Beth Eckert was once the picture of darkness as a committed witch and psychedelic drug abuser. Today she is a beautiful woman of God after finding the truth in Jesus Christ.
Beth grew up in the Mormon church and remembers being a little girl who loved God and had a relationship with Him. 'His love was real to me, and the most important thing to me,' she writes on her blog.
But she would 'soon learn how difficult holding on to that love would become.' Her experience in the Mormon church was not a good one and she even claims to have received hours of training as a child that focused on punishment and 'ritual abuse' so she grew up believing God had 'abandoned' her.
By the age of 13, Beth was severely depressed and suicidal. Then at the age of 14, she found herself in a bad relationship with her first boyfriend who raped her, causing her to feel hatred and resentment.
Then at the age of 15, she started self-harming to 'numb the emotional pain' and she contemplated suicide. When it seemed like life could not be more difficult, an ex-boyfriend committed suicide and she blamed herself for it.
Her conclusion after all this heartache was that God didn't care about anyone. That's when she met a couple who were Wiccan.
The man was the son of a high priestess in a coven and while she felt like religion just hurt people with all its rules, she saw Wiccan as 'the opposite of that.'
'It was about freedom and connection with the earth. It was about having power and using it and taking control of your life in partnership with the energy of the universe, not being controlled. It was about a god that was everywhere and a part of everything,' she explains.
Then she got into drugs, particularly marijuana, LSD and mushrooms, as a 'way to connect with higher levels of self.'
As she says in her own words, she 'fully embraced the persona of a witch' and started learning about all the witchcraft she could as well as Buddhism, Hinduism and Kabbalah, the occult and new age practices. She dabbled in it all, from moon worship, rituals and spells, crystals, gems, and chakras, to awakening her third eye, astral projection, and calling upon gods and goddesses to bless and protect her.
It was around that time she entered into an unhealthy relationship with someone else who was into witchcraft and she ended up pregnant. It wasn't what she wanted and he soon left her for another woman.
'My depression came to an all time high as I was left utterly alone with a toddler and a baby on the way. I had to move in with my parents and life as I knew it came to a screeching halt,' she said.
It seemed there was no hope for Beth, but then she unexpectedly met a good man who wasn't involved in witchcraft and who just really wanted to take care of her and her kids. After they got married, she still felt the need for a spiritual community and they started looking for churches together.
What really hooked her in was that they were homeschooling their kids at the time and happened to notice that a local church had a home school group. Curious, they went to one of their services and from that moment onwards, Beth just knew she had found what she was looking for.
'My husband and I made a split second decision to drive over to the Presbyterian church with the home school group to check out their late service. For the first time in my life I felt like I was at home. This was indeed a very strange thing for me!' she said.
Now life couldn't be more different for the one time witch and drug abuser. Beth and her husband are active in their church and are members of the worship team.
She feels like she's still on a journey to knowing God fully, but the transformation is unmistakable for her and her whole family, who were all baptized in the church.
'It is an amazing miracle, what Jesus has done for my life. He has brought me hope and healing for the first time ever. He has helped me to see that I am not alone, worthless, but I am well loved daughter of God,' she said.
Beth shares more of her amazing testimony in a YouTube below:
