Transformed
By Marilyn Williams

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MPD…Multiple Personality Disorder. That diagnosis scared me so entirely that I wanted to run for my life—or more accurately, from my life. But despite my ominous label and the reality of my emotional fragility, God held me tightly and walked with me through a refining fire that completely transformed my old life from hell into a place of peace and joy.

You may wonder how someone becomes so broken that their personality fragments into distinctly different people. For me, it was a way of coping with a very dark and painful childhood. From as early as I can remember, I was repeatedly sexually molested by my father, grandfather and their friends—sometimes even in groups. Incest is a dirty, ugly word. Living it is even uglier.

After those gruesome encounters, I remember talking to God. He was the only thing that made my life bearable as a child. I really didn’t know much about Him, but somehow in my innocence I knew that He loved me and that He was my friend. I turned to Him in my times of need…over and over and over again.

Later, at the age of nineteen, I came to understand how I could have an intimate relationship with God through His Son Jesus and I gave my heart to Christ. While my faith grew over the next fifteen years, I did not realize that I was still dragging the
emotional baggage from my past into my new life. As a wife and later a mother, I remained stuck in clinical depression and suffered from chronic anxiety attacks, selfloathing and social phobias as I continuously struggled to recover from the horrific abuse of my childhood. I was desperate for God’s transforming hand in my life.

God is not some kind of personal genie and faith in Christ a magic wand for all of our problems. I had received God’s gift of forgiveness and the promise of eternal life, but I did not believe He had anything more for me. I slowly began to realize I was not doing my part to fully receive and embrace all He had died to give me. I think in some ways that I was waiting for Him to bring all the promises to me on some kind of spiritual silver platter. I simply was not cooperating and taking responsibility for my role in our
relationship. As I cried out for Him to deliver me from the emotional oppression that was robbing me from the joy He promised, He began to teach me about “active belief”.

After seven years of counseling and money I lost count of, I was desperate for God’s transforming hand. I remember one particular day when I was quite angry with God because He wasn’t changing me quickly enough. “Lord, I need an extreme makeover!” I demanded. “I mean from top to bottom. I am so sick of myself and my oppressive emotional pain. Please God, make me over!” My self-hatred echoed in my head that I was a spiritual failure. If I am a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), why was the old me still so much a part of my life?

After I finished crying out to God for transformation, I went to my desk and reached for a pen and some index cards. Then, I headed to my fireplace where I opened a box of matches, knelt down and began to pour my heart out to God, giving him every piece of me. Despite my frustration that I did not feel I was a new creation, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I finally realized I had all I need to get where I wanted to go. I just needed to start implementing the power God had given me through His Holy Spirit.
“Okay Lord, You are on!” I exclaimed. I believed He would give me grace for the journey, and I was releasing my shattered psyche into His hands. Kneeling at the fireplace with pen, index cards, and matches I was ready to surrender to God’s power and let go of my own coping mechanisms.

At the fireplace, God began to reveal insights to me about my alter-personalities that I had not clearly understood before. I now saw them as extremely creative tools for surviving something no little girl should ever have to experience. Obviously those alteregos had served me well for a season. By dissociating from my pain and the reality of my life, I had been able to maintain my secret and in some ways, even hide it from myself. But those personalities had appetites I could no longer appease. My creative coping had turned on me; entangling me into a life of clinical depression, bulimia, suicidal ideations, crippling anxiety, many physical ailments, and confused dissociations.

Now in the light of truth, on an index card, I began to write the name of each personality and how that alter-personality served me well for a season. On the other side, I wrote why I no longer needed her in my life. For instance, there was Tera. I named her Tera because she was terrified of life…all life. When I would go into Tera, I would lose almost all sense of reality. God revealed to me that although Tera separated me from my crippling fear of the world around me ( a natural effect of the violent abuse I was exposed to), I did not need Tera to carry my fear any longer. He reminded me of a verse in the Bible, “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18); and He challenged me to lean on His living Spirit to carry my fear, just as Jesus had carried my sins.

Then there was Joy. She was the part of me that could separate herself from an evening of appalling abuse and happily romp on the playground the next morning. But once again, a verse from the Bible came to mind, “The joy of the Lord is my strength”. I no longer needed to disassociate to enjoy life. Life is hard, but the joy of the Lord is now my strength!

There were many more personalities to bid goodbye. I remained at the fireplace for hours, weeping and letting go of life-long friends. I thanked them for all they had done to help me through; but I also acknowledged that I didn’t need them any longer. I was moving on, and I wanted to be whole. I did not want to be Humpty Dumpty in a million pieces the rest of my life. I was ready for the King to put me back together again! I no longer needed them because I had God’s Spirit within to sustain me and hold me for eternity. I was trusting in the words from Isaiah 53:4-5 with all my heart, “He [Jesus] took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows…by His wounds, we are healed.” Did you catch that? We’re not only forgiven; we are healed.

The next few days, even months were rough. Believing that God could keep me whole took every bit of faith I could muster. Even though it is God’s Holy Spirit within us that works His will through us, our faith in Him is not passive. On the contrary, stepping out against every emotion and pledging your allegiance to God’s truth instead of your interpretation has been my biggest challenge in life. But allegiance to God and who He says I am is vital in overcoming what has been wrongly done to me. Hour by hour, and then day by day, my faith was strengthened as I exercised it. My heart began to truly heal from its shattered form.

Soon God was opening doors in my life to let others know that the power of the cross is all encompassing, both to forgive us from our sins and to heal us from the sins done against us. I now speak to women around the world who also struggle and stumble in the shame of their own sin and the false shame of the sins done against them. I have witnessed God setting hearts free from useless bondage, worldly coping mechanisms, and destructive life patterns. Like Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego, we may not understand the trials He allows us to face; but through His Son Jesus Christ, God walks hand in hand with us through our fiery trials to make sure we are not consumed, not even smelling of the smoke we have endured. In Christ, I am more than a survivor; I am truly transformed from the inside out.