MWYC 2010: I'm the Vine, You are the Branches

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Midwest Youth Conference

Christian Berdahl

Testimony of Christian Berdahl

Turn with me in your Bibles to Revelation 12.

This will actually be our proof text for tomorrow morning as well.

I think it's fitting when someone gives their testimony to put it into proper perspective.

And Revelation 12 verse 11 says, and they, who's that?

And they overcame him, the devil, by the blood of the Lamb, Jesus, and by the word of their testimony.

And they loved not their lives unto the death." And tonight I've been asked to give my testimony, And you could sum it up by saying, Jesus saved a wretch like me, which is a miracle story because I was raised in a home where there was no Jesus.

My mother was 16 when she got pregnant with me, 17 when she had me, my father was 19, and there was no religion in any of their lives.

My mother was shipped off to church periodically as a babysitter.

My grandparents did not attend and my biological father, his father eventually became a Christian but it was just his thing and my grandmother who was an alcoholic was not interested.

My mother wound up having 2 additional children with the same man, and so us 3 boys, I'm Christian, my brother is Aaron, and my youngest brother is Brandon, and my dad's name is David.

So we have all these biblical names, but there are no No reason for it.

My mother says now she thinks it was prophetic to name me Christian because Through my story eventually I became 1 My father did not want anything to do with raising a family.

And at 19, most young men aren't ready for a family.

And so my mother found herself many times having to pack up the house and where they had rented a home and in apartments or in individual homes, and they had to pack up again because when you don't pay the rent, eventually you get kicked out.

And so by the time, the first 7 years of our life with my biological father, My mother tells me we moved 13 times.

And so I didn't have a foundation, if you will.

I didn't have any roots in a home where it seemed like Whenever I came home from school, it was a different home, it seemed like.

He also was engaged in drug use and he also was had a serious problem with infidelity and he would chase other girls and be inappropriate with them.

So my mother eventually really got tired of this and at the age of 7, And my brother is 3 years younger, and my youngest brother is another 3 years younger.

And so 3 boys, I'm 7, and my mother finally decides she's had enough of his cheating ways, his non-providing ways.

He would say he'd be at work, but he would be out in the bars or out golfing with his buddies.

How he afforded to do that, I don't know, because he wasn't paying the bills.

We had every government assistant-type program that you could have back in the 60s and early 70s.

And my mother finally had enough, and she said it's time to go.

So she, on 1 day, decided to pack us boys up.

And we all loaded into this little Toyota station wagon type little vehicle that we had and at that time my biological father David was actually a truck tow truck driver a drunk 1 at that kind of an odd combination but a drunk tow truck driver And he came in from the rear in the driveway and hit the back of the car and began shoving us toward the garage door.

And I remember just looking at the back thinking, this is not good, and being concerned that this is probably not normal.

And so my mother, he took off and screeched out of there and my mom and my brothers and I, we moved away.

We moved to my aunt's house and actually at 7 and a half, 7 years old, right around there, my appendix burst.

And that's a very dangerous situation, but my appendix burst and I found myself in the hospital.

And as a child, you don't really understand why mommy and daddy had to split up.

Because there was no abuse that I can remember from my biological father toward us.

He and my mother fought a lot and yelled and screamed at each other But he never physically beat my mother or or us boys, which was a blessing When my mother decided to divorce him.

I remember being in my aunt's foyer of her home, and they were explaining to me that my dad was not going to live with us anymore, and that Mommy and Daddy weren't going to be together.

And I remember just holding onto his ankles and crying and just saying, no, don't go, don't go.

And he just had to peel me from him and he left.

He continued his infidelity issues or just chasing skirts as he would call it and not keeping his job.

And so he was in and out of our life in fact to this day that my The sad part of my life is that he still doesn't want to have a relationship with us boys And I'm 41 and my brothers are you can do the math or 3 years younger each 1, and he still doesn't think he's ready to be a dad.

And so that's a continual source of prayer for us.

My mother eventually remarried about a year after her initial divorce.

And she married a man that I'm gonna leave unnamed.

It's good that he remains unnamed because our life turned into a nightmare.

And while my mother went to work and us 3 boys were taken care of by babysitters, my babysitter, her oldest son molested us 3 boys.

And that Created some really interesting things in a young boy's mind kind of tweaking things that way and we'll get into that a little bit later as well And as we went forward in our experience with this new stepdad, it became clear right away that he was extremely heavy handed and he was very much an authoritarian from the beginning and he ran things as a little dictator.

And it was do as I say, not as I do, but do as I say.

And my mother and I and my 2 brothers lived through an environment that was criminal.

My mother would be abused and beaten, physically beaten, and abused in every way that a woman could be abused.

You know, John 16.33 says, in this world, you shall have tribulation.

I'm not just saying, oh, he would yell at us and he would slap us.

But I'm saying he literally would beat us.

And he loved to use metal ladles and would hit us over the head with them.

And to this day, if you take an X-ray of my head, I have multiple skull fractures.

I was hit so hard in the head with this fist, I had a grand mal seizure.

And I had seizures after that, only controlled by medication.

In the world you shout tribulation, I understand.

My brothers and I were, My stepdad eventually started his own business, and we worked in a metal fabrication shop where we would work until late into the night.

And I was learning, even at a young age, how to run brake presses and grinders and drill presses and MIG and TIG welders and arc welders.

I had a great little skill set as a young person, but we were exhausted.

We'd go and get some sleep and wake up in the morning.

We were latchkey children where we would let ourselves in after school, do our chores.

He would come home from work and many times take, not always, but many times take us to go work for the evening.

My brother, Aaron, was so exhausted 1 day that he literally, he fell asleep in class.

When he didn't wake from just jostling him, she grabbed a ruler and whacked it, or he, his name was Mr.

Cardoza, whacked it on a, on the desk, and he still didn't wake up.

He didn't wake up until he was on the gurney heading out to the ambulance.

We were physically drained, emotionally drained.

We were all 3 raised and our names were actual cuss words.

Profanity is what he called me and what he called my brothers.

And if he was not with us then we would all amount to nothing.

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Testimony of Christian Berdahl

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