A broken marriage and the end of another relationship left Jillian’s heart in shreds. Invited to church by a close friend, Jillian wasn’t sure what to expect. History had told her religion was outdated but something was drawing her near.

Transcript
I had a lovely childhood, good parents plenty of love. And I’ve got one brother older than me. We were very family orientated. Lots of aunties and uncles and cousins and celebrations. And then when I was 16 a family friend, their son, asked me out. And we started what we used to call courting in those days. And we’d go to dances on saturday night. And he was lovely. He treated me so well. Looking back I don’t know if it was being in love with being in love. In that era we left school, got a job, got a boyfriend got married, had your babies, got the mortgage. Married at 19, and then had three children. Husband was a good support. Oh we were just so so happy. Things started to change and I didn’t know what was happening. And then my husband decided to leave me. He told me that he did have a problem, that he was homosexual. And that just blew me away. What have I done wrong, how do I fix this? I don’t want to tell anybody, I felt so much shame and embarrassment cause we were the perfect couple. I thought that this was it, that’s it for me. But then I came along and met another guy. And we never got married but we were together 18 years and that was wonderful. Then bang he told me he’d been having an affair with a woman from work for 3 years and I was 57 years of age I was absolutely devastated. And that just blew me. It just blew me. I was just so sad, so traumatised. I just didn’t think this would ever happen to me again. A friend of mine Chris had become a christian a few years ago. Her and I had been the party girls. I couldn’t believe she’d become a christian. What does that mean? So she rings me one sunday afternoon, thinking that she’d probably be going to ask me to go to a barbeque or something? When she said oh good, that’s good. You can come to church. Walked in and thought, there’s no crosses and no stained glass windows and there’s this guy up the front on the stage. And he’s got jeans on and he’s rather cute and he’s talking about his alcoholic mother. And I thought if he’s preaching, if he’s running this church, I could be here. Since that day which was 8 years ago, i’ve never stopped going. I was a person that was very full of fear, inside. I might have been ok on the outside but the inside was so, the fear, the fear of being alone, the fear of not having a husband.
And so I had this fear and I kept obviously blocking that out. But once I became a christian and got faith, that fear went.
Also there’s only one person that could look me in the eye and tell me that they won’t abandon me or reject me and not forsake me and that is, that’s God.
I realised only over the last year my needs are now filled with the love of God.
Where I find myself being busy with today is helping others and that is with christians against poverty which i’ve got a real heart for. Because I have been stripped financially. And also i’ve only ever been on low income jobs so having a lot of money has never been a highlight of my life when you get stripped. Having to help people with their budgets, I do it as a debt coach supporter. And I just love going into the homes of these people and supporting them through their journey of becoming debt free. I just get so much pleasure out of doing that.