How God Brought Me from Brokenness into His Light

Hello, my name is Austin, and this is my testimony of how God brought me from brokenness into His light.

I was born on November 10, 2001, in Temple, Georgia. I was the middle child, with one older brother and one younger sister. From the very beginning, life was a fight. When I was born, doctors discovered fluid in my chest, and they told my parents I might not survive. My chest caved in and out as I struggled to breathe, and I even had a red spot on my head the size of a grapefruit. But God spared me. They called me a miracle baby.

Growing up, however, didn’t feel like much of a miracle. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and autism at an early age. My parents were young, and their relationship quickly fell apart. We lived in a trailer behind my nanny’s house, but it was filled with drugs, crime, and things no child should ever have to see. The house had roaches in the walls, rats bigger than the traps, and people constantly buying and selling drugs inside. At age 5 year old in 2005, I also remember many times my brother he one’s grabbed me up dropping me on my head on porch, slamming my head into window many times in my life he has abused me, sober and under the influence he was worse.

We wasn’t close at all and there were times when I was left alone at the house, and out of curiosity and loneliness, I grabbed my mom’s tablet and started looking up things I shouldn’t have, like porn. That one decision opened the door to years of regret and shame. What started as simple curiosity quickly grew into an addiction that began to control me and destroy relationships. Over time, that addiction led me deeper into sexual immorality. I went wild, chasing after lust, and in the process, I hurt many girls and hurt myself too.

On top of that, I was still seeing drugs in and out of the house, and the chaos of sexual immorality all around me only fed my addiction. Instead of getting better, things got worse. Every time I thought I had control, the temptation pulled me back in, and I sank deeper into the cycle of sin, brokenness, and regret.

My mom started praying daily for a little girl…

My sister was born on January 11th, 2005, just remember. Getting told getting told. I am a big brother now, this is when I became very protective over her protecting her from men and others who would try anything, that was a promise.

When I was 7 years’ old, I remember going hunting with my cousin and brother, we were walking, and I was behind him. He grabbed a vine I remember a bog log coming down smacking me on the side of my head, I fell down crying hurting but didn’t got to hospital as no one told anyone about it but me.

When I turned 8 it became hard for me to learn anything at home and in school I was also bullied in both home and school. I felt dumb and hurt I tried to become likeable So I thought if I became class clown for people will laugh.

I felt like I was being punished. I didn’t love my life, in fact, I wished I had a different one. As time went on, I drifted further and further from God’s will for me. All I wanted was for the pain to stop. Though every time something went wrong, I would run to my grandparents’ house, because that was the one place I felt safe, accepted, and loved. My nanny was a strong Christian woman. She lived out her faith daily, praying, reading her Bible, and showing love to everyone around her. She took me to church, and I believed in God, but at that time I didn’t really understand what it meant to truly follow Christ.

Looking back, I can see that those moments in her home and in church were seeds being planted in my heart. Even though I didn’t grasp it fully, I was being shown what real faith looked like through her example. She didn’t just talk about Jesus—she lived it. And every time I sat beside her in church, every time I heard her pray for me, it was like God whispering, “I’m still here. I still have a plan for you.”

At the time, I was still trying to cover up my hurt and my pain, pretending to be okay when inside I was broken. But I realize now that God was using my nanny to keep His light shining in my life, even in the middle of my darkness.

At this time, it created me trying to get acceptance for most of my life from friends, girlfriend and more, I put that mask on so many times I rode with wrong people and been and I remember being at church one Wednesday night when we came home to ambulances and police outside. My dad had been beaten with a shotgun, and my mom had been thrown into the fridge. By the time I was twelve, I had already seen more than most people see in a lifetime—violence, addiction, and immorality.

When I was just a little boy, I also faced something that could have changed my life forever. One day, a white Chevy long-bed pickup truck pulled up, I was walking on the side of road and inside were two men who tried to get me into the truck. By God’s grace, I didn’t go with them. Later, the police showed up and showed me pictures of what those men had done to other kid’s was 13 at this time.

At age 13, I also remember looking out the window one Sunday and seeing two masked men kick in our door. I watched my dad get stabbed and my mom beaten with brass knuckles during a robbery by someone she thought was a friend. The trauma was too much to carry, so I turned to weed and cigarettes to numb the pain.

The one safe place I had was with my grandparents. My Pawpaw became my father figure. We fished together, worked together, ate together, and went everywhere side by side. He taught me almost everything I know, and I thank God I had him. But still, life at school was just as hard. I was bullied, laughed at, and called worthless. My brother even turned against me, hitting me and calling me names. Over the years, the words “worthless” and “you’ll never be anything” sank deep into me. Eventually, I started to believe them. I acted out, got into fights, and was labeled a “problem kid.” They even put me on the short bus.

By the age of 14, I had already started running away from home and getting into trouble. Around that same time, something happened that changed my life physically. I was just being a kid, riding on the side of my mom’s car while she was driving about 45 miles per hour. My sister opened the door, and I fell out, slamming my back onto the gravel. A rock got lodged deep into my back, and the accident left me with serious injuries. I ended up needing knee surgery and suffered a spinal injury that went all the way down my back. From that point on, I was limited in the things I wanted to do physically, and it felt like another weight added to the struggles I was already facing.

The spinal injury and knee surgery I had as a teenager stopped me from chasing the dreams I once had of joining the military or becoming a fireman. Those were things I always wanted to do, but suddenly they were off the table. It left me feeling like I would never measure up to anything, like my life didn’t have purpose. I carried that weight for years—believing I was less than, broken, and never enough.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that even though those doors were closed, God wasn’t finished writing my story. He wasn’t punishing me—He was preparing me. The dreams I thought were gone were only being replaced with a greater calling that I couldn’t see yet.

When I was 15, the state stepped in and placed me and my brother, sister in foster care. I bounced from home to home. Around this time, my little brother Trevor was born. I was so thankful for him, but even he was taken by DFCS shortly after birth and placed in the system. He was adopted in other families not getting the care he needed wasn’t shown love he deserved.

When I was 16, I worked with a man named Kenny who was paralyzed. At the time, I didn’t know how it had happened, but as I worked with him, I saw him start using meth right in front of me. It instantly brought back memories of the times I had walked in on my dad doing drugs, and it stirred up a deep hatred in me for meth and other hard drugs.

But even with that hatred, I still made mistakes. One day, I stole three bottles of Roxicodone—30 milligrams each—along with a lot of money. I tried to hide it by slipping it under the soles of my shoes. Looking back, I realize how lost and reckless I was in that moment.

At 17, in 2017, I got out of state custody and moved in with my nanny and pawpaw. For the first time in a long time, I finally felt safe. But that season of peace didn’t last long. Pawpaw, the man who helped raise me and who I considered my best friend, was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors said he had three months to live, but he only lasted three weeks. I had to watch him fade away in pain and then slip into eternity at 88 years old. That loss shattered me.

Mentally and physically, I wasn’t the same after that. I didn’t know how to process the pain, so I started acting out. I hung out with the wrong people, got caught up in stealing and lying, and kept digging myself deeper into trouble. Within just two months, I had been in more than three car wrecks, always on the passenger side, never wearing a seatbelt. Every time, I should have been seriously hurt, but I walked away. I made a promise with pawpaw that I will graduate before her passing. Looking back now, I see that even in my rebellion and my grief, God was still protecting me. At the time, I didn’t understand it—I just knew something inside me was telling me I was still here for a reason.

Not long after Pawpaw’s death, depression and PTSD hit me hard. When I turned 18, I felt completely alone, like I had no one to turn to. Around that time, my nanny—the woman who had taken me in and given me a place of safety—came close to death multiple times. I remember being in the getting a call as she flatlined again and again, but God brought her back four different times.

To this day, at 83 years old, she is still one of the strongest women I have ever known. She has spent her whole life taking care of kids, and she showed me what it means to love and to persevere through hardship.

At 19, in 2021, I started talking to a girl named Autumn on Facebook. Wanting a fresh start, I moved to Ringgold, Georgia, to live with her and her family. We fell in love, got engaged, and soon after, found out we were expecting a baby boy. We decided to name him Brantley.

I’ll never forget the moment I felt his tiny hand press against mine through Autumn’s belly. It was the most amazing feeling of my life. That’s when I knew I wanted to provide for my family, so I started working as a carpenter, trying to build a future. But life got messy—mistakes were made, trust was broken, and eventually, I was pushed out of their lives.

Still, no matter what happened, I loved my son. I paid child support and did what I could to be involved. When Brantley was born on April 14th, he was perfect. Holding him was one of the greatest blessings of my life.

But only five months later, I received the worst phone call I could ever imagine—Brantley had passed away. Losing my son shattered me into a million pieces. That day, it felt like I died inside too.

I drove two hours to the funeral and arrived before anyone else. As people came in, many of them found out for the very first time that I was his dad. That day was also the last time I ever saw my little boy—lying in a crib, lifeless. I dropped to my knees, devastated, tears pouring down and hitting the ground.

Autumn came over and hugged me, but as I looked over her shoulder, I saw she was already with another guy—right there at our son’s funeral. And even though it hurt, I couldn’t bring myself to blame her. Deep down, I knew I should have treated her better.

As much as I loved her, I knew I had to let go. I wasn’t ready for another relationship. I felt like a complete screw-up. I was only 19 years old, and I was empty, numb, and broken. I carried a fear inside me that I was only going to ruin everything I touched—that my life was just one big mistake.

At age 20 in 2022, I went through another painful experience with my dad. He overdosed on cocaine and fentanyl and had to be put into a coma for three weeks. I was angry, worried, and afraid the entire time. I didn’t know if he was going to make it, and I carried the fear that I was going to lose him in the same way I had lost so many other people I loved. So, when he finally came out of the coma, I was relieved, but I was also left with a storm of emotions—mad, scared, and broken all at once.

After losing my son and watching my dad almost die, I started to backslide. I fell right back in with my old crowd, smoking and drinking again. Deep down, I was angry—angry at the world, angry at Autumn’s mom, and angry at myself. Instead of dealing with the pain, I tried to numb it, and that only pulled me further away from where I needed to be.

Riding around with the wrong people again, I didn’t learn my lesson. That season led to five more car wrecks. Every single time, I walked away when I easily could have lost my life. But instead of seeing it as God’s warning, my depression only worsened.

Eventually, I got my own place and started working construction with my uncle and cousin. We even had a few extra guys come along to help us. One of them was a man named Logan came and started working with me. He was looking for a place to stay, so we decided to get a place together. My uncle had a trailer for rent that used to belong to my aunt, and it worked out for us. We moved in, and for a while, things seemed steady. Logan and I lived there for about a year, but eventually, he decided to move out and go his own way, leaving me there on my own.

So I had the house to myself at this time I started having parties after 8 parties until it had to stop when 7 police and k-9 units showed up. I was locked up April 17, 2023, I served a week in jail then I went to the courthouse a month after to find out about what I needed to do, and they told me I had 1 year and $1,000 to pay. This was another Blessing I asked the prosecutor what else could I do with fear in my voice she told me I could do 30 hours of community service and 350 buck’s I took it and one 40 hours community service instead at animal shelter.

A few months later, I was working at Lee Fabrication, buffering handlebars. I had been there for about four months when one day, out of nowhere, four police officers from different counties showed up at my job. They came straight to me and locked me up right there at work. I started screaming, because just a few days earlier my mom had been shot—and yet her shooter had been let out. Meanwhile, I was being locked up wrongfully for something I had already paid off.

They had lost my paperwork. So instead of being free, I was thrown back into jail. I’ll never forget sitting in that cell, staring out the door, feeling hopeless. Eventually, my nanny showed up. She had gone all the way to the courthouse to get the proof that I had already paid it off. She brought the paperwork in, and because of her, I was finally released.

Then I got back working with my uncle. Working from 8:00 to six 6:00 I stayed walking for a while and making the money I had to have. A quote I would buy an alcohol and weed & things got hard. Just 3 months later, on July 12, 2023, I was getting ready for work going outside. I couldn’t pull it up and told me today. You are not going to work, she told me to go inside and I sat down. And she told me how my mom — my best friend — was shot at 3:30 in morning and dead at only 45 years’ old. She had her struggles, but she loved deeply, and in her final days she kept writing “Jesus Saves” on scraps of paper.

I was 21 At this time I never knew, what was to come hearing that I didn’t know but i think she knew her time was coming soon. The night before she died, she asked me to come with her. I said, “Maybe tomorrow.” But there was no tomorrow. Losing her drove me deeper into drinking, drugs, and blaming myself, isolation from family I spiraled—stealing, fighting, and drowning myself in alcohol to numb the pain. But even in that dark place, God…

Even through all my mistakes, God never gave up on me. He was protecting me in every situation as I was growing up. For about two years, I lived recklessly causing problems, numb to the pain, getting into constant arguments, and lashing out. Inside, I was completely broken. I honestly believed I would never feel true happiness again, and that I was stuck in the hell I had created for myself.

When I was 22, I moved in with one of my buddies and stayed at his house for a while. Over time, I noticed he had a stash of weed and money. After a few months, I made a terrible choice, I stole from him. A few days later, he confronted me about it. At first, I denied it, but the guilt ate away at me. After he pressed me multiple times, I finally admitted the truth.

The moment I confessed, everything turned violent. I was beaten, left with a black eye, and stomped on. I felt completely threatened and unsafe. When they weren’t paying attention, I saw my chance and ran. I made it about 25 minutes down the road before the very person I was trying to escape from found me. They dragged me back to the house.

Through all of this, I can look back now and see that even though I was living in sin and brokenness, God’s hand was still over my life, protecting me when I didn’t deserve it.

So, I went back home after a few days and watching my back then i friend came and moved in with me at this time I started drinking more than ever going out late nights the lasted 8 months. Then A few months later, I got a call from my friend David and his girlfriend Amy. They asked if I could give Amy’s homeless aunt a ride to Warner Robins. I agreed, not knowing how much this decision would change things. The next day, I went with Amy to Walmart in Villa Rica, and from there we drove about three hours to Warner Robins.

When we got there, I ended up having to drive her around the whole time. What was supposed to be a simple favor turned into me being stuck there for a month and a half. During that time, I paid rent and power bills, but instead of using the money responsibly, they spent it on drugs. I remember waking up one morning and seeing them doing drugs right in front of me. That’s when I decided to stop paying.
As soon as I did, they turned on me. They told me I had to leave, and even though I had been hanging out with them and some of their gang-affiliated friends, I realized they weren’t really friends at all. They grabbed my things, threw them outside, and even called the cops, claiming I refused to leave. The police told me I could either stay or go—but I knew it was time to go.

So I picked up my phone and called my Boss. He said he’s taking me to Rescue Mission of Middle Georgia. I didn’t know what it was, but when I walked through those gates and saw the words “Jesus Saves,” something in me shifted. For the first time in years, I felt peace. I knew God had brought me there for a reason.

On October 25th, I gave my life to Christ and was saved. For the first time, I truly surrendered. At the Mission, God began to show me my brokenness and teach me how to let go of the idols and sins I had been holding onto. I started learning who I was in Christ and that my identity was not in my past, but in Him.

Now, I’ve been clean for over a year. God has given me peace, joy, hope, humility, and a family in Christ. I once thought I was worthless, but God says otherwise. He calls me His son, chosen and loved. I am not who the world says I am, or even who I thought I was. I am who God says I am.
James 4:8 says:

“Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”