Fear, trauma, PTSD and Jesus
My life has seemed intense. Even though I am only twenty-three, it feels like I am much older. Time plays a funny game where it feels long but disappears quickly.
My life journey started in Alice Springs with my mother and birth father. I knew my birth father for the first three years and unfortunately, that time was probably too long. Because of the events I will share below, I clearly recall things that happened before the age of three. I remember the nuances of Alice Springs; houses, people and places, to a significant degree. I don’t have a memory of the consistent events, but I do recall the police removing my dad from the house on a few occasions. He did not live with us but appeared on intermittent occasions. My mother and I would make trips between Alice Springs and Melbourne to visit my dad. They were not married and there may have been guilt around giving me a connection with a father. We didn’t live with him because he was an abusive man. As we would just visit him a lot of the time, I would enjoy it. Our cousins were down the road and I’d play marble army men with my dad.
From memory, I did have a few events imprinted into my mind but mostly one critical, defining moment in my life. This moment is a foundational point that severely tainted the majority of my thinking and life decisions from that point.
On Christmas Eve 2002, when I was only three, I woke up in the night, already somewhat riddled with fear and scared of many things. I was calling out to my mum for an extended period and I eventually made an effort to open the door and look for her, calling, “Mum!” through the passageway of an almost echoing house. I made my way slowly to the front room, where the daunting image of my father trying his best to strangle my mum confronted me. While I won’t go into greater detail, that one little insight I have given was not the limit of the events of that night. However, what happened then traumatised me, leading to PTSD; the images imprinted on my mind are so precisely detailed that twenty years later I can still record the position of the furniture, the layout of the house and every event that took place. My last memory around that incident was waking up Christmas morning and asking my father about what had happened the night before. He simply responded, “It was just a bad dream”. The only further recollection I have of my birth father is of being in a large courtroom and then never seeing him again.
Around this time, my friends used to go to church, and I begged Mum for us to go too. I have no idea why I was so adamant on her going to church other than the fact I absolutely loved kids’ church. Mum did become a Christian, and this had a vital impact.
When we went to Wallaroo to visit my Nanna and Pop, Mum and I went to the local church. I was an energetic and lively kid despite the recent traumatic event - it only ever troubled me when it came to sleeping. If it was daylight, I was on top of the world, running and bouncing off everything.
This energy allowed me to create an excellent new friend at church that day – he later became my stepdad. I remember thinking I was funny, spitting in his face as we were just about to leave, but I quickly learned that it wasn’t an okay thing to do. It was the first stern discipline I could recall from a male figure, but at the same time, it was positive input. The same day we went and got ice cream with him and his son. This day was a blessing, an absolute gift, because three months later, this man who could entertain a kid that could not sit still became my stepdad. That three months was the biggest shake up of my life.
Lutz came into my life at a crucial time; he cared for my mother and watched over me. He was completely opposite to my birth father. From this point onwards, our relationship grew and grew. I immediately latched onto the missing father figure, although I was still a kid with various problems from the foundational event.
My stepfather, Lutz, and my mother, Cheryl, grew in their faith and soon became involved in aboriginal ministry. I grew up around the same areas that they ministered in: Point Pearce, Mallee Park and Ceduna, running around with all the boys. This shaped my absolute love for the first Australians.
Even though my mother and I had now found a loving home led by a Godly, compassionate man, my mind still played as many games as it could on me. When it came to night time, I had repeated nightmares. I wet the bed until I was fifteen and I was still very nervous about that early event recurring right up until seventeen. I still have that memory imprinted into my brain with tremendous detail. I had an issue with any male other than my stepfather around my mum. My fears weren’t just fears of the dark but of being in a position where I could not step in and help my mother; my fear was of me helplessly standing in the audience, watching events occur again. This fear shaped a lot of my way of thinking.
As I grew older, I coped by distancing myself from my emotions. I developed an art of maintenance, holding my feelings at arm’s length because I refused to deal with how they impacted me. From three, my parents raised me with Christian morals, faith and worldview. I learnt to memorise scripture verses to deal with my fear, and I had no problem knowing my Bible. But at sixteen, on the 22nd of December 2016 after cricket training, the news that my stepfather had asked to “go home” was another level of confrontation I had to deal with. (For those unaware, home equates to heaven here).
When I heard those words, I felt years and years of emotion rock me. Those words destroyed me, even though this was a path we’d travelled for thirteen years. Three months after my mum and dad got married, he had been diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma and had cancer the size of a football in his stomach. The doctors had given him three months to live but he survived another thirteen years. The end of the road came when thirteen years of battle became too much and he opened up and said “I want to go home”. In the end, it wasn’t because of the cancer but a hospital infection through treatment.
When I heard this news, it hardened a heart that utterly adored Lutz. He had taught me how to be a man of courage and integrity, his final words were about just that, reminding us to always be men of integrity.
After his passing, the weight of the loss of my stepfather, Lutz, who had become one of my most fabulous friends throughout my journey and my biggest supporter and challenger, added to the pain built up from my childhood. I went from avoiding my emotions to becoming completely fed up and angry with how life spans out. I started to use alcohol and females to dull the pain. As I looked for every possible outlet, my anxiety began to rise and I started having random panic attacks. I ended up in hospital with alcohol poisoning.
I did quieten down for a period, where I restrained myself. I was bored though, and at the same time, trying to know God. However, I couldn’t connect so then I burst again. I was so angry with life’s outcomes, but because I was so good at separating myself from emotions, I wasn’t sure how I felt half the time. I just knew I was angry. And then covid came around, and I tried cocaine for the first time.
When I started doing cocaine and MDMA, the toll those elements took on my brain only heightened what I was dealing with – or not dealing with. I was struggling and I thought they would be a fun outlet to separate myself, to be in another place for a short time. And it did accomplish that. However, when I wasn’t taking them in my free time, I started having uncontrollable panic attacks, up-and-down depression, and an inability to sleep. All my issues caught up with me at once. I went to a psychologist. He helped me with great techniques to push past the social anxiety, PTSD, and panic disorder, (which had quickly developed through extended drug exposure). These techniques helped me ease my reliance on drugs as an escape, because I had been fantastic at filling painful voids with substances or females. I was not too fond of the company but female companions took my mind off things, even though I could not connect. My heart was so closed.
There was a particular female companion I clung to in that period. The start of that relationship was horrendous. I started having panic attacks about her safety as well as other things going on in my mind. I had an insatiable need at that point to know where women in my life were at all times, so that fear didn’t overwhelm me - that fear of having to watch on helplessly. After seeing the psychologist for some time, I stopped doing drugs, although I still drank heavily at times. However, I started to battle with the idea of living. Although it wasn’t necessarily suicidal thoughts, I could definitely understand that perspective in that moment.
Paradoxically, in that period I still believed there was only one God and would defend him no matter what intoxicated state I was in. However, I couldn’t grasp the idea of an intimate relationship with a father. There were two reasons for this. The first was that my heart was so hard and I didn’t want to open it. The second - I didn’t want to add another father into my life as the others had already left. I was just scared that the Heavenly Father would also abandon me.
Eventually, though, everything came to a head. My girlfriend had just broken up with me - an ugly break-up, not one that anyone would consider cordial. My mum was asking me if I wanted to go to Warrnambool, which was a standard question, since my dad’s (Lutz’s), best friend was there as well as other very close friends of ours. So, I figured “sure, why not”, as I saw it as a getaway to clear my head.
On our arrival, Mum told me to be up at about 8 am to go to a service at the Benefit Centre. I was up and ready but wasn’t aware what I was in for. It wasn’t just a meeting, but a conference run by a ministry called Nothing Hidden Ministries (NHM). I walked in, and it seemed 30 people or whatever the number was - it felt like 400 - were staring at me, and I became angry. I didn’t want to do anything like this. I put my head down, walked to my table and didn’t say a word to anyone. I vowed I would not speak.
We started our first table group activity, and I have no idea what happened, but I couldn’t hold back from speaking. I started talking and holding back tears. It was incredible; Divine Love hit my heart, and I felt on fire. This was the critical defining moment that sparked my love for Jesus. At that moment of community, in the middle of my pain and questioning, it hit me. The love of Christ burst down my walls and revived me.
My life from that point flipped upside down. I started helping out with the aboriginal ministry that my dear mother still runs. I found a church near me and that fantastic community has blessed me. I have become a youth leader and have also slowly started co-leading single life workshops with NHM. I cannot explain the change; I went from saying life sucks and there is not much point to it, to being fired up with love and wanting to share the difference in my life with others.
A stunning example is that I wouldn’t say I liked reading, studying and focusing because I would be far too tired to take in what I needed. I couldn’t learn. Since that encounter with Divine Love, I have done nothing but read, learn languages, and study theology. My experiential moment with Jesus erased my desire for drugs and lust, and my desperate seeking for hope was over. Jesus cleaned my mind. Even though I didn’t want to be in that room at the Benefit Centre, the simple act of still walking in and sitting down was almost a subconscious invitation for Him to enter my heart, and that’s what He did.
The installation of hope, purpose and a new worldview from a simple encounter is how great He is. I am so excited for what’s to come. I can now connect with people. I care about people and I want to know their stories. I can connect with the opposite sex in a healthy way and I am free from the bondage to desires. Jesus has made my whole processing core of thoughts, and wants, new.
Drue works as a personal trainer, swimming teacher and kids’ mentor. He is also studying a double degree in business and theology. In his spare time, activities he does for fun include studying German and Hebrew, reading books and camping, alongside helping out in serving others in any way he can. Once a month he heads out to Lincoln as a youth leader, helping to support the work of the church there, and more recently is excited to join in co-leading single life workshops with Nothing Hidden Ministries.