Winner of Mary’s Beautiful Battle is posted below!
 { Download Mary’s Interview Here } |
Mary DeMuth is a joy to know. She’s had lived through hard things, but instead of carrying around the burdens of her past she now strives to help others and encourages them to live uncaged. Beautiful Battle is a book for each of us–to remind us that we have a real enemy but that we also have a great God. In this show Mary shares her story and the truth she discovered in God’s Word. She also helps a caller who is currently facing struggles…it’s a show you won’t want to miss!
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A Little More From Mary:
Growing up, I had a monster-like fear of death. Older boys raped me when I was five, and they whispered threats of death if I told anyone. They took me to deep ravines, sticks and dirt pushing into my backside. I’d look beyond them to the tree limbs above me, trying to think of something other than what was happening to me. They would violate me in their bedroom while their mother made cookies. And all along, they threatened me. It took everything inside me to tell my babysitter what they were doing to me, and even then, the abuse continued. For the rest of that year, I learned how to take naps all afternoon, to keep the boys away.
My fear increased after partygoers at our house told me scary stories about our “haunted” house. They pulled back a rug in our rented home and showing me a bloodstain. “See, someone died in this house,” someone said. “If you listen carefully at night, you’ll hear the cupboards open and close. If you happen to wake up deep in the night, you might even hear an old lady rocking in the attic above your room.” Even though I didn’t know what prayer was or who God was, I shivered as I prayed prayers to ward off ghosts and creaking rockers.
In retrospect, I realize now that the culture of drugs in our home had a lot to do with how unsafe I felt. They grew marijuana in a closet under grow lights and sold it. Neighbor boys rolled oregano joints and asked me to give them to my mom as a joke. My mom and stepfather threw parties where people would be so stoned they would pass a joint to me, a kindergartner. Even then, somehow, I knew what they wanted me to do was wrong. My refusing an offered joint was just one small example of how God had already put a fierce conscience inside me.
I most feared death when I was ten and my biological father died. Knowing that my father, whom I thought invincible, had died made me afraid to go to sleep at night.
A year after his death, my grandmother insisted that I get baptized. To be baptized, I had to attend a Sunday school class. I had never been to Sunday school, and I was glad that I finally had a name to give to the God I prayed to as a child. I begged my mom, “Please Mom, can I go back to Sunday school and church? Please?” She refused.
After I was baptized, a family member asked me, “Aren’t you glad you’re not going to hell?” I admit I did feel better, but I wondered what kind of magic water it was that could get me a “Get out of Hell Free” card. Below the surface I still didn’t have peace, and I still feared death.
During junior high, I thought about killing myself because my life had become unbearable. My mom was having an affair, which was breaking up her third marriage, and she was never around. I had to care for our small farm and cook for myself. My counselor at school gave me a special hall pass that would excuse me from class at any moment, an indication of how fragile I was.
My freshman year of high school, a friend invited me to go to Young Life. Although I loved the games and crazy activities, I couldn’t wait until last fifteen minutes when the leader gave a brief talk about Jesus. Every time he mentioned Jesus, my heart pounded and I craved to hear more.
That questioned echoed through my thoughts that summer and into the autumn of my sophomore year when I attended a Young Life weekend camp. There, the entire gospel was shared—Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and what it meant to be saved. I sat beneath an evergreen tree and looked up into the star-pocked night, looking for the face of my Creator. I gave my heart, my life, my past, my pains, my countless tears, and my abandoned childhood to the Father who would never leave me, to the God who conquered death.
I find it ironic that I gave my heart to Him under a tree—a place where I felt the first sting of violation. 1 Corinthians 1:27 says “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.” I pictured God in heaven, the God who sent His son to die on His own death tree, looking down and seeing me—a disheveled, unwanted, fear-filled child—and deciding to choose me to someday shame the wise.
considering suicide. Don’t miss this show!
emotional pain that smothered her. She lay down on a set of cold railroad tracks and waited—for a freight train to send her to heaven…and peace.
