Michelle

Michelle worships at St Marks Westhill, Bridlington and joined Stepping Up in April 2023.

I’m Michelle, I was one of seven children and grew up on a rough council estate. My dad was a heavy drinker and gambler, there was a lot of domestic violence and when my dad left my mum turned to alcohol and drugs. My older siblings left and I was left to care for my three younger siblings aged just 12, we often went hungry, I remember knocking on neighbour’s doors asking if they had any food, it was really hard. I eventually ended up in foster care at 14, but I think growing up I was really angry and really fearful, and I grew up learning to lie to hide the truth. My teenage years into my adult life was a series of abusive relationships, that’s what I’d grown up with, so I didn’t know anything different and it was really hard to escape.

One day, I know now that this was God, but I didn't know then, I was laid in my bed, I took a bad batch of drugs the night before and had a horrific night. I was crying and I just said “God”, I actually said “God, I just want my kids back please, I don't want this life anymore.” The next morning, I woke up and I had no edge whatsoever for drugs, and I knew that I had to make a plan. Gradually every day became easier and I've never touched a drug since…. amazing and I got my kids back. Then something happened that blew my world apart again, but I knew that something had to be different that I couldn't go back to drugs. I had to be strong, to show my kids a good example. At this point, I didn't have God, but I had my friend Emma. We’d lived on the same street and I’d seen something in Emma. I went up to the church, and she sat with me in the community garden, and I opened up. She prayed with me and honestly, did I feel different? Probably not but I believed in something, I believed that this God that changed her life must be available to change my life.

Emma kept inviting me back to things at church …and then asked me to volunteer. When I started volunteering, I was around prayer, I was around people's lives being changed, stories, testimonies and I thought this God sounds like cool, I kind of want to know who he is. I asked if I could go to the bible discovery group… then little by little, I started to believe that this God could be for me that this God could be a person in my life, he just wants me to be his friend.

Mark the vicar and Emma said they wanted me to do Stepping Up, and I said yes because for the first time in my life, someone believed in me. It was on Stepping Up I started hearing God, because I was given the tools to help me recognise God in my life and I started learning how to pray. It gave me a really different look at how listening to people is important, and being real and authentic, it gave me insight into how I can do that safely, and I felt like I was, you know heard. But I think this confidence thing, it’s given me a confidence that I never knew I had. I had quite a bolshy confidence before, where everybody liked me because I was cool or you know I've been a girl that you could go and take drugs with, but that ain't confidence….God’s built me with a confidence 100%.

At the end of Stepping Up I heard God say you've got a gift from life, and now I'm working with broken people, where I can really talk into people's lives, you know from God, but I can talk into people's lives because I understand, I can empathise, and I can give wisdom where it's needed. It’s been a challenge stepping up in a place where I’m known, where people know my story, and I’ve had to ask God to help me, and he’s put this protection on me where it don't pierce me anymore.

I’m now part of the Hope Hub, with the Restore food pantry, where we had team prayers before we opened. But then we felt we needed to start sharing from the bible and open it up to people who were waiting outside. That’s how Hub Church started and yesterday I think we had about 60 people there. Tuesday, I work with Emma running bible discovery in eight weeks blocks, we’ve got 13-14 people on that and community breakfast on Thursday, which has become massive, and what’s beautiful is people are finding friendships and, and we pray for people. Like this guy who was homeless and needed help, and we helped him and he kept coming back, asking us to pray with him and last Sunday he was baptised and asked me to be his sponsor.