Billa Kate Russell

A Spoken Testimony by Billa Russell

I never set out to become a Christian. In fact that was the last thing I wanted for myself + the furtherest thing that resembled me. I never imagined I would one day stand and say, “Jesus saved me.” Let alone proudly. But looking back, I can see, very clearly now, Jesus had been pursuing me a very long time.

It was July 2025.
I was eight months into my sobriety journey, a journey that began not with a plan, but with a moment. Overnight, something shifted. I woke up one morning and simply said,

“I’m no longer drinking. I’m no longer smoking cannabis or tobacco.”

I’ll never forget the look on my partner’s face, he laughed. Not out of mockery, but disbelief.
I wasn’t a heavy drinker, just a woman who enjoyed one or two at sunset, and, truthfully, I loved a spliff most weeks. That was part of my rhythm, my release my “Mummy Medicine” the Sin that was ongoing and subtracting so much more from my life that I dared to recognise.

When I announced I was fasting from every recreational habit at once, even I, hardly recognised myself. I remember thinking, Who is this woman speaking? and How on earth am I going to do this?
It felt impossible. I mean, who gives up everything, all at once?
No one I knew. Not in 2025, you’d have to be nuts to do that. It’s almost obscene to take on modern life + overstimulation sober.

But, from the very beginning, of my Sobriety Fast, I kept saying [ and still didn’t click ] someone upstairs is helping me. I could feel the support, the temptations removed, I could literally and tangibly FEEL the Holy Spirit renewing me, sheltering me, I just didn’t know how to verbalise that, theirs no way that I could have done that alone. NO WAY. One thing that was always clear is someone was helping me.

It was as if an unseen hand was steering my choices. Making the choices and then removing all hurdles, lifting any temptation + craving. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t easy, but it also was too easy. The other thing I vividly remember feeling [ and still didn't click ] is the pouring into sensation, like someone was filling me up with an energy that numbed me to temptation. It was like someone pouring a jug of love into your chest and you can feel it entering all limbs and filling you up like a glass of water fills from a tap.
I kept saying,

“Someone upstairs is helping me.”

I didn’t realise then who that Someone was. I thought I was simply “healing,” or had matured haha and was “choosing a better life.” There was no rock-bottom moment, no collapse. No real decision to do this. There was no conversation with my partner that I intended to do this prior. I just woke up said it laughed at myself hone I did though how ? Yet it happened. Next month will be my 12 month.

It has been a quiet, holy intervention, a divine interception disguised as self-improvement.

I thought I was climbing higher. But the truth was: Heaven was coming down.

And now I know, with every fibre of my being, that Jesus is real and their so many other verifications that Jesus was with me all along, random acts that again I didn’t put 2 and 2 together. I share these in our Community Chat space.

If there is anything I can do to help another soul see and feel
that everything said about Jesus is real, I will. Without Preach.

Because there is nothing like this.
Nothing on this earth compares
to the Holy Spirit moving within us, and the calibre of transformation it facilitates, Its everything that we think magic is.

8 months in, came the nights I couldn’t sleep. Tears I couldn’t explain.
Thoughts of death, hundreds a day, they tormented me, invasive uncontrollable thoughts of death, but they were not my own you could tell they were not my own, hard to explain. .
I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t suicidal.
I felt haunted, yet I didn’t realise I was being hunted by grace.

What felt like torment was really the Spirit separating light from dark,
beginning the death of the old self I’d mistaken for enlightenment. Or I was being pulled away from the light I had found in Jesus. I don’t exactly know. Still to this day what that was, all I know is it was darkness, a dark cold void that frightened me and I never want to feel that or experience that again.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” — John 1 : 5

One evening, in the thick of confusion, my partner looked straight at me and said words that split the air: “You need to go to church.”

We weren’t church people. Never had we ever spoken of church.
But the conviction in his voice was not his own. Something in me knew: this was an instruction, not a suggestion. Within seconds I was goofing the parish at the cathedral 2 hours away. It was after 9pm and I kept ringing until someone answered. I said I need help and I need to see you tomorrow.
It was as though the Holy Spirit borrowed my partners mouth to speak that to me.

The next morning I drove two hours and I will never forget the sunrise that morning it was a day I will never forget. I met the priest, I sat before him with nothing but desperation, begging for help, to understand what was happening to me. He cried, I cried, he felt so blessed that I went there and it was very clear to him what was occurring. .

He led me through Sacramental Reconciliation
and heaven touched earth inside that room.

When we finished, he looked at me gently and said,

“You’ve experienced a Christ conversion.”

He explained that the terror of death can follow a true rebirth,
that when the old self dies, the soul trembles as it feels resurrection beginning.

Those words detonated inside me.
From that moment to this day,
I have never feared death again.

“If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation;
the old has gone, the new has come.” 2 Cor 5 : 17

That was the pivot. I Waite. a few days expecting the invasive thoughts to return but they didn’t, the first Sunday came and I went to church, and it felt uncomfortable. But it also felt necessary. That was the hour I turned, faced Jesus, and whispered through tears, “I’m Yours.”

From then on, I have walked an integral path of Christ, I have not missed one mass, the Holy Spirit began a total rearrangement. I walked away from Buddhism, Tantra, Taoism,
the entire scaffolding of my identity and career.

It was radical, and It was terrifying even a little embarrassing. I didn’t want people to think I’d lost my Marbles.

I chose trust over performance,
faith over frameworks,
Jesus over myself.

And He proved faithful.

Soon after, my partner and I decided we’d marry and I saw the fingerprints of God all over our life.
He wasn’t merely saving me; He was restoring us.
He was weaving redemption into every thread of our home.

“The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” — Phil 4 : 7

Looking back, I see the orchestration clearly now:

• The small office where I worked two days a week suddenly lost its manager,
they needed me full-time. God used that to pull me out of Buddhism’s orbit.

• My Tao master, my old teacher, passed away.
NO coincidence. closure.
Heaven was clearing the path.

Every external shift mirrored an internal deliverance.
God was pruning attachments so new fruit could grow.

He has delivered me from every evil,
from every illusion that whispered, “You are your own saviour.”

Now I know, I am not my own saviour. Jesus is.

He eclipsed every counterfeit light
and filled my life with a brilliance that does not burn out.

I didn’t find the Light.
The Light found me.

Now I help other Wives restore their marriages to Covenant and Holy Matrimony and Women navigate new age to Christ.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?” — Psalm 27 : 1