‘I thought I was helping others and healing myself, but it was all so dark’

Lucia always knew that there was something more; a spiritual realm beyond all she could see, feel and touch in her day-to-day physical existence. It was an innate instinct, there from childhood. “I was never brought up with any religion, but there was always this faith deep inside me, even as a teenager,” she shares. “I knew there was a God…I just didn’t know where to look for him.” 

At the age of 17 Lucia became pregnant. She sensed that her son was a gift from God, but this tumultuous life event triggered a difficult season. Her son’s father was an alcoholic, abusive and constantly in and out of jail. Lucia found herself turning to partying, drink and drugs as a means of coping, but simultaneously knew this was no cure for the heartbreak and disappointment she was feeling. “By the time I was 23 I knew that something had to change. I was seeking some kind of peace.” 

Lucia turned to meditation to calm her inner turmoil. “I had no one saying to me, ‘try praying’, ‘try church’ or anything like that, so I tried meditation, as this is what my older sisters were into.” But instead of discovering inner peace, Lucia experienced a frightening out-of-body experience while meditating. “I thought I was dying. It really freaked me out. But when I told a friend about my experience, she said I had a gift and could clearly tap into spiritual energies.” Life was continuing to spiral for Lucia and overwhelmed by the weight of another abusive relationship, she decided to exercise this ‘gift’ and dive into the world of reiki as a means of finding freedom. 

Deep in the occult  

When practising reiki, Lucia would hover her hands over a client’s body, guiding the flow of energy to remove blockages to bring spiritual and physical healing. “There was some sense of freedom [for myself] from it,” Lucia explains, “but the freedom didn’t last. It was just enough to keep drawing me back in for more.” By the age of 24, Lucia had completed a level two reiki course and was on track to becoming a reiki master. “When I was practising reiki, I found I would feel things or see things. It drew me in and led me down the road of psychic mediums – card readings and other occult practices.”  

My friend said I had a gift and could clearly tap into spiritual energies

When Lucia and her son moved to Liverpool, she trained in acupuncture, working in a clinic alongside teaching reiki, performing energy healings and doing psychic readings for people in person and over the phone. “By this time, I was earning big money,” Lucia shares, “and this was before I started a business with some friends, running women’s retreats where we would offer various holistic practices.” Lucia’s route to find personal healing had also become a profitable career, resulting in a comfortable lifestyle. “On paper, I had it all. I was living the life I had manifested. A big house, good career. In many ways I was happy. I didn’t wonder ‘could this be dark?’”

Enveloped by the darkness 

For a long time, Lucia ignored her anxiety, her depleted energy and exhaustion. She put the sleepless nights down to the generosity of her practice: “I assumed I was just absorbing negative energy from my clients when treating them,” she explains. But then came a series of events Lucia couldn’t ignore; events her occult practices seemed unable to solve or heal. 

In 2022 her boyfriend at the time attempted to kill himself. “I couldn’t understand how this had happened while I was doing all this healing work,” she shares. “It seemed clear to me that something wasn’t right if the healing energy I thought I was channelling couldn’t reach those closest to me.” To exacerbate her sense of disorientation, the following week Lucia found out she was pregnant. “The timing felt so completely wrong. My boyfriend was like, ‘you can’t keep that baby, it will make me kill myself’, so I felt manipulated into having an abortion I didn’t want to have. I felt so broken after that and things turned quite dark.”  

Lucia turned to the only thing she knew, burying herself even deeper into her occult practices and focusing on growing her business as a means of distraction. While successfully ignoring how drained and low she felt after performing reiki or engaging in psychic readings, she could not ignore the voices of friends who were describing the same experiences. 

“Two of the friends who were running the women’s retreats with me came to me and said they were feeling ill and depressed after the retreats. The opposite of how they were meant to feel! One friend was bold and told me she’d discovered that what we were doing wasn’t from God and she wanted to distance herself from me.” This perturbed Lucia. She’d always believed in God and thought that what she was doing was a gift from him. It had never occurred to her that she was perpetuating darkness. “I couldn’t stop thinking about what my friend had said. Something started to shift in me.”

I woke on the floor, feeling like I was being spun round and round by a demon

An awareness that God was trying to tell her something was reinforced just weeks later by her son, now 12 years old, who met a Christian and became convinced that God was real and that Jesus was who he claimed to be. Lucia also kept seeing the words of Psalm 91 everywhere – on her computer screen, despite never having Googled anything from the Bible, and on bumper stickers of cars. “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will rest in the shadow of the Almighty,” she read. 

“I can’t really remember why I did it, but one day I decided to get on my knees and say ‘Yes’ to God, ‘I want to do things your way.’” It was a compulsion, a strong conviction she couldn’t ignore that she would later understand to be the Holy Spirit. “I didn’t feel an overwhelming sense of joy or anything like that, but I felt relief and real peace for the first time ever.”

The cost of obedience

A fledgling Christian, Lucia knew little of what God had done for her or was calling her to, but she simply knew her life had to change dramatically. “There was no doubt in my mind that I needed to leave it all behind.” Within a matter of months Lucia had left her job, sold her home and parted from her boyfriend. The extraction from life in Liverpool and the occult practices she’d been immersed in was painful. “I had severe panic attacks, feelings of anxiety and tormented nights. One night I woke on the floor, feeling like I was being spun round and round by a demon…I recognise now that I was up against a lot of spiritual warfare and that my deliverance from it all took time.” 

Lucia and her son moved back in with her parents in north Wales. It was safe and familiar but felt like a regression. “There were plenty of times when I wanted to just return to the comfortable life I had before. But my longing for God was stronger. I knew he didn’t want me to go back and every time I called on the name of Jesus, I could feel my faith growing.” Those early days as a Christian were lonely for Lucia, as she attempted to find a church but struggled to find anyone who understood where she’d come from, or the spiritual support she needed. “It was a time of real wilderness. A time of refining. I see now that God had given me a gift of faith; faith to keep going despite not seeing the way through the desert.” 

Open Heavens 

It was a Christian counsellor who suggested to Lucia that she go to Open Heavens Christian café in Bangor. “The guy who owns it is big on the gifts of the Spirit,” she told Lucia. Intrigued, Lucia went to a women’s group there – a decision that would change her life forever. 

“The moment I saw the owner of Open Heavens, Frankie, I felt the Holy Spirit say he would be my husband. Which I thought was mad!” Lucia says with a laugh. “‘I’m not ready for this!’ I told God.” But God thought differently, and Lucia had heard him correctly. She began volunteering at the café, serving coffee and praying for people, and within weeks of ministering alongside one another, Lucia and Frankie knew God wanted them to be together. 

“It’s felt like I’ve been on an accelerating train!” Lucia explains, sharing that she and Frankie were married in April of this year, seven months after first meeting. “I always knew God was faithful, even during the times of wilderness, but I never knew he had all this in store for me.” Now co-owner of Open Heavens, Lucia is privileged to be part of all God is doing in the lives of individuals who walk through the doors. “It’s such a special place, and people sense the Holy Spirit when they walk in, even if they aren’t Christians. We’re seeing miracles and deliverances on a daily basis. It’s incredible what God is doing.” 

Recently, a young man walked through the doors of the café, unsure what had drawn him in. Released from jail days before, life felt unsteady, and he shared the pain of having been told by social services that he could no longer see his son. Lucia and other staff prayed for him and days later he returned to share that their prayers had been answered, and he had unexpectedly been granted visitations with his son. “We are now witnessing how God is transforming his life,” Lucia shares, in awe. “And this is just one story of so many…God is clearly moving in Bangor, and I know he’s placed me here for a reason.” Lucia has found her home, spiritually serving others as she always longed to, but with the true spirit of God, leading to deep, lasting and authentic transformation. @openheavenscafe

Words by Jane Knoop