Abused

I love people's stories of how it was an instant, "And I got healed and set free and delivered in a moment." I'm not taking the mickey out of that. I honestly believe it and I have faith for it. However, that is not my story. Mine has been a long five or six-year battle to get to the place where I'm at.

Basically from about the ages of six to nine, I was sexually abused by people in my street. Older boys in my street, and then at 10, my parents divorced.

So, for me, when my parents told me, "Don't have sex before marriage," in my head, I was thinking, "Well, I'm not a virgin anyway. I've already been sexually abused for a bunch of years. So you're telling me I'm worthless anyway." I was thinking this without even meaning to. Growing up, I kind of didn't even take sex as a second thought. I started taking drugs when I was 12, started with ecstasy pills and pretty much moved from there.

I met my ex when I was 17. Before that, I would be promiscuous, but I would never have a boyfriend. I was adamant that no man would ever be in charge of me. I quickly fell pregnant. I didn't know what to do. My ex and I were already in a kind of rocky place, and there were girls around and this and that and all the rest of it. I didn't want to, but I felt the only option that I had was an abortion.

I was so torn. I was like, "How can I bring a child into this world?" This is why I will never judge somebody that has had an abortion, but in the same hand, I believe that every life is a life. I went through with the abortion and didn't deal with any of the consequences and quickly then fell harder into drugs. It was pretty full on. I wasn't just having drugs on a weekend or whatever. I would physically stay up for seven, eight, nine days at a time. I wasn't just doing meth. I was doing speed. I was doing Xanax, Valium, I was having weed. I was taking Rohypnol, which is literally a date rape drug.

It's like everything in your body is on such high alert that you'll do anything to calm it down. Yet you're taking the very drug over and over again that's going to give you the high alert. I lived in a constant state of anxiety. It was putrid. There is no other word for it but putrid.

My encounter was actually pretty gradual. I feel like God just continuously revealed himself to me. One night I randomly decided I was actually done with meth. I had a full on demonic experience. It was just one random day when I was with my friends and tried to go to sleep, but I'd smoked a bunch of meth that afternoon.

Honestly, for lack of a better word, I had demons coming at me from the roof. It was disgusting. And it was the first time in my life that I'd really been truly scared. I was like, "God, if you take this away from me, I will never do it again." I did it one more time, but God is gracious and after that I was done. I did continue to smoke weed, and like I said, it's been a really gradual journey for me as I encountered more of the love of a father.

I was always told to be quiet and chill out growing up, but God was like, "Nah, I created you to be this over the top, crazy woman of God." I got prophecy after prophecy over me and always had it growing up, but I decided to step into it. Long story short, I went to my sister's church, then was church hopping. I said, "God, I need to be grounded," and I walked into my church and honestly the pastor — I'd gone there when I was a kid — and he walked straight up to me and he was like, "Esther, you're home." I was like, "Sick, this is mad."

I feel like being planted was a really big step in my journey, and the last two and a half years, God has had me on a crazy journey of pursuing purity and just getting rid of all the drugs in my life, all the alcohol and cigarettes.

So this week, I'll be a year clean off alcohol and cigarettes, and all other drugs have been longer than that. Now I work with the Australian Anti Ice (Meth) Campaign. It was actually God appointed. I walked into the office and didn't even know what they did. The CEO was standing right there and she was like, "We need female presenters. You're hired." I didn't do an interview, didn't hand in my resume, didn't do anything.

So now I go into schools, prisons, and youth justice centers. I basically do a presentation and tell them about my story and how I got clean. I'm firmly planted at a church back home, I'm on the worship team and I lead some women's meetings.