"Kate, you mustn't cry. You have to be strong now. Be a brave girl and help your  mum, she needs you now." I was seven years old when my grandmother told me to grow up and fill an adult role. My Father had just left home and I was crying in the hallway while my mother was looking after my little sister. I was the third child and the first daughter. My parents' marriage was already in trouble when I came along. My father was a womanizer, alcoholic, and totally irresponsible. But he did love me and I adored him. When he was at home I followed him around like a puppy. He called me his "Little Princess". My grandmother used to say that I had the saddest blue eyes she had ever seen. I was sad for even as a little girl I longed for the fulfilment of my father's love. Little did I know how this loneliness and sorrow would precipitate years of a chain of events. My world whirled around me. I had no idea of the horrors and the happiness that could come my way. It certainly "conditioned" me for years of abuse and control. I was crying when he entered my room "Kate, I have to go away for a very long time, I may not see you again, but I want you to know that you are my princess and that I love you very much" he said to me as he held me and cried.

"Please don't leave me, I don't want you to go," I sobbed. Then he walked out the door and took one last look at me and walked out of my life. My world fell apart. Who was going to love me and tell me how pretty I was? Who was I going to love? I felt really special when he was around, he made me feel that way. I felt an empty hole inside.

When my father and mother forsake me then the Lord will take care of me. 

My Turbulent Teens

                                             Puberty hit me and nobody warned me. Boys started noticing me and I liked it. My life started to change, I learnt to survive. I had no one to help me grow up and no one to protect me. I hated my father. I used to race home every day after school just in case he turned up. I had this longing and belief that one day he would come home, after all, I was his princess and he did love me. No one told me differently. Wasn't I worth a phone call? Maybe he was dead. I guess my mother was trying to survive the best way she could, but I felt abandoned by her too. She kept telling me I was just like my father. I didn't know what that meant because I didn't remember what he was like,  but she didn't like me.

While she was away "coping" with her pain, I was learning the price of growing up into a woman. I was twelve when Mr. Robinson and his mother moved into the house behind us. He was fat, bald and had a big belly and a wide gap in his teeth. He would mow our lawns for my mother and he would ask us to run errands for his mother. We didn't mind because we got paid for it. Eventually, he started baby-sitting for us when my mother would go out. He started coming into my room at night when I was asleep and wake me up. "Kate, I need to talk to you," I knew what that meant. He would carry me into the lounge, he would place me on his knee and put a blanket over us and start to fondle my newly formed breasts. I was scared, but powerless to stop him. He said he would hurt me if I told anybody, so I  learnt to pretend that it wasn't really happening. I would pretend that I was safe in my father's arms. I would make my mind go off to other places as he started exploring  my body, Sometimes he would make my brothers and sister go to bed and keep me up so that he could sexually abuse me. I felt shame and I couldn't tell anybody, because there was no one to tell. I felt trapped. What could I do? He said that no one would believe me, because he was a Baptist Elder and he would say that I was lying. He  told my mother that I was very promiscuous for my age and that I needed to be  watched. She believed him. I wish I had known where my dad lived, I would have run away and tried to find him. I had a childhood of survival with no walls or boundaries built into my young life, only  a strong sense of survival. My parents were too busy with their own pain to teach me how to build up walls of preservation. I didn't know who to let in and who to keep out. I was a fish ready to take the right bait. I started High School and I hated it I had changed a lot. I was angry, and rebellious, but still very naive. Boys asked me out but  I never went because I didn't know what they wanted from me and I never felt good  enough. No one knew I felt that way because I had an outgoing personality. A new boy came to our school. He was English and he looked like Cliff Richard's. He really  liked me. He was sending me letters and kept begging me to go out with him. The  more I said no, the more intense he became, he said he loved me. That did it, no one ever said that to me before, only my dad the day he left. He asked me to the movies. I knew he was going to kiss me so I asked my girlfriend to teach me how to kiss. We practiced on our arms all afternoon, and I was ready for the big moment. We didn't  get to see the movies. He asked if we could call into his place to get a jacket. His  parents weren't home. He started kissing me. He asked me if I was a virgin. I didn't  know what that was, I thought it had something to do with the Virgin Mary, so I said  no. We started kissing and all the practicing paid off. I WAS GOOD. But it didn't stop there, he kept going. I couldn't get away, he started doing things to me that Mr. Robinson did. I was scared. He said it was alright because people who really love each other do this. After he had finished with me, he walked me home. I felt ashamed and dirty and I hated him. He kept telling me that he loved me and it was all right  we would always be together.

That night, Mr. Robinson came over to "baby sit" and he  started on me too. I started smoking. I guess I am grown up now. My mother caught me. I didn't care  when I went back to school on Monday, John looked at me differently and so did the rest of our crowd. I felt shame. I was sent outside the headmasters office because I  had smart mouthed the teacher. While I was sitting there I heard two of John's  friends talking about the girl he had "taken" on the weekend. I found out that there had been a bet on to see who would be the first to "take" me. I ran home from school. I was so ashamed, embarrassed and angry  I hated  living at home, my brother had come home to live too and I didn't like him. My  mother was out, when my brother, who was on drugs at the time, decided he also would like a piece of the pie and came into my room and raped me. He said he would kill me  if I told anyone. Who could I tell? who would believe me? Who would care anyway? I ran away , a social worker got hold of me and took me to her home to  live. She treated me like one of her own kids. I started to feel good about myself and I started having fun. I felt safe. Her daughter Debbie, was my age and we went to a lot of social functions together. She taught me how to dress with style. I liked who I was becoming .

                                             After a year I went back home and I still hated it. Things had changed. I  was sixteen, the sixties were in full swing. I had no direction for my life and I was  loaded with a lot of rebellion and anger. A girlfriend and I were on our way to the movies when these two cool guys pulled up in a Mark 1 Zephyr. They came to the movies with us and we went to a coffee lounge ( no McDonalds in those days) I really liked John but I didn't let him know. He asked for my phone number but I wouldn't give it to him. However, my girlfriend gave it to him, after he dropped me off home, and took her home. He kept ringing me and sending me letters. I eventually started going out with him but I refused to sleep with him.

They were exciting times. We went to parties, stock cars, beach parties and the speedway. Five months later I slept with him after a party. I got pregnant. He was seventeen and I was sixteen. We were both scared. We told our parents. My mother slapped me around and called me a "slut". John's parents shipped him down to the South Island. I didn't feel shame. I belonged to someone who loved me and made me feel the most loved person alive. He was so romantic. He showered me with gifts and sang me love songs that touched my heart more than Cliff Richard's ever did. I got the lot with him, love letters in the sand, poetry, dancing and stock cars, what else would a girl want. Now I had this baby inside me that I could love and protect and it was from a man I was so in love with.

For the first time in my life the emptiness was gone. Both John's parents were alcoholics and I only ever saw them drunk or with a hangover, but they did accept me, and drinking was very much part of the sixties, we always carried a dozen in the boot of the zephyr. I was seventeen year old bride. I wished my dad was able to give me away at my wedding, but instead my brother walked me down the isle of the catholic church. The mother of the groom was crying, I think mum was happy to get rid of me somehow. One of John's friends came up and kissed me to congratulate me and John decked him, saying, "Don't you ever lay a hand on my wife mate, no body touches her."

So I became a bride in 1967 and I was so happy that I belonged to the most  handsome man in the whole world. I knew that he would protect me because he would beat up any guy that even looked at me, wolf whistled or mad any comment towards me, it's gotta be love, I don't know any person who would protect me that way.

We moved in with John's parents, we still went out a lot but John's drinking got heavier, and as  I started to show my pregnancy more, John lived more recklessly. He bought himself a bike and came and gave me a kiss. He had been drinking. "Darling, Wayne and I are going up north for the weekend on our bikes, starting tonight".

"Please don't go, I don't want to be left alone" I cried. He lost his temper as he had done many times before, but this time he couldn't stop, I fell over and was crying in a heap. Usually, at  this stage he would realize what he had done and start crying and begging for my forgiveness, but this time he just kept decking and kicking me in the stomach. He then walked out with his cousin for their trip. His mother came in and told me not to be too upset with him, she helped me to bed and sat with me until I fell off to sleep. The next  morning, I was in so much pain all over my body, I had wet the bed so badly. I waited until John's mother went to work before I got up. I rang the doctor because I felt so bad. I walked up the hill to his surgery but I was so embarrassed because I kept  wetting myself. Little did I know that my waters had broken. The doctor took one look  at me and called an ambulance and told me that my baby was coming. A couple of hours later, and very much alone except for the doctor and nurse, my son Derek was born. I heard him cry once and then everyone was rushing around and they took him away. I never saw his face, the doctor told me that he had died. They later told me that they had buried him with an old man. I was never allowed to grieve for Derek, and nobody wanted to talk about it, it was better left alone, I pretended that it never  happened. They told me to get on with my life and have another baby.

My marriage was short lived, I came home and caught John in bed with another woman, he beat me up pretty badly and left me. I never saw him again, just like my dad. He would have  been proud of me marrying someone just like him, someone who could walk away and  never look back. Is this how it is? Do guys have this much power over a woman? I hated men, but who cared. I went back home to my mother but that was short lived, I went flatting with a group of girls.

                                   I became a full blown hippie, long hair, long dresses, flower power, ban the bomb, the whole works. I decided I would never love anyone again, and I was going to become as good as any guy at what I did. I bought myself a set of drums and decided that I was going to be the first and best female drummer in the world and prove that anything a guy could do I could do just as well. I played their game I used to make guys fall in love with me and then I would drop them, unfortunately I hurt some really nice guys.

The emptiness inside me was indescribable it wouldn't go away. I got into drugs, spiritualism, nightclubs, anything going I was into it , I was reckless with my life but  I was scared at the same time.

                                   I Finally found love. I met this guy called Keith, I felt safe being his friend because he was gay and we were good friends. We popped a lot of pills together and smoked dope, we were so cool. Around this time I had enough of life, I couldn't see much point going on, so I took a cocktail of pills, I started walking down  the main street waiting for a car to hit me, but nobody would play ball with me. I ended up in hospital having my stomach pumped out. I went back home to live for a couple of weeks, Keith used to pick me up on his bike and we would go to a "pot party" I had a massive void that could not be filled, I was searching for something that I  couldn't find, something to take the emptiness away. One day Keith and said that  heroin was the coolest, it makes you rise above all the negative feelings. He came to pick me up and we headed off to try some heroin but it started to rain heavily that we had to stop and take shelter under a shop verandah. Under the same verandah, there  were three Aussie guys preaching to their hearts content, well, I started telling them a  thing or two about the "real world". One of them turned to me and said "Kate, God loves you" and proceeded to tell me things about myself that not a soul on this planet  knew. I was shocked and angry. I said "How do you know my name, and how do you know these things about me"? He said "I don't know you but God does, and I am  telling you as He is telling me." I called him a liar and in no uncertain terms told him where to go. He told me that they had only been in New Zealand for a few days and that they were christians and over here to do some street witnessing, telling people about Jesus. I told him where to go and Keith and I rode off into the sunset,

Not quite, it was still raining cats and dogs. We ended up at Keith's parents place which was just around the corner because the wind, thunder and lightening was really bad and it was impossible to ride the bike in it. His parents were born again christians and  I didn't trust them, they were too nice. I liked them but I didn't want them preaching at me. It rained solid for three whole days, my body was screaming for drugs and   neither Keith or I had any on us, I was agitated, to put it mildly, I was a total write off. Keith's parents knew what was going on and they took turns kneeling at my bed praying me through. I don't remember much about those three days but I do remember them crying out to God for me. On the Sunday, I went to church with them. I put on my false eyelashes, teased my hair a little, put on Keith's leather jacket and went off to the first Protestant church I had ever been in. I didn't hear much of the man's preaching but what I saw changed my life.

Standing beside the man preaching was another man, only, there was a purity about him, he had the lovliest face but it was his eyes that struck me. They were so full of love, compassion and acceptance. He was staring at me. I started to cry, then sob from a well deep within. My eyelashes started  to drift down my face and my eyes were black from all the makeup, my face was a mess but it was nothing compared to the mess I was feeling inside, I felt used and dirty. I knew I had met Jesus and I gave my heart to Him that day. I was clean and I felt new, I had never felt like this before, I was so in love with Jesus, I told everybody I met, whether I knew them or not. I wanted other people to know Him too. I went down the pub to tell my friends, I asked Jesus to stand outside because I didn't think He would like being in there (like He didn't know what was going on outside the church and I didn't want to educate Him). His Presence was so real to me in those early days, so intense. I went back to the street corner to tell those Aussie guys that I knew Jesus but I never saw them again, one day they will know. When I look back, I can see how God in His mercy reached into my wretched life and gave me His love.  God was amazing to me, he showered me with His presence time and time again and saturated me in His love. I guess I took it for granted that it would always be this way  but God knew what I needed at the time, every time I spent time in His Presence, it  was like this warm blanket of love would envelope me. Everywhere I went I would talk about Jesus to anybody,I wanted everyone to know that He was so real. I would talk to  people on the buses, at work, I would even go into the pubs and grab the microphones. People would think I was going to sing but I would tell them how much Jesus really  loved them. What I didn't count on was an enemy trying to steal my life from me. I loved the sense of being clean and pure and no one was going to take that from me.

 

Isaiah 54v4

Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed.
Neither be disgraced, for you
Will not be put to shame;
For you will forget the shame
Of your youth
And will not remember the reproach
Of your widowhood anymore.

Lot's of guys felt it was God's will for me to marry them but I wasn't going to let anyone take away what I was feeling. I was nineteen when I became a christian.... and went to work in a place called TEEN HAVEN it was an off shoot of Teen Challenge. One of the counsellors fell in love with me and told me I was to marry him. I said nope...dont ever want lose what I have got in Jesus . He waited seven years before I agreed to marry him. He went to bible college and I headed to a bible college in the other direction.

I married Tony, he was now an assistant Pastor, we married when I was twenty off six, we had three fine sons. I was determined to be a good mother and worked hard at it. My youngest son was one year old when things started to go terribly wrong.

Tony had his own business as well as being in the ministry and he was away a lot. He  was good to me, he never abused me in any way in the five years we were married, yet one afternoon he came home and he was strange. I had just put the three boys down for their afternoon sleep and I was in the bedroom ready to take a nap, he came running toward me, jumped on me and had his hands around my throat, it wasn't him, he looked strange, I knew he was going to kill me. I cried out to God and the next minute, a twelve year old boy from and he left, he never came back to me next door walked into my bedroom and asked him what he was doing. He looked at the boy then at me as my husband. He walked out and never looked back, never heard from him, no support like he never existed. that was seventeen years ago. I don't know what happened but I did find out that he was visiting sauna parlours and was taking drugs.

                                   I met Dean and married him, he was the love of my life, I adored him. He was a businessman, he was In your face handsome, tall dark hair and hazelgreen eyes. While I was feeling rejected and worthless, this knight in shining armour came magically into my life and none of it made sense. I loved him so much and thought we would be together forever. He was the most attentive, most loving husband, we had a lot of fun. We went into business together and we took our staff out every Friday night for dinner and Dean and I went out Saturday nights. Sunday belonged to the family and we had amazing times at the beaches and long walks in the bush...I loved life and I loved being married to him. He was a sex addict and he was having affairs with several of our staff and the crunch came when I decided to clean our bookshelf and I found a letter to him from the worship leader at our church, they were having an affair.

I didn't want my marriage to break up but when his guilt of being caught got the better of him, he beat me up and one of my sons went to protect me and was kicked unconscious. I took him to our christian doctor and he gave me an ultimatum, he said he will expect my answer by the end of the week. He said I have to choose between my husband and my kids but I can't have both. He said whichever way I choose will be pain for me, there was no choice . Dean moved out that night and took all my business funds and moved in with another woman. We never saw him again. He didn't want to see his son again. I never gave up hope. I believed that he would one day change and come home. I waited for six years for him and it was the hardest time I still loved him, but didn't see him again.

For the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, Like a youthful wife when you were refused.

My husband got another girl pregnant and went for a divorce.

I started going to a new church and I clung to an older couple who took me on as a daughter and were wonderful to my kids. What I didn't notice was I was becoming dependent on them. They ended up controlling my every move. They told me in prophecy that I was to marry this man they believed God had chosen for me because I couldn't choose a man . Had'nt my past proven that . If I trusted God , then he would bring the best for me and the boys. It was a nightmare, I didn't love the man and I went along with it. A week after moving to Australia , and into the marriage I discovered that my new christian husband was a paedophile. It was my sons he wanted. No one would believe me, it took six years to prove it even though I only lived with him around six weeks. God did set me free but now I had four marriages behind me. I searched for love and never found it.

What I did discover was that I had married four men who were from alcoholic parents. They were saved, except the first one, but they had never allowed Jesus to heal the mess of their hearts, they saw me as the answer to their pain. I totally forgive them and pray for them that God will bring them to a right relationship with Him and heal their wounds.

I am not bitter. I have worked through the rejection and the pain knowing that God will bring me through as He has promised.

I have proven that He is truly a Father to the fatherless.

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