Inviting you into the heart of inspirational experiences and unforgettable testimonies, Conversations will spark your curiosity and encourage you in your walk with God.

<p>Inviting you into the heart of inspirational experiences and unforgettable testimonies, Conversations will spark your curiosity and encourage you in your walk with God.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Conversations with Christian Berdahl

My conversation today is with Christian Burdahl.

He's an international speaker and musician, and he has an amazing story of recovery, transformation and reformation.

Christian Burdahl, welcome to Conversation.

People are familiar with you from sea to shining sea and across the great blue ocean expanse.

We're going to talk about what you're doing, why you're doing it, and how God is using you in ministry.

We'll touch a little bit on the message that you share when you travel from place to place.

But before we get there, let's go back to the beginning.

Well my mom was 16 years old when she got pregnant with me.

What my mom didn't know was that my dad by the time he was 17 years old was already a daily drinker and was addicted to prescription drugs that he was stealing from all the neighbors.

And so this began a platform, a foundation for really the next 20 years of our lives.

My mom had 2 more children with him, my biological father, and so there are 3 of us boys, and he was just not there for us.

We moved, by the time I was 7 years old, we had moved 13 times around the country, because when you don't pay the bills, you don't go to work, you lose your job, and you get kicked out.

It was just, it was a lame beginning, if you will, for a child.

And when I was 7 years old, my mom had had enough.

After my dad drove us home from a party, a friend's barbecue, and he was drunk and just swerving all the road.

My mom was telling him to pull over, and he wouldn't, and got home.

If you were to take the story as it's typically told and fast forward it, the amount of years that have passed between then and now I'd be interviewing somebody who's in prison or I'd be interviewing someone who's dead if you understand what I mean.

So already we know enough about you to know that God has intervened in your life and done some truly phenomenal things.

Mom and Dad divorced, and so you were in abject poverty before.

Didn't get better because Mom now had to go into the workforce.

She was at the bottom rung in labor, she did get a job working at a bank and she had to put us in daycare and it was all, the state was coming in and helped out and we were living in state funded housing and food stamps.

Thankfully, there are those programs in the US.

You're down here and you're living in a bad part of town.

My mom put us in this little daycare run by a lady named Blanca and her Son a teenage son and her daughter would take care of us little boys and girls When it was time for nap and they would supervise What my mom didn't know was that that teenage boy was molesting about 6 of us little kids when it was nap time.

And so that went on for quite a long time and that would actually be 1 of the first big secrets that I would keep.

And you just kind of keep it in there, you pack it down, you don't tell anybody, because it's presented to you in such a way when you're just a little boy that, you know, this is something special, you know, and you don't tell anybody because we'll get in trouble because we're not supposed to.

And, you know, you're just this little boy that doesn't have a dad now, and you have this male figure in your life that's saying don't get him in trouble and so I just never said anything and so it went on for a while eventually I didn't want to go there anymore my mom didn't understand why and I wouldn't tell her until I was an adult About 27 years old.

Well When you have something like that going on it starts to play games with you Mentally and emotionally and at the same time my mom remarried to a man.

That was really became our family's worst nightmare.

He was a, it was horrible and we can get into that in a minute if you want.

But what it did is it, now my dad's not there and then this other male figure, even though he's young, for a 7 year old boy, a teenager's, you know, an old guy.

And now he's doing things to me that he shouldn't be doing.

So what it does is it builds up a lack of trust in your heart and you start putting walls up.

And so I had all this pain and confusion and I, because my mom had gotten remarried, her focus was over there and so my mom wasn't really there for me emotionally speaking.

And so you feel like you're walking around wondering what's that guy's angle and what's that person's angle and You start to develop this thought process that everybody wants something from you, and you can't tell anybody what's going on.

So you become very private, and you wall things up.

Do you think there's more of this taking place in the world than many of us would realize?

I give my testimony around this world, people come out of the woodworks.

Because the testimony gets worse, unfortunately.

But the reality is, so many people have these issues.

And sometimes they're within the church, and sometimes they're people that have come to the church.

I learned a long time ago, the church is not a place of perfect people.

As a result, every time, no matter where I have been, in the Adventist church, in Baptist churches, in other congregations, Church of God in Christ, different places I've spoken and given my testimony all over the world, people come out of the woodwork.

Speak to that kid who's going through what you went through.

And I don't know whether you want to take me back to when you were 4, 5, 6, or 12, 13, 14.

Speak to the youthful Christian Berdahl who's going through this kind of hell and doesn't know what to do.

If I could talk to Christian, I would say, Christian, you need to go tell somebody.

And if you can't trust mom or dad, then find somebody that you can, a grandma, a grandpa, an aunt, an uncle, a teacher at school, a pastor at church, an elder, somebody, a friend that you trust, that you think will believe you, and you have to tell them.

Because if I could have told my mom back then, because I was afraid, I didn't want to get anybody in trouble, and so I thought, what kid wants to get in trouble themselves?

So the last thing you want to do is go tattle on yourself.

But I want to tell young Christian, you're not tattling on yourself, you're telling the truth about what that person did to you and what they did was wrong and they're hurting other people.

And Christian, this is going to impact you in your future if you don't deal with this.

What do you think your mother would have done if you told her about it when you were 7 years old?

Honestly, Obviously, if I would have told her that was going on, she would have immediately pulled us out and I would hope she would have had the courage to inform the police.

I'm sure Blanca, who was running the little daycare out of her home, didn't know what was going on and indeed, it doesn't matter if it hurts people's feelings or whatever, it's wrong and it has to be stopped.

Because I have to live with the idea, John, that how many more kids were impacted by this and what if I had said something?

How many other kids wouldn't have had to have gone through it?

That's a lot to put on the shoulders of a seven-year-old.

So Walk us through how you walked through.

Well, my stepdad, he was heavy-handed from the beginning, and he was an authoritarian.

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Conversations with Christian Berdahl

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