Called To Be A Witness

By Pamela Quinn with Hilda F. Thigpen

Called to Be a Witness is the answer to a prayer that Pamela prayed as she cried out from her heart to the Lord for new meaning and purpose in her life after the loss of her son in 2016. The Lord then directed her to write her life's story in a book, and He gave her this title. Pamela shares how God's grace is the "light" in her life that has kept her through her battles with the "darkness" which has attempted to overtake her through childhood abuse, fear, hatred, rebellion, rejection, betrayal, witchcraft, sickness, loss and heartbreak. The Lord opened the spirit realm to her and has guided her with dreams, visions and discernment as she has faced each challenge. Her desire is that her story will give hope and encouragement to others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644711767

Book preview

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Called to Be a Witness

Overcoming Childhood Abuse—My Testimony of God’s Grace

Pamela F. Quinn with Hilda F. Thigpen

Cover design by Pamela F. Quinn

ISBN 978-1-64471-175-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64471-176-7 (Digital)

Copyright © 2019 Pamela F. Quinn with Hilda F. Thigpen

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

In loving memory of my son,

Danny Ray Quinn

August 19, 1964–October 23, 2016

This book is dedicated to my family and friends. To my children, my grandchildren and my husband who have kept the faith that I could write my story in a book and have supported me through the process. To my neighbors who have been faithful friends through many, many years. To my mother, who went home to Jesus during the writing of this book.

Foreword

When Pam’s son passed to his home in heaven, I was going through a season of depression and had disengaged, communicating only with those people that I had to. Pam and I are distant cousins and grew up friends but moved in different circles as adults, touching base with each other only now and then. When I learned that she had lost a son, I wanted to see her and planned to visit. But time passed, and I didn’t get that visit in.

Then one Sunday in June 2017, my phone rang, and it was Pam. She said that I was the only one whom she had thought about calling. I apologized for not having been to visit her and promised that I would, and I did two days later. She was heartbroken and wept deeply as she talked about how hard it had been. I told her that we were going to get out and about some because we both needed it.

A week later, we went out for lunch in a town close by. As we were driving and talking, she told me that God had told her to write her life story in a book.

I said, He has? That’s great, Pam.

Yes, and He gave me the title, she said.

Wow! What is it to be?

She answered, "Called to be a Witness."

When she said that, I felt the tingle of Holy Ghost bumps rise on my arms, as my spirit was quickened. I said, Yes, Pam. I believe you are going to write a book.

Then she said, I don’t know anything about writing a book, I have never even thought about it.

I told her to start by writing down the memories as they came to her and take it one day at the time.

About two weeks later, she called me and told me she felt that I was supposed to help her with her book; and I said, I don’t know anything about writing a book!

She answered, And do you think I do?

We had a laugh, and then because of the quickening in my spirit when she told me the title of her book, I agreed to help her in whatever way I could. It has been almost a year now and what a journey! We both have been stretched and have grown in ways we could not have seen. It has been amazing to me to see how the Lord gave her memories in such detail of her childhood and through the years as she was handwriting them down.

This is Pam’s story, her experiences and life’s journey. Then I would take her pages, arrange and polish, and put them to print. I had never done anything like this before and felt very much out of my comfort zone. I am not that good with computers, so my husband saved the day as my IT guy. I could not have gotten through it without him because he pulled me out of the ditch more than one time.

We were a couple of months into the project, when I was looking back through some journaling I had done during a conference I had attended in 2016 and found where a gentleman had prophesied to me that I would write a book! I had forgotten that word and was amazed at how our God does His work in our lives!

Both Pamela and I have had our battles to get through to the end of this project. She has shown me so much grace and patience all along the way when I would fall behind on my part. For that, I am thankful. We each have learned things about ourselves in taking on this endeavor as ladies in our seventies—you are never too old to do something new, especially when God is there guiding with His gentle strength. We both have come out of the clutches of depression ourselves in this journey, and our prayer is that Pam’s story will reach into those hurting, dark places in the lives of others and show there is way of hope to be found.

Hilda F. Thigpen

Acknowledgments

First, I thank God for giving me the assignment to write my story in a book. There has been much that I have learned in this journey.

I want to thank my grandparents, Pa and Mammy, who never stopped praying for me when my life was in the grip of darkness. I am grateful that I had their love and prayers covering me.

I thank God for my husband of fifty-five years, and I thank my husband for his love and faithfulness. He didn’t have to stay in the rough seasons, but he has stood by me and supported me through all the years, when I was right and when I was wrong.

I thank my children and grandchildren for believing in me as mother, grandmother and friend. I am so blessed to have the love of a strong family around me.

I want to thank our next-door neighbors Carl and Carol who are our best friends and have been for over forty years. Through the good times and the bad, they have always been there for me.

Last, I want to thank my friend Hilda for helping me to tell my story in this book. Without her, I could never have finished it. She kept me on track and kept me encouraged to the end.

Preface

My story is about a childhood of abuse, fear, hatred and rebellion, and of a God of mercy and grace who rescues. This book is written in the hope that it might help someone else who is facing or has faced some of the same challenges and trials that I have faced in my life.

I hated God for many years for allowing the things that happened to me while I was growing up. I questioned, if God was love like I had been preached to about, why would he allow things to be so bad? But I did come to know this God of love, in time enough for my life to be turned around, and I give Him the glory for life itself. After I surrendered my life to Him, He taught me in His word and by my experiences about the forces of darkness that are out to destroy us and has led me to help others in getting set free.

I always had a desire to give my testimony in church of how my life had changed, but it never seemed to be the right time. Well, God’s timing and His ways are best. I know now that my testimony was not finished; there were still some trials I had to face. And the biggest question was, how would I respond to them? I can say that in some, I didn’t do so good; but by the grace of God, I did come through them and survived. Through a tragedy in the family, He has given me this opportunity to write my testimony in a book, not just for myself but for my oldest son also who had hopes and dreams of writing his own book.

This book is about hatred and a love that rescues. It’s about facing good and evil and surviving, even in the most devastating circumstances. It’s about learning that you are not alone in what seems to be the darkest hours of your life. It’s about finding that the light at the end of the tunnel is God’s light and it never burns out. It is a beacon to guide those who will follow its signals.

I think it is important to know that we have enemies in the spirit realm that are there to kill, steal, and destroy when given the opportunity; and it is most important to know where our victories are won. I have learned by experiencing firsthand and share my story in the hope that it can help someone else, even if it is only one.

Pamela F. Quinn

Chapter 1

Childhood Memories

I was born in 1946, the youngest of three children. My family lived on the edge of a small rural town in the southeastern part of North Carolina. I have lived my whole life on the same road leading out of town. My family moved three times to different homes on that road, even on the same side of the road, and the last house is where my husband and I live today.

My father owned his own construction and landscaping business, which included him running his own bulldozer. Farming was on my mother’s side of the family. Living in rural North Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s was living in a culture of growing tobacco. Just about everyone you knew was in tobacco in one way or another, whether owning your own farm or tenant farming or just being hired help, which was a great source of summer jobs for school children.

My mother did not do public work but had plenty to care for with children, home, garden, and farming. Our house was full of people. Mother’s parents, we called them Pa and Mammy, lived with us; and it was like having four parents telling you what to do. My grandparents were Christians, but my daddy was a man full of anger, so we grew up hearing and living with good and evil.

My earliest memories are of when I was about three years old, and fear was already there in my life. The way it came to me was through my mother. She used the Southern legend of Rawhead and Bloody Bones to scare me and my older brother and sister as a way to control us. Rawhead and Bloody Bones can be traced back to the mid-1500s as the story of a bogeyman that would hide in a closet or under the stairs and jump out to eat children if they did not obey their parents.

There also was a black man named Dude that passed our house on the edge of town on his way to the store, carrying a burlap bag on his shoulder to put his groceries in. Mother would tell us that she was going to call him to get us and put us in that burlap sack and take us home with him if we did not mind her and behave or that Raw Head and Bloody Bones was going to get us. Control through fear. We were even afraid to pass the closet because we were afraid someone or something would jump out and grab us. A child will believe about anything they are told, especially when it is a parent doing the telling, so a spirit of fear (2 Tim. 1:7) was planted into my young mind like a seed through deception at an early age by my mother.

Fear of verbal, mental, and physical abuse came to me through my daddy. He was a man of anger, always finding something to be angry about. I don’t think he was ever happy. He did not appear to love anybody, not even himself. Most of what I remember back then was being afraid. I was afraid of everything.

He was verbally abusive to my mother’s parents and verbally and physically abusive to our mother and to we children. I remember mother telling me that he would pinch her in places where the bruises would not be seen by others. I saw him punch holes in the walls with his fists when he was mad over something and we could do nothing about it but watch. Mother’s parents lived with us—where could she go with three children?

Verbal abuse was always there at every meal. Daddy would find fault with the food, saying it was not good, always finding something to cuss and roar over, finding fault in everything, finding fault in living. The only pleasant time we had was when he was not there.

I remember that God gave daddy a chance to change way back then when he had a really bad accident. Mother, my grandparents, and some other hired helpers were tying tobacco in the packhouse behind our house, getting it ready to carry to the market. I was playing on the porch when, suddenly, I heard screaming and