About this episode
Toni Collier’s short childhood ended in third grade when her mother had a stroke and she was practically left alone to care for her. Toni carried many heavy emotional burdens in her childhood and felt deeply that she had to protect herself because the world was not a safe place. Fast forward several years and Toni’s strength of will to avoid the emotional trauma she experienced as a child finally ran out. Now a mom and reeling from an emotionally abusive first marriage, Toni sought counseling and therapy for the healing she so desperately needed. “I was so blind to how unhealthy my life actually was, and the unveiling, the unwrapping of this emotional onion made me worse. But there was a healed Toni that I had to get to. Not just for me, but for my daughter and my new marriage. The only thing that brought me through was the hope that there is a God who said he could trade my weakness for his power.” Toni opens up about the “treacherous” process of facing intense emotional trauma, the shame and stigma that surrounds therapy and what it’s like to parent in the midst of facing your own brokenness. Now as a powerful communicator and host with North Point Ministries , Toni has learned that God can take our broken, painful pasts and use them to minister to others. “I hopped on stage at North Point and my entire life changed in weeks. It was the first time in a long time that I had been in a ministry that's celebrated my gifts, wasn't intimidated by them, and also welcomed my brokenness. It is as if I had experienced a new Jesus.”