cases” those who were cast aside as too hard to be set free. You know that is where it all started with me. Because of bad choices in life I had allowed myself to get in the worse state.
As far back as I can remember I had dabbled in drugs, spot remover, alcohol, etc., as young as twelve years old. After much overdosing on drugs and developing syncope from drinking too much alcohol, sniffing spot remover, etc., I am sure I developed a type of brain damage. I spent all my time after graduation partying instead of getting a job and preparing for my future, and my parents allowed this. I had a terrible home life always in conflict with my mother who had so much fear that I would get in trouble that she accused me of everything even before I did it. This greatly upset me and I made my first bad mistake. I went out and did everything she accused me of.
After years of drug abuse, alcohol, fornication, etc., I ended up pregnant. And I chose to keep my baby and I got married three days before he was born. During this time, I had my son baptized in the Catholic Church, and he started showing much torment, and I actually could see evil in his eyes, and I could feel evil when I entered his bedroom. Levi was nine months old.
My marriage only lasted nine months and I had to go home to live with my mother who was in the middle of having a nervous breakdown. Really it was the manifestation of total demon possession. It was like watching parts of The Exorcist movie in real life. Yes, I knew about The Exorcist movie because my mother brought Levi and me when he was an infant with her to watch it.
I didn’t know the Lord as my Savior at that time and didn’t have the power to overcome evil. I felt the evil and its effects on my life but couldn’t do anything against it. I was full of fear, and had poor judgment and left my son with my mother many days while I went out drinking at the bar.
In this period of time the Lord started working in my heart drawing me close to Him revealing to me that He was the Creator of the universe. This was the first time I started getting interested in nature as I was seeking after Him. Even though I was still smoking pot I would spend many days outside writing inspirational thoughts, and the Lord used blue jays to draw my attention. To me the blue jay at that time was a sign of joy that there was to be a new beginning for me, a sign of a new life coming! I started thinking about the Lord being the Creator, and I asked my first husband if he believed in God. He made no comment, as his father was a Mormon.
When I was separated from Levi’s father, I ended up leaving my son with my mother because she would not allow me to raise him. She was always interfering. I got frustrated and I started drinking heavily and ended up pregnant again. Because I was afraid my son’s father would find out I was pregnant, I had an abortion. My ex accused me of being an unfit mother. I was afraid my ex would try to take my son away. Because of the guilt of all my sins, and my suppressing having an abortion, I went into serve depression and was under doctor’s care and on antidepressants. Around this time I asked the Lord to forgive all my sins, and the burden of guilt left me, and the depression started to lift.
I actually felt a divine change in my heart and I knew I was going to be walking into a new life. Even though I got saved I never was delivered from all the oppression where I could freely live my life without fear. I didn’t know the Word or the power that I had in being a Christian, so most of my life was the same.
I met a man at a bar and got married. I almost gave my son up to his father and the Lord intervened by my second husband wanting to marry me so I could keep my son. We were married and still I was involved in drugs and alcohol. I was still on anti-depressants and trying to get my life together the best way I knew how, but with little success. I am sure we loved each other, but still the marriage was not truly a scriptural one, but God used it on my behalf.
Because I had escaped my whole adolescence from being on street drugs and had to go to a psychologist, I realized that I was like a child with special needs having the responsibility of caring for a child who had special needs. I went to a priest for counseling, and he actually said to me that I shouldn’t expect a miracle, I am too messed up! This is when I left the Catholic Church, because to me they had nothing to offer.
Then a while later I was on anti-depressants and had much fear and had nightmares for a year. I had developed nightmares as a side effect from the medicine, and I had so much fear that I felt like I would actually lift up off the bed because of the demonic oppression. I met a lady in the laundry mat where we lived and she asked me if I knew Jesus. And I said no, that I knew Satan because of all the evil I was seeing in my life with my mother.
I went to church with her that night and they prayed the Lord would take away my fear, and that night was the first miracle I had ever received from the Lord. The nightmares actually left after having them for a full year! Because of this I thought I was in the Lord’s will. This fellowship had a pastor who had sex with all the women during counseling. My husband at the time gave the pastor permission to counsel me in the area of sex. He would tell you to keep the session between him and yourself and God but he couldn’t trust me because I would tell him that I told my husband what would happen during counseling.
Even though he tried to be intimate with me he never had intercourse with me as with the other women in the church. The husbands found out and his wife had him committed to a mental hospital. During this time he had led me in the sinner’s prayer on his bed, which was the first time a pastor ever prayed with me. He felt I was not saved because of all the problems I had coping with life. So the memory of the first pastor leading me in the prayer for salvation was bad. I’m glad that I got saved before that with the Lord Jesus leading me!
I started going to churches and bible studies, home fellowship meetings, etc., and I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Before my prayer language manifested I was trying to deal with a temper tantrum my son was having and watching Christian TV at the same time. And suddenly I began speaking out my prayer language. My son stopped what he was doing and stood up looking at me. I remember praying in the middle of the night and I could actually hear the prayer language in me like it was on a loud speaker, and the louder it got, the more my husband tossed and turned through the night.
Even though I had asked the Lord to forgive my sins and I started to walk with him, I still was drinking, smoking pot, and smoking cigarettes. I still had a lot of fear. I ended up getting divorced for the second time because I felt the Lord showed me that the marriage was not of him.
Then I was in a church for seventeen years that had much legalism, deception, division, backbiting, gossip, and control. I went faithfully and was wholeheartedly committed. I felt like the pastor deserted us because he left the area to have his meetings. I could have drove three hours but I didn’t feel led to go. The church split up and I never felt like I was planted in a body, or was able to trust any pastor since then, and that was close to twenty years ago.
I got convicted of my sinful lifestyle of drinking, drugs, cigarettes, etc., and in one hour the Lord delivered me of the craving of the marijuana and alcohol, but I still smoked cigarettes. I remember asking the Lord to forgive me because I was going to smoke a cigarette, and He said if you know it is wrong then you will be willful sinning and I need to repent of it. Right then I said, “yes, Lord”, and He completely delivered me of smoking even though I smoked since I was twelve years old!
After all this happened I started getting convicted that my second marriage was not scriptural and being so young in the Lord, I chose to stay with my husband and I turned my back on the Lord. That year I went back to smoking marijuana. But I never lost the Lord’s presence in my life. In one month I blew up the engine of our van, which wasn’t paid for, the clothes dryer stopped working a week after the warrantee was up, and I sprung the oven door. I knew if I didn’t get my life back with the Lord, we would be bankrupt. I knew I couldn’t leave my husband, so I prayed that he would leave me, and one week later he told me he wanted a divorce. And then I had to go back to living with my mother who was still not right.
I continued to go to church with my son, and I had much torment coming to me from my mother because I had to move back home with her. She gave me much persecution, and I ended up moving out on my own even though financially I was not able. My father helped me a lot without me having to ask for it.
My mother had to help me clean houses because I could not find proper care for my son. We fought constantly. I could not handle the demonic opposition from her and the persecution. It completely wore me out. I had to watch how much time I would spend with her. She constantly for four years came against my husband that I have now.
Around this time we went through an episode of demonic activity. My son got involved through school with a controversial teaching method called facilitated communication. It works like an Ouija board even though it was thought the child was pushing your hand towards the letters. While I was doing it with him with my mother present she started predicting what he would say, and this opened the door to divination.
This spirit came in and I was reading my son’s mind as the spirit was speaking to me while we were using the board. I got so involved in this that we both had changes in our countenance, and we were being controlled by this spirit of witchcraft. Finally the Lord showed me this was not of Him, and we stopped doing it, but he continued at school because they demanded it.
Around this time my son started having grand mall seizures. So I do not know if it was a result of my father dying that started him having them or his involvement with the occult during the use of facilitated communication.
The two times I had to go back home my parents wouldn’t let me discipline my son. They thought everything he did was cute and interfered terribly. The first time even though I wanted to live right I allowed myself to get frustrated and went to the bar. The second time I chose to live for the Lord and trusted Him. I continued to go to church and I believed that the Lord would deliver me of the situation I was in.
With all the demonic oppression coming against me through my mother I ended up in heated arguments constantly and I knew I was not overcoming and I was living in sin. The Lord found us a nice apartment where I was able to pay the deposit and first month’s rent in three payments. My father said if I moved out he wasn’t going to help me and I was making very little cleaning houses.
But soon after I moved my father helped me financially buying groceries, putting gas in the car, paying for my car insurance, and whatever he could do. I actually had to hide my utilities bills or he would pay them. They came over all the time for dinner and they watched my son while I worked.
Still I had such problems with my mother. Persecution was constant! She was always working against me. Whether it was demons or whatever, it was a constant battle, because I still needed her help either in helping me clean houses or to watch my son.
Then my father died and I lost it! I ended up leaving the church not intentionally but because I was spending so much time going out to eat with my mother and going shopping. She gave me a large chunk of my inheritance and I blew most of it. For one year I shopped and ran around with my mother not really having a home life and I started feeling wayward. I said this has to stop.
So I went to a church and met my husband. The first week that I met him he told me he had a burden for my son and that he was fasting and praying for him. Three months later we were married. The Lord had brought us together spirit to spirit and my husband was such a good father for my son and adopted him when he was twenty-one.
After my abortion and being in a legalistic church, my son and I developed an extreme fear of doctors. I walked many years not even going to a dentist battling many toothaches and infection and had many teeth extracted, developed high blood pressure, and ended up on medicine for social anxiety for over three years. It made me feel too drugged and I had panic attacks. They kept increasing the dosage so I chose to get off of it.
On top of all that I battle a lot of stress because of Levi’s behavior and condition, my one health problems, social anxiety, and post abortion syndrome for over thirty years.
I always had social anxiety, lack of confidence and nervousness and my first year, as a Christian didn’t help. So here I am. I’ve been saved and Spirit filled close to thirty-eight years, and been through much deliverance. I know God has called me to help hard cases, and my mother is one of the worse who has caused me much grief and heartache.
She has acted like my worse enemy talking against me to others and lying to me. She has driven me away even though I had tried to be her daughter until recently where it just hurts too bad to be with her. Then when she wounds me I withdraw from others.
I went back to church and met my husband that I have now. He came at a time where I felt I could not go on. I was so stressed out and fatigued because of my mother and my trial with my son. My husband adopted my son and his behavior started improving immensely. I have come a long way since our marriage. I am a lot better with having people over at the house going grocery shopping, eating with people, and taking the Communion of the bread and cup, where before I could not. I still battle a lot of fear, depression, mood swings, anger, jealousy, and problems with intimacy but nothing like before.
About a year after we were married my husband laid his hands on me and prayed the peace of the Lord upon me, and the fire of the Holy Spirit fell upon me, and demons that had been dormant started manifesting. My husband had never been involved in a deep deliverance session before, and the Lord showed him what to do to pray me through. This session lasted around eight hours. I felt demons snort through me and contort my countenance.
There were different ones that manifested speaking Italian, which I cannot speak. There were all kinds of manifestations. There was one that especially stood out. I fell on the floor and was in a fetal position like one in a mother’s womb, and a high pitch voice started manifesting saying, “Don’t, don’t, Mommy, don’t!” Over and over it said it getting higher and higher pitched and then it left. During this marriage, I came under severe demonic attack where I wanted to die and I cursed my life by inviting spirits of cancer to come in and take me. Now I continue to trust the Lord for deliverance and healing.
Even though I’ve battled much opposition from the enemy to be set free I’ve never given up on the faithfulness of the Lord to set us free. I’ve done my best to stay in the Word and to walk with Him, to try to fellowship with the saints the best I could, to worship Him through dance, to stand in the gap that the body of Christ through worship.
I still would do my best to get quiet with Him and write and encourage the body of Christ through my Internet e-list. The Lord has moved through me with the gift of healing to touch a lady’s life that was dying in a coma brain dead. And also I prayed over a man dying of cancer in a coma and God raised him up. If the Lord can use me to this intensity being under oppression, how much more free! I know I am a threat to the enemy and that is why he fights me so hard.
I spent over ten years with Levi having grand mall seizures, which terrified me, but I felt I had no choice because doctors would traumatize Levi and to take medication would require regular blood tests. Since then the Lord made a way where Levi was able to take medication and to trust the doctor with having blood tests.
What a breakthrough but still the stress is high because of the constant annoyance from his condition. It is very trying of my patience to constantly endure his persistence, his antics and loud noises, plus the embarrassment and feeling of helplessness when he acts up in public. Also having to endure even though I was exhausted from my own battles.
I know that the enemy is attacking to try to divide me from the body of Christ and I must overcome. To have victory one must have fellowship with the body of Christ and with the Lord. I might be able to worship Him and get still before Him writing, but I must also have fellowship with His body. As I continually get quiet before Him, He will do His part to show me secrets from His word that will unlock my total freedom. I stand on His promise that deliverance is His children’s bread, and I am going for a full loaf!
We’ve been together over twenty years. We haven’t had an easy life having an adult disabled son who battles autism and epilepsy, but God has been faithful to knit us together in His love and strength through it all. I know the Lord will set my son free and that he will have a mighty testimony and a mighty ministry setting the captives free.
I know God will speak through him the words that will confound the wise. In the natural he does not speak. All glory will go to the Lord because in the natural my son had brain damage at birth and has been though a lot of trauma, so there’s need of spiritual, physical, mental and emotional healing. As we know there is nothing too difficult for Him.
We have to keep our eyes on Him and His faithfulness. Deliverance is a walk and I have gone through several levels of deliverance over the years where I feel I am gradually coming out of that cage. I still battle fear of being around people and doing a lot of things, but I’ve come such a long way. I cannot get discouraged because I still battle so much and keep my eyes on Him and He will lead me through to the victory manifested in my life.
I know I have a powerful calling on my life and that is why the enemy fights me so hard. The Lord said to me “Peebles wobble, but they don’t fall down”. He said it in the middle of the night, and I know that’s the way it is. The enemy will try to knock me out but I will not stay down.
Now I am a lot happier about being alive when before I dreaded each day. I still am not totally relaxed and am not totally able to let go and let God have total control over my life and trust Him. But on the whole I am starting to feel like a new person. I am starting to really feel free where before I felt like a bird in a cage.
I know my testimony comes in layers as the Lord delivers me every step of the way. Yes, I could write a book. The Lord is not through with me. He has begun a good work and is faithful to complete it. The Lord is so faithful that even though I had much torment from the emotional abuse from my mother I was able to forgive her. She died in the Lord and He healed my heart when I think of her there are good thoughts. Thank you, Jesus, that He used me to lead both of my parents to His saving grace.
My father had a massive heart attack and I was able to pray with him the sinner’s prayer and he lived for three more years. He was able to come to church with me and he read the whole bible. In a matter of minutes I saw his countenance change from fear to peace.
In the heat of the battle God was always with me preserving my life. Yes, He has had me in the palm of His hand even before the foundation of the world He knew me. All things work together for our good. Yes, all things.
As time goes on the Lord reveals to me areas of bondage and the root cause of it. I realize that at the time the Lord was drawing me to Him preparing me to receive His saving grace my mother brought my son and me to watch The Exorcist movie and that is when my mother developed the state of possession she was in. This was the distraction he used to keep me from reaching out to Jesus.
Also I realized that both my son and I had birth trauma. Levi had the oxygen leave his brain because I had dry birth and he developed a hematoma on his head. Only God knows how long he went without water in the womb. I also had birth trauma where my mother’s umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and I went cross-eyed.
I got into all kinds of dangerous drugs that could have caused brain damage plus I developed alcohol poisoning for drinking straight whiskey. The oxygen was leaving my brain like my son. The enemy was after both of us. There had been a witchcraft curse upon our lives because my father had a satanic ritual done to take way back pain using candles and knife cutting.
You can see that the enemy had legal rights to come against us like he did. My son and my dad’s sister’s grandson both have severe brain damage leaving them both disabled. So we both had birth trauma and attack upon our brain with damage!
The bottom line is that because the Lord Jesus forever lives to intercede for us that no weapon formed against us shall prosper. Because God is for us no one can come against us and succeed. God is so faithful to manifest His promises of divine health and deliverance in our life. God sees us whole and I stand with Him and say that if the Son sets us free, then we are free indeed and Jesus has set us free!