What if the faith that kept you through the darkest years of your life was planted in you as a child, one memorized verse at a time?
I’m Anna Moore Bradfield, and in this episode of God’s Power Stories, I sit down with Elsie McKenney, a speaker, an author, and a cult survivor. I first heard her story through recordings from The Well conference, and I knew right away I wanted her on the show.
Elsie grew up in a small Mennonite church. Then, when she was ten, her parents fell under the spell of a charismatic pair of traveling evangelists who claimed to be a portal into the spirit world. They became the family’s sole source of spiritual input, cut off friends and relatives, drained the family’s money, and left them stranded across the country. For almost ten years, they controlled her family. When she was around eighteen, a false prophecy told her not to go to college, and she went with them instead. She calls it the worst mistake of her life.
What happened next is almost unbelievable: no cell phone, no contact with her parents, less than five dollars in her pocket, and a Canadian winter. She spent her days in a mall and her nights in a bus station, waiting for her aunt and uncle to come get her. Through all of it, she says, it was the Scripture she had memorized as a child, three hundred verses from a Bible memory program, that God brought back to her mind when she knew something was wrong.
We talk about how the trauma stayed buried for years until she and her husband became missionaries in Ukraine, and the war brought every old emotion back to the surface. Elsie began journaling, then wrote a young adult novel, Eve’s Covering, because she could not yet tell her story as a memoir. We talk about the three meanings of the title, how writing the book helped her forgive the people who hurt her, and what she wants survivors of spiritual abuse to know about God’s heart toward them. She also tells us about her next book, Hunted, based on the true story of a young Ethiopian girl’s resilient faith.
Key Takeaways:
- Scripture hidden in a child’s heart can anchor her through the worst seasons of her life
- Spiritual abuse often begins with charm, flattery, and isolation, and the enemy disguises himself as an angel of light
- Buried trauma does not stay buried; God brings it up to heal it, not to shame you
- Telling your story, even through fiction, can be a path to forgiveness
- You are not alone, and God wants to restore you, not leave you silent
Key Themes: Cult survival · Spiritual abuse · Healing from trauma · Forgiveness · Scripture memory · Missionary life in Ukraine · Writing as healing · Restoration
Who Will Benefit: Survivors of cults or spiritual abuse, anyone carrying shame or buried pain from the past, family members who are trying to understand a loved one’s story, readers of Christian fiction, and anyone who needs to hear that God can restore what was taken.
Psalm 23 is Elsie’s favorite chapter, because He restores our souls and walks with us through the valley. If you are in that valley today, you are not alone.
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Listen to more episodes of God’s Power Stories.