Transcript

Nichole: From Darkness to Light
Season 1: Episode 13

Carol: 0:10

Welcome to the God is Good Podcast, where we share stories of everyday people who have reignited their faith in Jesus and experienced remarkable life transformations. My name is Carol O'Brien, and I'm your host for this podcast. Before we begin today's episode, I want to share with you that this is a heavier episode than we've done in the past. It's a beautiful journey to the Lord, but it does include topics that may be hard for some listeners to hear. Because of its intensity, we've broken it into two parts. Please listen at your own discretion."Trust in the Lord with all your heart. On your own intelligence, do not rely. In all your ways, be mindful of him and he will make straight your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6. This is a popular scripture among our storytellers for good reason. It reminds us to cling to God in all aspects of our life. And when we do so, he'll hold us in the palm of his hand and guide us on the paths that are truly the right ones for us. For Nichole, our newest storyteller, these verses are a lifeline. Nichole's life was filled with hardship marked by abuse and neglect. Growing up under her father's fascination with the occult and horrific abuse, she felt lost and lacked strong guidance. Drawn to the same practices in an attempt to find understanding, she realized almost immediately she was inviting unwanted experiences into her life. Her struggles left visible, emotional, spiritual, and mental scars. Her road back to God was long, but a dramatic, unexpected experience marked a profound healing. Now, Nichole shares her story with others to teach them how to fully surrender to God, heal from trauma, and gain freedom from the evil that torments them. She even began a new ministry, Fullness of Joy, and has written multiple books. Please join me in welcoming Nichole to the podcast as we walk with her on her journey in this two part episode. Welcome, Nichole! Let's go ahead and get into your story. I know it's going to be a difficult one, but let's start with your faith foundation. Did you have a strong spiritual foundation and how did you view God?

Nichole: 2:44

My mom did not give her heart to the Lord until I was around 16, 15, 16. But my grandparents, her mom and dad, they were always in church. They were very faithful. So I did go to church with them some. I had an understanding of the Lord, who he was. I had more of a vision of him as a demanding God. Very punitive. And if you stepped outside the line, he was gonna beat you upside the head. I didn't really understand him or his character, so I did not have a relationship with him, and I only had a skewed view of who he was.

Carol: 3:17

Oh, that's interesting. I know that sometimes our perception of God is related to how we perceive our parents, especially our fathers. Is that something that's true for you?

Nichole: 3:29

I never really thought about what you're asking, what shaped my view of God? I had a really hard time trusting him because I did not have a trustworthy biological father, and I think that's where that played more into it. I think it was more my family was very legalistic. It was more about the do's and don'ts. So I think that's what kind of guided my idea of God, like that there was a set of rules and if you follow those rules, you were in God's favor. And if you stepped outside of those rules, then you were in big trouble. Where my relationship with my biological dad interfered with my relationship with God was actually after I gave my heart to the Lord.

Carol: 4:08

I know you had some challenging childhood relationships and some that were strong. Let's start with your mom. What was your relationship like with her?

Nichole: 4:17

I loved my mom and I was close to her, but, I don't remember a lot of my young years, so it's hard to say what that looked like. My mom got married when she was really young. She went straight from her parents' house as a teenager. I think she was 17 when she got married, and my biological dad abused her from the get go. He was very violent. And when she broke free from that marriage, I think she felt free for the first time in her life. So when I was young, she dated a lot. She went out a lot. She worked a lot. Sometimes she worked two jobs. My grandma helped raise me and when I was 12, my mom remarried and she's married to my stepdad. Now they've been married for 30 plus years. And what I've seen in that marriage was her creating the life that she always wanted. And she had my brother, and they had a very good family, the three of them. And from a 12 year old's perspective, I was on the outside looking in, so I got to watch my mom be the mom to my brother that I would've loved to have had. And that created a lot of bitterness and a lot of anger because I never felt like that that was the mom that I had. That was not the life that I was raised with. And instead of embracing it and becoming part of it, I always felt like I was outside of it because I was damaged and I couldn't fit into their family. And I only brought grief and rebellion and strife, and so that created a lot of division. As an adult, we've mended our relationship a lot and we are in a much, much better place now. But as a kid, there was a lot of pain and a lot of hurt.

Carol: 5:56

So it sounds like your relationship with your mom was good, but there was also some yearning there, something not quite complete for you. How was your relationship with your biological father?

Nichole: 6:08

I don't have any good memories of my biological dad. From the time I can remember, I just feared him and his anger and his wrath, and I did not have a good relationship with him at all. It was a relationship of fear. It was fear based. I don't have any memories of him ever playing with toys with me or... I just don't have any good memories of him. He was the type of person that was very narcissistic. If you were in his life, it was for what you could do for him. He was violent. He never physically that I can remember hit me but he sexually abused me. I was scared of him. He was also involved in the occult and witchcraft, and so that brought a whole'nother level of fear. He manipulated me saying that he could read my mind when I was a child, and as a small child, I believed that. So it was ingrained in me to fear him. He's deceased now, and up until the time of his death, even when he was bedbound, I remember just being afraid of him.

Carol: 7:08

So there's a lot there. Let's start with one thing. How old were you when you remember your father being involved in the occult?

Nichole: 7:21

My mom and biological dad got divorced when I was around three, three or four. He lived in Florida with his mom and dad, and she moved back to Indiana with her family and me, and he was granted visitation in the summer and every other Christmas. I can remember around the age of seven visiting. And that was when I met his new wife. So it would've had to have been from the previous summer to that summer that they got involved in the occult and witchcraft I don't know who introduced who. I don't know about that part, but I was around seven.

Carol: 7:54

And were these practices something that they brought you into as well?

Nichole: 7:58

Yes, there was ritualistic abuse, there was sexual abuse, there was blood rituals, there was killing of animals. I still don't have all of the memories. I may never, I've given that to God and I've told him if he wants them to come back, I'll walk through it with him. And if he doesn't then I'm okay with that. But I can just remember the house would be decorated. Even the wall hangings, the pictures on the wall would be wizards, dragons. It was just a very dark home. And my biological dad would sit at the kitchen table and he would make jewelry with crystals because he said that's what gave him power. And I remember him having get togethers in the backyard and doing bonfires and just talking about all this power that he had. So it was never a hidden thing. It was something that he was very, very open about and operated in.

Carol: 8:45

I know you mentioned you were only with your biological father for part of the year. Do you recall sharing anything that was happening at his house when you returned to your mom's house?

Nichole: 8:57

My biological dad ingrained in me that he could read my mind and if I even thought bad thoughts about him, he would kill me and my mom. So from the time he told me that, I never told anything, I never let anything slip, because I believe that he would know. So I can remember being back in Indiana and just telling myself,"Don't think bad thoughts. Don't think bad thoughts," because I thought even if I thought anything bad about him, that he would kill me and my mom, and I had no doubt that he would do that.

Carol: 9:25

So wanting to be really sensitive about this, Um, let's turn to the abuse. How old were you when it happened and how did it eventually stop?

Nichole: 9:38

So I know for sure it was from the ages of seven to nine. I do have a little bit of memories that it may have even started before my mom and biological dad got divorced, maybe when I was younger. I don't know that for sure. I also don't know 100% sure that it stopped at age nine, but I know it didn't continue past the age of 12. The way I got out of it had to have been God's mercy and God's grace because people don't just stop like pedophiles and abusers don't just stop. When he was abusing me, he had his own home and he was married and he had his own space. Once he moved back in with his mom and dad, I think it was because he didn't have access to me in that way anymore. And he kind of transitioned into outlets online that consumed his time and his mind. And so thankfully it kind of diverted away from me. I think he just didn't have access.

Carol: 10:32

There was a question I wanted to go back to and ask about the occult. You had exposure to it and combined with the abuse. I'm going to ask this as gently as I can. Did you experiment with the occult yourself?

Nichole: 10:47

I've always had an issue with repressing memories. I started that from as soon as the abuse started. I can remember being abused now and laying on the bed and looking at the ceiling and counting. And as I was counting, I was repressing. As a child, I didn't know that's what I was doing. So as a teenager, I started having flashbacks of a lot of this abuse. And some of it never went completely away. I was never able to suppress at all. But I started having some flashbacks of the ritualistic abuse and him being into the occult, and I got really curious. And so I went to the library and I checked out some books. One of the books I checked out was the Satanic Bible. I brought it home, and as soon as I brought it home I started experiencing things. I had already experienced like darkness, but this was a level that I had not experienced before I was inviting it into my life. And so I knew immediately I can't open that. I took it back and I never got it again. I never practiced witchcraft. I would have never practiced it, but I was curious about it. I was very, very drawn to horror movies, the movies with the occult in them, witchcraft, vampires, witches, all of that. I was very drawn to that and I didn't understand why. I was inviting it in because of what I was watching, but I didn't understand that at the time. I thought,"oh, I'm okay because I'm not practicing it."

Carol: 12:05

So you were starting to experience dark things and then you backed away from it. Were there any other events or experiences you had as a teenager that influenced you? What were your teenage years like?

Nichole: 12:20

As a child and a teenager, it was very difficult. I hated myself. I was incredibly shy. I had headaches. I had stomachaches. I did not fit in. I didn't have a big group of friends. I felt like everybody hated me, everybody was laughing at me. I just wanted to disappear. For most of my life, I just wanted to blend into the wall and disappear, and nobody see me. So I would go to school and if the teacher called on me, even if I knew the answer, I would be saying,"Oh, don't call on me. Don't call on me." And then, and I would say, I don't know even if I knew. I was such an underachiever. So I got married the first time at age 16, which was not unusual for my family. The women in my family got married very young. It was never on our radar to go to college and get a career. It was get married, have babies, and that's what you did in life. So I got married and the marriage was very, very violent. There was domestic violence probably within six weeks of getting married. I got pregnant after we got married and, probably, looking back, had postpartum depression. Depression, PTSD, and I was also in this violent marriage and I was at my wits end. In the meantime, my mom and stepdad were getting really faithful to their faith and they were in church and they were growing and they continued to ask me and my husband at the time to come to church. There was something in me that said, you know, there's nothing else that's gonna work like it it is God or nothing else. And I know now that was God pulling my heart. And so we decided, my husband at the time, decided to go to church. We set up an appointment to talk to the pastor and he talked to us for a while and we decided, yes, this is what we need to do. And so I surrendered my life to the Lord. I was living for the Lord. And I had a community of faith-filled believers. But I still never felt like I fit in. It was kind of like the same thing with my mom and my stepdad. It was like I was on the outside looking in. And if they really knew me, they wouldn't accept me, was the thought that I had. And I felt dirty and I felt ashamed and I still struggled with depression and I still struggled with all of the mental illness. But I did have a relationship with God. I started reading the Bible. I started studying the Bible. I started praying. I would hear the Lord's voice, and so there was peace in that.

Carol: 14:36

Oh my goodness. Such a young age to get married. I find it remarkable at that time that you were beginning a relationship with God as well. Can you tell us more about that? Were you on fire for Jesus?

Nichole: 14:48

I feel like at the very beginning, I was on fire for God. I was getting in the Word, I was devouring and I was going to Bible studies. But then my life wasn't changing. The depression wasn't changing. And because of that and my marriage, my ex-husband backslid, the violence started getting worse. It got way worse before I got out. And I think that I got my eyes off of the Lord and then my fire went out. I've had some ups and downs along the way.

Carol: 15:17

Yes, I understand the ups and downs, because you had a little glimmer of hope, didn't you, at that point?

Nichole: 15:24

Yes, I divorced my first husband and there was infidelity and a lot of different things. And I remarried. And once I remarried, that's when I went to college. I got my degree. But I could only practice for a little bit because I was so mentally damaged myself. I was in and out of therapy for myself. I always knew that I wanted to help people because I knew how bad I had suffered and I knew how difficult my life was, and therapy had never really helped me. But in my mind, I didn't know another way to help people, and so I thought the answer would be I become a therapist. And the Lord had been speaking to me about helping other people. And I would think, but Lord, I'm in such a mess. I can't, how can I help anybody else? I can't even help myself. But the only thing that kept coming back to me was, well, therapy'cause when you talk about mental illness, there is no other help in my mind. That's what I was thinking at the time. There is no other help. So it's what led me down that route to think I wanna help other people because I've had a heart for, especially, kids who've went through abuse. It did not turn out well because I had not healed, and so I wasn't able to practice very long.

Carol: 16:32

Let's return to when you said you experienced darkness. Can you describe these experiences? Did you have any understanding of what was happening?

Nichole: 16:41

So as a child, the way that it presented is I never felt alone. Even if I was in a room that was completely by myself, I felt like I had eyes watching me all the time. I couldn't physically see eyes, but I felt like someone was always standing behind me, breathing down the back of my neck. I would be in complete and utter terror. That's probably not even the right word. It goes deeper than terror. I could not sleep at night because as soon as the sun started going down, it started getting dark. I would have this overwhelming fear and terror overtake me. I would feel like somebody was watching me. I would have to sleep in bed, like with my grandma. I couldn't even sleep in a bed across the room from her. I couldn't be in a room alone by myself. I would feel like there was a presence in the room. I don't think I saw things as a child, but as a teenager, I definitely saw what looked like people walking through the rooms. It wasn't all the time, but I would see it. Sometimes they would look like full on people, like just walking through the room. I would see glimpses of what I called shadows. They looked like people, but like a person's shadow walking through the room. As a teenager, I would sometimes have my bed shaken. Well, that happened as an adult too. Like somebody would shake my bed. I would be laying there and there was nights like it would shake for hours. Like somebody was just in there shaking it on and on. I would hear clawing on my wall. I would hear people walking. I can trace it back to childhood for sure.

Carol: 18:02

So you were having terrifying experiences. How were these impacting you physically?

Nichole: 18:08

In my early twenties, I really started declining physically and mentally and emotionally. And I started getting further from God. I don't wanna say that I ever walked completely away from him, but I was not on fire for him at all. I wasn't fully submitted to him in any way, shape, or form. I got to the point where I did not understand why God wasn't setting me free. Because I knew he could."God, I know you can, but I don't know why you won't." So it was like he was withholding something from me and that caused some bitterness and some hurt and some rejection and some anger. It was a progression. It was, it was a definite progression. Um, my twenties and thirties were very difficult and it progressively, day by day, week by week, year by year, physically got worse. Mentally I was worse too, but physically I was gaining a ton of weight. At my highest. I was, I know I was way past 274 because I quit weighing myself. And so physically it was taking a heavy toll on my body and it progressively got worse and worse for sure. So around 2020, I was very physically sick. I was going back and forth to the Mayo Clinic. I had this really weird breathing issue going on that if I talked I would cough. And they couldn't really nail down what was going on. I'd been to tons of specialists for different diagnosis that I had over the years'cause I also had a lot of physical sickness.

Carol: 19:32

Did the COVID shutdown make your physical symptoms worse, do you think? Or your mental symptoms?

Nichole: 19:38

I had already had the lung issue before Covid hit, so I knew it wasn't Covid. Then the Mayo Clinic shut down. So I was having all these breathing issues and I couldn't even go to the doctor. Now fear definitely came in. It was a very scary time because it was the weirdest thing that I was experiencing. So, for example, if my husband decided to go put something in the oven one day, it could trigger it and I would feel like I was smothering and I couldn't breathe. And I would take a breathing treatment and an inhaler just to get it under control. There were times I would almost have to be rushed to the hospital because it was so bad. So I don't think that the shutdown had much to do with it, except that it did bring in more fear and I was just so tired. I already was not going out. I mean, I didn't have friends. I wasn't going out. I wasn't going around people. The only people that I visited was my mom and stepdad, and I would go stay at their house and spend a few days at their house. I was in such chronic pain that I couldn't even wear blue jeans. If somebody just touched me, I would scream in pain because it hurt so bad. I can remember when I would try to visit a church here and there. And, you know, at church, people want hug and it would hurt so bad. I felt like someone had just beat me and I would bruise. My skin hurt, my body hurt, my eyes hurt. I was just, to my wits end. I'm like, Lord, I cannot keep living like this physically or mentally. I also was being bombarded with thoughts of suicide. Over the years, that got worse and worse and worse. First it was a few whispers here and there. Then it was every single day, all day long,"Your family would be better if you were dead, you could just go be with Jesus and just go rest." And so it was all of it. I feel like mentally that I was almost at a breaking point. I don't feel like my body could have held out much longer, and I don't think that my mind could have held out much longer.

Carol: 21:22

So I hate to leave our story here, Nichole, but I think this might be a good time to pause. Thank you for sharing your journey this far. I know it's not been an easy one, and I know there's still a lot more to come. For instance, what was going on with your medical health and what were these dark experiences and how did you gain freedom from them? Friends, please be sure to join us next time because there's a tremendous amount of Nichole's journey left to share, especially her transformation from lukewarm to on fire for Jesus. And if you would like to become involved in our movement either to tell your story, or to support us, either financially or by liking and sharing this podcast, please be sure to visit our website to learn how. And, in the meantime, friends, remember God is good.