I found God amid the trauma

When Libby Thompson stood trembling over her drunken, sleeping father, bread knife in hand, she was just ten years old and “completely undone”.

The only thing that stopped her from plunging the knife in? “Someone had told me that suicide is a sin,” she said. “It’s strange that I didn’t consider that murder is also a sin.”

Now 42, the Warwickshire mum-of-two says it was her growing relationship with Jesus that stopped her from going under during years of physical abuse, addiction and mental torment.

“Despite everything going on in the house as well as in my head, I was getting closer and closer to God,” she has written in a new book.

“I prayed every night. I gave all my feelings and pain to God. I knew he was real and I knew he loved me from a very young age. I loved him and still do.”

Libby’s raw memoir, Undone, charts a life marred by beatings from her alcoholic father, childhood trauma, and a vicious assault by a gang of teens when she was 17.

But woven throughout her story is a deep, unshakeable faith in Jesus – a faith that saw her through the darkest of nights.

“There was a group of angels around our bed,” she remembered of a childhood vision shared with her younger sister during one of her parents’ violent rows.

“My sister turned to me and said, ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’ I answered, ‘Yes, he is. The black one?’ She said, ‘Yes.’”

Both girls saw the same supernatural vision – a heavenly sign Libby never forgot.

By 18, Libby had found her spiritual home in Kenilworth and headed off to Bible College after a prophetic word at a Christian youth camp.

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