My testimony can be summed up this way: child of divorced parents, feeling unloved, worthless and shameful, molestation, sexual immorality, having a child out of wedlock, being told I was going to hell and believing it, marriage to a younger man and being emotional abused, sickness in my young children: asthma for my  seven month old daughter, leukemia for my 2 1/2 year old son, my husband cheating, separation from my husband, being jobless with no way to support my children, drug addiction in my now adult older son, the struggle to find work. The struggles with a teenage friend of the family who practically lived at my house at times as his mother was abusing drugs, raised by his grandmother who could not control him, Him getting involved with gangs, stealing and going to DJJ, then breaking in a house and killing the owner. My children getting pulled out of school by the police to answer questions about him and seeing if they were involved and his eventual arrest and in DJJ. And then moved to SCDC with a 30-year sentence for murder. Discovering I had breast cancer, alcohol abuse in my 17-year-old son and his expulsion from school just before graduation, my 17-year-old teenage son having a child out of wedlock, my daughter leaving home at 17 and me not being able to stop her. I had more guilt and shame than I knew what to do with, custody battles for my son over his child, the marriage of my daughter at 18 and the children that followed. Eventually my son married the mother of his children and joined the Army.

I met a young lady who talked to me about God. She told me that God loved me. I discovered God had been working in my life the entire time. I just had to sit back and let him show me how much he loved and cared for me. Getting in the right church, with the right pastor who is leading me on the path God has for me. I am so thankful to be a part of Living Faith Christian Center. I still struggle with who I am and God, and sometimes shame, guilt and condemnation try to creep into my life. But now I know that I am more than a conqueror and when the enemy rises up, I know that he’s already defeated. And I realize he’s trying to stop me from walking the path God has set before me.

N.S.