Badly Broken, Beautifully Mended

By Katherine Lionheart

If there's a quick way from broken to mended, I haven't found it. This is the story of my long, slow, painful, beautiful journey of being reconciled to myself piece by piece. My story is raw and honest. I wrestle with faith and suffering as I take you with me to the depths of insanity and back up the slippery slope to normality. My book is peppered with questions for your own reflection, ensuring that you are not just a spectator but a travelling companion.

Badly Broken, Beautifully Mended is my account of growing up in two lives - a normal, stable, successful life and a traumatized, broken, unacceptable life. Thirty years ago I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder- a wonderful system for arranging trauma to enable life to continue, except that inevitably the system leaked bubbles of trauma into everyday life. Eventually, as the rest of the world folded into the eerie quiet of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, my world fell spectacularly and noisily apart. Flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, blinding headaches, screaming anxiety and wracking sobs made me so glad that no one was expecting me to go anywhere, any time soon. After decades of trying so hard to hold everything together, I let everything go.

Slowly and gently, with infinite patience and kindness, Jesus came and sat with all my broken pieces. I struggled to have Him there. After all, wasn't he a bit late in showing up? Anger and outrage rippled with eternal gratefulness as I clung to Him, the only clear path back to life. Shame covered me like a contagious disease. I despised myself. It was inconceivable that the God of all the universe was not equally repulsed. However, He led me to the suffering in His own story. He taught me that His death did not just buy me peace with God. In Him, I could also have peace with the long separated parts of myself. I reached up and took His hand and he led me from the broken shards of my life into healing and freedom in Him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katherine Lionheart
• Release date: Feb 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9780620970259

Katherine Lionheart

I started writing out my story for myself. I so badly wanted a story that made sense to me, that made sense of me. Writing was identity shaping for me. As the story came together though, I began to wonder if it might be useful or helpful for others. I thought about all the (often terrible) psychologists, counsellors and pastors who, in ignorance, did more harm than good. So, I started to see the story as a map for these kinds of long journeys. My experience of church community is that we like a quick fix. We like the 10-minute ministry time or the once-off pastoral visit. Doing long journeys with people who don’t get quickly better? That is not something we are good at. We might start with energy and enthusiasm but when we don’t get a quick response, we quickly give up. We label those people – manipulative, malingers, draining. Eventually they leave the church and that “proves” that they were not serious about growing up in Jesus. I think we can do better. We have to do better.I registered as a psychologist years ago but I’ve never worked in private practice. I couldn’t stand the thought of people having to pay to get that sort of help. I’ve always worked in NGOs for children and families in Australia and South Africa. I didn’t think I wanted to study further but a few years back I started a Masters in Sociology. I found that I love research and writing. That path eventually took me to my Phd in Psychology. I know most people moan about their Phds but I have loved it. I think it is important to choose work that fits with our God-given purpose. For me, most of my work and studies have also been my ministry. They have been spaces I have shared with Jesus, places where we co-labored.

Book preview

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Badly broken, beautifully mended

A personal story of freedom and healing

Katherine LIONHEART

© Katherine Lionheart 2021

Badly broken, beautifully mended

Published by Katherine Lionheart

Cape Town, South Africa

[e-mail]

ISBN 978-0-620-97025-9

eISBN 978-0-620-97026-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Cover design by Wendy West from thingswendymakes.co.za

Layout by Boutique Books

This story is my truth. As best as I know, it is a true story. The people and the places are real people and places. I do not know the names of many of the characters but where I do know names, I have done my best to anonymise them. Sometimes the story may appear dream-like. It is particularly bizarre in places, floating unrooted to places or people. If the physical story seems more unreal due to being anonymized, let it contrast with the incredible reality of what Jesus has done for me. His and my story is the one that we will be telling for eternity.

Katherine Lionheart is a pen name. Lionheart was a name given to me long ago, as I faced one of the difficult seasons in my life. The name was given by work colleagues who knew me and loved me. I treasured it immediately. I was then twice named Lionheart again, prophetically, by people who didn’t know me at all. I take it as one of God’s special names for me.

Visit my website at www.kathlionheart.com

I welcome communication by email at [e-mail]

To my dad who died whilst I wrote this book. I never got to hug you and know that you were not my perpetrator and that makes me profoundly sad.

Violence touches us all.

Contents

About this story

Crazy

DID From the Inside Out

Broken

Badly

Therapy

The Suffering God

Jama

The Night-time Visitors

Intimacy after Abuse

The Suffering Friend

Back Together

Reflection

About this story

Do not skip this chapter!

I waited patiently for the Lord,

He turned to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me up from the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire.

He set my feet upon a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him. (Psalm 40)¹

There is a story inside of me. It is a scary, wonderful story. It is a hard to believe story. It is a stretch your mind a little further story. When I look at those opening sentences I think about Jesus’ story and I think I could describe it in the same way. Scary, wonderful, hard to believe and even foolish (1 Corinthians 1:20-23). So, I am hoping if you read this that you have already stretched your mind into believing the crazy, unbelievable rescue plan of God. If you have stretched that far then you might be able to believe what is coming in this story.

My psychologist and Armor Bearer², said to me – Katherine, you have a wonderful story, you should share it. I responded – I have a terrifying story. No one would want to read it. He said – I would. You are weird, I said. Yes, He said, may be that is the case. Hubby says that if this story ever makes it to a bookshop, it should be filed under Christian Horror. It is a story that fits in the framework of Ritual Abuse. You might also think of it as organized crime against women and children with specific Satanic overtones. I find that there are strong resonances in my story and the gender-based-violence experiences that many women are now bravely speaking about. It is also a story about mental illness, about utterly terrifying craziness. It is my sincere hope that this story would help churches open dialogues about faith and suffering and that Jesus would transform hearts with deep understanding.

This is not a story for bedtime. It is not a story to curl up with on holidays. It is a raw and pain filled story. It is a true story, as best as I can tell it. Out of that deeply wounded place grows a narrative about the incredible gentleness and persistent love of our Father who seeks us relentlessly, offering us restoration. My prayer is that as you remember your own pain, you would let Father God pour His love deep into the wounds of your soul. It is only from that space of our own healing that we can connect openly with the suffering of others.

If your own pain is still easily triggered and yet you still want to read on, please do so with a safe person who can support you. You are welcome to skip chapters and come back to them another time. I didn’t re-member³ the pieces of my story in any sort of order. They were more like a plate dropped onto the ground. I picked them up as I found them and eventually, they came together. Pick up the pieces of my story in whichever way is right for you.

This is a story I have started many times. I have always been thwarted by how much it still scared me. Sometimes I write things literally with my eyes closed because it is too much to see the words on the page. I am writing because the story wants to get out. I am writing because every time I tell the story it makes the off the scale unreal, a little more real. Making it real is something I both want and fear. I am writing because I hope that you will be stretched, blessed, and equipped. I hope that my story has spoils of war⁴ that you can take with you into your own battles.

I feel a strong need to protect you from the hard parts of my story. I recognize that you can’t hear the healing and grace without hearing the pain and destruction. Still, my story has gained mythological proportions in my head. I believe it imbued with the power to spread its hurt to others, to you. After all, it has hurt me. I have invested a lot of energy into pretending that I’m OK. Normal. Shame has disciplined me into silence. It is a hard habit to break. You will notice when I write explicitly about the pain (in the chapters Badly, Broken, Jama and The Night Visitor), I interrupt myself continuously. These interruptions are for both of us, a place to break and remember that we (including you) are not in this kind of story anymore. If you find yourself spiralling into a sad, bad place, please stop reading and bring yourself back into a place of safety and containment.

My story is a version of many other stories – being messed up, searching for healing, embracing the freedom Jesus offers and going on to live well. It is a version that I haven’t heard anyone else tell though and I wonder if there are other people out there like me and I wonder if their therapists and pastors knew my story if it might help them lead people like me to freedom. I do love freedom. It only takes a tiny moment of remembering what Jesus has set me free from and to, to fill my heart with renewed joy at my salvation. And for that, I like my story. I like who I am.

When I was 22, I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and soon after with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), later called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). DID was still a new and controversial diagnosis at that time. I had certainly never heard of it. DID described the process of separating or splitting off of trauma into dissociated identities or parts that the getting on with life⁵ person was often unaware of. The sceptical psychological community quickly hit back with False Memory Syndrome, indicating that the horrors fragmented people had survived and finally managed to speak about, were not real at all. Soapies⁶ explored crimes committed by an alternative other – a bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, adding an additional layer of unreality to the diagnosis. Bizarrely I found, years later, that I had a book with a chapter on MPD and a chapter on ritual abuse. I distinctly remember skipping those chapters and reasoning – those sorts of things don’t happen. It’s OK if you want to laugh at me. I laugh too.

I always found the MPD/DID diagnosis helpful in explaining my internal conflicts and clashing narratives. I believe that all of us, to a degree, experience the same multiple story lines revealing different parts of our identity. These experiences are expressed when we say – one part of me wants to do this but another part of me wants something else. We all experience inner conflicts. The only thing that differs for those of us with DID is the degree to which we try to separate those parts, their stories and their conflicts, from our everyday life awareness.

It is complicated for someone who has had multiple parts of self to tell a coherent story. Whose story line should I pick up? What if there are two or three or even four conflicting story lines? I have done my best to string events along with one story line, but I acknowledge, in doing that, some story lines have been edited out. For example, when I was 21, I wasn’t in a church, and I was missing it. I started writing worship songs on my guitar to fill the gap. That is one story line about one dissociated part. In another story line about another part, I was in a church where I met my soon to be husband. Then, still at 21 whilst getting to know nearly Hubby, another part was getting to know Gerome who I was also considering marrying. As I prepared for our wedding, another part was planning suicide. This is where telling a coherent story can get tricky.

I have a similar problem with telling about the time I got saved because there are multiple times. But which one was the real one – I am asked? They were all real. Salvation has been a journey for me, a journey with Jesus and with myself. Honestly, there isn’t really a time in my life when God was not there, drawing me with cords of loving kindness into truth (Hosea 11:4).

When I was three, I prayed the sinners’ prayer at Sunday School, and it was real. When I was twelve, I gave my life to Jesus at a youth camp, and it was real. The following year I was talking to my youth pastor about assurance of salvation. I had not understood the watertight deal that Jesus had done for me. I gave my life to Him that day, and it was real. When I was 16, I had a revelation of Jesus on the cross and the conviction that it was my sin that held Him there. I fell to my knees in tears and gave my life to Him, and it was real. I think you’re getting the idea now but there is more. When I was 21, I went to a Vineyard Church conference. The speaker called young people forward who wanted to commit their lives to Jesus and give Him all their hearts. I went forward. I gave my heart to Jesus and He filled me with His Spirit. And it was real. When I was 40, at the end of a period of therapy, I had a dream in which Jesus revealed Himself to me as the Good Samaritan and I was the one who was beaten, robbed, and left for dead. Jesus came along my road and picked me up. He cleaned me, dressed my wounds, and paid a debt I couldn’t pay. For the first time, I found joy in my salvation. I walked around in this amazing bubble of knowing how deeply God loved me.

In addition to all these encounters, are the many, many times that a fragmented part of myself heard the gospel for the first time and chose Jesus. When parts choose Jesus, it feels less about salvation and more about reconciliation. I am being reconciled to Jesus, piece by piece. I am also being reconciled to myself and the story within me. This is an excerpt from my journal.

I had two bunny⁷ tribes- one with two bunnies and the other with three bunnies. They didn’t like each other at all so we divided the front garden from the back garden with double fencing so they could never meet. Warring bunny tribes can do a lot of damage to each other. Over time I took down that fence and moved it randomly back and forth until I could take it down completely and they each stayed on their own side. I called the strip where boundaries moved, the Gaza strip. There was a lot of fighting there, most of it passive – run to the enemy side and poop then run away! Bunnies are funny. Some time ago I used this as an analogy of the two