Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Gail Kreason

Gail: You're very right. I want to remind you too that I was five months pregnant when this happened. I had a seven-year-old son and I was pregnant with my daughter and I was very angry at some point. I can't even describe the emotion, Jonathan: it was so over the top. I was so overwhelmed and because I felt like God had restored that part of what I didn't have as a child with my husband and I had all this love: I had people around me that loved me, my church. Also, if I can make this point too, I found an identity - I felt that people loved me again and I was this wonderful person because I was married to a pastor and I had all this music, this singing career: my life looked perfect. When I lost him, it was like my perfect little world that I made for myself, in a moment was gone, I mean in one phone call it was destroyed: everything that I worked so hard for and put the whole of my trust in was gone! It was so devastating and I was so angry at God as the time progressed. I was thrust into being a single mother like my mum was, raising my two children - but she had raised seven kids all by herself. Here I was, this woman all by herself now, with a seven-year-old and an unborn child and now here I'm going to be one of the statistics of a single mother. I lost my church, I lost my friends, and I'm losing everything again, God, please? And so the anger and the despair and the hurt and the pain - well you can't even look up to see bottom. You just feel like you want to die yourself: you don't want to live any more. A lot of those thoughts came to me: I didn't even want to live anymore because if I had to lose all this again, what's worth living? That's the danger, though, in putting your identity and your hope in anything else than Jesus Christ. Even though I loved Him, I still got distracted.

Jonathan: Where did you find a lifeline? What were you able to hold on to even though you were in the depths of that pit?

Gail and Andrew with Abigail

Gail: It was really and truly, honestly I can say this above all else, it was that seed that my mother planted in me about knowing Jesus Christ, knowing that He loved me, knowing that He cared about me. There was a scripture that she would say to me, Psalm 46: God is our refuge and strength, He's your present help in time of trouble, Gail. Don't fear because the Lord of Hosts is with you, the God of Jacob is your refuge. I went back to that, even though the tornado, the whirlwind, the winds and the storms of life were raging and I didn't even want to live. I heard that still small voice, that little thing that my mother taught me from a very young age that God was my refuge from the time of trouble. That's all I knew, is that God was a help in time of trouble and I was in trouble and I needed His help.

Jonathan: I guess that that's part of the dynamics of the wrestle in some of these things, is that our pain takes it out on God. You're angry with God, but at the same time you've got that inner voice that's also saying, "But I know you're different and I still want to hold onto you and you are where my hope is still to be found."

Gail: Yes, that's it, because in all of it, when I was going in my fit of rage and my depression and my anger and my hopeless - I just felt so hopeless, Jonathan: I mean I knew people loved me around me - but it was that feeling of just being so alone again and it just hurt so bad. But to know that wrestling that goes on inside, the natural and the spiritual side, like Jacob when he wrestled the angel, I felt like: "I'm not going to let go God, I can't let go, because you're all I have." Everything else so quickly dissolves, you know, a marriage of 10 years, a church that we built: everything I had to let go of, it dissolved. In my wrestling it with God, I said, "God I'm not going to let go," because that was the only truth that I really knew couldn't be taken from me. Everything else can die, can leave you, can walk out, can be destroyed, can be stolen - but God, you said you would never leave me nor forsake me in Hebrews 13:6. He'll never leave us or forsake us, Jonathan. I like this part because He says: You can boldly say the Lord is my helper, I will not fear, what can man do to me? I had that knowledge because my mother taught me the Word when I was a little girl.

Jonathan: You see, there's a difference between knowing God in your head and even knowing Him by seeing it in Scripture, and actually having to find Him in experience and knowing Him experientially as that God. I guess that's what you've discovered; that although you've had some deep tragedies in those places, you know God as a God that you can find and He meets you in that place.

Gail: Absolutely! And He's no respecter of persons and He loves us all and He cares so deeply and His Word is so true. When you're going through these times, though, the last thing you want to hear sometimes is that God loves you. There's that part of a human being that just starts to self-protect and so you don't want to hear anything that somebody has to say. Like even someone reading this, they might say, "You know I've tried God, or that's the last thing I need to hear," because you want something tangible, something in the natural that can make you feel better. But if you'll just wait on the Lord, the Bible says: Those that wait on the Lord, He'll renew their strength. Sometimes it's just a process of time, but God is faithful and God is there and He was before time began and He'll be when it ends. So we're in the middle right now: we're not where it began and we're not where it ends; we're in the middle, we're waiting on God. So at that time, in the process, I had to wait for God to heal me completely: spirit, soul and body, because we are spirit, soul and body; we're not just a spirit, we're not just a soul and we're not just a body. God takes care of all three portions and sometimes it just takes a little time for all those three to come together. But if we wait for God and not try to mask it with a drug or mask it with a substance and just lay out before God and say, "God I need you." He loves us just like that, Jonathan, and He will, right in time, touch us where we hurt. I promise you. He did it for me: I'm an example of what God can do if you'll wait on Him.

Jonathan: Now we've not touched yet on another tragedy that came a little bit later on. So after all that you'd been through, you remarried, you found love again and right in the early part of your marriage, you had financial ruin with your husband's business and as a result you lost your home and bankruptcy followed. What did you feel when again you were hitting this huge abyss?

Gail with her husband Jim

Gail: You have no idea of the depth of the abyss that I went into. It's the darkest hole. In my spirit I knew that God loved me, but that soul part, our mind, will and emotions, is the part that gets devastated. You can be a strong Christian and something like this happens, but it still devastates you because your soul realm is where it hits you and you go into this place that you just say: "I mean, God why again? I've served you all my life. I've given in tithes and offerings, I've given you my ministry, I've given you my children, my life, everything I have - and then this? Now I lose this again?" I found myself back in that place, but each time it got easier to recognise that God, if He could pull me out of the last one, He'll pull me out of this one. Then I had my husband who was a powerful man of God just to hold hands with and we came into agreement together. Although that was the product of our hearts being wrenched, our minds being disillusioned, going through all that process that the human condition goes through, but when it was all said and done we could hold hands together and say, "God will bring us through," and you know, He did. We didn't save our home, and we didn't save our business: we ended up in an apartment which was small. We had a beautiful home and I drove a Mercedes and he drove a BMW and we had this six-figure income and we had all this stuff. But when it was all said and done, what was remaining, we went into this small little apartment and we had a used car. You know we lost everything; what remained, what was important, was that we had Jesus and His presence and love. He who dwells in the secret place of the most High God shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty - Psalms 91. That's what we did: we thrust ourselves under the wing of Almighty God and I know that's what helped us - but it wasn't without much pushing and persevering and believing. It was torturous, let me tell you, it was very torturous.

Jonathan: I guess you had to go through a transformation. We've shared this on Breakthrough Nights over the last year, the example of the caterpillar to a butterfly, that process in nature. It says of the caterpillar that it thinks it's going to die and it's basically getting ready for death in that cocoon and it gets broken down into a pool of liquid, but in that place of being so fully broken down, miraculously the cells find each other and they start to rebuild. Out of it eventually comes this incredible butterfly, which has to push its way out of a little hole in that cocoon before it finally comes out, but when it does, it comes out in a totally different dimension. That's really just a great example of that transformation process that sometimes, and I see it in your story, God has broken you down to a pool of liquid hasn't He?

Gail today

Gail: Yes He has, Jonathan. But you know, God's Kingdom is being built with broken things. God uses broken people, He just does. There's a scripture in Psalms that talks about how He's near to a broken heart and a contrite spirit. That's how I feel that God has used me and His whole Kingdom is being used by broken things. We think that we should be the strong and successful and victorious and unbroken things in life to build God's kingdom but God is the God of the unsuccessful, He's the God of those who have failed. Look at David in the Bible; look at all the characters in the Bible that did things that were broken and that lost, like Job and look at how God used Job and restored him at the very end of his life: when he forgave his friends and when he prayed for them, God restored him double than what he had before. I like the fact that God can restore us to a glorious place of blessing and beauty and He can take a life that's been crushed by pain and sorrow and He can make it beautiful again and into an instrument of total praise. My life is an instrument now of total praise. Yes, I was a liquid: that is a perfect analogy of a caterpillar trying to get out of that cocoon into a butterfly, because I'm telling you, if you put yourself in the hands of Almighty God and you let Him build you, you'll be an instrument then like that butterfly. We can open our mouth then in praise: truly be a vessel, an instrument that breaks strongholds, that takes down walls of adversity, that can truly do something powerful on the Earth, something that can be used for God's glory and lifted up to Him. That's what it's all about, just like the butterfly flying away. Anyone that's going through any problem or distress and feels like that little caterpillar that's turning into a pool of liquid because of its adversity - just know that God will give it wings and also as an instrument of His glory to sing praise and to give Him the glory. He wants all the glory.

Jonathan: Let me ask you a couple of questions to wrap up here, Gail. Where have you come to in your heart towards those who murdered your first husband?

Gail: Total forgiveness. I often think about them and pray for them. I know I'm female and I guess I really do have the gift of mercy so I'm very quick to forgive - and I understand that a lot of people don't have that gift of mercy and it takes them time to forgive - but I truly forgive them. It's so important that people know that forgiveness is so key to moving forward in their life, because in Matthew 6: 14 says, 'For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you but if you don't forgive their trespasses, your Heavenly Father won't forgive you'. It doesn't sound good for people to hear that, but for you to truly get past your problem, you have to forgive your offender and without that you're stopping up your well, as God says rivers of living water should come forth from us. We actually put a big lid on that when we don't forgive those that have hurt us, that have mistreated us unjustly, even if they have falsely accused us. They did it all to Jesus: they falsely accused Him, they said terrible things about Him and ultimately killed Him. If you think about it, we are no different: if we want to be His messengers, if we want to be His disciples, we will suffer just like He suffered, we'll go through just what He goes through - but we need to do just what He did and that was: 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do'. Many times the people that do what they do, don't realise what they're doing and the consequence of what they're doing, but if we can forgive them, we release them and we release ourselves. In that I feel so free that I have released them and I have released myself. Now to walk into the Kingdom of God, to lift my voice in praise and worship in the songs that He gives me to sing, to bless His Holy Name and to take it to the nations that Jesus Christ can do it for me, so He will do it for them.

Jonathan: You started off the interview by talking about your father: all that you suffered at his hands and the way he was. But you mentioned that the mercy of God reached him as well. How did that happen?