My Healing Story: An Inspiring Story of Hope, Healing, and Restoration: An Inspiring Story

By Darlene J. Wegner

My Healing Story: An Inspiring Story of Hope, Healing, and Restoration is a remarkable memoir of a courageous woman who takes you on a breathtaking journey of living life as a bipolar. The devastation of her childhood and shocking details of her past will, at times, bring you to tears. In the next moment, you will be laughing at her spe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Aug 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640889125

Book preview

Preface

The reasons for writing this memoir are many. First, it has been very therapeutic for me to write about the progressive stages of my healing emotionally. I love to write, and therefore, I have fulfilled a passion of mine by writing this book. Since the age of ten, I dreamed of writing a book. God spoke to me clearly in May 1990 that I was to be a speaker and writer. How prophetic those words have become. God is so good to give us the desires of our heart as we delight in Him.

Secondly, it was written to encourage the churches be more involved in social issues such as pornography addictions within the walls of our churches. No longer can we pretend it doesn’t exist with Christians. Sadly, it does. It is a cancer that is infecting our land and wounding our children. God wants to bring healing and restoration to the perpetrators as well as the victims of molestation. I refuse to believe the lie that once a child molester, always one! With Jesus, there is always hope! God wants to heal the church by un-wrapping the grave clothes of shame, fear, and guilt that plague so many of us victims and those addicted to pornography. As the grave clothes come off, we shall see an army of Christians ready for battle because they will know who they are in Christ and the shame of their past will be vanquished.

As my inner child struggled so much to survive while I was attending Faith Community Church in Ontario, a woman one day told me she was musing before the Lord and asking Him why molestation victims suffer so much? Why do they have such a hard time overcoming? God’s reply to her was very profound and thought-provoking. It is because the church is treating the issue as if it was a firecracker, and in reality, it is an atom bomb! How true. Molestation damages the soul of a child. It takes years of hard work to restructure the personality. We take the path of least resistance, which will take us out of our pain. We commit suicide or succumb to illnesses due to the psychosomatic issues of un-forgiveness, anger, and bitterness.

Many child molesters have themselves been molested as children. Without therapy, they too, will repeat the cycle of sin that was committed against them. Pedophiles and child molesters are just as much victims of the pornography industry as the children who were molested!

Thirdly, I wrote this book to help change our legal system. The one act of my father’s molestation of me in the privacy of my parent’s bedroom when I was five years old was nothing compared to the humiliation I was subjected to when I was seven years old in a Los Angeles courthouse. It was clearly a rape of my soul. My dad spent eighteen months in prison. I have spent a lifetime trying to recover from the trauma of my day in court. When will we begin to protect and defend the children rather than the criminal? It seems our legal system is turned around. Funds are desperately needed for victims needing outpatient therapy. Perhaps we could channel our tax money, which is supporting the National Endowment of the Arts and direct them toward this cause!

Lastly, these men and women need rehabilitation in prison. Only Jesus can bring lasting change in a person’s life. These men and women need Jesus. They don’t need drugs and pornography to fill their minds while incarcerated. It is common knowledge that pornography flows freely in the jails. Can you imagine how the criminal mind is fueled to commit even more crimes once he or she is set free from a penitentiary to enter society?

Celebrate Recovery was founded in 1991 by John Baker at Saddleback Church in Orange County. It is an excellent Christian 12-step recovery program for those struggling with drugs, alcohol, codependency, compulsive overeating, sexual addictions, depression, mixed issues, love addiction, spending addiction, and much more. It is a program built on confidentiality for those who attend. They can be assured it is a safe place to share their hurt and deep pain. Many become sponsors and accountability partners for those attending. I have been on the leadership team typing notes for the monthly meetings. I’ve sponsored and been an accountability partner. I have done set up and tear down. As we share our hurts, hang-ups, and habits and become accountable to someone in the program, we find a new freedom. The pain, shame, and guilt are gone as we continue our journey to wholeness. The Celebrate Recovery 12-Step Bible is integral in this ministry. Celebrate Recovery is in our prisons! Prisoners are being set free!

Since 1990, the ministry has grown internationally! If you’d like more information about Celebrate Recovery please contact them at www.celebraterecovery.com. If you’d like information for our Celebrate Recovery ministry at Hillside Community Church, 5354 Haven Avenue, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91737, please contact us at [e-mail] [phone].

Acknowledgments

I am greatly indebted to Janet McDaniel, intercessor and gifted healing counselor. She walked alongside me through the dark side of my soul.

Thank you to Russ Rummer, my counselor, who delicately walked me through the stages of healing during my recovery of breast cancer.

Thank you to Greg Anderson, now founding CEO of Cancer Recovery Foundation International Group which gave me the tools to get back into life again after the sentence of death.

Dr. Lynn Sanders, director of Lusk Psychological Services, clinical psychologist PSY8288, and marriage and family therapist, MA 18483, continues to be an incredible psychologist helping me work through the tangles of my life.

Thank you to Dr. Kyaw, my psychiatrist, who firmly but patiently insisted I be on medication and continue writing.

Thank you to Sharon Clark, my sponsor, at the 12-step Celebrate Recovery ministry at Hillside Community Church in Rancho Cucamonga, California. She was always there for me, just a phone call away

Lastly, thank you, Mom, for giving me life!

Introduction

My Healing Story has gone through many stages and rough drafts beginning back in 1987 when I wrote the poem, Three Children Within, at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California. A writing class at Citrus College in Azusa pulled me through another extension of my story. At that time, the manuscript was titled The End of Bitter Tears. It was a unique class. The students read each other’s manuscript. My professor was inspired by my story and encouraged me to pursue finishing it. Most of the students made similar comments; however, they were overwhelmed by such trauma and sadness in my story that some of them found it difficult to read. In 1994, I finished the complete memoir and sent it to the Library of Congress for a copyright. The title was Beauty Instead of Ashes. I was approached two times from publishers; however, the timing was not right.

Blue Host through Word Press created a beautiful website for me to blog on, which they titled My Healing Story. It shows a woman with long blond hair. Her back is to the camera with her hands raised up high praising God. Please visit my site at http://thornton1953.com.

In 2005, I attended a personal leadership development class at Water of Life in Fontana, California. Our only textbook for the class was The Path by Laurie Beth Jones. This book and class were the groundwork for me finding my distinct voice, my spiritual and natural gifts God has given me; learning my inner guidance, godly counsel; and living a focused life. It was in this class I wrote my mission and vision statement for life, which is below.

My Mission Statement

To inspire, motivate, and encourage healing and restoration to broken people by the written and spoken word.

It took several rough drafts for me to develop my mission statement.

As Laurie Beth Jones states in her book, The Path:

While a mission statement is centered on the process of what you need to be doing, a vision statement is the end result of what you will have done. It is a picture of how the landscape will look after you’ve been through it. It is your ideal.

Your vision statement is the force that will sustain you when your mission statement seems too heavy to endure, enforce, or engage. It is written down; it is in the present; it covers a variety of activities and time frames; it is filled with descriptive details which anchors it to reality.

She gave an illustration from Dave Cowan about the story of gravitational pull. Apparently most of the fuel that is used by spaceships traveling to the moon is consumed in just getting them beyond earth’s gravity. After they have done so, NASA scientists count on lunar gravity to pull the spaceship toward the moon. Similarly, in the ‘escape velocity’ that requires most of the energy, moves us away from our former way of life. A compelling vision must be so clear and so powerful that its very magnetism and gravitational forces will literally pull you toward it.

There were two precious items I wish I could find. While in prison my dad wrote a song about me. He knew how to write music and played the piano. He played the piano in the Sunday services at the LA Missions where he found food and clothing. I gave the song to a boyfriend, and he tried to pick out the tune on a guitar. When we broke up, I lost that song.

When I was about eleven years old, I complained to my mom that I did not have a pretty nightgown to wear to a slumber party at my best friend’s home. We were poor, and I was ashamed of our poverty. Therefore, my mom took her hard-earned money from ironing each shirts for 5 cents. She bought white satin material, lace, and pearl buttons. She made me a wedding gown! My mom was an incredible seamstress. It was a bit overwhelming. I was too embarrassed to wear it. It hangs in our closet to this day in our living room.

These two items from my parents, a song about his daughter from my dad, and a white satin nightgown from my mom were gifts I will treasure today because they tell me of the love my parents did have for me. However, in spite of their wounded spirit, they were not capable of showing it in a healthy way. They tried. They did the best they knew how to under the circumstances.

While in the hospital in 1976, I had taken a class in occupational therapy. I assumed we would be taught how to get back to work. However, I was given a ceramic doll to paint. I started painting her to look like my goddaughter, Cari. She is my best friend’s daughter. I painted her with long flowing brown hair and big blue eyes. However, I ran from the hospital AWOL in September 1976 and never finished her.

I left her unfinished in the hospital, which was a symbol of all the unfinished work in my own life over my lost childhood. Nearly fifteen years later, I finally had the courage to uncover the unfinished business after two more breakdowns and cancer.

It is amazing how much pain we will endure in life to avoid the pain of healing! It would have been so much easier if I would have just faced it back then, worked through it, and gone on with my life. However, God knows how much we can endure. As Janet once said, God will not crush a broken reed. You have to heal enough before He can break you.

In December 1992, Cherith Brook Ministries at Faith Community Church in Ontario had their annual Christmas fair. I had already left the church and was still feeling much grief and guilt for leaving. Janet learned how to make an angel doll. We spent five hours with our glue gun and crepe paper for their dresses and bodice.

Little did Janet know that she introduced to me a very therapeutic tool in my healing. I started becoming obsessed with making angel dolls out of Pepsi bottles and craft paper. My first one had long blond hair and blue eyes with a white dress and blue lace trim. I made several with brown hair, red dress with Christmas bells and garland in their hair. For Easter, I made a doll holding a basket of Easter eggs. I asked the store if I could give them that doll in exchange for other material. They kept my doll, and I made another one. The craft store asked if I’d do craft lessons for their customers. On another trip, they had my Easter doll in the front window of their store! My favorite one is a baby blue with a shaft of wheat thrown over her shoulder. She was made the week after the National Day of Prayer in 1994. She is a symbol of the beauty God has made out of the ashes of my lost childhood. I still have it to this day. I made twenty-five of these dolls while watching movies like Anne of Green Gables and Sound of Music—that is 125 hours of making Pepsi dolls. It took about five hours per doll! I made other crafts during this time. I finally learned how to have fun. These were made as I was recovering from breast cancer. I gave these dolls for gifts.

I also did hours of scrapbooking for all the trips we had taken! I learned how to make floral arrangements. I looked at one in a store and bought the same flowers, vase, and other flowers. It was a beautiful bouquet of large white lilies with green leaves and baby’s breaths hanging over the vase. It is in our living. I cannot believe I made it! So I do have some creative art in me besides writing!

I then took a ceramic doll-making class! I made a beautiful porcelain doll with brown hair and pink dress and bonnet. I gave it as a birthday gift to Janet. When Janet died, she left in her will for me to have the doll. She sits on a trunk in our living room along with my very first Pepsi bottle doll. My mom’s Singer sewing machine is also on this trunk. This was the ceramic doll I never finished in Alhambra Psychiatric Hospital’s occupational therapy!

At the turn of the twentieth century, there was an asylum in the suburbs of Boston that dealt with severely mentally retarded and disturbed individuals. One of the patients was a girl whose name was simply called Little Annie. She was totally unresponsive to others in the asylum. The staff tried everything they could to help her but without success. Finally, she was confined to a cell in the basement of the asylum and given up as hopeless. But a beautiful Christian woman worked at the asylum, and she believed that every one of God’s creation needs love, concern, and care. So she decided to spend her lunch hours in front of Little Annie’s cell, reading to her and praying that God would free her from her prison of silence. Day after day, the Christian woman came to Little Annie’s cell door and read, but the little girl made no response. Months went by. The woman tried to talk with Little Annie, but it was like talking to an empty cell. She brought little tokens of food for the girl, but they were never received. Then one day, a brownie was missing from the plate, which the caring woman retrieved from Little Annie’s cell. Encouraged, she continued to read to her and pray for her. Eventually, the little girl began to answer the woman through the bars of her cell. Soon the woman convinced the doctors that Little Annie needed a second chance at treatment. They brought her up from the basement and continued to work with her. Within two years, Little Annie was told that she could leave the asylum and enjoy a normal life. But she chose not to leave. She was so grateful for the love and attention she was given by the dedicated Christian woman, she decided to stay and love others as she had been loved. So Little Annie stayed on at the institution to work with other patients who were suffering as she had suffered.

Nearly half a century later, the Queen of England had a special ceremony to honor one of American’s most inspiring women, Helen Keller. When asked to whom she attributed her success at overcoming the dual handicap of blindness and deafness, Helen replied, ‘If it hadn’t been for Ann Sullivan, I wouldn’t be here today.’ Ann Sullivan, who tenaciously loved and believed in an incorrigible blind and deaf girl named Helen Keller, was Little Annie. Because of one selfless Christian woman in the dungeon of an insane asylum believed that a hopeless little girl needed God’s love, the world received the marvelous gift of Helen Keller. Excerpt from Dr. Neil Anderson’s book, Victory over Darkness.

In September of 1991, I spoke at the Ontario California City Council’s meeting. At that time, there were six adult stores lining Holt Avenue, which were just a few blocks from our home. In the morning of September 1991, I read in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of a proposal for bringing in thirty-five more stores was being considered by the City of Ontario. I was enraged! I immediately called National Coalition against Pornography (NCAP). They quoted me several legal rulings and legislation for consideration by the City of Ontario.

That evening, I wore a black three-piece dress suit with a briefcase. I had with me business cards from an at-home secretarial business, Inland Empire Secretarial Services, which I quit when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. After my eloquent impassioned speech, I stepped down from the podium and walked up the aisle.

A woman was there to hear about the same proposal. She saw my name and phone number signed in at the city council meeting. Her name was Robyn Woolen, two housewives! You can read more about how, with the obvious righteous anger of the Lord, we not only closed down the six adult stores on Holt Avenue, we also kept the thirty-five more from coming in. We have been friends ever since 1991-present.

There were now two of us.

In 1992, I met Patricia Massie at an anti-pornography meeting in Ventura County. I hesitated to attend because of the distance for me to drive. I also was traveling alone. My husband encouraged me to go. Even though I was a bit shy entering a room full of people that I did not know, I found a seat and sat down. I took many notes in shorthand.

As I was starting to leave, a young woman approached me. As we discussed our different areas of involvement, it was apparent the meeting was ordained by God.

Now, there were three housewives.

On the National Day of Prayer, every first Thursday of May, we felt God leading us out of the commission and begin an event at the National Day of Prayer at the Red Lion Inn, Ontario, California. The packed room of 300 pastors and city officials prayed for our country. Our keynote speaker was John Dawson, author of Take Our Cities for God. Mrs. Shirley Dobson was chairman at that time of the National Day of Prayer. At this time, another housewife, Sue Harman, joined us to help organize the National Day of Prayer in Ontario, California Red Lion Inn. Now there were four housewives.

Sue Harman had a vision for having National Day of Prayer at the Quakes Stadium in Rancho Cucamonga. We all worked and prayed for eight months to organize this day of prayer. Stadium capacity of 6,500 people attended! Twenty pastors from various churches spoke and prayed. One hundred twenty children, representative of six churches in the Inland Valley, sang Heal Our Land, the theme song of that year’s National Day of Prayer. We had a worship team from Community Baptist Church in Alta Loma, California, who played live worship. We had a youth group from Mountain View Community Church in Fontana. The event was free. It was the most glorious day of my life (besides my marriage to Karl and the birth of our daughter, Heather).

Chapter 1

Rejoice not against me, oh mine enemy: When I fall I shall arise: when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.

—Micah 7:8 (KJV)

I awoke that morning of May 27, 1976, from the Intensive Care Ward at Alhambra Psychiatric Hospital, Alhambra, California, blinking my eyes in bewilderment. Where was I? I looked around me. There were twelve other beds in a large room, dormitory style, with windows facing the freeway. I slowly walked into the dining room. I was dazed. I must have looked strange standing there stupidly staring at everyone. They all stared back at me. The walls were yellow with old linoleum floors. A used TV, piano, and a few chairs and couches with end tables full of magazines and books was our living room. One young man, who was an attendant there, was standing near me with another patient. The patient kept staring at me and asked the attendant what was wrong with me. He just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, No telling, around here, you never know. Then a young attendant wheeled out an old white-haired lady. I was horrified that she was strapped in a wheelchair. She was yelling obscenities and flailing her arms around. The male nurse looked at me as if to say, This is what happens when you try to run away.

Then my memory started coming back.

I remembered how I got there. I refused to go to work that morning of May 26, 1976. I had recently lost a very responsible position as an executive secretary to the Assistant Vice President, Mr. Vincent McCauley of Real Property Management, Wells Fargo Bank’s Southern California Administrative offices in Rosemead, California.

Thinking back to a few months ago, I wish I had taken the advice of my employer and allowed them to admit me to a hospital in February rather than losing my job and waiting until I was psychotic before being admitted in May 1976. Since my work had suffered tremendously due to my lack of concentration, crying spells at my desk, and overall inability to function, I asked for a two-week vacation. My employer requested I wait until he spoke with his supervisor before I went on vacation. The next day, the vice president of Real Property Management, Mr. Jim Higgins, flew down from San Francisco to encourage me to admit myself to a hospital for counseling and treatment with all expenses paid by them through medical insurance. As we sat at the table in the upstairs conference room, with tears in his eyes, he spoke of his own recovery from alcoholism.

Darlene, we value you as an employee here. We don’t want to lose you. I understand you are having some difficulties, and we would like to offer our assistance. We will pay for all expenses at a hospital of your choice.

As he spoke, my mind wandered. Why was he offering to send me to a hospital, all expenses paid? What could he possibly be suggesting? The room was thick with an atmosphere of oppression, as if some cloud was keeping me from hearing what he was trying to convey to me.

Darlene, I am an alcoholic. I’ve been in recovery now for five years. There is healing out there for you. Why was he confessing to me of his alcoholism? I certainly wasn’t an alcoholic. They must have me confused with someone else. All I needed was a vacation. Is that too difficult a request? I just needed a rest.

You realize, Darlene, your work has suffered tremendously these past several weeks due to your condition. For that reason, if you do not accept our offer, take a vacation and then return in the same condition as you are in now, we will have no other alternative but to terminate your employment with us.

At this time, Mr. Higgins, I’d appreciate it if you would allow me to take two weeks’ vacation. I just need a rest. Thank you, though, for your generous offer of help.

Chapter 2

I have loved thee with an everlasting love,

Therefore with loving kindness, I have drawn thee to myself.

—Jeremiah 31:3 (KJV)

Why was I so drawn to this man, the very Son of God, who died on a cross for me, who became what I am so I would become what He is? To exchange my rags of sin for His righteousness seemed too wonderful to believe. I had never felt so free, so clean, in my life. I rushed home to tell Mom of my decision. She was happy for me. It was September 21, 1971. I was eighteen years