Share a testimony here:
In my past I broke every commandment. Yes all of them. I saw myself as a person that could never be loved by anyone. I never had the opportunity to dream of a fairy tale life as those dreams were taken from me before I was 5. As an adult I would look in the mirror on my really bad days, drunk and depressed and the thoughts of death seemed to free me and my pain. What good was I to anyone?
As a child I was abused, neglected and abandoned by family, leading me to a future life of heartache and endless cycles of my past. When a child is abused it gives them a false sense of how life is really meant to be. They tend to gravitate towards abusive relationships because that is what seems normal and what they have learned to deal with. We went to church until my parents divorced when I was 10. Once the divorce happened the world that was already perverse to me became a more terrifying nightmare: New abuses of step parents and a mother who would leave me for 6 years.
I was married twice before Ray, each one leading me closer to the point of no return. I left home at 16 and married my first husband, the father of my two children. We were married for 13 years and in those 13 years I was mentally beaten down to the point I never thought I was good enough for anything or anyone. I was told I was stupid and would never amount to anything without him. Religion had long since been extracted from my thought pattern as he was an atheist and I had learned early on in our marriage I was not to think in the way of Christ. Affairs and abuses led to my first divorce at the age of 29.
I immediately moved in with a man 25 years my senior and eventually married him. Again I was in the midst of an abuser. But this time I was fearful of abuses to my children and myself. So once again I was divorced a few years later: More bad choices of men and lifestyles a few more years.
One night I took my then 10 year old daughter to see "Left Behind" the movie. On the way home she was full of questions, I answered the best I could but I was pulling from teachings and 20 year old memories of Sunday school. As we sat in the car she said she didn’t want to be left behind. I told her she wouldn't be left. She said she wanted to go to church and tomorrow, Sunday. I tried to make excuses but there was no stopping her. We went to church at CCC. By this time in my life I had went and earned my GED (I never got to finish high school) and I started college even though husband one number 1 always said I was not smart enough to take a college class.
Since my return to God's family, my life has had set backs but none that with Him by my side could not be overcome. By the time I was 34 I had earned my bachelors degree, by 36 my masters degree. I met and married Ray, a man that became the daddy my daughter so needed to have in her life: The man I so needed in my life to understand how I was meant to be loved and needed. I worked myself from a part time job making $12K a year and uneducated, to being a well respected employee in the aircraft community and teaching college classes.
I have worked my way though many areas of CCC from the safety of holding babies for over a year in the nursery and staying quiet and to myself, to helping with the youth, helping in the kitchen, and working on my acting in skits and plays.
In recent years my heart and passion belongs to missions. Oh how I long for Africa and can not wait to see that beautiful land and my children of promise again, God willing. My life will forever be changed for the better having Christ as my savior and friend. I do believe it was Gods plan for me to finally stand up to my first husband and not abort another life and keep my daughter, for it was she that led me back to Him and He had/has such big plans for me.
