AMAZING STORY
Belonging to No One But Christ
By Dory Nissen
The 700 Club
CBN.com -Karen Fikes remembers the night she woke up and found her boyfriend Steve hovering over her with a butcher knife. “I just saw my life flash before me and I thought I was getting ready to die.”
Steve and Karen’s relationship started much differently a few years earlier. Her sister introduced the couple. And for a year and a half, Steve lavished her with attention and affection. “(He was) my knight in shining armor and he began to shower me with gifts and he began to give me words of encouragement. It was almost too good to be true.”
But after 18 months, Karen discovered a dangerous side of Steve. He became extremely possessive and controlling. His violent behavior grew until he beat her regularly. “He acted like he owned me! He felt like he had some type of control over me, to where if I didn’t do what he wanted me to do or think the way he wanted me to think, or say what he wanted me to say, he would go off on one of his fits.”
Karen grew even more horrified when she learned Steve was a drug dealer. She tried to leave him several times. Each time, he tracked her down and threatened to kill her if she left. “He felt like he had the right to put his hands on me. Even if he had to use guns or knives to threaten me, what have you, then that is what he would do. He would literally tell me that I would never be able to get away from him. That no matter where I go, he would find me. What kept me in the relationship was fear. I was so afraid of him and felt like I was trapped in this relationship. I didn’t have the strength. I didn’t have the power to get out of it and stay out it.”
After each outburst, Steve apologized and promised to change. And each time Karen hoped the abuse would end. But the night she woke up with Steve standing over her with a knife, she knew the violence would not end, until she was dead. “All I knew was I needed to fight for my life because I was about to die.”
The struggle finally ended and Steve left in a rage. Karen knew it was only be a matter of time before he came back and would probably kill her. So she cried out for help. “I said, ‘God please, if You don’t help me out of this relationship, I am going to end up dead. I need You to help me. I need You to help me out of this relationship.’”
The next day, Steve called from jail. He’d been charged with murdering someone else and later sentenced to over 20 years in prison. “And after I found out he was in there for murder, I realized then that it could’ve been me. It could have been me.”
Karen went to church. When the pastor asked if anyone wanted to receive Jesus Christ and be baptized, Karen knew that is what she wanted to do. “I literally came out of the water praising God. Praising God. I mean, just ‘Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus.’ I felt free. I felt like I was going to live... After everything that I had been through, the odds was against me from the beginning of my life, you know, it’s always something. But I felt like I was going to live.”
Today she is a wife of a loving husband and a mother of three, and has a message to share with others. Anyone can have a new life in Jesus Christ. “He’ll make you feel like there is hope. He’ll make you feel like you can make it, and you can go forward. He did it for me. I’m a living witness. I’m a living testimony. And He’ll pick you up. And He’ll turn you around.”
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