I always wanted to be a daddy's girl. From the time I was very small, I saw other girls that had fathers around and I always felt different. My natural father left when, I believe, I was four months old, and I did not have a relationship with him. Deep down, honestly, I always felt like "What did I do? Why didn't he love me?" And that's soul shattering for a child. My stepfather came into the picture when I was two years old, and he was sexually abusing me, physically abusing me, and psychologically abusing me for many, many years.
The biggest thought that I can remember back then is having my first thought of suicide when I was 10 years old and being so afraid all the time that it was causing stomach pains, that I would literally be doubled over. I just kept thinking, "Why doesn't anyone know what's going on in this house? Can't they hear him screaming at me? Don't they notice that something is wrong? Don't I seem different? I'm not right, I'm 10, and I feel like I'm dying. Can you not see me?"
Out of self preservation, I finally just blocked it out of my head for many years and just didn't remember anymore. I was very, very lonely. I did start drinking when I was 14 years old. What had happened was I had a flashback of being molested and it shattered me. I did not know how to cope with it, so I started mixing all different kinds of hard alcohol together, and smoking weed, and being sexually promiscuous. That was just the beginning of many years of hell.
It wasn't until several years later, I realized that I needed to get help in order to stop using the drugs because I had been separated from God at that point and I knew that if I didn't get help that there was not going to be God for me anymore, that I was going to completely take myself away from him. Something just clicked inside me, all my life I felt that God wasn't there for me and what I realized was that He was.
I will never forget the time that I was sitting there in church and there was a silk lithograph of Jesus Christ up on the altar, and I could not even look at it because in my soul I knew that what I was doing was wrong and I couldn't stop it. Not even talking about what it was doing to me physically, but that brand new friend that I had found in God I was pulling myself away from Him.
During that time, off and on, I turn on the TV and pastor Doug would be there. One thing that he always said that caught my eye is he always said, "Don't take my word for it, go check your Bible." Amazing Facts helped save my life. It took me years but I finally found God, I finally healed. That little girl that was so shattered, that had no self-esteem, that all her innocence had been taken, God gave back everything and then some.
I go through trials. I am a single parent, I'm a recovering addict, I have MS and I have fibromyalgia. I am blessed. I am blessed because I am so mighty with the Lord. Everything that was ever stolen from me God gave back, and on top of that, He gave me forgiveness. That's what I want everyone to know. He took a broken, broken woman and turned her into a warrior.