I am an example of millions of people that have lived on planet earth. When I was born, my mother was on the run from the police, and my father was in prison for armed robbery. Ten days after my birthday, my mother was arrested. I was left at my grandmother’s house.
For my first four years of life, I was thrown around between relatives and friends of my parents. I can still remember multiple parties that I was at and arrests that I have witnessed. I have horrific memories of drug houses and hand cuffs. When my mother was finally arrested for child abuse (guess who that child was), I was moved to my grandmother’s. Eventually, she didn’t want me either, so I went to live with her daughter, my aunt. My aunt and her husband had just become Christians. They had a son and a daughter on the way. They were really busy, but God put it into their hearts to welcome me into their lives.
Pain in a child is a strange thing. Shattered that my parents didn’t want me, I went through the next six years of my life angry, broken, and alone. I grew up learning about Jesus but never truly accepted Him. My mentality was, if God is a God of love and purity, what would He want with a girl like me? A girl who had come from the grossest sin that a child could hardly imagine? I was bullied in school, and I truly felt that no one wanted me. Until one day.
After a particularly terrible day, when I was ten, I crawled into my room, broken and empty. Feeling I didn’t know what else to do, I felt drawn to open my Bible. So that’s what I did. You know what I found? I found 1 John 4:9-10. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
That day, I found that no matter how ugly, awful, and truly terrible I was, He only saw me as beautiful, wonderful, and His perfect, beautiful creation, fearfully and wonderfully made. I became a child of God that day, and life has been a joy since.
I’m a mess. But I’m His beautiful mess, and day by day, I am becoming more and more the person that He created me to be. He changed me. He can change you too. Share your story and let’s change the world…for the greater glory of God.
