Overcoming the Spirit of Heaviness through Faith (Part One)

by HGBM Contributing Author, Terra Kern

I understand the spirit of heaviness, but I also know it’s life changing when it’s exchanged for the garment of praise, so please let me encourage you. It’s very difficult when your father, the one who is supposed to be your protector, your safety net, your provider, and nurturer watching over and establishing your emotional wellbeing, hurts you. It can leave you traumatized with deep emotional scars, and this my soul knows very well, for I had a father like that, and it caused me to walk around clothed in a spirit of heaviness that I wasn’t even aware of. But the effects were deep-rooted.

First, my father, by a court order, ripped me away from my mom and siblings. Then he brought me to a new house and demanded I call his new wife my mom. But this woman was very abusive in every way imaginable. I was physically beat and battered, verbally berated and belittled, and therefore, emotionally bruised and broken. Where was my father when all of this was taking place? Oh, he was right there to apologize for what she did to me, right there to give me money to buy whatever my heart desired to make up for it. But he was never right there to raise a finger to make it stop or to help me. Never right there to assure me that I wasn’t wicked, that I did have worth, that I deserved to be loved, that I wasn’t stupid and good for nothing, and that I was actually wanted.

Unfortunately, we don’t even realize the deep-seated damage this does within us and that it even carries on into adulthood, buried at immeasurable depths into our subconscious mind and spirit. Naturally, when I was old enough to leave, I fled the miserable existence I had in that house and set out to make something of myself, telling myself that I didn’t need anyone, yet at the same time, craving to be loved. The conundrum was real. After setting out on my own, attempting to pull myself up by my bootstraps, if you will, I met a young man who was enamored with me. He told me all of the opposite things I was told growing up and I just could not help myself from falling in love with him. I dared to believe everything he said about me and that he really meant it. I felt like for the first time in my life, someone searched and looked into the very depths of my heart, saw everything in there, saw past the chaff to the valuable wheat, and deemed me lovable.

So, the day he asked me to marry him, I said yes. However, when that day came, I found myself in a raging battle. All of the negative things spoken over me all throughout my childhood warred with all of the positive things this man spoke into my life. I was ready to call the whole thing off. But instead, even though my palms were all sweaty, even though my heart was racing and I could only hear the blood reverberating through it in my ears, and even though my stomach was fluttering like I had swallowed a field of butterflies, just like getting ready to get on a fast-moving rollercoaster at an amusement park, I took the plunge.

At first, everything was complete perfection. I don’t recall ever being happier in my entire life. Then I became pregnant and my happiness even superseded that. But, after the baby was born, he began to hang out with his buddies and drink, staying out late and leaving me and our newborn baby all alone. This sent me into a freefall of dark despair. Maybe all of those things my stepmother had pronounced over me were true. What a mess my life was once again! I was heartbroken, crying my eyes out one night.

Come back on Thursday for Part Two of Terra's amazing story of testimony!