One Year.
It has been exactly one year today that I came to Christ.
No. It has been exactly one year today that Christ came to me.
So much has changed. You cannot even fathom how much has changed.
Everything has turned completely around, and I am so greatful for my savior, Jesus Christ. I wish the world could hear my story. I wish the world could feel the way I felt that night. One night, one instant, changed my life. Forever.
I didn’t grow up in church.
My parents weren’t “religious” and we just never belonged to a church.
My parents raised me well, but never really mentioned God.
At 15 years old all I knew about God or Jesus was that God created everything, Jesus was born on December 25th and died on a cross, ross from the dead, and went to heaven. That’s all I had ever been taught, and not even by my parents. By movies mostly.
I don’t remember much from my early years. I got along well with others for the most part, I believe. In second grade I moved and changed schools. That was pretty hard on me. I went from a huge school to a tiny one and it was hard to make friends without having their friends hating you for “stealing” their friends. I gained a lot of weight. I just recently found a journal from elementary school where I wrote about how much of a pig I was, and how I didn’t understand why I was so ugly and how much I was disgusted by myself. I remember vividly crying myself to sleep every.single.night. The self image problems began there.
Awpaw: My dads father.
The only memory I have of him is sitting on his lap the night before he died, I was 2 years old and him telling him he loved me through his oxygen tubes.
Next was the death of my grandfather, Poppop.
It was a late July morning at my aunt’s house, just after his 60th birthday which ironically is also June 18th. We were planning my 10th birthday party. We were back in my aunt’s bedroom making plans, calling people, for oh I don’t know 30 minutes. We were going to go out and check on my poppop and make him some eggs for breakfast, but we decided to make one more call. My last call. Michaela King. I was on the phone for maybe 15 minutes, and we wandered into the kitchen, and into the sun room where he was seated in his chair, sitting hunched over in his long green robe. “Hey dad, you want some eggs” my aunt says. No response. She asks again. Still nothing. Worried, she shakes him, “DAD, DAD!” My sister and I stand frozen. There is drool dangling from his pale lips, dripping almost to his knees. “GET THE PHONE!” My aunt dials 911, and is instructed to lay him on the floor, and to attempt mouth to mouth. She hands me the phone. At nine years old, with my dead grandfather sitting infront of me, I am left to instruct my frantic aunt what to do. She couldn’t do it. He had multiplemiloma and his bones were weak and brittle. She risked breaking his ribs and puncturing his lungs if she attempted CPR. So that was it. We couldn’t do anything. Nothing. That was my last grandfather.
Middle school rolled around and my parents divorced.
I hardly remember anything from that time besides my dad staying in a hotel for a weekend and us not knowing if he was coming back or not. He did. And then my mom moved out. She moved in with her sister and stayed in my poppops old room. We saw her on weekends and had to travel 45 minutes to see her. Occasionally we’d stay the whole weekend and she’d drive us to school Monday morning, but we were living in a house with 5 other people and the adjustments were not easy.
I also recall clipping a ring to my bellybutton on April Fools day in 5th grade as a joke. When I saw the attention it was getting me, I pretended it was real, and the next day did it for real. My bestfriend ended up ratting on me on accident, and I was sent to the nurse to check it out. It was infected, and I had hit a vein so I actually could have died. The worst part was calling my mom and telling her.
Middle school went semi-smoothly after that until i met Steve.
steve was a grade ahead of me, and a major player. He was my first kiss, and it ended up he kissed me while he was dating a girl named Deirdre that I later became friends with.[Deirdre is also how I met Griffin, whom you will read about shortly.]There was something about Steve that just drew me in. He played with my head for a while, and I let him. One night I was at my friend Britnis house, who lived right down the street from him, and I walked down to his house to “talk”. He took me down his alley and we started to make out. He then tried to have sex with me. I was 12, mabyeee 13. I said no, and he got mad. The next day he started dating a girl named Paige and they dated for nearly 2 years. How special that made me feel.
After that I’m sure I had little crushes, but the next person that played a huge roll in my life was Griffin. I was 13 and he was 17 when we met. We met on myspace, through Deirdre. Griffin is the guy that knows how to get what he wants, and he will get what he wants. He is a fan of mind games, and will ruin your soul. I fell into his trap for 2 years without being able to get out, until the police took him away and threw him in jail for rape. Ir used to be hard for me to talk about Griffin, because my blood boils with anger, it is still sometimes difficult but getting better daily. The gist of what happened was that he cheated on me countless times, told me he loved me, asked me if it was okay to makeout with other girls while we were dating, you know the answer. But he did anyway, and even had sex with them. Told me how he wanted my first time to be special, and he took my virginity and i later found out he had had sex with another girl right before he came to my house.
It sure was a special first time. He was my first. i was his 12th. He swallowed my soul. I attempted suicide over that boy, and got thrown in a pysch unit for it. I lied to my parents for him. I snuck him in my house and broke my parents trust. Looking into his eyes could make the hair on your arms stand up. He was just bad news and my parents hated him.
Throughtout all of that and even after I began my partying. I smoked weed. drank, and smoke cigarettes. I did the unthinkable for a bottle of booz not because i was desperate for it or addicted, but because i wanted to be the one that everyone idled for getting the goods. I wanted them to look up to me.
Everything sucked.
I hated myself.
I hated how everyone treated me.
I felt ugly.
I felt useless.
I feld used. Everyone used me for what THEY wanted.
Nothing was ever about my happiness.
I felt guilt.
I wished I was dead.
I cut myself.
I cried myself to sleep.
I looked at myself in the mirror and screamed I hate you, you useless bitch.
My heart was heavy and every little thing felt like the end of the world.
I literally could not breathe.
Something changed on June 18th, 2009.
I had been friends with some members of I Am History- Alex, Robby, and Zach.
I was sitting on myspace one day, and I was commenting on their bandspace and one of their guitarist Aaron commented me back and invited me to this thing called Harvest Cry. I didn’t even know Aaron, but it was a big deal that a stranger invited me somewhere, and honestly I went because that made me feel worth something. That little something. So I went. And I felt very out of place, and as msot people would feel going to church for the first time. This is a load of crap I thought. This Holy Spirit crap. This God changing you crap. At that point I wasn’t even sure I believed God loved me. That seemed like total crap. If he loved me, why would he have let all that hurtful stuff happen to me? Where had he been? Why hadn’t I ever felt him? The speaker, a man named Johannes was preaching about how beautiful we are to God. How we are his paintings, and he the painter. How HE determines our price, not anyone but him! You don’t go up to an artist and tell him how much you’re buying that painting for. He tells you how much its worth and what it’s being sold for, and then you decide if you want it or not. The value does not change. He told us to think of the most beautiful thing we had ever seen. A waterfall. A sunset. A sunrise. Anything. And he said how we are a thousand times more beautiful that that to God. That hit me hard. I never felt beautiful. I was never happy with my appearance and never treated like a lady. Service ended, and Johannes called nonbelievers who wanted to accept Jesus into their hearts to come to the altar. Something just told me to go. I cried and cried and cried as something came over me and made me feel alive. I can’t explain what happened in terms that you would ever understand, but that night I was changed.
Soon after that I lost all interest in cigarettes and all forms of partying. Just completely lost interest. I forgot about Griffin, and my heart was light again. I could breathe and slowly confidence made its way into my life. I broke out of my shell. My life did a complete 360 to where I was before all of this crap happened to me. My only dream in my lifetime is to share the love and grace of Jesus Christ with as many people as I can. He means so much to me and he is the ONLY one who can restore. My heart breaks for those without Jesus. This is not to be taken as an insult, but it is impossible to get by without Jesus. He is the only thing constant you will ever find. The only one faithful. The ONLY one that doesn’t mess up. And he loves you SO much. he loves you SO SO much.
I truly hope this inspires someone. I love my Jesus so much.
