In 2017, I started my practice in Cape Town, South Africa. This concluded a six-year study journey in preparation for this. I studied at the Institute of Christian Psychology(ICP) in Johannesburg, where I lived at the time after moving back from Abu Dhabi, UAE, where I had lived for several years. At this time, my husband was still working in the UAE.
Around 2005, through personal circumstances in my life and my marriage, I ended up in a wilderness experience, which was traumatic and very painful. During this time, I was forced to work through things in my life that had remained unresolved. Trauma is a complex thing, and it is also something we can only suppress for a certain amount of time before it starts to impact our lives on all levels of functioning. So it was through my own journey of healing and coming back into a right relationship with God that He led me through the process, and I was re-parented by my Father in heaven through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ and His precious word.
From living a life of what I wanted and needed and self-preservation, I learned to seek the Lord for the plan and purpose He had for my life. During this painful season, I went from crying out to the Lord to relieve my circumstances to crying out to Him for His plan and purpose for my life. This is where things changed. Once I submitted all to Him, even to the point of being willing to lose what I was fighting to keep (my marriage, my pride, my dignity), I started to see a shift in my circumstances. We need to get to where we are so desperate for God that we are willing to sacrifice everything else. We need to get to the place where we want what God has for us more than what we want for ourselves.
In 2007, many things brought me to where I am today. I left Abu Dhabi and moved back to South Africa as part of the process of being willing to let go. The Lord brought me to a higher place, and I continued to grow spiritually despite the fact that things had not yet been fully resolved. My faith was in Him to do what still needed to be done. There was an intense period where I just would seek Him, spend time in the Word and immerse myself in Him. It was during this time that one night, He fetched me by His Spirit and took me by my spirit to an ancient place. It was a place that looked like where Jesus may have roamed with His disciples in the time of the Bible. It was an old structure in the desert with arch openings and fire lamps to light the way along the passage that we were going down toward a large cavern. I could see out of the arch openings, and I saw expanses of dunes of red sand.
As we entered the cavern at the end of the passageway, I saw all these treasure chests piled up from the floor to the ceiling in this large cavern. In my mind, I asked the Lord, what is this? And He answered me in the same way, saying that it was the treasure of generations laid up that had not been claimed. Those that it belonged to did not have the knowledge to claim the treasure. As I was pondering this, I felt myself go back into my body, where I was lying in my bed, and the Lord left Hosea 4v6 in my heart as the experience ended. I eagerly grabbed my bible to read this, and this is what it said: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children."
I knew that the Lord was giving me my assignment. He showed me through this what His plan and purpose was for my life. I knew that somehow I had to help people by bringing knowledge to be able to claim the treasure that had been hidden from them, treasure that had even accumulated from previous generations that had caused them to suffer lack in various areas. And consequently, their children suffered also. Part of this was also that we need to return to the knowledge of God and His word so that we can be the priests and kings that He speaks of in His word. Come back to His ancient paths.
Jeremiah 6v16: "Thus says the Lord: 'Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’"
This started my journey to seek what I had to bring to the world. Through my own journey of walking through the pain and trauma and healing process (which, by the way, is never the end; God is always revealing things we need to deal with), I discovered that it can be a lonely journey. My experience was beneficial as I learned from the Word and with the Holy Spirit how to get through it, but it was a lot harder than if I had skilled and equipped people walking alongside me. The Lord was also faithful in restoring my marriage in 2007, and this remains a significant year of my life. It was like a crossroad where I chose Him and His path.
When I found ICP quite by accident one day while browsing on the interweb, I knew this was something God brought across my path. At ICP, I studied psychology but had the privilege of appraising it through a Christian worldview, and I could filter out what I would use and what I would not. It was a valuable experience for me as I continued to learn, heal and grow through it. By the time I was done, I knew that I wanted others to understand why they experience life the way they do, why they struggle in certain areas, why their relationships are messy, and why they just cannot seem to overcome their challenges.
As I went into practice, I started to see that most people need to understand the basics before getting into deeper things. Starting in childhood, understanding what influenced their thought patterns, perceptions, and behaviours was fundamental before dealing with the deeper issues. I started to see a type of model unfold that could be used to explore and deal with trauma. I kept this in my heart, and the Lord used my practice and church ministry team experience to grow this model. I started looking deeper into trauma and the effects of this on the lives of individuals and the role of fragmentation and dissociation in why people struggle.
In 2019, just before COVID hit, I moved back to Abu Dhabi also through a series of events. This would turn out to be another wilderness experience where God would further expand on my assignment. It was not only going through the lockdown but also adapting to this place again, which I thought I would not return to.
You see, what we need to go through and the next level we move to is often not without pain as it is a place of preparation for us. And sometimes, the Lord will take us back to a place to resolve what needs to be resolved. It was at this time that I started to work on Take Up Your Space. Alongside this, I learned and listened to a lot of information that would help me build a case for my model. So many have done such awesome work that I did not want to reinvent the wheel, but I could use some of their knowledge, add to it, and expand on it through the Holy Spirit. We are all joints knit together to supply the body of Christ (Ephesians 4v16).
During my writing of Take Up Your Space, I realised that I had some lingering trauma that I had not dealt with. As I equipped myself more by learning more and working with individuals who had been through severe trauma in childhood, I was able to work through my own process and bring wholeness to those lingering areas. I think we will always have areas we need to pay attention to, especially when there have been longstanding issues, and the enemy loves to try and trigger us into old responses. We need to become more aware of when it is us and when it is the enemy and take hold of the truth of God's word. We need to cast down the thoughts and the strongholds that he will try to erect again. We are more than overcomers through Christ!
Having said this, we first need to build the pathway to be able to do things because if there is no pathway for something, we cannot do it. For example, you go to church, and you are struggling, and you are doing everything you can to get through it. The well-meaning pastor says to you, "Just have more faith, just read more Word, just trust in the love of the Father". All this is very valid for every believer, but what if you, as a child, never experienced the love of God? What if every time you hoped someone would come to save you from your circumstances, but no one came? This is something that needs to be resolved by first bringing healing to the trauma and then focusing on how to function with a new pathway, which also needs to be grown through repetition and consistency. We need to experientially feel the love that we never had, often first through others, and then grow in understanding God's love.
Take Up Your Space was released in May 2024, but it took me almost five years to bring it to completion due to my own challenges, distractions from the enemy, and also allowing myself to be led by the Holy Spirit in the content. I thought it would take a couple of months but that was me, it was not what God had planned. I focused on looking at trauma from a spirit, soul and body perspective, as we cannot heal only on one level. We are a tri-part being just as our Creator is, and so we need all parts of us to be well before we can fully embrace our identity in Christ. And this is what it comes down to. The enemy uses our trauma, those unresolved points of pain to keep us captive. We cannot move forward, and we cannot grow in our trust in God or understand how much He loves us and how wonderfully we are made. My heart is that this manual will help you to understand yourself better and also understand the intricacies of dealing with trauma as well as the spiritual aspects we need to take into account.
It is an extensive manual, but the feedback has been that it is easy to read, and the diagrams help to visualise and understand. My aim was also to present this as a course for those who have read the manual, worked through their own trauma, and then are inspired to help others. The extensive information was also to prepare those who want to coach to have a solid foundation in a short period of time to work with others. It took me fourteen years of studies and experience, and my hope is that I could bring the most important of that into this manual for others to use. What I also found working with individuals is that they do not always look for the information that is freely available to them. We are all different in how we process or look for solutions but we often also fail to seek out information when we need it. Being a teacher in my redemptive gift, research, and knowledge is important to me, so with this gift, I can impart to others, fulfilling part of what God called me to do. Why a part of it? Because I know there is more. There is always more for us if we are willing to take up our space.
Part of my treasure experience was also learning that we carry treasure in our hearts that we can share with others. So, if you have walked a road, you need to share it with others to help them find their treasure. Our testimony is our treasure, just as mine is.
I pray you will be blessed by this today and be inspired to take up your space!!
