Dad died. Then Mom. I was 13.

My Mom got diagnosed with cancer. With Leukemia cancer when I was about eight years old. So that became a little hard. I had to grow up a little bit more to help around the house. My Dad was always on the road because he was a truck driver. When I was ten, he passed away from a heart attack. It was pretty difficult for my family, but it kind of grew us together more. I had to step up more, even more than had, to take care of my Mom with chemo treatments all of the time. She was so weak. In 2008, the day after Mother’s day, she went into the hospital for a kind of final solution chemo and the doctor said it was a fifty, fifty chance that it would either cure or kill. It was still in testing. They weren’t exactly sure what would happen. She passed away a couple of days later when I was thirteen years old. I just lost all hope. I was just being dealt the wrong hand. I really went into a depression. I didn’t want to hear from anybody. I didn’t look up to anybody. I didn’t trust anybody. So I tried to do my own thing. I tried to find something to fill that emptiness that I was feeling. The depression I tried to solve in my own ways, which ended up being drugs, alcohol and being abused by guys all before I was in high school. So, to me, there was no God. He was not loving. He wasn’t loving to me. My life was falling apart. I hit every speed bump there was. By a whim I started getting involved with Fellowship of Christian Athletes when I was a senior in high school. I signed up for a mission trip to Honduras to work with an orphanage there. I was invited by Abba’s House to come to a service because they were taking an offering for me. I come from a very traditional Baptist background and Abba’s House is not like that. So I was kind of taken back at first and just thought okay I’m just going to roll with it. I just remember that the Holy Spirit just took over my body at that moment. It’s kind of hard to explain how it felt. Just a peace of mind I guess. Just an entire peace came over me. I wasn’t stressing about having to pay all of my bills. I wasn’t stressing about all of the family problems I was dealing with at home. I just felt at rest. Kind of like a Fatherly assurance that everything’s going to be okay, that loving embrace, kind of feeling. I changed from this girl who was resistant (she was selfish and she didn’t care about anybody else around her) to compassion. I don’t want to judge others. I don’t want to be alone in the world anymore. I saw everything that was happening to me as hatred. God hated me. He wanted me to suffer. I was doing something wrong and so I was being punished for it. Whereas now I see that, it’s my story. It’s something that I had to deal with so I can impact others because not everybody has this story.