What follows is my personal Testimony

Sometimes I think about my spiritual journey and I have no idea where to start.  Do I start by telling everyone that God works in their lives even if they don't know Him yet? Do I start by telling them about the day i made the decision that following and serving God was the only thing in my life that made sense?  Instead I think i'll start with an explination of my family.

Before I was born my mother had issues with drugs. Things were so serious that my grandparents insisted that my mother terminate the pregnancy she had before she got pregnant with me.  When I came along, grandma had given up on protecting my mom and just prayed that I wouldn't be born with any inherited addictions.  By the grace of God I was healthy.

My mother and father are were not married, and even before I came along they had an unstable and volitile relationship.  My father was never abusive towards my mother, infact if it ever got physical it was probably mom towards dad.  Other than her drug problem my mother is has a bipolar disorder, the drugs would have made her mood swings occur quicker and more often.

It wasn't long till dad moved out and it was just mom and I.  I stayed with my grandmother (maternal) alot, at 6 months i had a severe ear infection that required tubes and mom didn't own a car.  Grandma didn't want mom walking with me everywhere in the winter.  Mom got clean for the most part, and worked a few jobs.  I remember at least three of which she worked all at the same time when i was between the ages of 3 and 5, the last two years i lived with her. Two were waitressing and the third was bartending. But still she couldn't make ends meet, grandma thinks she was most likely using again.

The last two years i lived with her we didn't have heat, electricity, or running water.  I will never forget the winters.  The inside of the house was so cold that everything felt damp.  I remember sleeping with my shoes one (could be why i don't even like wearing shoes now).  I know that if we didn't have the two dogs and 5 cats that i probably would have died of hypothermia, but the animals often slept in my bed and i'm sure it's their body heat that kept me alive.

Finally it came down to "go with grandma or be put up for adoption". Grandma took my mom to court and recieved legal custody of me.  Mom resented Grandma for this,  claimed (even to this day), that grandma took me from her. She never seemed to care that if Grandma hadn't that I would have been placed in foster care and then put up for adoption. Growing up it often made me think that Mom wasn't really so mad at grandma for taking me but rather for keeping me, for not making it so she no longer had a daughter.

Then my father left.  There was no definite This was the day he left memory for me. I just realized one day that he didn't come around anymore.  My life was so confusing at that time that just about anything could have happened to me at that time and it would have been a blur, not being able to  recall if it was a memory or something i made up or dreampt.

I remember mom and grandma fighting.  Yelling at each other so loudly that i could hear them through the hung up telephone reciever.  I remember crying about missing mom and dad, and getting yelled at for it.  For many years I didn't cry, i taught myself not to.  The only ones who knew what i was thinking and feeling was my journal, my cat charlie (who always seemed to know when i needed a friend), and the one who know all [God], though at the time i didn't realize that God even cared about me.

My family is Roman Catholic and I was sent to a church (my grandparents had stopped attending by this time) where you showed up on sunday, gave money, sat -knelt - and stood at all the right times, listened to the preist (trying not to fall asleep because of his monotone chant, and then went home with a "clean slate" for the week.   God was impersonal to me.  He existed, but only to judge and forgive, never a friend or a father, never personal.

It was in this that i struggled.  Dad was gone, he managed to do what mom couldn't do because of grandma, he got ride of me.  Mom yelled at grandma constantly about taking me, Grandma yelled at mom because mom was yelling at grandma.  They argued so much about me, that it didn't seem like they cared, it seemed like I was in the way.

That's when the notion hit me that my  family would be happier, better off, it i didn't exist.  I didn't understand my mother's mental illness, i didn't realize she was coming off of a drug habit.  All i knew was that my family was unhappy and my life seemed to be the source of that unhappiness. 

At ten years old, I decided that it would be best for everyone else if i killed myself.  It wasn't a way out for me, I hadn't hit "rock bottom" so to speak, but I wanted my family to be happy, my presence seemed to have the opposite effect, and since i felt that no one loved me who could i be hurting by ending my life?  In my mind, i'd only be making things better for people.

My family life seemed to be a sore spot for my catholic church as well.  I was told a few years back (when i was 7) that i would not be allowed to make my first communion in the church because my mother wasn't married when she had me, and that i would need an additional year of CCD classes before i would be eligible.  While I didn't know God, I felt that church was important, but I hated my church, and so i started going down the street with a friend of mine to the Christian Missionary Alliance church.  It was a friendly church, a nice place to get away from home and away from the teasing at school.  I felt welcomed there, i felt like I belonged.

Every monday afternoon a train came through town, my plans were to go to church and "say goodbye" to everyone i cared about there, go bowling (i was on the jr. league), and then hide in the woods behind the bowling alley that the train tracks ran through.  My grandparents wouldn't return from grocery shopping until later, i was always alone in the house on sundays so it would be late before they realized i was missing, if they even noticed at all, and they'd never find me in the woods.  The next day when the train came through i'd jump on the tracks.  I'd put a note in my room in a place they'd never look till they were sorting through my things to throw or give away.

That sunday came, and for the first time i felt at ease, like i wasn't a stranger to everyone around me, like something wasn't wrong with me.  I went to church like normal, but instead of my normal sunday school teacher, the pastor's wife was filling in.  Instead of Bible stories from the old testiment, she talked about God's love, and Jesus' sacrafice one the cross.  She talked about how God made each of us special, and has a purpose for everyone who's willing to believe in Him and be obedient to him. She told us that God doesn't always stop bad things from happening, but that he does stand by us while they happen. She told us that if anyone wanted to accept Jesus as our savior and ask God into our hearts to come and talk with her before service.

Something broke inside of me, I had just been told that someone loves me.  I wanted to know more so i went and asked the pastor's wife if we could talk.  I did something I hadn't done in three years, I cried.  We didn't make it to service, i cried alot.  I told her everything.  For the longest time she was the only person I'd ever told I was suicidal, even the counselor my grandmother had me seeing when i stopped being talkative and outgoing never knew and i saw her from age 7 till 13.

But God saved me, not just my soul, he gave me more than a spiritual rebirth that day. His love stopped me from killing myself.  Things didn't get easier either in my family life, i had to start putting myself in a position to take more emotional abuse from my mother to protect my brother from it.  His father had gotten custody of him and she did the same thing to my brothers dad as she did to grandma.  Which I knew meant she was doing the same thing to my brother as she did to me, telling me i was stupid, telling me grandma was bad and evil. She would tell my brother the same things, but she only picked on him if i wasn't present, if i was present then she focused on me.  He was my little brother and so i felt it was my responsibility to protect him no matter what it cost me.

It still hurt, and i still had feelings of worthlessness.  But i had something now that i didn't know i had before, God's love, his promise of protection, and purpose, and worth.

My mother is bipolar, and possibly schizophrenic, she also drinks way to much way too often. She is also not on medications for either mental illness.  I know now that alot of her behavior and how she treated us stems from her mental illness.

I also know now that it was mom's unstable behavior that made dad run, not me.  I know this because 3 years ago, after 14 years of not knowing who he is, where he went, or why he left, my father tracked me down and we met face to face.

It amazes me how God works.  I spent alot of time angry with my father for leaving me in the situation I was in.  I finally came to the realization that being angry with him only bothered me, not him.  I made a consious decision to forgive him. It wasn't even a month later that i recieved an email from him with a picture of him and myself together at my first birthday [ to prove he was who he said he was].  Had he contacted me before I'd forgiven him I would still not know him today because I would have turned him away, maybe never even reply to his email.

God is love

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