Sometimes its very hard to share your testimony especially when such grief is involved in it but I think its important for more people to share their testimony so other people won`t have to go through what you went through. I hope this helps somebody. First I would like to start out that my parents marriage, as long as I can remember has never been very good. Alot of screaming and fighting all through my growing up years. My father is an alcoholic, smoker, and lottery ticket addict. My mother is a woman beaten down by these addictions, not physically but emotionally and always did alot of screaming. I went to church as a young person and then ended up not going for many years, because the family just stopped going one sunday.

 

Now to understand my home life I have to share a little bit more about my family. My brother was a teen father at 18 and we are 10 years apart so my neice was born when I was 8. My brother was also involved with a gang in his teen years and disrespected my parents terribly, a huge rebel. My dad`s way of handling things was to scream about it or hide from it, all my life and even now, he has sat in the dark garage scratching off several tickets a day, drinking several beers and smoking several ciggerettes for hours, then he comes in and gets on the computer or watches tv and goes to bed, no interaction, no going anywhere with the family, nothing. Well I got into acting when I was about 13 and music and got around some superficial influences and some very toxic influences. I began feeling bad and cutting myself and over-doseing on pills, it was a bad scene. I had the lowest self-esteem you could imagine.

 

Then in about the tenth grade I had my first "boyfriend" i guess you could call it. He lived in Virginia though, I had met him at a Film Festival, and most of the dating was done by phone. Even though he lived far away, I still had given a peice of my heart away by having a personal connection. Remember that for now. So we ended up breaking up after while and I continued my highschool career studying and then in eleventh grade I met this boy at school. He actually didnt say very nice things but when he started pursuing me he tried to be charming and buy lots of gifts and jewlrey so I thought he was a gentlemen and I had my eyes so full of cotton I couldn`t see the big picture. One things led to another and I let him get way too friendly, instead of thinking "This guy is totally using me and disrespecting me" I was thinking "Wow, I have a boyfriend look at how special he thinks I am" which was Satan trying to convince a girl with low sel-esteem that she was special to somebody. Well after a few months of dating things went completely too far and fornication came into play.

 

This one person, amidst all the screaming and drinking and bad stuff at home actually "loved" me and wanted to marry me and all that stuff he had told me. Well guess what, after that, there was no more jewlrey, no more gifts, no more holding doors, no more flowers, NONE of that stuff. I got disrespected and made to feel bad. I got scared about what I had done and went to a Womens Resource Center to talk to a lady. She listened to me and then told me about second virginity and that I could still choose abstinence till marriage and reclaim my virginity spiritually. I was rebellious so I nodded yes but in the back of my mind kind of wrote her off and took the pamphlet she gave me and hid it in my dresser drawer and still tried to cling to the decomposing relationship with this fella.

 

Well wouldn`t ya know, the night I tried to have him come into to town and meet up with me is the night he broke up with me and told me he didnt love me. I was crushed just broken hearted. I had been baptised that past summer, even after doing those bad things, I thought if i could do that and get him to come to church I could save him just a couple months before and right then he was telling me everything I didnt want to hear! Well I was so broken that I still attended the same class as him but was numb, failing, and not learning. I pulled out of school and graduated a semester early by way of distance learning on a computer. Well I was crying over the whole situation and fears i had one day in January and My mom was beside me after I confessed everything to her and I felt this hand on my shoulder consoling me, Well I thought it was my mother but I looked at her and her hands were in her lap! So then my first thought was that it was a ghost and I jumped straight up and got scared.

 

 Later on i thought about it and I just didnt know what to think. I spiraled down-ward after that, developed an eating disorder and was just waiting around to die. I wanted to die. What did I have to live for? No boyfriend, no escape, nobody to love me, what was left? I was just so sick laying in bed, pretty much my death bed after having this eating disorder for 2 months I felt weaker and like I was going to die, then all of a sudden an old friend began to speak to me, that friend I held so dear in Sunday School class, that i talked to when I was hurting myself, that friend was Jesus. I said pleaded with God, please let me die I don`t want this life anymore I just want to get rid of it. Then God answered me and said "Well if you dont want it anymore, can I have it?" and at that very moment, I was done with my life, i had enough, and at that moment, I gave my life to Jesus. I said, its your life now, no longer mine. So from that moment forward I started reading the bible everyday and physically "living" the life that now belonged to Christ, so as I sit here today, I have been continueing to maintain the human existence of the life I handed over to Him.

 

As a result, I have decided to save myself for marriage and remain pure until in Gods timing, I meet the person hes had for me all along. And let me tell you, I have experienced some awesome blessings by living for God. A big one, my dad the drinker and alcoholic? He been going to church 2 weeks in a row now and having meals with the family and coming in from the garage sooner. The Lord had put His hand down on my life one day, because I woke up and felt the joy to do all the laundry, dishes and make all the meals and learn to live frugally. In return, this has taken ALOT of stress off of my mother who is a tax preparer and I still know, its only by the glory of God that I find intense joy in these things because my mom had to bend over backwards to get me to do them just the day before! So now by making the meals and physically calling the family to the table, God has brought through me, the family back together for meals.

 

Many more blessings have occured, more than I could list, but now I stand here as an 18 year old, new adult young woman, remaining pure until marriage, with restored innocence, cleaned white as snow again. The woman God intended for that 5 year old little girl in Sunday School to become. With his intervention in my life, and having to learn the hard way in some areas, He really has showed how deep his love really is for me. The best most wonderful thing is, His love runs that deep for you too. All you have to do is ask Him into your heart and to guide you. And he will take your hand, walk by your side, guiding you every step of the way. You will be filled to over-flowing with the love, joy and peace a life in God offers.

 

Trust me, thats knowledge from first hand experience. I have never felt so blessed in my life. And I pray right now, that if my testimony touches any of you, that God may bless your lives and the richest most fullfilling way, that only He can. Thank you, and if you want me to pray for you or just want to tell me something my email is nashvillechick0913@yahoo.com