We would go back into his trailer, and I remember that he would give me sips of beers. He would give me a lot of hugs and a lot of attention. I was only seven years old, and my father wasn’t around much. You know, I just really ate it up. I think he knew that I was going to be an easy mark for him, so that ended up becoming a violent rape when I was seven years-old, which pretty much ruined me for life, it felt like. From that point on I just became a very angry person a very angry child. I would run away from the time that I was twelve to the time that I was fifteen.
So while I was on the streets, I did what you do on the street to survive. You have what they call survival sex where you have sex with someone so you have a safe place to sleep and that type of thing. I began to experiment with pain during sex, you know, bondage and sadomasochism. For me it was a very slippery slope. It went from just your run of the mill kinkiness to really try to discover something about pain during sex. I would be all into it, the whips, the chains, and all of those things. I really became a part of that subculture.
I began to get involved with witchcraft. I got involved with a group of friends and some of them were pagan. I really got into it, and I liked it. I read books, and I tried to cast spells. I became very suicidal, then I became a very angry atheist. I didn’t not just believe in Jesus, I hated Jesus Christ. I hated the Christian religion. I hated the entire establishment of the Christian religion. I just became very bitter, not because I thought it was God’s fault that all of that happened to me. I just didn’t believe in God at all. I thought Jesus was the king of the cartoon network. I mean, I bitterly hated Christians. I thought they were just so stupid. Me and my friends would just sit around snicker and laugh and make jokes. I remember sitting at coffee shops, and the street witnesses would come up and try to witness to me. I would get in screaming matches with them. They didn’t scream. I did, though. I was so angry. I remember clearly going, “I can’t live another twenty years. If the next twenty years are like the first twenty years, I don’t want it. I just want peace. I just want death, even if it’s nothing, even if it’s blackness in oblivion.”
My mom and I had not been speaking for quite some time, and I tried to mend that relationship because I missed her. I wrote her a letter, and she said, “Why don’t you come over for dinner?” I came over there for dinner. She was just full of love and light, so was my sister. They were just full of so much happiness and joy. There were all of these people over at their house and all of these young people. My family is not like outwardly hospitable. Something had changed. My Mom had started going to this church, and it was this very Christ based church called Set Free where they apparently met Jesus. They knew I hated Jesus, so they told everyone in the house and all the people that came over, “Don’t talk to her about God. She will just get hostile. You can’t just come right up to her and witness to her.”
Me and my Mom started building a relationship very quickly in about a week and a half. They went off to a Wednesday night service, and I was like, “Yeah, I’ll go,” but I felt profane walking in there. I was almost certain that there were Christians on walkie-talkies going, “We have an unbeliever in the room,” and they were going to come to me and throw scripture at me. That’s not what happened. In reality, my Mom had been telling all of her friends at church about me, and they had been praying for me for weeks.
One Wednesday night there was a little girl playing on the pews behind her parents, a little girl with long blonde hair about seven years old. I was instantly back to when I was seven years old. I saw that little girl, and I saw how happy she was. Her parents were standing up with their hands in the air, and they were praising the Lord. She was playing behind them, and I just saw how happy she was. It made me think about when I was seven. I used to hide in the closet. I was terrified at seven. God began to talk to me in that moment, and what He said was, “If I’m real, then everything I make is beautiful, and everything I make is whole.” I thought I haven’t felt whole my whole life. There was a big sign behind the band that said “Set Free.” I looked at that, and I just, I got it. I said, “I need to be set free.” I just started crying. I just started crying and crying and crying. I realized that God was real and that He had just spoken to me. It was through all of that hate and anger and darkness that God spoke to my heart when nothing else could get to me. I was high on Jesus for a long time, still kind of am.
I lost all of my friends that I was hanging out with. I had a lot of friends. I used to go to clubs and coffee shops with all of my angry atheist friends. Prior to that, I had been like the ring leader on bashing the Christians. Suddenly I give my heart to Jesus, and it was night and day. It was a night and day difference, but I knew that was alright. I had Jesus Christ and nothing, nothing in this world could compare to that.
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