Finding Identity in Christ: Overcoming Abuse, Kidnapping, Rape, Rejection with Leah Kelley

This episode is sponsored by Heroic: Personal Excellence. Collective Flourishing.
Leah Kelley - From failed abortion to freedom - witness an extraordinary story of survival, healing, and God's transformative power. As the child of a teenage mother's traumatic pregnancy, Leah shares her raw, honest journey through attempted suicide, kidnapping, and abuse to find complete healing and purpose through faith in Jesus Christ.

Despite facing rejection, abandonment, and life-threatening situations, Leah's powerful testimony demonstrates how God's love can transform the deepest wounds into a message of hope. Now leading a ministry helping others break generational cycles of trauma, she shows that no past is too broken for God's redemption.

This inspiring testimony of Jesus Christ and conversation reveals how faith, forgiveness, and surrendering to God's love can bring freedom from life's darkest moments. Whether you're struggling with rejection, trauma, or searching for identity, this testimony offers hope and proof that complete healing is possible through Christ.

Join us for this moving story of survival, divine intervention, and the journey from victim to victor. Learn how God's love can transform any life and bring purpose from pain. You will love Leah's testimony of Jesus Christ
Leah's book: Sisters Connected By The Blood: Life Lessons from Women in Ministry. 
#selfimprovement #healingtoday #spiritualawakening #spiritualgrowth #healingdiaries

CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Leah’s Traumatic Childhood
03:17 - Leah’s Early Years
11:15 - Suicide Attempt at 15 and God’s Intervention
16:11 - Leah's Kidnappings
21:30 - Breaking Free from Chains
22:41 - Overcoming Rejection and Labels
28:03 - Advice for a Young Mother with 7 Babies
31:31 - Jesus' Love for Prisoners
33:57 - Encouragement: You're Awesome

Transcript

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 0:00

I, grew up as the oldest of mom, my mom's seven children and how it shaped my life was very traumatic. It had a traumatic impact on my life and I have to go back to the root. Right. So. My mother was 17 years old when she got pregnant with me. I am a failed abortion and I'm also the daughter of my mother's rapist, which I would later on find out after years of asking my mom who my father was. And I have to, uh, this be really, me. Um, strong on this point. My mom grew up, uh, in a household of Of eight other siblings, they, her mother and her father had 10 siblings, but her baby brother, Christopher had passed away. So she was raised in a religious home. My grandfather was a Baptist preacher and my grandmother was an apostolic, uh, minister at the time who, you know, grew into ministry and became a pastor. So she had that root and that foundation within the household, although the household was not perfect.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 1:18

hmm.

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 1:18

She, um, went outside of the household to look for love in all the wrong places and ended up being a victim of a violent crime. So with that backstory, she had to hide me, the child of a rapist and the embarrassment. Um, you know, there are a lot of things that happened with inside of the household, a lot of things that were taboo. Not talked about or dealt with. And I say that, predicated on there's still things, you know, that circle families that you hear about what happened in days of old. So her only recourse was she'd rather try to abort me, even though she was further along. She, um, self abort She had, she had, um, hid her pregnancy with big baggy shirts, uh, you know, sweat pants and whatever the case may be. And when she couldn't hide it any longer, she devised a plan. I'm going to have to get rid of this baby. And so she created a game. With her younger siblings that did not know that she was even pregnant. Okay. She said, y'all want to play a game with me? They'll say, yeah, yeah, we're going to play a game. Sure. And she said, okay. She laid on one bed and then she had them jump from another bed on top of her stomach. So in the interim, it was nothing but the deception of the devil who comes to kill, steal and to destroy.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 2:56

hmm. Hmm

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 2:58

He not only wanted to destroy me in a womb and the spirit of rejection attached to me, even in the womb, but he was sought out to destroy my mother as well.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 3:12

mm. I'm so sorry. I'm just so sorry. And, and tell us about born and are you raised by your mother, or how did, how did that continue on?

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 3:25

Well, mom had seven children at 21

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 3:28

Oh,

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 3:29

she ended up having to adopt four away, which was two sets of twins, two girls and a boy and a girl. And she was blessed, uh, to Come across a family that couldn't have children or try to have children of some of that sort. And they took in my four siblings. So that was a blessing. And then she had my grandmother, uh, to take care of me, to help her take care of me. And then she mainly had my brother and my other sister. Uh, so, but it was a hard way for all of us growing up. I mean, we, I was born in Stanford, Connecticut. We moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Uh, we were left by ourselves, a whole house of us left by ourselves to fend for ourselves. And then they finally gave us a babysitter, who was the cutest little person I've ever seen, but had a demented mind. We didn't think, the person that we were so intrigued with, we didn't think that she was going to have a demented mind. So she would try to make us do things that were unseemly, right? And so for me to try to escape, I had to run out the house. About four and a half or something, you know, nude and five feet of snow, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to try to get us help. And that's just one of the stories of the things we experienced with being left alone. And that had a lot to play, um, in the dysfunction that was, uh, birth within, I don't, I don't think it was blatant neglect, but I think it was just adults that were doing their own thing or trying to find themselves. And, you know, children were being brought into the scenario of unhealed, adults. And

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 5:36

mm

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 5:37

so that's what really started the spiral spiral. I believe of, um, what I now knew was the neglect, uh, the abuse of the absence. Okay. Cause we weren't beat, you know, we weren't beat or we weren't, um, done like that, but we weren't left at times. And so the absence of that, supervision in the earlier parts played a big part. And so, uh, being with my grandmother, my grandfather had died. So she was like, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was really, I would say strange because when I saw her say goodbye to him in the door, I said, grandma, you will never see your husband alive again. And 30 days after that, my grandfather, um, had passed away.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 6:31

oh,

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 6:31

I said, that's the last time you'll So that's what got us to Arizona. Cause he had moved here, um, to get over like bronchitis and stuff like that, you know, or emphysema, I believe. Yes, correct. The emphysema and so, but life in Arizona coming here when I was younger. was very different for me. Um, it was a lot of absence from my mom and just being with my grandma and being around my aunt, the uncles that would help prepare me, get me ready for school, different things like that. I mean, I would see my mom and I knew she loved me. But she was dealing with her own stuff and a lot of times when people are dealing with their own things and they're not resolved and they're not dealt with, how can they care for a child? How can they care for someone that? They love and it comes out as pushed aside, abandoned, rejected, and neglected because the inner person that is wounded and broken and you don't want to talk about it because ouch, it healed. It hurts if you bring it up so that the healing can take place, you know? And so I grew up like that. And my teenage years, um, back and forth with my mom, uh, she ended up marrying. A man in prison where, you know, which she thought, okay, I'm marrying a man in prison that is going to be a father for my children and a husband for her, um, from the prison cell. And even though he tried, um, within the body of that relationship, Dysfunction and abuse came out of it, came out of that, um, towards her children, um, towards her and it was, it was not good, but it is just a piece of the father, you know, a piece of a connection and not knowing the. functional relationship that you would have with a human father. That's when God had to step in and he showed me the relationship of a father because I was so hungry for that connection. God came in and he sheltered me and he protected me from a lot of things that were sent to destroy me. Based on the lack of things that I did not possess or the tools that were not present that I needed in my life at the time. I had, they preached Jesus, but which that's the best gift she could have ever given me was God. But I'm talking about a balance of things, the, the balance, the structure of things. Was lacking in a lot of ways. And I think that being with my grandmother, she resented, um, my mom. And so my mom having all those children, the choices that my mother made, just like any good mother, they would want. their child to make the right decision. And so this, everything just began to be compiled on top of me, overwhelming on top of me.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 10:08

mm-hmm

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 10:10

um, the words that you would think would be spoken in love because of her frustration with my mother, it was like, I was never going to be anything, never amount to anything or never have anything. So the challenge, it was said to me, it was said, you're never going to be anything. You're never going to have anything. You're never going to amount to anything. You're going to be a bee and a whore just like your mother was. And mind you, if I can just be real, I can understand. Why God stresses so much in the word of God that we are to be careful because life and death is in the power of the tongue. We have to be careful of the words that we speak. And I'll tell you why, John, is because I allowed those words to take root in the inside of me. I began to believe them because there was nobody there to counteract those words. And I believe them. And at the age of 15, I try to commit suicide. And so, at age 15, trying to commit suicide, I drank me some gin, took me four Quaaludes, I was never an alcoholic, never a drug addict, all I wanted to do at the time was escape the pain, and the rejection, and the abandonment, and the lack of love that I felt. And I was at a friend's house when I did this, who I thought were my friends. We gotta be careful who we be so quick to call. Right? And so, I was in, uh, that resulted in me being in a drug induced coma for two days. And when I woke up out of that drug induced coma for two days, they were about to roll me up, John, in a rug and throw my body into the wash in Arizona here in Tucson, Arizona, where all the water goes out there in the desert. But I had sat up like I had never been in a coma before. At all. Like I had never been out. I was wide awake and fully alert and I heard God speak to me and he said, I spared your life, Leah. He said, if you would have died, you would have been on your way to hell. And I said, God, he said, you would have been lost Leah by your choices. And I began to weep, and I began to look at the people that were around me that were getting ready to dispose my body like I was a piece of trash. I began to look at them, and the only thing they could say was, We thought you were already dead.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 13:10

So you overdosed, you're unconscious for two days at your friend, friend's place. They decided to roll you up in some carpet and take you out to a ravine and dump your body. And that's when you sat up, heard the voice of God speaking to you. Wow. Tell us about the rest.

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 13:35

It just shook me. It let me know about who can I really call my friends. Who is really my friends, because my friends would have called the police. My friends would have called the ambulance. My friends would have said, somebody knows where is her mother, her grandmother, uncle, somebody, because we got to let them know that some, someone loves her. And so when God spared me, that's when I knew when he spoke to me, I said, Oh God, I don't want to be lost. Like God helped me that then let me know that he loved me, that if nobody else really loved me, I knew that God did. I knew that he cared about me because he spared my life. He did not let me die and go into outer darkness. And so I said, I began to pray. I began to call out to God. I began to be grateful and I began to yearn for them in feeling of God's spirit. And so not only did he do some miraculous in my life there, I began to be a testimony. For them that stood and looked and seemed like, wow, that's God, that's God's presence. And I just thank God for what he did. But when he did that, the attacks didn't stop though, you know, the attacks didn't stop. It was still challenges that I went through in my life, challenges that build character challenges that, that hurt me things that attacked me, failed marriages. Uh, uh, you know, infidelities within the marriages, uh, being raped, uh, being kidnapped and raped for seven days in San Francisco, uh, does various things. How the enemy was still on a mission to kill me. Uh, and then, uh, one other time kidnapped and a kidnapper wanted to Blow my brains out, but the gun jam. So he said that something told him to bring the other gun. He was mad that he didn't bring the other gun, but instead he drove me through a drive through, got me some food and dropped me off at my house. How do you know of a kidnapper who wants to blow your brains out, drive you through a drive through, and then takes you home. That's nothing but the grace. Of God.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 16:08

Wow. You've had some crazy journeys, sister. I don't even know how to respond to that. I mean, that's like, unreal. At what age were these kidnappings that you've talked about?

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 16:25

I was, uh, I was 18 and a half. Um, when the first time I was kidnapped, I was in a kidnap from Sacramento, California to Oakland, to the Bay area in Oakland. And they first took us from Sacramento out of like San Francisco by the Rose garden. And then we ended up somewhere in Oakland where we was held captive for seven days, um, brutally essayed. not fed, not showered, not anything like that. And it was only me knowing God and being taught God and how to pray that kept us alive. And that was the first time I ever had seen anyone who suffered from mental illness because they would throw butcher knives at the door to keep us Locked in a room. They had their mother there. And this was, this just, it blew me away, John, their mother was helping the kidnappers. So she was standing guard. And every time we would try to escape or go out and get food or something to drink, she would keep us captive by throwing the butcher knives at the door.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 17:40

This is wild. Um, and then what was, how old were you in the second kidnapping?

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 17:49

And the second kidnapping, I was in my early twenties and it was a friend of mine who, it blew me away that. He would even kidnap me or try to hurt me. And he said, well, someone told me something. They, they told him a lie. I can't remember what the lie was, but whatever the lie was, it angered him to the point that he wanted to kill me. And I said, it's not true. It's not true. And so he brutally assaulted me in Sacramento. It was over there by Stockton Boulevard, brutally assaulted me in Sacramento. And He was about to blow my brains out and I'm just sitting there. I'm hearing the spirit of the Lord say, be quietly yet. Don't say nothing. Remain calm. And I'm thinking to myself like, Lord, this man remain calm Jesus. And so he's like, remain calm Leah. And I said, yes, Lord. I remained calm, John. I remained calm while he was loading the gun. I remained calm and prayerful. I did. I'm telling you, this is real truth. I remained calm and prayerful. While I remained calm and I'm praying with the inside of my mind, and I'm talking to God about it, the gun jammed. He got so mad. I'm still sitting being obedient to the Holy Spirit. It pays for us to listen to God. When God tells us to do something, we got to do it. Our very lives can depend upon it. And he went to the back of the trunk and he's looking and he's, he's rattled. He's, he's just baffled about everything. He said, I can't find it. And I'm just still calm. I'm still calm. I'm listening to him. Talk to himself. He's saying his mind told him to bring the other gun. He doesn't know why he didn't bring the other gun. And so he throws the jammed gun into the glove compartment of the vehicle. He takes me from where he assaulted me from. There is a Kentucky fried chicken right there. He says, are you hungry? Now I'm telling you, God told me to be quiet and to sit still and God told me, he said, Leah, tell him that you're hungry. I say, yes, I'm hungry. He said, I need to buy you something to eat before I drop you off at home. Do you know I order just like the Lord told me to? I got my food, held it in my lap. He dropped me off in right there in the middle of my driveway. The man that wanted to blow my brains out, that was on the cuspid of killing me. Jesus is Christ's hand was on me. His protection was on me. God kept me and protected me. Even though I went through that, he sustained me. His blood. Hallelujah. Glory to God. His blood covering was over me and he did not allow that man to take my life. And I am here today to tell the testimony to any women who have been raped molested gone through childhood. Trauma may be the child of your mother's rapist or whatever the case may be that the Almighty God loves you and that he cares about you and he is mine. you. And if you're carrying regret, grudges and pain, he is here today to heal you.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 21:28

Hmm. You are on a mission to help people and you have a Facebook group. What is, what is the title? Share, share with everybody the title of your Facebook group.

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 21:45

Oh yes. My Facebook group. Um, the Lord has spoke to me. He said, Leah, it's time to, uh, create a Facebook group. And I said, God, what do you want me to say? He said, I want you to, to create the group cycle breakers, no more chains. Cycle breakers, no more chains is about breaking the cycles in your life, breaking the toxic cycles in your life that are getting you nowhere. There is a saying, doing the same thing over and over again and thinking you're going to get different results is insanity. So within the body of my group, biblical foundations. Prayer and teachings. I help through the leading of the spirit of God to help you break the cycles in your life so that you will no longer be bound in chains.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 22:38

Now, I love that message and I love that goal and that's why I had you on today. I, I'm looking at your story though and you've been through some really, really traumatic and you grew up with some horrible, horrible labels of rejection and as you said, the B and H word. How did you re, how did you overcome those to see yourself As something through God's eyes now, how'd you overcome that?

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 23:13

I had to go to God and really be real with my father and say, Lord, I give you everything that was ever said about me. And some of it may have been true predicated on the mistakes and the decisions that I made based on what was fed in, excuse me, fed into me. I said, but father, here I am at the foot of your throne. I am not those things. God, who am I in you? I need to find my identity in you. Who did you create me to be? And what is your plan? For my life. So father, I give you the lies that were spoken over me, Jesus, and I want to invite the truth of your Holy spirit to come in. Oh God. And to create in me a clean heart, renew a right spirit within me and show me who you created Leah to be. So then I can take on that identity.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 24:20

you remember approximately what age this was?

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 24:25

You know, I was around about, actually, when I came to that, it was in my, probably by my mid twenties. My mid twenties.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 24:36

And, and, uh, what did, what did the Lord share with you?

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 24:44

He told me that he loved me. He told me, and it brings tears to my eyes, he told me that he loved me. And I was not the things that had happened to me or was said about me. And he began to tell me, he said, Leah, if you give me the layers, hallelujah, glory to God. If you give me all the layers and allow me to get to the root. I will heal you, but I need you to surrender to me the layers. And so I'm telling you, it's been a process to get me where I am now, because I gave him the layers. I gave him everything. I allowed myself to forgive others. I

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 25:35

Mm.

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 25:35

myself to forgive myself.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 25:39

Mm.

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 25:40

And I also allow myself, John, to receive the forgiveness of the father.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 25:51

And what did that do for your soul?

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 25:55

It, it saved my soul. It, it delivered my soul. It took a weight off of me. I'm telling you, it took a weight off of me. Like if you can imagine a soul. Uh, being planted on the top of you and you being embedded up underneath a skyscraper. That's how heavy some of the weights were on me. But when I gave it to God and I cast all my cares upon him.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 26:24

Mm.

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 26:24

And I walk with the mentality and the mindset now that it's, I'm going to give it to my father. I'm not going to carry it. I'm not going to allow offense, pain, rejection, or abuse to be the one that is at the helm of my life. I'm going to allow God to do it. And it has freed me. I'm free. I am so free. And when the people said, whom the son is set free is free. Indeed. I'm free. When I tell people that I'm whole, they look at me, they say, that's impossible. You can't be whole. I'm saying, let me taste that you hold. After all that hell you went through Leah. I said, let me tell you something. I'm whole. He has created in me. Wholeness. I am complete. There are no more scattered broken pieces out there that I feel that I have to collect of myself and try to do it like a broken pieces of a puzzle. He has put the potter, the songs that the potter wants to put you back together again.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 27:38

That's such a beautiful, beautiful, uh, summary of what Christ has done for your life. Put the broken pieces together to where you now are motivated to share and to help other people heal. Such a beautiful testimony. Amen. And it's

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 28:00

Thank you.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 28:01

power. So let's speak to the woman out there who is, let's say, 20 years old, and she's just had her seventh baby. Like your mom. She's 21, though. What would you say to the 21 year old that has seven babies, out of wedlock, searching for love in all the wrong places, like you said? And And just struggling to find her true identity. She believes those horrible words that others have said about her. And what would you say to her today about Jesus Christ? And, or what would you just say in general to give her hope?

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 28:57

I want to tell you that Jesus Christ loves you. He loves you and he cares about you. And there's nothing that has happened in your life that has gotten past Christ. He knew it before the foundation of the world, how your life was going to go. I just want to encourage you to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself. Let bitterness, let resentment, let shame go. Stop being mad at the children's father or fathers. I want you to gain strength in God. There is hope in Jesus Christ. I encourage you to lift up your Bible and open it that you have on that shelf and begin to read the promises of God and what he has for you. I want to encourage you to allow God to reconstruct your life and reconstruct the broken pieces. I want you because I understand because I used to gather my little six babies around and I used to hold them and hold them close to me. And I used to pray over me and my children. And I used to be full of shame because how people would look at me and I was married and had children and they still threw stones at me. I want to encourage you. I want you to take strength, woman of God. I speak to the inner you, the dreamer, the prophet, the architect, the writer, the cartoonist, the motivational speaker, the woman's testimony that's going to change lives of the masses. We need your voice and I encourage you not to give. God loves you. Gird up yourself with strength, woman. We need you in the body. The world needs you. Your children need you. And I want to encourage you one more thing. God is going to heal you. He's going to heal you. I speak to the woman whose soul is wounded. I've been there. God is going to heal you. Take courage today. My dear sister and my dear friend, don't give up because we need your voice in this realm that would help change lives by the power of your testimony. For we overcome, By the blood of the lamb and the words of our testimony. God bless you.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 31:32

I just want to add to that. I've had the opportunity of going into prisons and teaching and sharing, you know, scripture with inmates and, um, When I've gone and I've, I've really take time to ponder and what's the message? And invariably the message that comes to me is, let them know I love them. That's the message from the savior. When I go into the prisons to teach them is, I feel God telling me, tell these people, I love them and I haven't given up on them. And that's just. Like, like just like, you know, like when I first felt that I was like, why am I feeling love this room of prisoners, which I know contains some people who've done some horrible things, like you talked about today. Right. And the people who did those horrible things to you deserve to go to prison, but yet God still reaches out with love for them. At first it caught me off guard, like I was like, why do I feel so much love? And it's like, it's like the Lord was reaching through me. Just let them know I love them and I have not given up on them. And all throughout the New Testament, you see Jesus reaching out to lepers and the man in the, in the cemetery who's naked and nobody can, you know, like he's crazy and everyone's running from him and Jesus heals his heart and soul. Those are the stories of the people we hear about. And I think Jesus offers that same hope to everybody. And you don't have to be in prison, but I want you to know today, my friends out there listening that Jesus Christ still loves you. has not given up on you. He has not given up on your Children. He has not given up on your marriage. He has not given up on, you know, whatever your struggles or challenges you're facing. Jesus has not given up and Jesus reaches out with love and I want to leave that With all of our audience and tell you that you are loved not only by, not only by Jesus, but I think you're awesome. And that's why I sit here with this t shirt that says, you're awesome. Because Leah, first of all, you're awesome. You're a heroic person. You are a dynamic hero who's overcome to become the hero you are today. And I celebrate you. for all our

squadcaster-1897_1_01-09-2025_173712: 34:21

Thank you.

john_1_01-09-2025_173711: 34:21

out there, you're awesome too. want to thank you for joining us on this week's episode of walking with the savior. Have a great day, everybody.