My testimony
27 years ago, right before Christmas, I ran away from home.
I was 15 years old at the time. I wouldn’t learn who Jesus was for another 5
years, but I know now that it’s only by His grace that I am alive today.
I know it’s time to tell my story, to give my testimony of what God has brought me out of. It’s a little scary for me to put this out there for all to read, but I need more than anything right now to focus on the goodness of God and his ability to rescue us from even the darkest of situations.
If I never talk about what he brought be out of, I’m not allowing that goodness to be realized in my life or in the lives of others who might be going through similar experiences.
When I was 12 years old, my mom left my dad, my little sister, and me, and moved from North Idaho to Branson, Missouri. The time leading up to that and the months after are kind of a void in my memory. I know I was in 7th grade. I know I was caught shoplifting and had to do community service. I know I was a hurting, broken little girl. Eventually around spring break of that year, after a fight with my dad, I called my mom and asked if I could come live with her (I have more to share on this but I'll save that for another post.)
I moved into her 2 bedroom cockroach infested apartment in Reeds Spring, Missouri over spring break. I remember having cardboard boxes for furniture. I don’t remember her being around much. I think she was bartending to make ends meat, since her day job selling her handmade leather dolls at Silver Dollar City was probably not paying the bills. I was left alone a lot, and the kids that accepted me first at my new school were probably what I would now consider the “stoners.”
I started going to parties where drugs
and alcohol were the focus. The fist time someone offered me marijuana, I was
13, and I thought it was just a cigarette. The only time I remember spending
with my mom is when she would take me to parties at her friends houses, where drugs and alcohol were
also openly consumed. At one of her “friends” homes, his teenage son molested
me in his bedroom while my mom was in the other room.
When I was 14, I lost my
virginity in my own bedroom, to a boy who wasn’t even my boyfriend. Shortly
after that, I did get my first boyfriend – an 18 year old who had just gotten out of
jail. One of my clearest memories from that time in my life was
my mom allowing me to go spend the night in a hotel with this man – even giving
me condoms. I don’t think the condoms made any difference at that point, I would
find out later that I was already pregnant. I was a freshman in high school,
barely 15 years old.
My mom paid for me to abort the baby. “She wasn’t ready to be a grandma” she said. After that I became suicidal. I would regularly use razor blades to cut my wrists, and one night I took an entire bottle of sleeping pills.
I think after that incident, my mom finally took me to see a therapist. I asked to be put in in-patient treatment because somehow I knew that I wasn’t getting the help and support I needed at home. I spent around a month in the “looney bin”, as we called it back then, officially a psychiatric inpatient facility. I don’t remember much about my time in there either. It’s kind of amazing and also a little scary how our minds can block out traumatic experiences.
I remember
rooming with a girl that had ran away from home before and getting pointers
from her. It was during my time in there that I decided I was going to run away
from home. When I got out of the hospital, my mom was moving in with her
boyfriend so I needed to pack up my belongings also. As I packed I
inconspicuously marked my boxes as ones that would stay and ones I would take
with me, and two days before Christmas 1994, I got in the car with my
boyfriends uncle, who I had never met before, and let him drive me 2 hours to a
town I had never been to, where I would
live with various friends and family of my boyfriends for the next 6 months.
During that time, my mom did very little to try and find me, and eventually
signed custody of me over to the state. I got a job, I got my GED, but I also got
in trouble. I was caught shoplifting again, I had regular domestic dispute run in’s
with the police, for a while we were staying at a drug house that was
selling what I would later learn was crystal meth, and at one point I was pulled over with stolen guns in my car. One night, the cops came and raided our triple wide trailer. After finding me hiding in the bathtub, they handcuffed me and hauled me off to
juvie.
That was, thankfully, the only time I was actually locked up, and it was only for a night or two. After that incident, my mom decided to move back to Idaho and at first I was going to stay in Missouri with my boyfriend. A couple weeks before she left, I thought better of that decision and moved back to Coeur d' Alene with her, where the Lord would continue to protect me and look out for me throughout another abusive relationship and an eventual addiction to methamphetamines (another amazing testimony that I will share another time.)
Looking back on all of this now, I can see the Lords hand protecting me in so many ways. I could have easily taken my own life. I could have become so addicted to drugs that I lost my life or ended up in prison. I could have ended up with the wrong people and been trapped in the world of sex trafficking. I could have stayed in any number of the abusive relationships I got myself involved in. I could have a criminal record that prevented me from getting certain jobs or college scholarships.
But none of that happened. Jesus saved me from that lifestyle because He had plans for me, plans to prosper me and not to harm me, plans to give me hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). For most of my life, I've been ashamed of my past, but not anymore (a few years of therapy have helped me overcome that.) Now I am able to look back and see everything I have overcome, all the ways that the Lord looked out for me over the years, and it's time to use my story to bring hope to others.
No matter what you've done, where you've been, who you have hurt in the past, or who has hurt you, you are forgiven and loved.
Sometimes the hardest part is forgiving yourself - but God (and therapy) can help with that too!
I read this quote the other day that really resonated with me, so I'll leave you with this:
In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.
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