Heather Bellamy spoke with Lorraine Poulton about her miracle baby and recovering from severe stress

Lorraine Poulton

Lorraine Poulton is a make up artist, colour consultant and style coach. As a teenager from a difficult background, she had a desire for a glamorous life and so began modelling. This led quickly into using drugs and eventually hitting rock bottom after her first marriage broke down while living in LA. In Part 2 of the interview Heather Bellamy heard about how she met her second husband, Paul Poulton, her miracle baby and how she has been recovering from severe stress.

Heather: When did you meet your husband Paul Poulton?

Lorraine: I had to go through this stage of changing before I met Paul. I prayed and said, "Oh Lord I need a man. Although you really love me I need Mr Right in my life. I'm going to trust you to get him for me and bring him to me". My mum thought that was funny because I had this great big long list of what Mr Right would look and be like. She said, "You'll never find him and if you do somebody else will already have him", but I said, "No, I'm trusting God. God's going to bring him to me; he can bring him to the front door if he wants to". So she said, "Oh he may be like the window cleaner", because I guess we were having our windows cleaned at the time. I said, "No way", because he was a bit rough. To cut a long story short the New Year came and I prayed for God to help me to make these changes. I had to change my friends and everything. I had to stop meeting with the same friends otherwise they'd be smoking weed and I would not be. By mid-January I'd stopped smoking and getting drunk. I became teetotal. Everything changed about me so that by April I was a new woman with a new lifestyle and guess what happened: some friends from church set me up on a blind date and on the night of the date this good looking guy came up the path and knocked on the door and that turned out to be the answer to my prayer. God told me a few months later, "There's your Mr Right all the way to the front door just like you asked".

Heather: What happened next?

Lorraine: Meeting Paul made such a huge difference to my life. I couldn't explain it in a few words if I tried, because I'd been searching for love and what my mum had never had, as I mentioned earlier. I really wanted to be loved and I didn't realise how important that was. So first of all along comes God who showers me with love and starts to heal me in such a wonderful way, but only a husband could complete that work. God uses us to bless each other in so many ways. So Paul came along and provided almost unconditional love. He was just so great for me and the opposite of me. He brought stability to my flighty nature. I like to do new things; he likes to be stable and keep doing the old stuff. That's not quite right, but he doesn't like change as much as I do if I can put it like that. He's very stable, so he brought that stability into life for me; plus he was a musician and I poured myself into his lifestyle, because I hadn't got one anymore. I started working on his itinerary and getting him on the road. He was previously with someone else - his band - playing guitar and he started going out on his own and in his own right with his own band and doing solo gigs. I travelled with him and as we travelled sometimes he'd do a church event and he'd say, "Can you give a testimony if I stop at the end of this song? Will you give five minutes?" And I'd say, "Yeah". I started with the five minutes; give this little testimony about my exciting life as a model turned Christian and then it got bigger; then it was 10 minutes and then it was 15. In the end he was saying, "Lorraine, five minutes ok". Something was growing and developing and I think God wanted to use me in that way.

I was very very willing because women started booking me up for women's meetings to come and share my testimony. I thought I know what I can do, I can add a bit of a make-up demonstration. I'd do someone's make-up and then I'd talk about when I was a model and about how I became a Christian. That way people could invite their friends in and it could be evangelistic. You'll get quite a lot more ladies in that way because they'll come for the make-up demonstration. It began to grow and grow and grow and so that's where I am at the moment, but coming back to your question, having Paul in my life has provided an opportunity for me to pursue a life that's worthwhile.

Heather: And what about children? What's been the journey for you with that?

Lorraine: We couldn't have any. When I first met Paul and we were talking about being together long term, he told me he couldn't have any children, which gutted me. I said, "Well that's no good". I thought God how can this be Mr Right? How can it be that he can't have any kids and I want children? When I thought it through I said, "That's ok, I'll still marry you". He said, "I haven't even asked you yet". He's always funny, he's so funny. Anyway we got married and seven years went by and I really wanted to be a mum. I knew I'd be a good mum and I begged and I pleaded and no children came along; it seemed like God wasn't hearing me. Paul always had faith though and then one day I said, "We must go and get some tests done; maybe we'll do a test tube baby", but the hospital said, "No, we can't help you; the results are just too bad".

We went to a large Reinhard Bonnke meeting and we had prayer. I can't go into the detail because we don't have enough time, but by the autumn I got pregnant naturally. That was a God intervention; a modern day miracle. We both knew that it was only the Lord that could do it. When we went for the pregnancy test we just looked at each other and when they said, "Yes you are pregnant", Paul laughed and I cried. Then nine months later I was laughing on the gas and Paul was crying when Isaac popped out. It's a wonder I wasn't crying actually because he was nine pounds seven ounces and I thought what on earth is it!

Lorraine and Paul Poulton

Heather: What was it like waiting seven years for a child? What did it mean to you?

Lorraine: Having a baby was the ultimate answer to prayer. First came the husband of course, which is such a fantastic answer to prayer and then along came Isaac. I was filled with joy, so in the night I would get up to breast feed and I'd get up two, three, four times and every single time I had like a bubble of joy just burst in my heart. As that child lay feeding, I would sit in the corner of the room on the chair in the darkness with just the moonlight coming through the window and I tell you what, there was nothing I wanted to be doing other than that. God was so precious to me for what he had done. I was so grateful. At that point, having a baby, having Paul, having a good life style - we had a nice home, I had everything that I wanted; absolutely everything I could possibly need and I was very very happy. They were really golden years. As Isaac grew up as a small child I felt so blessed to be part of a family that I had never been a part of. Isaac to me had the perfect childhood. He had a mum and dad who absolutely doted on him. I used to think, "Lord, why didn't I have - why didn't you put me in that family? Why? Why did I have to go and take all those drugs and why didn't I become a Christian earlier? Why did you make me go through all that?" That was what I said to him once and I said, "And I want an answer, because you could have given me a better life style than what you did". See how we put it all on God? Eventually the answer came to me and the Lord showed me that what I'd been through enabled me to understand life in a certain way and now I could genuinely help people who were struggling with some of the issues. It's not a deep and full answer to the question that I put to him, but it was satisfactory for me. It meant something to me and it made sense of everything. I began to realise that God has even got answers to the deep things of life if we ask; if we sit in his presence; if we spend time with him.

Heather: So does that mean that life's been perfect ever since?

Lorraine: Well, you know what the answer to that is don't you. God did need to heal me and when Isaac was about two or three I went through a funny period where I really had to seek the Lord and I used to sit for an hour on my own in prayer; in deep prayer and God was healing me of the things that I'd done before I was a Christian. A few memories and some of them were awful memories that I'd kind of locked up. What God did one day in prayer was he took me to the room and we went to this dark place of these memories that I never used to think about and it was as if he opened the door in my heart and I looked at it and it was all dark in there. All I could see were these horrible names that I called myself; bad names and they were written on the wall. God flooded the room with his light and all the names disappeared; all the nasty names that I called myself. Nobody knew about this. This was what needed healing; these kinds of things; all the things I'd been up to in my previous life and that was kind of the final healing.

Things started to take place then. I really felt cleansed, but after that when Isaac was about five or six I decided I needed another change, which is true to my nature; I wanted to go out to work. I'd been a mum for so long and I still wanted to be a mum, but I wanted something for myself now. I wanted to go out to work. That's when I went and got a job with a charity and I began as a support worker and then I became a manager. Then I took a degree in project management and I did all that while I was working full time. I was an absolute work alcoholic for six years for this company and I burned myself out.

I had a problem with the management. I didn't feel supported and when I had a problem with my team and I wasn't supported by the management, life began to crash for me and I got really stressed. I got so stressed I had to go to the doctor and have time off. Stress is an illness and it's something that three years later I'm just about recovering from. I left my job after six years with the company and I gave them 100% and more; everything I could. I'd come home late and I'd start early and I thought I was achieving so much, but maybe I was doing it all in my own strength. Maybe I'd left God behind when I checked in at work and put my business suit on. I don't know exactly where it started to go wrong, but I do know that I was so desperate that I ended up playing this album into work and on the way home because the words lifted me. I couldn't sit still; I was so stressed I couldn't even sit and pray. My prayer life went out the window; I didn't have a quiet time, hardly ever. I was still a Christian and I still really loved the Lord, but I was a working woman and I was quite high up in my organisation; all I can say is it didn't work for me.

Heather: How have you managed to recover from such stress?

Lorraine: The first thing I did was leave the job. That was the best thing I could do. I needed to leave it because the Lord spoke to me and I think eventually you give in to God's voice. I was holding on to things. When you're stressed and you're in a good position and you've got a lot of money coming into the home, you don't think about leaving your job; you think about getting over it and recovering and doing better. But I couldn't get over it and the Lord knew I needed to move on. He just needed to convince me of that and finally once I agreed to do what I thought he was asking, I said, "Lord what am I going to do? What about my job? What about my career? What about my need? But God knows best, so I left. Do you know, that very week my local Baptist church offered me a job, just ten hours a week doing admin for them. I started doing that and at least I felt wanted by somebody. The Lord's always there. He knows what we need and I think I just needed to slip in nice and quiet and do that little job.

I wasn't on medication. I refused to take the medication from the doctor; but when you're living a life of stress, you're always on the edge, so a little thing is a big thing. It's taken me three years to draw back from that edge. I feel that even though the Lord is healing me and has healed me of a lot of it, once you're broken with stress, I mean you're really broken, it's like you're broken and it's hard to fix yourself. You can't fix yourself. It's even hard for God to totally heal you, because you live so much closer to the edge than you ever did before. I think that that's what people don't understand. Stress is a long-term illness. It's not something that comes and goes and you say, "Oh I'm really stressed today and I need a few days off work". That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about being so stressed that you fly off the handle when really you should be listening to someone. When my husband Paul or Isaac did something, I would fly off the handle. I would shout at them and I'd think I can't cope with this. Paul would say, "Lorraine, it's a little thing" and gradually over these last three years I've begun to see that those are the little things and life comes into perspective, but it's been a long time.

Lorraine and Paul Poulton with their son Isaac

People around me haven't really known; they just think I'm my usual self, but I have struggled for three years to come back from the brink. I started taking care of my mum-in-law; she's got Alzheimer's. I would think, "Well here I am sitting with my mum-in-law; I'm sitting in her house three or four days a week with an older person; what's my life come too? What's going on Lord?" But the peace in that place and there were no demands on me; I'd watch the telly or read a book and I just began to unwind. It's taken all this time, but this last year I'm starting to kick things up a gear again.

When I gave up my job, people did start booking me up again. Churches started booking me up again when they knew I was available for outreach events. I was getting one here and there, so about a year ago I did a mailing. I've been going out doing make-up events and going around the churches sharing my testimony, doing a beauty demonstration and people have been getting their neighbours and their friends in. That is such a fulfilling ministry because we women love it.

Heather: Tell me a bit more about that. What does one of these evenings look like?

Lorraine: It's run by the church mainly. Community groups put them on as well, so they're not just Christian events. They're easy events to invite your friends and neighbours to and your relatives, to hear a spiritual message; sometimes you can't get people into church, but if you invite them to a make-over they'll come. I give them the business when it comes to the make-up. I call some volunteers out and show them which colours look good on them and which colours they should be wearing in clothing because I'm a trained colour analyst; so should they be wearing warm colours, or should they be wearing cool colours. The audience decides; they don't need me to tell them as their eyes get trained as they watch me working. Then I put a bit of make-up on. It's so easy to transform a plain person into a beauty with the right colours in make-up.

Heather: You must find that people's lives get transformed just by that, in terms of their confidence and self worth.

Lorraine: I have. I see that happening all the time and that's why I like doing it. I see that happening in one to ones as well when I do consultations, which I do from home. I do workshops as well, but this time I want to be careful that I don't focus on the make-up and the colour analysis and the style coaching, which is easy for me to do because when I do something I want to do it really really well. But not to focus so much on that as on the church events and the ministry, because that is really the back bone of everything that I do. That is my main focus, that's what I want to do for God. This time I want to keep focused and I don't want to go off and be the best ever make up artist that I can be. I would like that, but I want to make sure that that's not the route I'm going down this time. This time I want to stick close to the Lord. I want to follow his leading and watch him work.

Heather: Do you think that this is your true purpose and that the other job that caused you stress was a bit of a detour?

Lorraine: I don't know. That's a question I ask myself. I wonder if I ever will know. All I know is that nothing is lost in God's economy. Everything we do the Bible says that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose and that's me and you. In the end I think, "Oh well Lord, all I know is that you'll work it all out and use everything". It did fulfil me. I am broader, deeper and wiser because of it, but I'm still recovering.

Heather: If anybody out there would like you to come and do a personal consultation, or may be interested in setting up an event, how would they go about contacting you?

Lorraine: They could look on my website which is www.mybestcolours.webeden.co.uk.