My Story

 When they say your life can change in a blink of an eye, believe it. It’s true. All within five months I experienced great loss, and my life changed forever.  Abortion, unexpected deaths of both my father and grandfather 30 days apart and a mother that checked out for rest of my life. It was just my brother and I…

      This is my story(testimony) 

          I have been so broken to the point of not knowing if I wanted to live anymore. I felt alone, lost and had a darkness that engulfed me. I was in a fight or flight state of mind all the time and I had a ton of “Why this God?” Surely this can’t be all there is in life. There has got to be more to this life than pain, sadness, fear, worry… I always felt like something didn’t quite make sense. I was always trying to look for answers.

You wouldn’t have known I was struggling by looking at me. I always tried to be an optimistic person, kept to myself and had a smile on my face. But inside, I was hurting. I was drowning and suffocating in my own issues, fears, worries, negative thoughts, etc. I grabbed and reached wherever I could to make myself feel loved. I wanted to just numb the pain I was feeling inside. Whether it be with men, alcohol or sleeping, just so I could escape and not think about the world around me for a minute.  I tell people that now and they ask, “Why didn’t you say anything?” Maybe it was because I didn’t want to bother them with my problems. Honestly, things kept happening to me one right after another that I wasn’t able to process my situation until later on in my life because I was in survival mode.  When you are in survival mode for so long, what you think is normal, is actually not normal at all. So how then can one ask for help?  I wasn’t even capable of grieving until later on in life when I had some stability.

       This is my testimony. I don’t normally talk about my scars or the past. I always try to look forward to the future and to see what God has planned next for me. I believe you have to look at your past objectively with God to be able to look correctly to the future and move forward.  I am at that point in my life now that I am ok with revealing those scars so that maybe God can use me to help someone else whom might be going through a hard time and trying to navigate through life. We are all on this side of heaven suffering together but yet no one wants to talk about their suffering. Everyone wants to act like everything is ok but in reality, we aren’t. But I have found that actually if we are honest with our weakness and suffering, we are strong (2 Corinthains 12:10). It’s not that we are strong but in the mist of our sufferings we meet Jesus through the Holy Spirit who makes us stronger to overcome. I want people to know that in this dark world there is hope. I promise you there is a light at the end of the dark road. Whether it be months, days or years till you see that light. It is there, in God’s timing. My life has been a testimony to that and that’s why I have such confidence in the Lord.

      The book of Romans in the Bible got me through the toughest times in my life. I understood the pain and the words that Paul wrote in that book. If you are suffering, I encourage you to read Romans. It gave me hope and made me feel like my suffering wasn’t in vain and that there is a light at the end of that long dark tunnel that seems to be never ending. It helped me realize there is purpose in the pain.

   “We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we also rejoice in our suffering, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character: and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom has been given to us.”-                                                                                                Romans 5 1-5

       God had been working on me since I was a little girl. I realize now that there were several instances and circumstances God used to make me into the person I am today. I believe He does that in everyone’s lives, but it depends on whether you are willing to open up to God and say, “Here, take my life, open my heart, eyes and ears and show me what you know. What is the truth in a world that seems so meaningless? Why do we seem to be longing for something that this earth can’t seem to satisfy?” I know for a fact, you ask and make God first, He will show you. And the results are life changing! Let those walls fall around you and stop having a “I got this mentality”.

          At one point in my life, I had everything (I thought). I think when you go from having everything to not having anything at all you look at life differently. You have more genuine gratitude for even the smallest things in life.  I believe the most difficult times in our lives are usually the ones that shape us the most. There is a peace that comes from not having anything but the God that created you. When you are striped of the things in the world that make you comfortable and safe and you are only left with the God that brought you into this world then your perspective of the world changes. Things that once meant so much to you do not mean anything in the comparison to the relationship you have with your creator.  In so much suffering I have found a peace and truth that no amount of money could buy. I know no matter what happens I am going to be ok. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my days where I still get depressed and down, but I realize that following Jesus and knowing the Father doesn’t mean you have to be all cheery and happy all the time. Just knowing and resting and being in His love is sufficient and really that is the real joy in life.  Realistically life is not always going to be happy all the time as we live in a fallen world. Happiness is short lived and comes from external things in life whereas our REAL JOY can only come from the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now, through Jesus Christ, I have a hope that once was not there. I know that this world I live in now is temporary and the next one is my real home.

            

 The start of a long journey

  My toughest journey in my life started my senior year of high school in the fall of 2001. I was 18.  I grew up a majority of my young life in middle class America. My parents worked for everything and grew up poor, so they naturally wanted to give their kids everything they didn’t have.  So, I guess they decided to give my brother and I everything we ever wanted. I don’t feel like they said “no” a lot and to say we were spoiled would be an understatement. But that false reality we lived in didn’t last for long and a different life was about to be embarked upon.

      I remember it was right after the September 11th terrorist attack, and it was around October. I did something that I thought I would never do. I never thought I would be that girl that got myself in this situation.  I wasn’t raised that way either, but fear can have a grip on you, and you can do things you wouldn’t think you were capable of. I had my first abortion. Yes, I said first. I felt guilty, dirty and ashamed. I went along with something I knew was wrong in my heart out of fear. Fear of what people would say. Fear of walking down the aisle at graduation pregnant. Fear of my future and how it looked different than what I had planned for myself. I carried those emotions and condemnation with me for many years. But little did I know, in that moment, my journey of darkness was just the beginning. I was in for a long dark season of life. Ten long years.

      Three months after I had an abortion and still in shock of what I had done, life struck me with another blow. It was the end of February. I was at school, and I had co-op that day and was able to leave early. My mom called me as I was leaving and said she needed me to come home because she needed the car. She was trying to get ahold of my grandfather (her dad) which I called PawPaw. She couldn’t get ahold of him, which was weird because he always answered the phone. It wasn’t like PawPaw. So, I drove home so we could go check on him. Mom and I walked to the door where we could see him through the glass door. As we walked in, he was sitting in his chair he always sat in. He was still, lifeless, and starting to turn blue. Mom’s worst nightmare had happened. She had just said that she had a feeling something was wrong the whole way to PawPaw’s house.  Mom screamed and I just stood in amazement. I had never seen a person dead outside of a funeral home. I had to call the police because Mom couldn’t hold it together. I still can see that image in my head sometimes. And then for several years I carried around guilt and blamed myself for my mom not being able to get to her dad sooner.

         The reason for the guilt was because I normally drove my own car to school, but that day my car was at my aunt’s house because I was in trouble (I can’t remember what for now, I was 18… so who knows). My parents were making me ride the bus for my punishment. Well, I missed the bus and ended up having to take mom’s car to school. If I hadn’t of taken my mom’s car to school, I felt she could have gotten to my PawPaw sooner. So, I was carrying around a guilt about my grandfather along with the guilt I was holding on from my abortion.

     Then exactly 33 days later on Good Friday there was a knock on our front door. A police officer and two of my dad’s friends/coworkers standing there. One of dad’s friends said he had been trying to reach us but couldn’t get through. They came to tell us that dad had a heart attack at work and that he was being rushed to the hospital. They said that we needed to get there quickly and that things did not look good, so my mother, brother and I jumped in the car.  I think that was the longest ride of my life and my heart was telling me that my life was about to never be the same and it never was.

Life was about to never be the same

       So, my mom, brother and I got to the hospital and the doctor took us to a back room. The doc sat us down and told us that dad had already passed. They tried to revive him all the way to the hospital in the ambulance, but they could never get a pulse. I will never forget that moment. That moment in my life seemed like forever and I have never forgotten my mother’s face that day. Blank stare. Nothing was behind those brown eyes of hers anymore. She completely checked out and was never the same for the rest of her life. My father was her everything.

       After the doctor told us the news my mother and I were able to go back to see Dad. Mom and I walked in and I still till this day can see that image. My dad was sitting upright, blue and lifeless in the hospital bed and tears running down my face as I looked upon him. From that day onward my life was never the same.  Everything was different. The life I had before did not exist anymore. My brother and I lost both parents that day. One was physically gone but the other was emotionally gone. Really, I don’t really know which one is worse. They are both equally painful.

Mom could not and did not know how to deal with the deaths of her father and husband. Then for the next ten years my brother and I dealt with an emotionally and physically abusive mother.  My brother and I were always a nervous wreck. My brother had it worse than me because I was old enough to move out where my brother was stuck with her for a couple of years since he was 11.  Remember me telling you earlier that I was in a fight or flight state of mind? Well, it was in full force dealing with mom. She self-medicated with pills, alcohol and god knows what else. She was a wrecking ball. Everything she did or said was just total chaos. She was lost. Completely lost and she reached, grabbed, and looked for whatever she could to null the pain, but nothing would satisfy or help. Grief turned into bitterness, bitterness into anger and then anger just took over. Anger consumed her. It consumed her body and soul to the point that she was unrecognizable. I remember at one point in my life she showed up at my apartment with such rage. There was something about her that just seemed off and at one point when she turned around to look at me the pupil and iris of her eyes were jet black. Some people don’t believe in demons, but they are real. They come among us when we have obsessed or have become so fixated on terrible things in our lives. That is why it is so important to let things go. It is important to protect your heart, mind and soul. King Solomon said it best in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” I’ll talk more in my blog how obsession can become possession later. It is real. Anger itself is an understandable emotion to have, but I saw first-hand with my mother that if not dealt with and not given over to God it can do great damage to not only yourself but for the others around you.

      After a couple of long years, I felt it was best that my brother come live with me. My brother was living with my grandmother a few years before I got custody. Grandma was getting older and being as old as she was, she really wasn’t in any condition to take care of a teenager. I mean I was only 23 years at the time (and really wasn’t an adult either) but my brother was all I had left.

         It wasn’t long before Dad passed away, I remember Dad saying to my little brother and I, after our many fights we had, that we needed to be good to one another.  I remember him saying so vividly, ” One day the two of yall is all that is going to be left of this family. Yall need to be good to one another.”  Little did he or I know that that would be sooner than later.

   So, we went to court, mom or no one else ever showed up to contest it so than the courts granted our wish. Afterwards, it was brother and I against the world. Man, I had no clue what I was doing, I was taking on a responsibility of a teenager with still being a kid myself. I had my own demons(issues) I was dealing with along with trying to deal with my brothers. I struggled everyday trying to keep both our heads above water. It was hard managing being a mom and a sister at the same time.

      It was about a year later and if I hadn’t had enough going on in my life, I found myself pregnant AGAIN. This time by a guy that happen to be heavily into selling drugs. I didn’t realize how serious he was into the whole drug scene till later on. When I got pregnant, he threatened to hurt me if I left him, and he would make my life a living hell. But I left anyway not knowing if he was really being serious or not.  I didn’t know what else to do but get an abortion. I had no one to help me and I was so scared and the most alone I had ever felt. Darkness around me was so thick. How was I going to take care of my brother and take care of a baby?   I had hit my rock bottom.

   I remember coming home from the abortion clinic, I fell on my knees and cried out for help. I knew what I had done was wrong. The darkness in my life was so thick. I could feel the darkness. I didn’t think you could feel darkness, but you can. The light that I had seen in life was not there anymore. The darkness was taking over, and I was scared.  I had no family, barely getting by on bills, no car because drug dealer guy wrecked my car, and I was going to truancy for my brother missing school.

I had never really prayed out loud. I didn’t even know where to start and I had hit my point.  I needed a change. I had for far too long tried to do life on my own with a “I got this attitude.” I needed out of the darkness that engulfed over me. The darkness was so thick. I couldn’t do it anymore.  I truly humbled myself at that point and asked God to come into my life and lead me to where he wanted me to go. I called out to Jesus to help me, and He came.

I never knew God was so close to the ground. I always thought He was up high. But He met me at my lowest and reached His hand out to me.  From that day forward my life kept getting better. It wasn’t an instant change, but it was the starting point of many blessings that came afterwards. It was a start to a relationship with the one that wouldn’t leave me. It was a start to many blessings that I know I didn’t deserve but God is SO SO GOOD!

   While trying to get my life figured out and leaning on God every day and getting to know Him better, my brother and I were on and off with communication with our mom. She had gotten so bad we both could not emotionally take it anymore and decided to stop being in contact with her. It was a hard thing to cut off all ties with her. I mean she was our mother, and we loved her, and we just wanted for her to love us back. But looking back, she just wasn’t capable of doing that at the time. My brother and I had a lot of resentment towards her for a long time. How could she just throw her kids away like that? How could she say the hurtful things she would say? How could she just not show up for court to fight for my brother?  How could she just walk out? I will go more into this in a later blog.

         But the good news is… it didn’t end bad. It took 10 years for her to find peace.  To find Jesus. And when she did, it was a transformation like no other. It could be no other way but God to change her. Her heart had transformed from a cold stone to a warm heart again.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”-Ezekiel 36:26.

  Never underestimate the power of God. When things look impossible, He can make a way.  He can change hearts.  I never thought that would happen. I thought several times I was going to get a call she was dead. I was prepared for the worst. But God loved her and at one point in her life, she accepted Jesus fully. Truly amazing. And you know what? After my mom asked Jesus in her life, my grandmother told me she prayed Ezekiel 36:26 over mom for several years. Hallelujah for answered prayer! Prayers really move the hands of God. They might not be on our timing, but God is always on time. It’s so crazy but I have seen the Bible come alive in my own life! I really recommend you pick up the Book.

    Both my brother and I were hesitant at first to let her back in our lives. There were so many years of pain, but we decided to let her back in with caution. Hurt takes time to heal and the more we were around her the more we could tell she wasn’t the same person. Mom went from saying things like she wished her own mother was six feet under to living with her mom and having communion! Totally different person!

Our hearts had become cold ourselves towards her, but we just couldn’t ignore the new person in front of us. All of us got together and talked about the past. Many of the things that we talked about our mom didn’t even remember doing or saying. She didn’t remember much. But my brother and I forgave her. We weren’t the closest of family still and I don’t think it could ever be what it was before Dad, but it was a start, and we gave each other grace and mercy.

Not shortly after our mom came back into our lives, I was taking mom to the Good Will one rainy afternoon. She wanted to return some things that she had bought that she didn’t need. As she went in to return the items I sat in the car and waited for her. I remember we were listening to K-LOVE Christian station.  It was raining hard, and I sat and watched the raindrops coming down the window. Have you ever watched raindrops and tried to see which raindrop would bet the other one down the window? HAHA… that’s what I was doing. Then a song by Laura Story called Blessings came on and the lyrics….what if your blessings come through raindrops, what if your healing comes through tears, what if the thousands sleepless nights is what it takes to know you are near. What if trails of this life are your mercies in disguise. And at the moment as that song was playing and I watched that raindrop run down the window I felt a burning sensation come over my body and an indescribable amount of joy that I literally wanted to run a marathon. I thought I was going to come out of my body. It was a feeling I had never felt before and honestly from that day I was never the same. I know without a shadow of a doubt the Holy Spirit came upon me and came to live inside of me forever that rainy afternoon. My life completely changed after that. I believe you have a choice when you accept Jesus in your life but when the Holy Spirit comes, you are a changed person. Everything you do it different. How you act, what you say, and you can’t help but talk about Jesus!

Grace and Mercy

         Through everything that I had been through in my life up until then, I now understood grace and mercy. It is two of the most beautiful acts of Jesus. It is Jesus. It comes from people that have experienced great sadness and pain in their lives. They are broken. They understand because in those times of their lives they once needed grace and mercy when they didn’t deserve it. They can see the pain in others. They become more sensitive to others around them. I didn’t have those two qualities until my life turned upside down. I was always quick to judge and thought I knew everything. God humbled me. He showed me what His Son Jesus did on the cross for me and everyone that believes in Him.

    I have not always truly believed in Jesus. I believed there was God. I knew of a man named Jesus, whom many depicted as a hippie who loved everyone. I believed I was a good person and because I was a good person I was going to heaven. Truly one of the biggest lies Satan throws at us is us thinking that just because “we think we are good people” that we are going to have eternal life in heaven.  Man, now that I look back, how arrogant of me. Not once did I ask God, who made me, if I was going to heaven.  I thought I was a good person. But God’s definition of good is not our good. God is holy and He wants us to BE HOLY AS HE IS HOLY. And oh boy, I was far from holy! The more we get into His word and get to know Him we realize how sinful we are. We realize how far we really are from God’s holiness.

       If my life had gone the way I would have liked, I wouldn’t know God. I wouldn’t need Him. I wouldn’t have a desire to know Him. Why would I if my life was perfect? Did I like the way some things happened in my life? No way. Do I have regrets of some bad decisions I have made?  Absolutely. But there is one thing for sure. I would never take what I know about God and His Son back for anything.  I have a peace that surpassed all understanding. I have the best gift that God can ever give me and that is a relationship with Jesus. TRULY, THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME! Don’t take the bad things that happen in your life as a waste and don’t play victim. Because in those moments, God is transforming you into the person you are suppose to be. He truly is sculpting you just as a potter sculps the clay with which he is working.

    “Then I went down to the potters house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter, so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.” – Jeremiah 18:3-4

We are all pieces of clay that God keeps shaping throughout our lives till we are perfect in His image. God might not like a particular characteristic or flaw you have and decides He needs to work and kneed you until that flaw comes out. He keeps doing that till he has a masterpiece.  Sometimes that flaw might come out easily and other times He might have to work out that flaw in you a little harder until that flaw comes out. When those challenging times in your life seem so long and there doesn’t seem to have an end sight, it’s because God doesn’t leave you only somewhat done or somewhat good enough. No. He lets those long valleys and long hard years keep on for a reason.  Ask God what it is He is trying to show you.  Everything has a purpose and a timing.  In those hard seasons of your life, don’t give up. God has a purpose and has a plan. Right as you are about to give up God has a blessing on the other side of that long hard journey you are on.  Seek Him above all else and He will never steer you wrong.

Since that day I gave my life to Christ, I have had so many wonderful blessings. And when I say blessing, I am not just talking about physical things. Blessings are different when you know Jesus. You see life differently. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. You see life in different lenses because He gives your eyes to really see and ears to really hear. For my heart is not harden to God anymore. God had healed my heart.  Jesus says in Matthew 13 15-16

      ” For the hearts of people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes- so their eyes can not see and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.” 

                 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.”

    Blessings are all around us all the time. But do we have the eyes and ears to see them?

 Since my life has turned around, I found my soulmate, got married on an island, gave birth to my beautiful daughter, my brother and I got baptized together, just to name a few. Its where Faith Not Fear was cultivated by my late mother-in-law, Carol. I pray that God gives me the courage and boldness to keep that legacy going. It’s time to rise up and keep spreading the love, grace and mercy that only Jesus can give. He changed my life, and I hope I get to experience Him making the change in others’ lives as well.