New and Felt like I Needed to Post my Testimony

I was raised in a Christian home and always knew right from wrong. There wasn’t a day in my life that I questioned if what I was doing was right or wrong, I just knew. I grew up very active in my church up until I decided to do for myself.

I am struggling with the idea that God forgives for the first time in my 24 years of existence. I have done things in the last 5 years that I would never have thought of doing before.

Anyway, here’s my whole story:

I lived in a Christian home, as I earlier stated but it wasn’t all happy and praising Jesus and we were definitely not the model family most thought we were.

I started off as a happy kid with two parents who fought when they were together but it wasn’t very often because daddy was always at sea (He was a chief in the Navy). I just knew him as the man who brought candies and sometimes yelled at mommy until I was six years old.

We then moved to Texas because my father had retired and we have family out here who we needed to be close to. Life got interesting from here on out.

We moved into a rental home and almost immediately welcomed my drug addicted, gang banger cousin into our home to get her away from her like-minded friends. She was rude, crass and hiding drugs in our shared bedroom. I was then, at the age of 7, put in charge of making sure she did not do drugs and was to tell on her if she did. Of course, she threatened me.

Not a good start for a young kid but most people can get over only a year of that treatment fairly quickly. I’m sure I would have too had it not been for the following 7 or so years.

Fast forward through all the parental fights, insignificant dramas and land into a place where I was now 10 years old. My older brother had been regailing me with tales of how he felt like someone was always behind him and voices were telling him to off himself and others. It freaked me out, quite honestly. But that was NOTHING compared to what happened next.

A concerned friend of the family phoned my parents after my brother had told her how he was feeling and what he had been hearing. They took him to a shrink who then gave him pills that made him spiral out of control.

There were days he would lock himself in the bathroom, bedroom, closets or just bring knives to his throat, wrist or whatever and I would have to break down the door, pick locks or wrestle sharp objects from him to make sure I had my brother.

The odd thing about him was that he never truly lost his faith in God through all of this struggle. He later told me he was not in control of himself but he knew God was there and would bring him out of it. That got me thinking more and more and fed my desire to teach in churches, which I did during all this happening.

Church was the one place I felt safe and like God was in complete control.

During this time, I was in the 5th grade and on a field trip with my class on the normal over-crowded buses with too few teachers to know what is really going on.

This is where the first molestation happened. I was placed next to the “loser” of the class because I was the only person who would be nice to him, regardless of the boogers he picked or the weird comments that would come out of him. I was, maybe, too nice.

On the way home that day from our trip, he was, again, placed next to myself and my friend. I was next to him. I hear some boys whisper at him and say “do it now”. Apparently some boys had put him up to ‘copping a feel” because he had a crush on me and thought it would be funny or something. I don’t know and at that point, I did not care.

I fought like never before to get him off of me and since the bus was so crowded, it was difficult to do and even more difficult to explain to my teacher why I had thrown this “outcast” onto the floor and even harder to explain when one of my nearby friends decided to stand up and kick him in the ribs because he had seen the whole thing. The three boys sat and smirked. Oddly, that’s what hurt the most.

Later, after I had publicly forgiven all four boys in the 7th grade, I ended up having to protect the very boy who had done the first of many incidences to make me fall into a semi spiral.

Throughout middle school and high school, I was molested by other guys and bullied by many people, including a handful of teachers. By the time I graduated high school, the only worth I felt was when I was in church. I wasn’t accepted anywhere else. I went to a jr. college to start my schooling and this is where life got more interesting.

This college was more for the underclass citizens, or at least that is who made up the majority of the on-campus students. I was one of the live-ins but I tried to keep Christian friends (I’ll keep this year short and just summarize until the ex comes in). My best friend was suicidal while I was there. She used me as the one person she could confide in and apparently everyone else also thought I was a good counselor. It got to the point that one night I was about to have a literal heart attack when I cried out to God for one day of peace and received it the very next day. No stress. Just a nice calm drive out in the country with the very suicidal best friend. Now she is better and dealing with her problems much more efficiently and loving every bit of life.

One more molestation happened by a guy at the college, but I did not let him get to me… or so I thought.

Now I met my ex while I was going to school here at my job. He walked in and instantly intrigued me. He was tall, muscular and humorous. I figured I would take a chance and date a stranger instead of the guys who I had thought about dating but did not want to ruin the friendship. HE WAS ONE OF THE WORST MISTAKES OF MY LIFE.

The first date was awesome. So was the second and third. After dating for about 2 months, we decided (yes, I know this was stupid on my part) to have a sleep over with “no sex” as I explicitly insisted upon. He agreed to this term and said we would just cuddle and watch movies.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. He raped me. Held me down and made sure he got what he wanted out of me and then blackmailed me with it. Before this, I never understood why someone would listen to a blackmailer but in my family, if he told my parents we had sex, they would have believed I had it willingly no matter how I insisted otherwise (My mother had already thought I was having sex from age 11 when I hadn’t).

I stayed with him another month until I was offered to go to another city for schooling about 4 hours away. It provided me with a sense of security knowing he would be so far away. I texted him and told him I was leaving for school. He tried to make me stay but I told him (lied to him) that I already told my parents.

Fast forward: went to school. It was a Christian school. I stayed for a semester, went back for the second semester but could not deal with the drama and lies drifting about me sleeping with random guys I met on the internet, so I left… with my now husband. We smoked weed. We moved house to house to house and then I got pregnant. We were not yet married. Moved out from living with him because I was low on funds.

He cheated on me, we reconciled almost immediately, found out I was pregnant for sure 2 months later, moved back in with him for 3 months, lost our funds/jobs, moved back in with the parents, had the baby, moved in with him for a year with our daughter, stripped for about 4 months (I am not proud of this and hate the fact that I ever did it but I was in a desperate situation and I did not want to have our child on the street), lost our apartment, moved in with his family, got in a major fight with his mother and got kicked back out again and am living with my daughter and separate from him (parents hate him) because, again we have no funds and he can’t keep a job.

That brings me to the currentish area. Now he finally gets a job, can’t support us still so we are stuck here, he loses his job after 9 months and now I have a job as a tutor. He tells me, right before new year’s he cheated on me AGAIN with an ex-girlfriend of his because he was drunk and “stupid”.

I forgive him as I always do and am now stuck dealing with the pain of this recent betrayal. He has offered marriage counseling so we will start that soon. He just got a new job as an ADT salesman that started today.

Ok, I know that my story is kind of weird and LONG, but I want to say this. Now that we have been separated for two very excruciating years, we are both seeking God again and working hard on our marriage and our relationship with HIM and our daughter.

I would like to interject a prayer in here for anyone bored enough to read this whole thing: my husband and I need help, obviously from all the cheating he did and the fact that he and I have made the mistakes we have and sunk as low as we have just to make ends meet. Please, please pray for our finances, relationship and personal ability to cope with everything to get better.

Thanks.