This piece connects to Warship, a work exploring the nuanced nature of violence and my experience in a cult-like church. Once again, I engage in wordplay with the title Caughtship—the intentional misspelling hints at the subtlety of deception. This story spans over ten years, a period I believed was one of waiting: a season before marriage when feelings grow and hearts are won—not unlike courtship.
In reality, I was living with deep torment.
This narrative is long, and parts of it still leave me wondering. But the mystery no longer stops me from sharing what happened. Welcome to the heartache woven into my history—and the fractures that came before freedom.
I heard the whisper—a lethal lie: He is your future husband.
Words laced with poison spun webs around my mind. The voice sounded familiar, like a friend. He is your future husband.
I’d grown up steeped in a particular theology. Wore a God-is-in-control badge. An I-Kissed-Dating-Goodbye ring. At fifteen, I believed God not only predestined lives but revealed them. He is your future husband.
The religious sect I was visiting had a history of milking people dry—financially, spiritually and emotionally. From donations to spiritual gifts, practical skills to volunteered time, nothing was off-limits. Without realising it, I had stepped into a community that thrived on exploitation and left people spiritually broken.
He is your future husband.
Those perplexing words filled my senses the moment I stepped into the church and saw him on stage. Though they weren’t audible, they echoed in my mind at an almighty volume. God had been a friend to me since childhood—our daily dialogue was unforced, gentle, familiar. So when that bold, declarative statement invaded my headspace as a teenager, I pushed it aside.
The voice sounded like God, but the words—and whatever force they came from—couldn’t possibly be.
The future husband moved with charismatic confidence across the front of the auditorium. The culture around him cast his voice and vocation as sacred. Every verse and chorus had been written by him, and the congregation sang them with reverence. His melodies were mesmeric—and I had no idea how vulnerable I was to spiritual seduction.
I returned home to Leongatha after that encounter, but the words followed me—like seeds planted deep in the soil of my heart.
He is your future husband.
He is your future husband.
He is your future husband.
The voice defied my will, persisting with its incantations. It pounded at the door of my desires, demanding to be let in—insisting I allow it to take root and grow within me.
Deception
the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false1
dishonest or illegal methods used to get something, or to make people believe that something is true when it is not2
In the months that followed, my youth group occasionally attended events hosted by the church. And every time we returned, the voice—and those words—pulsed loudest.
Over the next year, I tried to reason them away, to quiet their hold on me. I loved the worship and teaching at that church and never sensed anything unsafe. Their doctrine placed strong emphasis on hearing God’s voice clearly and responding with faith.
I didn’t want to be a doubter. I wanted to trust God.
Strangely, it felt imperative to keep the prophetic pounding in my head a secret. When I finally journaled about the singing stranger in Melbourne and the wild words that followed him in my mind, it felt momentous.
After a year of resisting the voice, I was exhausted. I began to wonder if its persistence was, in fact, a sign of truth.
Could this, in fact, be God?
Instead of trying to disprove it, I began praying for confirmation that it was God speaking. I asked for signs, laid out a fleece3, and hoped his name would appear unexpectedly in my day-to-day—proof that the whispers carried weight.
To my surprise, the signs began pouring in. I’d turn on the television, and within seconds, a news story would feature someone with his name. At the salon where I worked, the appointment book started filling with that same name, again and again. My brother bought a car—and affectionately named it after him. The bank teller, the barista, a pet and a playwright—his name seemed to follow me everywhere, appearing in every space I occupied.
Confirmation bias? Baader-Meinhof phenomenon4? Perhaps. But given the speed, regularity and sheer number of times his name flooded into nearly every part of my life, I still wonder if it can be dismissed as mere cognitive bias.
A torrent of signs convinced me God was speaking, and these “confirmations” washed away my doubts
So, I befriended the voice and aligned myself with its whispers.
He is my future husband.
When I turned 18, I began making the two-hour drive to Melbourne regularly to be part of whatever the church was doing. I liked being in the same room as him, always hoping that today would be the day we’d finally speak—and God’s promise would begin to unfold.
I believed the words were true, yet tried to hold them lightly. I wanted to have faith but also protect myself from heartache if they proved false. I even prayed that God would have the future husband dating someone else—to show me this was just a strange lie living in my mind.
Every time I attended the church, he remained unmistakably single. Three years had passed since those words first found me. I had repelled them, fought them, surrendered and finally believed. Despite my prayers, he stayed single the entire time.
I hated it and loved it at the same time.
Torment
great mental suffering and unhappiness, something that causes pain5
to cause severe, usually persistent and recurrent distress to the mind6
My parents were the first to hear about my prophetic premonition.
After all these years, I had discovered he’d started dating someone—the woman leading the church kids’ ministry and the PA to his parents: beautiful, outgoing, charismatic—a perfect fit for the pastor’s son.
I had come home, grappling with what this could mean and carefully trying to contain my sadness. For it to happen now was deeply upsetting and incredibly confusing. Mum and Dad noticed my withdrawal into silence. They sensed I was carrying a secret and gently urged me to share. Through guttural sobs, I told them everything—the inception of the words, the battle to refute them, the peace in finally accepting them, and now this: him dating someone else—the very ‘sign’ I’d prayed for before allowing myself to fully believe. At 19, I lay between my parents, curled up like a child, weeping as they held me. Tears of relief—mostly because they knew and I was no longer alone.
My parents trusted my ability to hear God’s voice and didn’t impose their own opinions about what was true or not. They simply told me they were with me—that they would support and pray for me as I navigated the road ahead.
After discovering he was dating someone, I had so many questions.
Why had God waited until I was fully convinced of His promise before allowing something that seemed to say otherwise?
Was this a test of faith? Is God one to give and take away?
I chose to keep believing. To live by faith, not by sight7.
He is my future husband.
I’ve never been much of a dreamer.
It’s rare that I wake and remember a dream from the night before. Yet dreams of him flooded my sleep—dreams of our first meeting, of dates, of us together in all kinds of settings with friends and family. I could recall them in microscopic detail. They came so often I took them as further confirmation from God. The Bible tells stories of people receiving prophetic revelation through dreams, so I believed this was my experience too. I began chronicling these nights in my journal—writing out the colours and words that filled the dreamscapes. I started building an archive of evidence: documenting dreams, scribbling signs, crafting lyrics, drafting love letters. Time and again, he seeped onto my pages.
In reality, we had barely met—but spiritually, it felt undeniable that this was our future.
It was only a matter of time.
Manipulation
to change, control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means8
the action of influencing or controlling someone or something, often without anyone knowing it9
Over time, I became increasingly involved in the church. I split my life between Melbourne and Gippsland—renting part-time in the city, part-time in the country. I volunteered on nearly every church team and became deeply embedded in the community.
I believed we were making a real difference.
I believed we were a prophetic, Spirit-led people.
I believed we were intelligent believers with God on our side.
I believed I was going to marry the pastor’s son.
I believed a lot of lies.
In hindsight, the atmosphere of the church reflected its hidden dysfunction. Narcissism ran deep, and the unseen environment it fostered was psychologically and spiritually unsafe.
Occasionally, he and I would interact. While I was busy serving on a Sunday, there’d be fleeting, inconsequential moments of conversation—just enough crumbs of connection to keep me convinced the words still held true.
By this point, I’d been attending the church on and off for nearly seven years. During that time, he dated a couple of different women. I watched from the sidelines, trusting, praying—believing I would be next.
His relationships never lasted. And I wasn’t surprised.
He was, after all, the one God had for me.
Over the years, I confided in a few people—my sister and some close friends, none of whom attended my church. They knew about the prophetic promise, supported me in prayer and regularly checked in to see how I was holding up in the waiting.
It was never a matter of if, only when.
In 2016, my Melbourne living arrangement ended. Despite my desperate efforts to find another part-time rental in the city, I was forced to move back in with my parents in Leongatha. It wasn’t until after I relocated that I began to realise just how chronically burnt out I was. On the advice of a psychologist, I completed a detailed questionnaire that revealed the full extent of my emotional exhaustion and burnout. Years of constant service to the church had finally caught up with me—I was utterly depleted.
I blamed myself entirely for the burnout. I was the one coordinating the service teams, the one who rostered myself on far too often. I hadn’t prioritised rest, nor taken time off when I should have. I lacked the self-awareness to recognise my limits and establish boundaries.
I believed I had brought this on myself.
It never occurred to me that my deterioration might be the result of the church leaders failing me—failing all of us. I couldn’t see that my condition was directly linked to sustained submission within a systematically toxic spiritual environment.
I also didn’t know that prolonged, deferred hope could take a serious toll on both mental and physical health.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But when desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.10
Relocating to Gippsland full-time was profoundly healing. Slowly, I began to regain both my strength and my sense of self.
During my years in the church, I had unknowingly reshaped myself into who they needed me to be: a bubbly, extroverted woman with a can-do attitude—dressed almost exclusively in black, never wearing anything that might be deemed "revealing," and, after one firm reprimand, always—always—wearing “proper” shoes.
Now, outside that environment, I had no idea who I was or what I liked. Did I have a favourite colour? What clothes expressed my individuality? Did I gain energy from being around others, or from time alone?
Over the next 18 months, I slowly rediscovered myself and what I loved. Introverted. Bohemian. Forest green and fire engine red. Piece by piece, I was being rebuilt.
Even so, the lie lingered, its tendrils tightening around my heart, binding me to its promise.
He is my future husband.
After moving home, I occasionally drove to Melbourne to see old friends and attend church. In my eyes, the church had done no wrong—it was still a place I liked to visit, albeit infrequently. Though much had changed—I was healthier, more self-expressed, and better rested—my internal prophecy remained untouched, and the source of those words still felt like a friend. Ongoing confirming dreams and sporadic encounters kept the delusion alive.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.George Orwell (1949)
At the beginning of 2018, I started planning a solo 5-week holiday to the U.K. As an avid planner, I mapped out every place and experience I hoped to have. Initially, I intended to spend a week in London, then head south for David’s Tent11, road trip around England, and finish with a week in Edinburgh.
I researched options and meticulously adjusted the details. After a couple of weeks of tweaking the timing and order, it became clear that for everything to fit, London needed to move from the start of the trip to the end.
Early on, I sensed that the week in London would hold special significance. There was something about the timing.
I prebooked everything I could—Airbnbs, hotels, airport transfers, car hire, entrance fees, tours. Months in advance, my itinerary was airtight. Yet London felt different—I booked my accommodation but resisted adding anything else. An overwhelming sense told me to leave that week open, unplanned.
In the months leading up to my departure, I noticed several strange, repeating signs that caught my attention. Twin eagles flying together appeared regularly—while driving, looking out the window at work, or during my daily walks. Each time, I heard God say, “I’m taking you and him away from your normal environment to begin your story; you will fly and you will connect.”
Consequently, I began to sense that he would be overseas when I was, and that after ten years, perhaps it would finally be my turn to love—and to be loved.
Another strange phenomenon was the constant presence of wedding processional music in the week before I left. Every day, without fail, I would hear “Here Comes The Bride.” Sometimes I’d be flipping through TV channels just as the familiar tune started playing, or walking down the street when a busker struck up the melody. Each time, I felt God whisper, “I’m a good Father preparing to give you away, to entrust you to him.”
It was strange, but by then, I had grown accustomed to the peculiar and saw it all as confirmation. The growing number of signs and signals sparked a hopeful sense that this trip would finally mark the beginning of my promise being fulfilled.
I arrived in the U.K. with an open, expectant heart. I delighted in worshipping at David’s Tent, driving through quaint English villages and wandering stately homes that had served as sets for Pride and Prejudice. It felt like God and I were on holiday together. We ambled through the majestic Scottish Highlands and spent rainy days cosied up in Edinburgh cafés, watching the world go by. Our conversations were mostly kind and contemplative.
There were, however, moments when I sensed God telling me the future husband would be in London at the same time as me. I had no way of knowing if this was true. Years earlier, I’d unfollowed him on all social media to protect myself from the heartache his posts often stirred.
So, I chose to stay purposefully uninformed, accepted what God was telling me, and hoped it would be true.
Flying from Edinburgh to London, I prepared for my final week in the U.K. Upon landing, excitement and anticipation bubbled up inside me. Within hours, I felt God say the future husband was on his way—and that years of waiting would culminate in what this week held.
The voice and words were so clear and loud in my head. I tried to reason it out, questioning how likely it was that we’d both be there at the same time.
God responded, “I can prove it to you. Check his Instagram.”
Skeptical, I searched his account and saw a story posted just minutes earlier—an image of him on a flight, with words confirming he was en route to London.
Despite the prophecy, I was utterly shocked—and ecstatic—that he was coming. I took a screenshot of his Instagram story and sent it to my parents and my oldest friend, who, along with her husband, had supported and prayed for me over the years. I attached the image with the words, “It’s happening. Please pray!”
From there, I set out to explore the city. Assuming it would be a day or two before he arrived, I immersed myself in London’s museums, galleries and West End shows. I walked extensively, carried by a steady internal dialogue with God. I could feel His excitement in the unfolding story between the future husband and me. His voice confirmed, in every way, that this was the week when everything would begin.
On day three, anticipation stirred within me. As I wandered the city streets, explored tourist spots and sat in cafes, I found myself searching for him. We’d had so few interactions over the years that I didn’t have his contact details—and I felt no urge to reach out on social media.
God kept reassuring me that everything was being orchestrated by Him, promising that our paths would cross naturally during the week.
On days four and five, hypervigilance took hold. I became acutely aware of my surroundings, subconsciously scanning every face in the crowd, waiting for him to emerge from the sea of strangers. Doubt crept in—I questioned whether I could trust myself and began asking God to guide which streets to take, where to buy my coffee and how to spend my time.
God kept reassuring me that our encounter was inevitable and that I didn’t need to worry about being in the right place at the right time.
Day six dawned, and worry settled in. God’s voice reassured me that He was taking care of me—and that the future husband and I would meet before the week ended. I had visited all the places I’d wanted to see and now wandered London’s streets aimlessly, unsure of what to do next. Time was slipping away and I found myself wondering how I would cope if nothing happened. I spoke to my parents one last time before returning to Australia, telling them they would be picking up either a delighted or a broken daughter from the airport. They prayed for me and waited, uncertain who they would welcome home.
At the end of that day, I posted on Facebook asking friends for recommendations on which theatre show to see on my final night in London. Within seconds, the future husband commented with his suggestion. We’d been Facebook friends for years, but this was the first time he’d ever interacted with one of my posts.
I was elated. It was happening.
I prayed and asked God whether I should reach out to him through Messenger. I felt a clear go-ahead. I sent a private message thanking him for the show recommendation and acknowledged the absurdity of us both being in London at the same time. I asked if he might have time the next day to meet for coffee—or if he’d be interested in joining me at the evening’s Wicked show.
Nervously, I sent the message and went to bed.
Day seven. Ten years of waiting had come to this—I woke up excited. That morning, I laid out my ‘nice clothes’ on the bed, hoping I’d return to the hotel later that afternoon dressed up to spend the evening with him. I headed out for the day, eyes glued to my phone, waiting for a response. I asked God what time I should buy my ticket for the show that night, wanting to hold off in case I heard from him or we crossed paths—and maybe saw the show together. God told me we would connect by 2 p.m., so I resolved to wait until then to buy my ticket. I spent the morning in cafés, my eyes darting between my phone and the faces passing by. Every second felt heavy and drawn out.
At 2 p.m., a wave of confusion and disappointment crashed over me. I hadn’t seen him, nor received a message. I walked to the box office and bought my ticket. I made my way to Buckingham Palace and lay down on the patch of grass outside its gates. Pressing my spine into the earth, tears streamed silently behind my sunglasses. My lament watered that lawn that day. God’s voice still whispered, urging me to hold onto hope. I begged Him to stop speaking, but vowed to keep the faith until I boarded the plane.
That night, I sat alone and disillusioned in the theatre. From start to finish, I couldn’t stop crying. The show featured a father-wizard figure, both cruel and kind—weak and impotent, yet wielding power through showmanship and manipulation. He used deceit to serve his own ego. I sobbed in the darkness, questioning if this was an accurate reflection of my God.
The next morning, I caught a train to the airport, searching for him every second. As I boarded my flight and buckled my seatbelt, I commanded God to stay away.
I told Him He was a monster.
I told Him He was my enemy.
I landed in Melbourne broken.
In the middle of the Arrivals terminal, I wept uncontrollably as Mum, Dad and my brother embraced me. On the drive home, I told my parents, “I will never trust God again.”
In the months that followed, I made war on God.
I screamed songs of hatred while my ribcage burned with rage. Each day unleashed a new language of loathing.
I was in so. much. pain.
And God was silent.
To read the next part of my journey toward wholeness, click below…
Merriam Webster dictionary
Cambridge dictionary
“Laying out a fleece” is a Christian phrase derived from the story of Gideon in Judges 6 of the Bible. It refers to seeking tangible, observable signs from God to confirm His will for you.
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: Also called the frequency illusion, happens when something you recently noticed suddenly seems to appear everywhere. This creates the illusion that its frequency has increased, as your brain selectively notices it more. The term was coined in 1994 by a Minnesota newspaper reader who described how after learning about the Baader-Meinhof gang, he unexpectedly encountered references to it again shortly after, despite its historical obscurity. source here
Merriam Webster dictionary
Cambridge dictionary
Biblical reference: 2 Corinthians 5:7 — “For we live by faith, not by sight.”
Merriam Webster dictionary
Cambridge dictionary
Biblical reference: Proverbs 13:12
David’s Tent: A festival where thousands from various Christian denominations and church expressions gather for 72 hours of worship.