“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalms 51:17 KJV).
Leah Cook knows exactly how it feels to be completely broken before God. After enduring trauma and addiction over the years, she has experienced a point of redemption that has given her a desire to give others hope through her own experiences.
The catalyst for some of the things she endured took place when she was very young.
“I have childhood trauma,” explained Leah. “Then, my eighth-grade year going into my ninth-grade year, I was raped by a 21-year-old man and his girlfriend. That probably has a lot to do with some of the things that happened, too.”
It was after that event that she developed an addiction to alcohol and began to be confused regarding her identity.
“After that, I started drinking alcohol,” remembered Leah. “Then, I had a girl that took interest in me, and I didn’t feel like that with any of the guys I would talk to. I thought that it was a new feeling and I liked it, so I started seeing a girl. I thought that I must be gay because that is what I liked. For 16 years, that’s what I thought. I thought I was born gay. I thought everybody that was gay was born gay. It was a straight lie from the devil. That’s not who you are. You’re born a man, or you’re born a woman. You are not attracted to the same sex. You’re looking at the physical appearance when it shouldn’t be the physical appearance.”
Her addiction increased once she joined the military.
“I struggled with alcohol for a really long time,” declared Leah. “I went into the Marine Corp in 2010. I got over to Japan when I was 19-20 years old, and the drinking just got even worse in the military. That’s pretty much all you do. You go to work, and then you go out with your friends, and you get drunk.”
Along with the alcohol, she experienced demons while serving in the Marines.
“I was literally tormented by demons there. There were literal demons,” recalled Leah. “I could not go to sleep because I was so scared because of the stuff that I was seeing. I would literally call home and make somebody stay on the phone with me so I could go to sleep. It would be like a three-month span, every single night for three months. Then, I would get a break for a little bit, and then it would pick back up. It was just unimaginable things I would see in my room, but I was asleep. It would be like children with their heads turned around backwards and crazy stuff. It got really bad. I dealt with that and alcohol, and obviously when you do that you don’t really care about yourself and just do all kinds of stuff. Then, I went to North Carolina in 2013. It didn’t stop. I think the alcohol got worse, to be honest. I remember one of the last times I was tormented, I was asleep in my rack, and I could literally feel something physically laying in the bed with me. It scared the Jesus out of me. I went to turn over, and it was like this old hag looking woman. Well, I got out of the military in 2014, and I did not know how to come back to society at all. The alcohol got worse. I wasn’t seeing stuff anymore. I was just getting belligerently blackout drunk, and I was turning into a demon. I didn’t even realize it, but the people around me—my mom, my family, my friends—they saw it. It’s pretty scary. A lot of people here deal with that. I’m telling you so they will understand that they are not alone.”
It wasn’t until she was in college that she was freed from her addiction to alcohol.
“I started college in 2016. I started cleaning myself up. You can’t be an alcoholic and get a good grade in college and pass, so I had chilled out on my alcohol,” informed Leah. “By the beginning of 2018, I just didn’t care if I drank anymore. I had been praying for a couple years before then, like crying on my knees praying for God to just take it because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop it, but it was killing me. At the beginning of 2018, it pretty much didn’t have a hold on me anymore. The alcohol and all the stuff that was literally keeping me down, I’m free from all that. God’s clearly the one who freed me from alcohol. It wasn’t me.”
A dream she had around 2018 is what caused her to truly cry out to God for the first time.
“In 2018, I had a dream. I was on Okinawa, a little island off of mainland Japan. It’s beautiful there, and I had always wanted to take my mom and family to see it because it’s a beautiful country,” described Leah. “I had this dream that we all went to Japan and were all staying in kind of like a barrack still. One of the family members down the hall came into my room saying there was something in another room and they didn’t know what it was. Personally, I just feel like a protector of everybody, so I guess that’s why they came to me in my dream. I said I would go check it out. I walked into the room, and it was pitch black dark. I was walking to the middle and looking around. These three things in cloaks gathered around me, and we kind of just evaporated down. When I opened my eyes up, it was like I knew I was in Hell. There wasn’t fire and all that stuff. I just knew I was in Hell. I opened my eyes up, and I noticed I was on this hospital gurney strapped down. I could not move, and I was alone at the time. It was a brick corridor with torches on the side. I could see that. Then, they started coming towards me. They started coming around the bed, and I was starting to literally try to scream for Jesus, and no words would come out of my mouth. I could not speak, and my spirit just called out to Him in my dream. I was calling, and He literally brought me back up. That was the first time I have ever like truly, wholeheartedly called out to Him.”
While her issues with drinking were resolved, she still struggled with her identity and relationships. She enjoyed her life and didn’t want to change her relationship because she loved her significant other; however, she knew something wasn’t right.
“I was still dating girls and all this kind of stuff,” expressed Leah. “In 2018, the relationship I was in was the best one I had ever had. It was pretty perfect. I was like this is it. She gave me her all, and I gave her my all. It was really the best relationship I’ve ever had. After a couple of years, she wanted to get married. It was like my internal was saying you can’t do that, that’s not right, you just can’t do that. I loved her so much that I just wanted to give her anything that she wanted. I held it off for a while, but I finally said okay. I bought her this gorgeous ring. We talked about children and stuff like that. I was just like, we can’t do this. How are we going to teach the children right from wrong when we’re not doing right? It really bothered me for a while. I prayed to God. I was like, ‘Lord, if you want me to stop this, then stop it because I can’t stop it. You have to stop it.’ He literally stopped it. It was the perfect relationship, but it wasn’t right. The devil is really good at lies and making us feel and believe things that are not true.”
It was in 2020 that she started questioning things regarding the government and doing research. She didn’t really like the results of the research she had done at the time because it ended up pointing her in a direction that would require her to change. She wasn’t quite ready to listen to that just yet.
“In 2020, it was like something just opened up. I’ve always been what they call a conspiracy theorist,” explained Leah. “I really started questioning the government. When I came home, through all the drunkenness, I was doing research while I was sober and looking into freemasonry and all this stuff. I kind of had a little background. When I went to college, they taught me how to research and critically think about things, so it was a tool that helped me. I did a whole bunch of research in 2020. Literally, everything was leading me to God and Satan. I was like this is too much. I couldn’t deal with it because I didn’t want to stop living the way I was living. I was happy finally. I didn’t want to stop living that way. I just kept on telling myself that there are lost books of the Bible, so the Bible can’t be true and all kind of craziness; but the truth to finding Jesus and truly being saved is in the Bible. It’s in the New Testament. The Old Testament is who God is, and the New Testament is who Jesus is, and then you have His revelation at the end. He sent me on a chase and was like okay, you don’t have to listen to me right now.”
She had already been struggling with her identity for a few years before she went into that research. Her identity and purpose became even more of a question as she conducted her research until she finally realized what a person’s true identity and purpose on Earth is.
“In the beginning of 2018, a bad relationship I was in ended, and she left. I was like, I’m tired of living like this. I wanted to change and be different. I started reading the Bible. I was literally reading a book a night. It didn’t matter how long it was. I read Psalms in like two nights. I was serious because I thought I would just read those words and they would change me. I got to the book of John, and nothing was changing,” recalled Leah. “I didn’t like what it was saying still, and I just threw the Bible down and started drinking again. Then, I got my new girlfriend and decided it was great. It was just who I was. He was like, well here are some glasses in 2020. You need to look around the world you live in. Satan runs this place, and they’re lying to you about everything, even about who you are.”
In 2022, she decided to delve deeper into the bible. It was during that time that she fully understood the love of Christ and experienced redemption.
“Last year, when I was really looking and going through it all, I realized I didn’t even know who He is to be honest. I knew what people told me, but I didn’t know Him. I started watching videos. One of the main ones was My Identity in Christ. That was the main thing. Like I said, there’s a big identity crisis. I was like, who am I? He created me, but who am I? That’s the identity thing. We put labels on ourselves like gay or alcoholic or crazy or even Marine. You’re adding labels onto yourself, and those aren’t who you are. You are His. He created you for a purpose here on Earth, and it wasn’t to go to work every day. Those are things we have to do, but that is not your purpose here on Earth. There’s a spiritual purpose everybody has. We have a job to do,” proclaimed Leah. “Last year when I was doing deep dives into it, He just kept working on me and working on me. There would be certain times that He would tell me to serve Him, and I would be like don’t do this to me. I wanted to keep that relationship because I was so happy. I found out that He loves us more than we could ever love each other. People don’t see that. I got it then. I have the eyes to see. It’s like the song. I was blind but now I see.”
Now looking back, she can see where God never gave up on her and stayed with her through it all.
“I didn’t realize it at first. You don’t really realize it until you look back on your life. You can see Him all throughout your life,” stated Leah. “Thank God He was because it probably would have been a whole lot worse if He hadn’t been with me throughout my life. He’s been working on me for a long time. You just have to be still and be obedient and listen.”
She has a desire for everyone to experience who Jesus truly is just like she has.
“We are supposed to live day to day telling people about the gospel to bring them to Heaven instead of judging people,” declared Leah. “When you truly know Jesus, He is truth. He is the Word, and He shows you everything. He gives you the discernment to look at something and say this is right or this is wrong. People don’t really understand the Holy Spirit or being obedient to God because once you are truly saved, you do get the Holy Spirit. He convicts you. People think it’s them and their conscience, but it’s not. You have the choice. He’s going to come meet you, and you have the choice to obey or disobey. If you obey, He’s going to take you higher into your calling and what you’re supposed to be doing here.”
She is more than willing to talk with anyone who may be struggling the way she once did.
With each day that passes, she will continue to share her faith in Christ with those around her as she tells her testimony, complete with the grace and mercy God has shown her.
