Alison Buttenshaw lives in Newcastle NSW with her husband and their two teenagers. She and her husband lead the Australian HQ of Christians Against Poverty (CAP), helping people to free themselves from debt and discovering true freedom in Christ. 

I first went to church after my friend Jason hassled me for nearly six months. I was 18 and my life was spiralling out of control. Jason was a former boyfriend who had broken up with me because he wanted to start living as a Christian again. I was shocked that I was being dumped because of God!

Walking through the doors of the church felt like I’d ‘come home’ and for the first time in a long time I felt a real peace. I was traumatised from the events in my childhood and was very sceptical about everything…especially God. After going to church for six weeks, I thought, “I’ve tried everything else, why wouldn’t I give God a go?”

I’d seen people getting baptised and loved the idea of symbolically ‘burying’ my old life and coming out of the waters ‘new’. I was baptised in May 1991 and it’s without a doubt the most significant day of my life. I’ve never looked back. My family and friends were surprised by my radical conversion and thought at first that I had joined a Christian cult. But over the years they have seen the genuine change in my life.

In July 1992 I married Jason’s best friend Ross Buttenshaw. Seven months later Jason married Ross’ sister, so now we’re not only friends, we’re family!

At the age of 10 I had witnessed my oldest brother brutally attacking our parents. My dad tragically didn’t survive the attack and my mum was left with multiple stab wounds.

In the years leading up to the attacks, I was also robbed of my innocence through sexual abuse. The emotional scars ran deep and had a profound impact on me. As a result, I spent most of my teenage years lost in a cycle of mind-numbing activities just trying to escape. I was abusing drugs and alcohol and had developed an eating disorder. I hadn’t really processed any of the grief and pain of these traumatic things at the time I accepted Christ.

I didn’t seek formal counselling, but over time I read the scriptures and felt the word of God leaping off the page and ministering to me. The Holy Spirit is described as our Wonderful Counsellor and it was God’s spirit that guided me through.

God has been very gracious to me, and has helped me deal with each issue one step at a time. I would often process one thing and then, a year or two later, he would bring something else to the surface that had to be resolved.

One of the biggest issues for me was forgiving my brother. When I was planning our wedding day I realised the significance of my loss. My dad couldn’t walk me down the aisle to give me away. Not only that, but I’d lost a lifetime of memories with him. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I knew I had to choose forgiveness if I wanted to move forward.

In addition to being blessed with an amazing husband, God also blessed us with two children: a daughter, Kealy, in 1995 and a son, Curtis, in 1997. Becoming a parent brought up unresolved feelings and memories that had been locked in the deep recesses of my mind caused by the abuse. Again, forgiveness played a significant part in the healing process.

In 2000, we got involved in our church’s Christians Against Poverty (CAP) centre where we saw what happened when people overwhelmed by debt, were given hope and experienced the freedom there is in Jesus.

In 2003, we felt God call us to the UK. Our desire was to go to the Abundant Life church in Bradford, the same city where John Kirkby had, in 1996, established the headquarters of CAP (which developed the CAP Money program as an evangelistic tool for churches and as a way of helping people to improve their lives).

Our family came back home to Australia in 2007 and got involved in the National Operations Centre located in Newcastle. We now have 25 centres throughout Australia. Our goal is to have a CAP Centre in every major town and city by 2021, enabling us to reach every struggling family in Australia.

Freedom is an important theme in my life. One of our key scriptures at CAP is Galatians 5:1 — “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

www.capaust.org 

Alison’s book ‘Out of the Shadows’, is available at www.alisonbuttenshaw.com