Reflecting on my last days of darkness

a new age to Jesus testimony

I’m coming up on four years saved by His grace and I can’t help but remember how lost I truly was, that day, crying on the bathtub floor, crying out to God…for a sign to keep holding on. Remembering how He held me and surrounded me with His peace, in that moment, as I cried uncontrollably, not because of how sad I was, but that He answered my call. He is real. And I just knew it was Jesus.

….

My relationship with God is not perfect by any means. And if I’m being honest, this past year I have had more doubts in my faith than I like to admit. I feel spiritual warfare at times. That’s why I committed to reading the bible in a year, today being day 2 & I already feel the enemy trying to rob me, but I know the great gift of His word and that I need the daily reminder that I am truly nothing without Him.

It’s been almost four years since Jesus met me in my bathroom one really dark night, as I contemplated if I wanted to keep living. He came to illuminate my very catastrophic life. He truly saved me from myself because only He knows how lost I truly was. And though I have times when I doubt literally everything…I could never deny Him. His presence that He revealed to me that night. How in just a split second He gave me so much hope.

I think I have moments of sabotage and wanting to question everything I believe in because I haven’t fully forgiven myself for how long and far I’ve guided myself into darkness. How lost I was for years and in turn, guided others to false gods and wildly harmful practices that I once swore by. How my ego got so inflated from these “spiritual encounters” I was having with what I thought were ancestors and angels and gods and beings from other dimensions.

To recognize now, the deep deception I was in is not only humbling, but at times, shameful. The shame part isn’t from God, but from my ego, my inner critic not letting me off the hook for being so dead wrong for all of those years, when I claimed to be “healing” others and proudly took the title as a “spiritual healer”...cringe (as my 13 year old son would say).

My supernatural encounter with Jesus came after a series of events that I will never forget.

Let me backtrack a bit.

I had been practicing witchcraft for about three years…a proud Wiccan and was very deeply immersed in my new age lifestyle for nine years before being saved.

I loved working with entheogens.

I loved entering the spirit realm to unlock memories, “past lives”, receive psychic downloads, communicate with spirits…and ultimately offer my vessel for dark spirits to inhabit. Of course, I didn't know this is what I was doing. Everything I was doing was with good intentions: to help others heal, help myself heal, manifest loads of money, and “ascend” my soul. I just had no idea what the trade off would be…that these spirits were siphoning my energy, my sanity, my peace.

I frequently would have “ceremonies” where I would channel spirits (I now believe these to be dark spirits…or demons). Sometimes I would do this through my meditations and sometimes I would take psilocybin to journey through the spiritual realm and channel. This was all very normal activity for me. I was a paid psychic and tarot reader and being the workaholic I am, I was always doing some kind of “spirit work”, whether for personal development or money or pleasure.

But there was this one night, I had just received a “past life regression reading” from a woman I knew in the psychic community…she was very well-known. She claimed to be from the Pleidian lineage (an alien species supposedly of higher consciousness than humans). A Pleidian Starseed, she called herself. She affirmed my path as a healer and began to tell me that I was also of this “higher consciousness” alien lineage. Of course, this really boosted my ego at that time, believing that I must really be special after all. Gifted. Otherworldly. How cool?

That night I decided I wanted to communicate with these beings and go on a psychedelic journey. I made some psilocybin tea. I invited my husband to join me and he did so, quite reluctantly, as he wasn’t really interested in the activity that I had been participating in at this point. At times he expressed that I was “taking it too far”, which, to be honest, I really was. I told him that I was going to take a much larger dose than I normally do and would likely need him to “babysit”, knowing he would only take a little bit and would be quite level headed compared to me.

I set my intention by whispering to the tea before drinking and then I drank up. I sat in meditation for a short while until I began to feel my body vibrate. I was used to this happening to me and now believe this is what would happen right before a spirit would inhabit my sacred vessel. However, this time, the vibration in my body was overwhelming. I began to involuntarily sing a song in a completely foreign language. One that I’ve never heard before. One that I would assume is not from this world.

It started to become harder to breathe. I felt completely taken over, shaking uncontrollably, and feeling the hair on my body stick up. It felt like I was being electrocuted. I opened my eyes to look at my husband for solace. He was looking at me with eyes of concern, confusion, but trying to comfort me.

It felt like a thousand pounds of weight was sitting on my chest. I looked at my skin and it began turning blue with carvings of some sort of writing all over, glowing on my skin. My hair began to stand up like it was met with static electricity. It was nearly impossible to speak. I wanted to ask my husband if he was seeing what I was experiencing because it all felt so real and I knew it couldn’t have been a hallucination. I needed something…someone to help ground me, so I clung to my husband for dear life.

I felt like I was fighting whatever entity was trying to take over. My husband held me, attempting to calm my panic. I cried out for help and for it to stop and eventually it did. When I was able to speak again, I asked him what he saw. To my surprise, he saw exactly what I was experiencing – the blue skin, the electrocuted hair, the writings lighting up my skin. I felt chills down my spine. This wasn’t a hallucination…this really happened.

Up until this experience, I was never one of those people to experience a “bad trip”. I was known as the “mushroom queen”. I thought mushrooms loved me and I loved them. But this wasn’t a bad trip. This was like being cracked open and blasted off into outer space for all of the savage spirits to feast upon your soul. I was deeply disturbed by this experience. I didn’t know what to make of the entire thing.

If these spirits were good…why did I feel like I was dying? Why did I feel like I had no say or control in the experience?

Why didn’t I call out to God? Probably because at this time, I believed that I was the god of my own life. I know…blasphemous.

The next few weeks following that earth-shattering trip were dark.

I spent a lot of time in the bath.

I was in a program for mediumship during this time. I was learning an energetic practice that I thought would help me become a better “healer”. I was also desperately trying to heal myself. So I would practice this energy work in the bathtub, multiple times a day. I spent so much time in the bathtub. Mostly because I felt like I couldn’t handle real life. So the bath was my escape.

One of these days, I was in the bath, meditating and journeying through my subconscious, as I would do often in these meditations. A memory surfaced, one that was so vivid. It left my paralyzed.

I was raped.

When I was 12 years old, at a sleepover at my aunt's house. Her boyfriends son who was 17 years old at the time…raped me. I felt all of the shame, guilt, and confusion flood my body, just as I felt that night when it happened. The memory was so tangible…so real.

How could I have forgotten this? How did I just suppress that memory for 15 years of my life?

Why didn’t I tell someone? Why did I carry that shame and guilt, leading me to hide it away for so long?

Little Tiffany was crying out for help. So much made sense in that moment, as I remembered what happened, but I was not mentally equipped to carry the burden of that memory at this time. I was already suffering…crying out…desperately needing to be saved.

How was I to carry this pain all on my own?

I began to lose it. Crying so hard, my husband heard me from downstairs and came up to comfort me. He had no idea what I was crying about, but he knew I was in pain.

I tried talking about it with my family, with my husband, and with my best friend. Nothing could really help me make sense of it all. No one could give me the comfort I was seeking.

The void, the emptiness I felt in my soul felt bigger than ever.

Back to the bathtub I go. I sat there contemplating everything. What the hell was the point of it all?! Why me? Why is it so hard to just be happy?? Why can’t I just live a peaceful life?

I cried out, with my eyes closed, hopelessly…thinking to myself, “God if you are real, please show me.”

I felt warmth surrounding me. A presence like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I opened my eyes and saw gold shimmering all around me. I didn't see Him but I felt Him. He lifted my burden in an instant. He told me to follow Him and leave behind the life I no longer wanted.

I knew it was Jesus.

From that point on I slowly began to change. I wish I could say I radically shifted my life at that moment, but I was fighting it for a bit.

How could I leave it all behind? My businesses? My lifestyle? What about my calling? My purpose? Who am I without all of it?

I slowly began to shed my identity as a “healer and psychic”. I bought a bible. I began listening to other testimonies like mine. I felt God moving in me, changing my heart, shifting my desires.

Then one day I purged it all. The tarot decks. The crystals. The statues. The candle magic. The altar. The crystal singing bowls. Every single tool I had acquired during my journey, that I associated with my old life, the old me, I purged.

I felt light. I felt hope. I felt at peace.

With each new day, I began to rebuild, to figure out: who am I?

I am a child of God. I am His daughter.

Then, I found out I was pregnant. I felt a deep purpose in that. In birth. In motherhood.

I became a doula. I began to reinvent myself. Purging old ways and discovering new ways.

Now, as I reflect on the last 4 years of my life, I am truly in awe. He is an artist, our Creator.

God is so good & He makes no mistakes.

Filled with gratitude,

Tiffany

PS: If you want to hear my full testimony, you can listen to it here on my podcast.