Leaving the Occult and Finding Healing in Jesus
Trigger Warning: The occult, dissociative identity disorder
I grew up in the occult.
I grew up under a different name. I grew up in a family that was not biologically related to me. I grew up as a kid with one foot in church — one foot in Christianity. Our family was the “normal Christian family”. I was homeschooled with my two brothers. We grew up “absolutely perfect”. No rebellion, no talking back, and no fighting. In the daytime, I lived in my normal homeschooled Christian life and had no awareness of it until my teens.
But at night, in the dark, there was a whole other world. I was being taken to rituals. Satanic ritual abuse is where they control, manipulate, and program people in fear, torture, and pain. I grew up with one foot in darkness. The duplicity was always so shocking to me.
I started asking God questions and I began to question the person I was my whole life. So I started asking Him, “Who am I? What is this life I am living? What is this life? I can sense that there’s more going on here.”
In my early high school English courses, I fell in love with words, and I started finding this was my release for things I couldn’t explain. I began writing poetry. But then I realized that my poems were talking about things that I didn’t know about. And they were going into different handwriting, and they were being signed by different names.
I knew that I was fragmented. I knew I was broken. The poems were my first clue.
I was then led to this Christian psychologist and she said, “You are way too far beyond me, I deal with multiplicity, I deal with dissociative identity disorder, but when you add in the occult and all this demonic, I don’t know how to deal with this. I know this couple in Calgary who just started doing inner healing and deliverance ministry. Can I give you their contact?”
So instead of going back to the town I grew up in, this couple here in Calgary had huge hearts, and they had a revelation from God to minister to me and to bring freedom. I later found out that they were praying for me before I came to them, and they were praying under the old name that I had. And one night, God stopped them and said, “Don’t call for that person, call for Rachel.” And that very night, I had picked up the phone and called them saying, “I will take you up on your offer and come stay with you.”
At this point, I had no trust in me at all. I had been told so many lies, I had so much distrust, and I was at the end of my rope, so I said yes. I came and stayed with them for the summer.
Jesus just unravelled everything. He took apart my system. And if you know the dissociative world, anyone who has more than a few parts, a few splits, and alters has a system. I had a system that was very in control and very resistant to God. Not all of them were happy that I was there and was looking for freedom.
This is how God calls us, and for me, the scripture of “He calls us by name” became very literal. When He calls you by name, it’s as though everything inside you, no matter how resistant, has to say yes. He called me through everything, through the muck, the mire, the ugliness, through all the false identity. He called me by name, and I heard it.
I had to let every old structure in me fall. I had to rebuild foundations. I had to grow up again. I went through all the phases and He walked me through everything. It was a war. It was beyond anything I’d ever seen, but the interesting thing about a war is that when Jesus is in it, He always wins.
This couple stuck with me through thick and thin. And they said, “God told us we’re to see you through, and we’re going to see you through.” And so there were many attempts to distract and to manipulate and to take this journey of deliverance. It may have felt impossible at times, but nothing is impossible with God. The most complicated situation, He can unravel with just one word.
There would have been no way that I could walk this out on my own. I needed people who would stand with me through everything and who knew how to hear God over everything else because the enemy can scream really loudly sometimes. This couple became my spiritual parents and we are still very close, now 22 years later.
I want to be able to share, especially with those in darkness, that healing is possible and that Jesus can do anything if you say yes to Him. There is absolutely nothing that He can’t do.
My purpose, I found, is first to just be His daughter. I had to come to realize that I’m God’s daughter first. God has promised that He leaves the 99 to find the one. And I know that I was the one. And He went to all lengths to get me out.
This is just a glimpse of Rachel’s journey from Episode 14 of our ‘Can We Ask You This?‘ podcast. Thank you, Rachel, for sharing your story! If you’d like to share your own story or connect with us, send us an email!
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