Healing from Childhood Trauma & Becoming Who God Created You To Be

“He asked me to lay down who I thought I was and become basically nothing because the story wasn't true.”

Below is a snippet of a conversation with Deb Copeland (70), a former Fortune 500 executive who retired at 50 to work for God full-time. Deb shares her profound journey of faith, including an awakening she experienced at 19 that led her to give up alcohol and drugs and the healing she went through from unprocessed childhood trauma at 57 years old. Throughout our conversation, Deb emphasizes the importance of surrendering to God, understanding your identity in Christ, the role of scripture in personal growth, and more. If you prefer listening, you can listen to or watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

How long have you been walking with the Lord and what has your journey looked like?

My initial being saved as a young girl, I veered and changed like most of us do and tried to do things my way. And so at 19 was my first awakening and literally He woke me from a deep sleep and asked me to pick up my cross and follow Him. And at 19, I'll be honest, I wasn't exactly sober and I didn't know exactly what was happening.

And I thought, I'll do it. I got up the next morning and I poured the liquor down the drain and the drugs and the other things down the toilet. And I didn't know what that meant, but I immediately started praying and I was lucky to have a pastor who was my uncle.

So when I went to him and I told him what had happened and I wasn't sure if I was going crazy or not, he assured me that he had seen the same visions and knew the calling on my life. Now, 19 years old, we don't understand calling. We don't understand visions. We don't understand much. But I was at a desperate place in my life. I had a traumatic life and I wasn't willing to talk about it.

I kind of stuck with the basics, and that was that my dad had left when I was 13 turning 14. And prior to that, he was always out and in. He would leave and then come back and leave and come back. But this time he left for good. And my mom had just gotten diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. My sister had just left for college and it was me.

And so I was in dancing and I was a majorette and I was in all the stuff. And so that stuff came to a screeching halt. I continued school for a couple more years and then dropped out as a junior in high school to take care of her and she died when I turned 17. And so I kind of left that as this is my story and I'm sticking to it. And I made a cognizant decision to make that my story and to stick with it and to never go deeper and to never talk about anything else.

And I was blessed that the Lord accepted me where I was, woke me up a couple of years later out of a stupor. And I was blessed to have my uncle who was a pastor whom I could go to. And he was kind of like, okay, great, about time.

And it was beautiful because I really had him to study under and to attend church. And any time I slipped or faltered or became negative, I was working three jobs just to manage, going to college and I had taken my GED and then joined the local university and studied healthcare. First, just general studies and worked at a hospital as a helper, as an aid, and then later went on and received my PA in pediatrics.

So that was kind of my life then. And I just did what God said. And that wasn't me. That was the Holy Spirit I had accepted earlier doing that work in me. Because as a 19-year-old, wow, I mean, I'm going to drop my friends and divorce them literally. And I did, because I kind of had to, because I was hanging with the wrong people.

Healing from childhood trauma at 57 years old:

But a major part of my story was revealed later. And at 57 is when I told the truth about my childhood. And I had never told anybody, not one person. I had carried it my entire life. Not my husband, I'm ashamed to say. Well, then you're afraid to say it because what if he leaves? Because you're still so governed by Satan filling your head with nonsense about not speaking your truth.

And so at 57 the Lord called me and threw a gal who kept trying to get a hold of me and she wanted to have lunch with me. And on this particular day, I was at home making soup for neighbors who were sick. And I had made several calls to a prominent name we would all know. And I was praying for her to call me back. And so I get this call from a number I don't recognize. And this is when I really knew I still had more growth with the Lord. So I was quite disappointed when it was this gal.

So she said, I know you think I'm calling you because I'm in your book club fan group, but I'm not. I'm calling you because the Lord has given me a word to speak to you. And I was kind of like, again, spiritual correction needed to happen, yada yada. In my head, I was like, yeah, I'm sure.

There was a little pride and arrogance that had not died off. And I wasn't aware of it because I was also this great woman and this worker bee for Christ. And I didn't see it. I have a favorite line that I say: we don't know what we know till we know it. And I didn't see it. I wasn't aware of it. I thought I was like kind of perfect and certainly a self-righteous Christian without knowing that too.

And so I finally said, ‘Yes, I'm making soup for my neighbors. Why don't you stop by?’ So she did. She was much younger than me. And I said, here, we'll have a bowl of soup. And I pulled up a chair and I started to pray. And I remember in my prayer near the end or at the end, I said, please Lord, help me to help this lady, this sister with what she needs. And I said, which was not me, it was Holy Spirit, and please help her to be a help in my life. And I went, what?

And so she started to talk. And she told me of her childhood trauma with her pastor father. And my mouth was agape. And I kept saying, shut your mouth, close your mouth. And then I started to feel this rumbling and it was just like that. I knew she could see it because I felt like I was shaking. And I was, I thought physically shaking from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes, because I felt it. I couldn't sit still. I certainly couldn't eat my soup. I was nauseated. I was sweating. I was feeling sorry for her. And I was near like, not just crying. I was shedding tears. But I was more like dry heaving crying.

And so I said to her, you're going to have to leave. I have to go get my kids from school. Well, she worked at my kids’ school and she knew that school wasn't quite over like by an hour and a half. And so she said, okay, dear. And she was much younger than me. And that wasn't really what I would expect to come out of her mouth. But she said, okay, dear, when you're ready to talk about this.

And so I went to my car and I sat in my car and I beat the steering wheel and I just screamed at God. I had never raised my voice with God. I had never told Him what I thought. I had never bossed Him around and the real death out of the ashes. And I think of Esther 4:14, this could be the day you were created for.

And I thought of Joel 25, I thought, oh my goodness, could He restore the years, the locus of Eden? I didn't believe He could. I had no thought that He could. I was just mad. And so I made a deal with Him that I would go sign the kids out early and that we would skip tennis and their after school activities and that I would come home and go to my room and have a meeting with Him.

And so I got to school, they didn't want to skip tennis. They didn't want to do anything. And I said, okay, I'll take you to tennis. And that was a two hour window…and so I had gone meanwhile into the bedroom with a legal pad and I had filled it as I prayed, while they were at tennis. And I came up out of there destroyed. But Holy Spirit had revealed to me that if that woman had not spoken to me, I wouldn't have understood what had been so complex my whole life.

I'm like, how can my father have sexually abused me and beaten me if we sang hymns together, if we went to church, it didn't make sense. If he was good about this with me or that with me, but this part didn't fit and I had never let it fit. And when the negatives, if you will, like a photograph negative would come up in my mind, I would dismiss it and blame myself for having had a vision that I was either mentally deranged or I had seen something as a child, maybe a Playboy book or maybe some form of a movie. And I just blamed me.

So once I filled the entire legal pad with the memories, I kind of shook it at God when I came up. I had been sobbing and praying and I said, I'll never speak of that again. And He must've had a good chuckle. Because then the truth was out and I've helped more people from 57 to 70 than I would have ever believed.

And the whole ministry of helping children was “Live to Give a God Thing.” And we sent children to Hilton Head Christian Academy out of different places in Hilton Head that they didn't have parents or they had a parent but not the other and they were in poverty. So we paid for those children to go to Hilton Head Christian and as I got to know their parents, then I learned about a whole lot of dysfunction and then the Lord called me to Recovery Church.

So the last five years, I've served as pastor of Hilton Head Recovery Church where we help alcoholics, addicts, porn addicts, people in severe trauma and their families, find the Lord, walk in the Lord and walk in recovery. And so we oftentimes house people who are on their last leg and we help them find jobs and we give them financial security until they can get that job and get their lives turned around, helping them stay sober, giving up drugs and alcohol.

And we now have a sober house on Hilton Head where several guys live and then they come along and help me with other people. So it's a ministry I would have never planned. I wanted to be talking about alcoholism because my father was a severe alcoholic. And that's why there were times he was great and there were times he was very sick.

[But what the Lord essentially did] was ask me to lay down who I thought I was and become basically nothing because the story wasn't true, right? Because I'm the one told my story and the shame was so great that I couldn't allow myself to be that person because the picture wouldn't be the same. And so now to be who He had called me to be in Christ Jesus, He restored me to a place he could really use me.

I've come to know that He is in charge of my identity. I don't pick an identity. He chooses that identity for me. He did a long time. He knit me together in my mother's womb for such a day as this. I am who he says I am. You know, I run everything through a filter no matter what I do. And it is, ‘Is what I'm about to do or say pleasing to you, Lord?’ And if you ask Him that, He’ll tell you. Before I say yes to this podcast, is that what I'm supposed to do, Lord? I have become very submissive. And that's all happened since 57.

Wise words worth echoing:

-“It’s not enough to love Him, but you have to surrender yourself, your identity to Him.

-“We get better with the Bible and with the Holy Spirit and the Lord.”

- “When we live that prayerful life, we're not going to go do the next wrong thing. We're going to do the next right thing.”

- “When I'm living in His plan and being obedient, things get better when I get better.”

- “Every time He shows up and we're aware of it, it strengthens our faith.”

- “You can't know His voice unless you've read His word. His word is our directive.”

- “The longer I serve Him, truly the sweeter He grows.”

- “It'd be like…you had a crush on a guy and you wanted to date him. So you go for the first date and suddenly you wanna know everything. What's his favorite ice cream? What's his favorite color? What's his favorite thing to do? What's his favorite song? You wanna know these things. Well, we need to kind of date Jesus like that. We need to know what makes Jesus Jesus.”

Listen to or watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

Thank you for being here,

Katharine

P.S. Eternal Echoes is free today. But if you’d like to partner with me in passing on faith and wisdom to future generations, I’d be so grateful if you consider supporting my work. I thank you truly, kindly and sincerely.

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