AMAZING STORY
Television Set Powers On to Interrupt a Tragedy
By Shannon Woodland
The 700 Club
CBN.com -“I'm still that little girl inside,” said Sheryl Brackley. “There's a saying that whatever age you were abused at, you kind of emotionally are stunted at that age. So I'm pretty much always that 9-year-old, or that 13-year-old girl. So I remember.”
What Sheryl Brackley remembers is hoping someone would love her – and the years of abuse by her adoptive parents.
“If you're going to beat me and molest me and drug me or just get rid of me, never tell me that you love me, never tell me that I'm worth anything, then that little girl is going to go into her life and she's going to be a grown woman and she's going to think, ‘They didn't love me. Nobody ever loved me. Nobody thought I was special. Nobody thought I was worth anything. Nobody wanted to raise me, to mold me - to make me a beautiful young woman.’"
Sheryl became a single mom at 16 and by 18 she was a topless dancer with a drug addiction.
“I knew that it was all survival mode. All of it was survival; whether it was the man I chose, (or) the work I chose. I chose the things that I chose because I thought I had to in order to get by. In order to raise my little girl, I needed money. I needed to get an apartment. I needed to get out of a bad situation, so I was always trying to get out of the bad situation, but it was by picking another bad situation.”
This went on for years. Sheryl married and had another baby. But her husband was unfaithful so she divorced him. Desperate for answers she looked to the spirit world through candle lighting, séances and Ouija boards.
“I thought that I was getting in tune with angelic creatures, and I was getting actual answers, but then something else came in the home.”
“It was very, very dark and it was very, very scary.”
“Black blobs going across the doors, TVs turning on that weren't working and weren't plugged in. They were scaring me and they were scaring my children.”
Sheryl stopped the occult activities, but the evil remained. Even her addiction to methamphetamines didn’t numb the terror.
“I remember the deep, extreme, dark, gut-wrenching feeling of being scared, alone and exhausted and just can't take one more minute; not one more minute.”
“I was empty. There was nothing left.”
One night, after everyone had gone to bed, Sheryl decided to kill herself.
“Death seemed perfect. Death seemed tranquil. It seemed permanently wonderful. But at the same time, it still felt lonely.”
She put the razor blade on her wrist. Then, she hesitated.
“I said, ‘Okay, if there's a God, rescue me. Stop me.’"
“All of a sudden my TV turns on and the guy goes, ‘you, out there!’ And he said, ‘yeah, you. Now raise your hand.’ So I raised my hand, and all of a sudden I started shaking. My whole body just started super shaking. I felt so hot it hurt. I dropped the razor and then the voice, not from the TV, but from I don't know where, came and said; ‘Now you will want for these things no more. I love you.’"
Those were the words Sheryl had been waiting to hear her entire life.
“Just imagine it. Just imagine it for one second; a nobody – somebody that was disposable, she called on God and He showed up. Everything wonderful… I felt at that moment."
“I felt that that little girl that needed to hear that ‘you're everything wonderful, that you're worth it, that you have a calling, that there’s a purpose’ at that moment I felt all of that. ‘You will want for these things no more.’ And then He said to follow the mountain until you see my name. And I'm going, ‘Oh my, what's his name? What's his name?’"
That morning she piled her family into the car and did as the voice told her.
“We followed it. It wasn't very far. It was just right up the street though, we went right up to the mountain, followed the side of it and there was this huge church that had the name Jesus on the top of it. Now remember, when He said, ‘you will want for these things no more. I love you. Now, follow the mountain until you see my name.’ What? And that heat came over me again so powerfully strong. I said, ‘We're here. This is Him. His name is Jesus. Jesus is real! Jesus is real!’"
At that moment, Sheryl was free from drugs, alcohol and the occult. Plus, she stopped stripping. Even though she has worked for years through the pain of her past she doesn’t question God’s love. And as a single mother, she makes sure her daughters feel loved too.
“And I know the reason, and the reason is because I was a little girl who didn't have that.”
That is no longer the truth. Jesus Christ found Sheryl during her darkest hour.
“He was real. He came to me. I was important to Somebody. I don’t care if it was one Person, it’s the most important Person. Hey, my daddy is God in heaven, and He loves me.”
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