Father’s day is this weekend and I have been blessed with great dads whom I love dearly. I have a dad, step dad, have said goodbye to a Papaw and a Father in law. Each of them has shaped how I see the world. I have learned a great deal from them, but since this is a Christ centered blog I want to tell you about my Heavenly Father. He found me in my darkest hour and has brought me through several more. This is my testimony and the reason I choose to follow Jesus with all that I have:
I was in a very abusive relationship at the age of 15 with a man who was old enough to know that it was illegal. This went on for a year and a lot of choices were taken out of my hands. In that time, the people I reached out to rejected me, mocked me and I felt completely alone. Except for one kid at school. He always spoke kindly to me, and since I knew he was a Christian I would ask him questions about God. The more questions he answered it seemed like the harder things got in my personal life. On the day that the last person I could think to turn to for help dismissed me, I decided I didn’t want to live anymore. Seeing no way out of my abuse and being to scared to tell my parents I felt that suicide was the only way to escape the pain.
I planned on sitting outside that November night until I froze to death. There had already been a couple deaths due to exposure, so I knew death would happen. As I sat out there waiting, I kept thinking of my family and how sad they were going to be. I thought of how my baby sister will only know me by a note on my pillow, and how the person who tormented me constantly was warm and cozy. I thought of how everyone I love would wake up in the morning, but I would be dead. My mind kept drifting back to all the questions I had about God and I got so angry that I cried out through my tears, “Why God?! Why won’t you help me! You help everyone else, so why not me?!”
But I already knew the answer from the time my Christian friend had spent witnessing to me. I knew I had to repent for God to make a change. So half frozen and completely exhausted from the spiritual battle, I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior that night. We wear shirts at our church that say I Am Alive, but for me it is the most literal phrase I can wear. If not for the love of God and him sending his son to die in the cross I would have had no hope beyond a fridgid death.
Given that choice I was still terrified to go back to my neighborhood. I was alive but what would happen to me at the hands of my abuser? How could I stop this? I didn’t have to. The next day I came home from school to find out he had been evicted from his home. I only saw him a handful of times after that in the past 10 years.
I have had people argue ‘how can you say God is so great when he let that happen to you?’ The answer is that if that had not happened in my past I wouldn’t be as sensitive to others when they tell me their story of abuse. I wouldn’t fully understand that kind of pain had I not lived through it. I wouldn’t have known how to help others who have come to me. My testimony is a rough one but God was still wise to have brought me through it, and to deliver me from my tourment. My life really did end that night in the field, but my new life in Christ has been amazing! It hasn’t always been an easy walk, but without Jesus’ sacrifice I would have no hope. This is why I serve God with everything I have. This is why He is my joy even though trials and valleys to worship Him.
So I invite you to seek out Jesus if you don’t know him as your savior. I plead that whatever trial you are facing that you trust it in the hands of God, our heavenly father, and that you give your life over to Him. Above all never give into the lie that you are alone.
God Bless
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