Pursued by Darkness

By Janet Sharp

This book is the word of my testimony of how I am an overcomer through the blood of Christ who, while I was at enmity with him through the works of my flesh, gave his life so that I can walk in the newness of life.

At six years old, I became of victim of incest until the age of thirteen. My siblings and I grew up with an abusive earthly father who sexually, physically, and verbally abused us. This trauma led me deep into darkness, where I was pursued by the enemy of my soul. Without receiving the proper mental and emotional support as a child for many years, I thought I was functioning as a normal person until my addictions led me even deeper into the darkness.

In 2004, I was arrested for manufacturing methamphetamine and arson. While in Union County Jail for arson, I tried to commit suicide to end my misery, but God had another plan. In that cell, I surrendered my life to Christ and began my journey of redemption. Reaping what I sowed resulted in a ten-year sentence. I was required to serve 70 percent or seven years in prison for manufacturing.

While in prison, I was blessed by God to be one of fifty women accepted into a faith-based program, the Interchange Freedom Initiative, where I experienced the truth and love of God through the teachers and volunteers that came into the prison to teach us about God. After graduating from the program in 2007, I went back into the general population to serve the rest of my sentence.

In 2008, I was sent to the heart doctor for a checkup, and he discovered I needed four pints of blood, which led him to insist that the prison get me the proper medical care to find out why I was losing so much blood. In 2010, with much, much resistance, I was diagnosed with stage-three colon cancer because it had gone untreated for so long.

My diagnosis for survival for not good, but God had another plan. In March 2011, I was released two years early to receive treatment for the cancer. Through treatment, God has healed me and I have been in remission for eleven years. Surviving all this, I have been called by God to share my testimony and give others hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887633954

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

About the Author

cover.jpg

Pursued by Darkness

Janet Sharp

Copyright © 2023 Janet Sharp

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88763-393-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-395-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To God, who set me free from the darkness, and to my mom, who was the most amazing woman I have ever known.

As I go back into my past, I can see satan at work. I remember every lie he ever told me, and I believed them all. I was forty-two years old before I had come to experience Jesus. Now, as I look back, I can see with my eyes wide open. I am not speaking of my natural eyes but my spiritual eyes. I can see my life through the eyes of the one and only God Almighty. God was always there even though I did not know him. Jeremiah tells us that God knew us before he formed us in our mother's womb, even if we are conceived from the violent act of rape like I was.

My journey began in the winter of 1961. My mother was with her two older sisters when they met up with three brothers. Mom was only thirteen at the time. My grandparents had made the older girls take Mom along. Mom thought they were going to the movies. That is not what happened.

That night changed my mom's life, and not for the better. When they met up with the boys, they had already been drinking. As the night progressed, Mom got separated from her sisters. When they asked Mom if she wanted to drink, she said no. She said one Moment they were there and then they were gone, and she found herself alone with James, the younger of the boys.

Mom said he reeked of alcohol, and he made her feel scared. When she looked for her sisters, they were nowhere to be seen. Mom said one minute she and James were talking, and the next thing she knew, he was all over her, pulling at her and saying horrible things. That night, my mother was raped, and I was conceived. Mom was so ashamed about what had happened. Of course James told her no one would believe her story. He would just deny what had happened. After all, he was seventeen and his brothers would stick up for him.

She was scared to tell anyone what had happened. As time passed, she began to see changes in her body, and so did Grandma. When she began to ask questions, Mom told her about the rape. Her parents knew James's parents and went to them about what had happened. They wanted James to take responsibility for what he had done, and he did admit to the rape. The only reason I am here is abortion was not an option in the sixties like it is today. Thank God for that. If her rape had taken place in this day and time, she probably would have had an abortion.

Even though I was conceived in rape and not in love, God still had a plan for my life, but so did satan. It was agreed upon by the parents that James would marry my mom. When she was fourteen, she gave birth to me. I cannot imagine how my mother felt forced to marry her rapist, and for the next fourteen years, my mother lived a life filled with violence and fear.

Jeremiah 29:11 teaches that God has a plan and a purpose for every child conceived. satan will do whatever he can to stop that plan. We are all a part of God's creation. Every living person and every living creature exists because of God. Most of my life was spent lost in the darkness, ignorant about the Word of God. I was not raised in the church. Instead, I grew up in sin and darkness.

satan knows God wants us to be with him in heaven when we leave this messed-up world, and satan wants our souls. The Word of God teaches in John 10:10 that satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy; but Jesus came to give us life with God in eternity. satan wants to steal our souls and take as many of us as possible straight to hell. He wants to take what belongs to God. That is why he starts trying to take us out.

Understand that we are all born into the darkness and sin of this world. My mom was forced to marry a man she did not love. Grandma said she would learn to love him. That was not the case. James was eighteen and already an alcoholic, and he was filled with evil. Mom suffered, and not just her. All of her children suffered at the hands of satan. The devil began to pursue us as we were running in the darkness, looking for a way out.

I was born in September 1962. In September 1963, Mom gave birth to a boy named Rodger Dale. Sadly, he only lived for three months. Mom buried him on Christmas Eve, 1963. James started to drink more and became a mean and violent man. In September 1964, Grace was born. Then two years later, Davey came in October 1966. The devil tried to take him out too; he was born without an esophagus. He was sent to Arkansas children's hospital where they did surgery and gave him an artificial esophagus. They told Mom that as he grew, he would have to come back and have it replaced every few years. The devil is a lie. Davey is in his fifties, and through the miracle of God, he has never needed surgery again. At first, he did have a problem swallowing if he did not chew his food well.

In 1968, Katie was born. That was the year James started to sexually abuse me. My first real memory of him was when Mom had brought Katie home and she was lying down. James told Mom he wanted to teach me how to tie my shoes before I started school. That was a lie. He was drunk and reeked of whiskey. That night, the abuse started when he took my little hand and put it inside his pants and told me to play with his penis. I started to cry, and Mom came to see why. He told her he spanked me to make me learn how to tie my shoes.

Mom took me to bed a few days later. I remember waking up, and the house was filled with police. Aunt Syble was there, but James was not there. Years later, I asked Mom about this memory. She told me that a black man had broken into the house by cutting the window screen. She said she was home alone with us kids, and James was out all night again, gambling and drinking. That was a normal thing for him to do. She said the man told her if she did not do what he wanted, he would kill us all.

He duct-taped her hands and her mouth and raped her. After she was sure he was gone, she went to the neighbors and called the police and Aunt Syble. She stayed with us while the police took Mom to the hospital and brought her back later. James still was not home. The police did catch the man, and he was charged with breaking and entering and rape. A black man in the sixties did not stand a chance. He went to prison, but during the trial, the truth came out. James owed the man a lot of money from gambling. When the man tried to collect, James told him to go get it from his wife, and that is just what he did.

I remember Mom taking us kids and going to Grandpa and Grandma's house. She told James she did not love him and she wanted a divorce. He would not let that happen. So in the middle of the night, James was all liquored and came to my grandparents' home, kicked in the back door, came in and grabbed Mom and me by the hair of the head, and took us, throwing us into the truck. Then he went back in and got the other kids, throwing them into the truck too.

We were trapped with no way out and no one to help us. The way the enemy works is to tell you there is no way out of the darkness. Growing up in the south in the sixties was very different than it is now. James worked on the farm for different farmers. Part of his pay would be in the form of a house. Some of the houses we lived in were in very bad shape: no running water, no inside bathroom, holes in the walls, and no screens to keep the bugs out.

Mom cooked a lot of meals on the old woodstove. She would have to go outside to get water from the old hand pump either on the back porch or maybe even in the yard. My mom had a hard life, but she never gave up and she never quit. She would haul water in and heat it on the woodstove so we could take a bath. At night, we would use a five-gallon bucket to use the bathroom, and the next morning, we take it outside and dump it.

James was a mean and abusive man, or should I say the demons living in him were mean and abusive. People need to know demons are very real. As I look back, I can see where they were working in our lives. James was being controlled by those demons in his life, and we were the ones to suffer. We were the victims of the evil ones as long as we continued to live in darkness.

There are many of you living in that same darkness. I remember going to bed hungry and afraid. I remember hiding under the bed when James came home drunk in the middle of the night and started beating my mom. I can still hear her screaming for James to stop. I remember the bruises she tried to cover up with makeup. Some of the beatings she got were from defending us. If James came home drunk, he would whip us with anything he could get his hands on. He would use a cane, an electric cord, or a clothes hanger. Sometimes, he would just reach out and slap us, not just a little tap but knock us across the room.

Mom always tried to protect us and paid dearly for it. James kept us isolated from the outside world. If Mom had to go somewhere, he would take her and keep an eye on her. She was a prisoner, and so were we. Sometimes, if we were hungry, she would make us some biscuits and water gravy; that was better than nothing. I thank God she knew how to provide for us kids out of nothing. We ate a lot of beans and cornbread.

Once a month, we would get food stamps, and James would take Mom to the store to buy food. Mom would try and spend all the stamps at once because if she had any leftover, James would take what was left and sell them for money at a store outside of town. Then he would take that money and spend it on alcohol and gambling. It was a hard life for us all even though some of my siblings do not have the same memories.

Mom was always afraid for James to come home. She tried to make sure everything was to his liking. If his food was cold, he would throw it at Mom and then proceed to give her a beating. My mom was an amazing woman. I did not always think that way. As I look back now, I can see God was at work even then.

*****

Grace was four, and I was six. We wanted to go fishing, so we went to catch some worms for bait. We had a bucket with a lot of worms in it. We took them to show Mom. When she saw what was in that bucket, she screamed and took the bucket and hung it up high on the front porch. When James came home for lunch, she showed him what we had. That bucket was full of baby water moccasins. We could have been bitten and died.

God protected us even then. I want you to understand that God has a plan and a purpose for every child that is conceived. Never believe satan when he tells you that you should have never been born. He is the father of lies, and he is very good at it. No baby should ever be aborted. God has a plan and a purpose for every child that is conceived. If you have had an abortion, ask God for forgiveness. There is nothing he will not forgive except the blaspheming of the Holy Spirit.

Once you received forgiveness, you are no longer chained to the darkness by the sin of abortion. Abortion is when a baby gets the death penalty for someone else's sin. Either having sex out of wedlock or by rape, both are sins.

Moving on now, when I was eight or nine