My Testimony

Even though I grew up always believing in God, it wasn’t until three years ago that I knew the God that created me and my life changed forever.

When I was born, my mother was sixteen and my father was twenty years old. The devil tried to kill me when I was about three months old. I lived with my parents and I was neglected. I was severely dehydrated and I was going to the bathroom every minute. I had no food in my body and I had severe diarrhea. My Grandparents decided to come see me (my Grandmother said that something told her to come see me..I now know that something was the holy spirit). It was a night of a blizzard and my Grandmother was persistent on her and my Grandfather coming to see me. I praise God that they were obedient because when they took me to the hospital, the Doctors said that I could have died, if I hadn’t been brought in sooner. From that day on, I went to live with my Grandparents. I grew very close to my Grandfather and we developed a loving relationship. My Grandmother was loving too, however she showed me tough love. My Grandfather worked hard as a painter, and I would go with him to his jobs and wherever else he had to go..the bank, the grocery store, etc. I didn’t want to be apart from him..EVER. My mom and Dad would come in and out of my life, but were pretty consistent with coming around every two weeks or so. They actually split up after my brother was born. He is five years younger than me. My mother raised him as she dated many abusive men. I would occasionally go to her house to spend the night and spend time with her, but it never turned out like that. I would witness her using drugs and alcohol, being intimate with her boyfriend and being in physical fights with them too. I also witnessed the neglect that my brother was experiencing and I knew that something had to change. I told my Grandparents about how I hated going over there and how I didn’t want my little brother there anymore either. I was probably about eight at this point. Two years later, my Grandparents heard of severe abuse that my brother was undergoing and they also took him from my mother. My youngest brother was also born at this point (by a different man) and my mother later went on to have my little sister too, with yet another man. Her drug abuse was spiraling and getting worse, as was her alcohol addiction. She wasn’t happy. She came around as much as she could, to visit us. Her and my Grandmother didn’t have the healthiest relationship, they would argue constantly and my Grandmother , although loved her, would be very verbally abusive to my mother. She was also like this to me too. As I grew older, I became very aware that my Grandmother favored my brother. She would give him praise, but I always received negative comments. I know that she loved me, because she told me, but for the most part, she would put me down. I felt like I always had to “win” her love and attention. My Grandfather, on the other hand, was always very loving to me and he would defend me, but it caused a lot of arguments between him and my Grandmother and I felt guilty for that. I even grew angry at my Grandmother and would swear and yell at her often. I didn’t understand why she didn’t love me like I needed her to. I had a very poor relationship with my aunts and uncles and also my mother and father. My brother and I were very close, which I always was grateful for. We would see our other two siblings occasionally, when our mother came around. I always wanted them to come and live with us but unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. I would cry myself to sleep at night because of my mother’s habits and I would pray to God for him to keep my siblings safe. It broke my heart.
Meanwhile, my father had stopped coming around because of family differences. He would only visit us during holidays. I never understood how he could just stay away from us all year. It made me feel like I was losing him.
When I was ten years old, I witnessed my Grandmother have a stroke. She literally went back in her chair and stopped breathing. Thankfully, my Grandfather was home too and he called 911 and my family all came over too. I remember running up the stairs to my Great Grandmother (she lived upstairs from us) and crying out to God to “bring my Grandmother back”. Well, he heard my prayers because she was pronounced dead at the scene, but they brought her back with CPR. Praise God!
After that day, I tried to be nicer to my Grandmother and I spent more time with her, however I was still angry at her for being mean to me at times. I realized though that she wasn’t healthy, she spent many days in bed and she began having trouble breathing. Over the course of the next five years or so, she was in and out of the hospital. She was always very strong though and stubborn. She was very strong personality wise and physically. She was a hard worker and was always scrubbing or cleaning…she also loved to go shopping and would take good care of us by buying us what we needed for school. She also cooked very often and made sure that we were never hungry. I did and still do love my Grandmother, I am just saying that we didn’t have the best relationship. My Grandmother passed away from heart failure in May 1998. I had lost what I knew as a mother and wasn’t ready for it at all. It made me mature a lot and it also brought a lot of guilt because we argued the night beforehand. I never got to apologize for being so mean to her all those years. I was angry. It took me over ten years to get over that and it wasn’t until I found Christ could I forgive not only her, but myself for all of the anger in our relationship. Then there was my relationship with my mother: I remember riding the school bus home and wondering if she would be on the couch when I got there…”would this be a week where she came to visit?” I missed her, and always desired more of her time and wanted to know her, but I never really did. I remember as my siblings and I got older, she began to start using heavier drugs and she would flee to Schenectady often on a drug binge. She had met more abusive guys and eventually it would destroy her.
In May 1999, my mother went disappearing. Even when she was in jail, she would write to us and let us know that she loved us and she was ok, but we knew after not hearing from her for at least a year that something was much different this time. We still have not heard from her to this day. We put out missing people reports and have even written to television shows to try to find her, but no prevail.
My father had come to my Grandmother’s services, but then we hadn’t seen him again in several years. We knew he was in the area, but for some reason he didn’t seem to want to see us. I didn’t understand. (We have since reconciled our relationship), but back then with losing my Grandmother, mother and my father again and my brother also moved away to college…it made me depressed and I did poorly on my college grades for the first two years. I began dating a guy who was extremely verbally and emotionally abusive to me. We moved in together quickly and he was into evil music and movies. I also became interested in some bad things. I became sexually active with him and eventually felt abused in that also. I didn’t know how to receive love, because the only person who had shown me pure love was my Grandfather. I was only living upstairs from him, but I even became distant to him due to my boyfriend at the time. I became more interested in my abusive boyfriend than I did for anyone else in my life. I lost all of my friends. He was very possessive. I was heading in a bad direction and was pretty much already there. I had a few people witness to me about Christ, but I told them that I already believe in God and I was “good.”
I thought about suicide a few times but never actually tried it. There were many nights where I still felt guilt from my Grandmother and I cried myself to sleep, wishing I could have changed the past. The condemnation I felt was unbearable at times. I didn’t have any friends and the only person that I hung out with was my abusive boyfriend. I began to be more depressed. I was thin, but I thought I was fat. That was because of the mental abuse that he fed me. Unfortunately I believed every lie he told me. This went on for almost four years. Eventually he got a job in the south (Virginia), and he went away for training in Georgia for the Summer. I felt so free for the first time in years. I moved back downstairs with my Grandfather and having family around and not hearing constant lies was so nice. However, in the fall, I moved to Virginia to live with him. I wasn’t happy leaving my family and my Dog, but I did it because I thought I loved him. After I was there for a few weeks, I noticed that he wasn’t good for me. I was being abused day and night by him and I cried often. I missed my Grandfather so much. My cousin Stephanie was praying for me and I remember one day I went to work and a girl I work with noticed I was crying. She asked if she could pray with me. I remember that I felt so different after she prayed and I thanked her. After another month or so, I had made up my mind. I was going back home and leaving him for good. It wasn’t an easy break up, but it was one of the most important decisions I ever made. I moved back home in Nov. 2003. I am so grateful for a Grandfather that never let me go. For a God who never let me go either. PRAISE HIM!!
I would love to say that I got saved after moving home but it took two more hurtful relationships with men, one who cheated on me and another who rejected me, to realize that Christ is what I wanted and needed.
In the summer of 2005 (here is my FAV part of my story or I should say LIFE), I helped my cousin and her husband plan their wedding. They were both attending a bible school at the time and were on FIRE for God!! I couldn’t escape the Gospel when I was with them. GLORY! They both witnessed to me in more ways than words and I felt the love of God for the first time in my life. They invited me to church and one day I accepted. I gave my life to the Lord in Late Nov. 2005. I began attending church with them and my cousin Stephanie discipled me with the bible and taught me how to receive God’s love.
I started attending church regularly in February 2006 and made a bunch of new Christian friends who showed me what being a true friend really means. I have lost some along the way, and made more, but there are some who are still faithful and by my side. I praise God for a church with a leadership that doesn’t compromise! We have vision, fire and are willing to go above and beyond to see the Kingdom of God come to Earth. I have since lost my wonderful, dear Grandfather (in Nov. 2007) but I walked him through the salvation prayer and today he resides with Jesus in Heaven!!!!!! GLORY!!
God has been so wonderful and faithful to me and I could go on and on about the healing that he has brought to my past. I am forever grateful and a new woman because of his unfailing love for me and innocent blood that was shed for my sins!!! HALLELUJAH!!