Dominique Young knows about the dark side of mothering. And now, she doesn’t hesitate to share it. The pastor’s wife and mother of four young children also runs a ministry called Faith Mamas, designed to “boldly combat the loneliness and isolation that have become synonymous with motherhood.”
But when she first experienced a season of anxiety surrounding past traumas, including her own childhood sexual abuse, her first impulse was “to sweep it under the rug,” she says.
She tells Dr. Barbara Lowe on “Dr. Barbara’s Whole Life Podcast” on the Charisma Podcast Network, “I was shocked. I thought I was over this. I thought I was done with what’s going on. But of course, I didn’t tell anybody, because [I thought], I’m a mom. Now I’m supposed to have it all together. I have these little humans to take care of. And I went on like that for a little while. And I ended up in a behavioral hospital; I just completely crashed; I completely had a breakdown.”
And in that difficult season, Young says, she realized something. “This is one of the parts of my testimony. … I thought that I was operating in faith, and I was operating in fear. .. And I would call it faith like, ‘Oh, you know, no, I’m fine; I’m fine. And by the stripes of Jesus, I’m healed. And I would just sweep it under the rug.”
Fear of what others would think and of the pain the healing process might bring kept her hiding in the shadows, Young says. But after her breakdown, “God met me and said, ‘It’s time to deal with this; you’ve got to actually go to counseling; you’ve got to bring this out; you’ve got to talk to your husband about it; you’ve got to tell people what happened.”
That began a layered healing process, Young says, that moved her into freedom. She realized her former sexual abuse “was like an open doorway to the enemy to imprint shame deep within me.” And the way God has turned her deepest, darkest moments into a continuing ministry to other moms through Faith Mamas, she says, is an incredible “accidental ministry.”
To hear more of Dominque Young’s story of transformation and to learn more about Faith Mamas, listen to this podcast. {eoa}
