God Sent Me a Messenger

So, this is my second attempt at writing my testimony out. I first wrote it on January 26th, 2020, about 4 months after I had gotten clean. But didn’t finish it and went on about life as usual. But today being 2 years, 6 months, and 25 days into my sobriety I feel lead by the Holy Spirit to re-write what once was so I can share this powerful story of my history, I know my testimony has the potential to transform many!

In my original attempt at this I saw that I started off from birth to being obese then straight to my first marriage but after the last couple of years of Jesus healing me. I have come to realize there is much more of a beginning to the start of my old life.

So, I was born on December 6th, 1969, to my mom and dad. My dad being a Pentacostal pastor at this time. I don’t know much about that time period only from what Mom has told me, but my parents divorced when I was around 2 years old. I assume it was a tragic ending because of how hurt my mother was from my Dad stepping out on her. She was never really PRO me spending time with him afterwards and neither was I. I know that my mother at some point after that ended up getting a job for the railroad and I ended up living the majority of the time with my grandparents.

In retrospect I see how this was my blessing and when Jesus entered the picture from my memory. My mother’s parents, my grandparents LOVED them some Jesus and went to an Assembly of God Church which is pretty much Pentecostal. So for the first years of my life, I was schooled as a young child to love Jesus. I remember going to church and seeing people filled with the Holy Spirit speaking in tongues, and being healed. I know that as a little kid my cousins and I would be sitting in the pews laughing and being silly not understanding what was going on around us. And I don’t remember a lot of it, but I know I witnessed as a small child some miraculous things from God. Just knowing that origin of my early days is  miraculous. Now years later I realize just how wonderfully blessed I must be, because I know the hand of God, his protection is what got me through the next 40 decades of my life living in sin. It is the only way I am still breathing to this day!

So basically my mother ended up getting remarried a couple of times after that and is still with my step Father for almost 45 years. Looking back I see how that must have been traumatic for me because of how much I rebelled. I know that my stepfather wasn’t a Christian until sometime about 4 or 5 years ago. He had left his wife and daughter for my mother, and definitely not for us both (which I just learned this fact in the last year that they had an affair, my mom kept it a secret).

From the point of them getting married I was no longer a priority in her life as far as time spent with me. They both worked the graveyard shift and slept during the day and worked at night. Mom ended up leaving the railroad and getting a regular job’s that she was at home at night. I don’t really remember spending any time with her or them she would buy me lots of things, being a shopaholic she was always going to the mall. Somehow she felt that since money satisfied her desires that it should satisfy mine as well, but as a small child you don’t know the difference and was enamored by the material things she bought me.

One of the main things that occurred in my early formative years is I was molested by one of my female cousins around the age of 4 or 5. She was like my sister because I had no siblings and at that time we spent weekends and holidays around one another. The molestation manifested into a darkness that stayed with me for the next 40 years controlling my life, a young child should never know what LUST is.

I became aware of my own body at too early of an age and that dark secret became who I was. I didn’t even know it wasn’t okay, or was something I should talk to someone about even. I just recently the last couple of months confessed this to my mother, never realizing she didn’t know about it. I felt like it was just who I was and she knew already. I took pride in my open sexuality going from bisexual swinging lifestyle to porn, then eventually in my addiction. I ended up selling my body for drugs and money. I see now how the loneliness lead me to always seeking attention and constantly getting rejected by family and friends and at school.

I learned at an early age how to cover my hurt with food, I saw my mother eat hers away. I didn’t start gaining the weight until around 8 or 9 years of age. I never knew why I was obese, why I ate all the time, why I was obsessed with food. But now I see it I was desperately lonely and had nothing to turn to at that time but food, so by the time I was in high school I was well over 200 lbs, no real friends, no boyfriends, but I had clothes and sports cars of course. I was that girl always in the background.

So I got married at age 18 to my first husband and was divorced at age 22, weighing around 310 lbs. I see now how my young husband wasn’t happy and ended up leaving me for another woman. I remember being devastated but relieved at the same time because he couldn’t hold a job and needed a mama, not a wife. But I saw my main problem was being fat, and I have to tell this part of the story a little different now that I truly see it. But before I would say that I prayed and told God I was tired of being this fat girl and something had to change. So I immediately stopped eating and the addictive part of me took over and I was obsessed with losing weight after the first 40 lbs.

Yes NEW addiction!

I dropped about 150 lbs in less than 6 months, I basically starved myself, and I ended up suffering from bulimia for almost 11 years or so. It was also another dark secret I lived with. I see now that yes, God gave me the strength to get started losing weight but living without Jesus first in my life, my darkness had taken over. I just didn’t know it.

I ended up getting married to my kid’s father at age 24 and we had a girl then a boy 21 months apart. During this time the internet had just come out and I was mesmerized with this imaginary life I could live online meeting people and getting ALL the attention one could ever imagine. No longer physically the fat kid, but emotionally stuck in that frame of mind. Now I know was the WORST choice I could have made at that time was buying a computer and a modem.

My marriage to my kids’ father entered in a new level of darkness that no one could have ever imagined in the 90’s. I started having an affair with my boss who was married and went to the same church as us. That spiraled out of control and I found some guy online to “rescue” me from my “falling apart marriage” and one day while my husband was at work I packed up a few things and took the kids!

My husband was devastated and it wasn’t good for the kids either. I ended up moving to Little Rock with my 2 year old son, mom had my daughter in Batesville and I went through a series of traumatic events just one after the other, getting robbed, then my son and I held at gun point by a crack head in Little Rock, to filing $300,000 in bankruptcy, and empty endless relationship after relationship. And my levels of addictions just kept escalating from food, porn, alcohol, drugs and wrong people. It was just a constant relentless cycle of emptiness that needed to be filled and I didn’t have the knowledge or ability to rescue myself. I really didn’t even know that I was that bad off.

So this type of lifestyle accelerated to my kids barely being with me. My promiscuity ended up with me in the abortion clinic too many times. I can’t believe some of the things I did! The guilt was unbearable. I couldn’t even be around my kids or family. I was so ashamed and my children suffered living with out me for a good decade at least. I was also seeing a psychiatrist who I used to get ALL KINDS OF DRUGS from. He prescribed me anything. I knew the symptoms to Adderall, 190- 2 mg Xanax each month, plus Klonopin, plus other meds I don’t even remember. I see now my guilt and addiction was in full control back then and I was spiraling out of control.

In May of 2011 I had my first accident and swerved off the road dodging a deer which ended up snapping my back and my T11 was fractured. I had to have surgery and metal put in back. By the time I went through physical therapy and got back on my feet six months later, I had my second accident on November 21st, 2011. One of the things I recently have remembered is that morning grabbing a few Xanax and chewing them up while I was getting dressed, but the toxicology report from the hospital didn’t show anything in my system. I’m sure God did this so I could qualify for disability that I’ve been on since.

This wreck was much worse than my first accident. I was driving to work one morning in my stepdad’s truck. It was dark around 6:30 am and all I remember is driving one minute, then hydroplaning the next minute screaming “Oh GOD!”

The next thing I remember was being in the ambulance and the EMT’s fighting for my life. Screaming at me to “come back!!!” over and over yelling at me, and all I know was I was mad enough at this dude because he wouldn’t let me drift off to the comfortable darkness I was in to opening my eyes in the ICU hooked up to life support and a medically induced coma. I’m not saying I woke up to this because there was a consciousness going on that I cannot describe, but I was there when I wasn’t awake. I was in the void, the dark is all I know how to explain it.

I ended up with major trauma. Traumatic brain injury is one. I lost my frontal lobe of my brain which is where your short term memory is located and why this story might be a little choppy. Also, crushed my left leg and lost a huge chunk out of my calf, plus lacerated my bladder, punctured my lungs, broke my back once again. ALL In the same year!!! How blind was I not to see that there was something major going on in the spiritual realm over my life.

I ended up in the hospital a few months then eventually to an assisted living nursing home. That once again I had to learn how to walk again, and this time talk and think again. All I can remember was physical therapy was rough, very painful and all I could do was grunt from the pain because I had lost the ability to use my words or express myself any other way.

So, my mom took care of me for over a year, which resulted in my stepdad leaving her. So I had to move out so he would come back. You would think that this would be the end of my destructive nature but NO, shortly after that I fell backwards down some stairs and broke my left ankle so badly I ended up needing three surgeries to repair it and a metal cuff around what once was my ankle. It took me a while to be able to walk again after that.

So fast forward a few years I had met a guy online and we were staying in a hotel one night and I woke up to him smoking something while I was sleeping. By the next day I was smoking it too! I embraced Methamphetamines because it enabled me to step out of my insecurities into a whole other person who was what I thought was the REAL me, lol but was the demonic me in FULL FORCE!

I ended up getting stuck in Conway after a weekend excursion with this guy who left me with total strangers smoking meth. I tried to get my mom to come and get me after the weekend was up, but she was fed up with me and said no. Needless to say, ended up being my ROCK BOTTOM!

I ended up in a very traumatic emotionally abusive relationship with a man who was definitely possessed. My torment was damaging, and I became a drug addicted, drug selling, gangster that ended up in a SWAT team raid of my house and going to jail, fortunately not prison but 48 months of felony probation that lead me to a probation officer that challenged me to get right. And I went out and bought my first car since the wreck in 2011 (so, writing all this out is very emotional for me, so much pain and sadness, this is definitely triggering painful memories that no wonder I wasn’t ready to disclose or even deal with 2 years ago when I first started).

I’d like to add to this part by telling you that I am no longer a felon. I had my entire record expunged by the GRACE of GOD. It was wiped clean, and it was free? I was thanking GOD after this praying in such joy and excitement, and I heard that still small voice in me saying, “It’s paid in full”!!! GLORY TO GOD!

So, what led me to getting sober finally? Not that ANYTHING I had put myself through wasn’t enough. So my first attempt at sobriety was right after August 13th, 2018. I had drove to Morrilton from Conway where I was living in my car basically and this guy wanted me to buy some dope off him. I pulled up at his place and all I remember was he was really messed up and I just wanted my drugs so I could leave but he had gotten in my car and kept trying to get me inside his house.

And what happened next is baffling still to this day. All I know is he had the passenger door open and he leaned out and started viciously arguing with someone or something. I couldn’t see or hear anything but his violent behavior. The next thing I knew I heard gun shots and he had been gunned down. By the GRACE OF GOD I put my car in reverse, closed my eyes and the next thing I knew I was at the truck stop down the road and I heard a voice in me telling me to go in and get a subway sandwich.

After that I got clean and moved into a supposedly “chem free” apartment in Little Rock across the street from NA (which I never attended but once or twice) and of course I relapsed 6 months later being around others living there getting high. This time I packed up and moved to the hood in NLR in with this guy who was very demonic. And I have no words for the abuse I went through there, but I finally escaped one night and lost once again everything I had to my name.

I ended up at a trap house in NLR and feared for my life constantly. This was the beginning to the end of my self-hatred. I started praying for a way out of this situation and knew I had PO appointment coming up soon so I got paid one morning and told my boyfriend at the time I would not be back, handed him my drugs and paraphernalia, bought him breakfast, dropped him off at the trap and drove to Maumelle and checked myself into a hotel. I was very dope sick throwing up black bile and slept it off a couple of days before my PO meeting.

I went into my PO meeting as planned and got arrested for not reporting that I had moved out of the chem free house. So ended up in Faulkner County Jail in Conway for 41 days that I won’t ever forget. Because that is when I FINALLY surrendered to our Father in Heaven!!!! Praise GOD! I don’t know if this long stretch of torment I put myself through was how strong of a rebellious, defiant mentality I had or just how strong of a hold Satan had in my life from early childhood or both!

Praise JESUS for rescuing me! The part I didn’t mention yet was when I met Jesus in 2017 living at some apartments that were exclusively for lower class and let felons live there. I was selling drugs and doing ALL the drugs I could get my hands on. God sent me a messenger/angel to start ministering to me while we were smoking dope. He would pray with me, protect me from my abusive relationship and finally one day said some words that set me free from this guy.

He told me the reason I would always let this guy back in and continued to love him like crazy was metaphorically how much God loved me and he wanted to show how he feels for me, how faithful and endless his love was and how many times he’ll always open the door for me no matter what I do. This revelation of God’s love still blows my mind to this day. My memory from this time is a little hazy but I had gotten to the point I couldn’t carry my cross anymore and I saw Jesus beside me lean over and pick it up for me!

I know that through this odd friendship with the messenger I saw some miraculous things from heaven, I stepped into other dimensions and saw things I can’t describe to this day. It has taken me some time since I got out of jail walking with Jesus and learning things about myself and I am still learning and healing. I’m pretty sure I have a lot more to heal from.

One of my major issues today is realizing what this loneliness mindset did to me and the choices I made out of my desperate need for acceptance. I today now care WHO that person is that I am around. I have moved to Northwest Arkansas to be closer to my children and grands, and now my parents live up here with me. We are reuniting, and God is healing us each step of the way. I still have some hangups about letting people in. I just don’t trust others enough YET to let them in regardless of who and what their story is, but God…

So, the moral of my story, let GO and let GOD!!! If I had known to give my worries to him many moons ago, I could have been spared a life of heartache. It’s so important to teach your children now who Jesus is and who they are in him!

How faithful was he throughout my WHOLE life sinning all the way and he just was always there to answer my desperate cries for help, waiting patiently for THE DAY of my surrender. I feel that because of my Grandma and Grandpa Love’s prayers that God never left my side regardless of my foul choices and he was always ready to redeem and heal me.

Thank you Father in heaven!!!!!!! I am forever grateful and forever your eternal servant.

I pray my testimony blesses someone. Please don’t let all this PAIN and suffering be in vain! Take my word for it, God loves you! And he is ALWAYS ready to open the door and let you in!!!

We were never intended to run our own lives outside of God’s will. We are HIS creation. Whether you understand this or not, this is his design, this is his world, this is his creation. We are his! So, before your carnal mind starts to pick apart his logic, remember his words in Isaiah 55:8,9 (NIV):

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.