Recently I was asked to be the speaker at my church for a women’s fellowship dinner. I wrote out my testimony and was a little surprised by what I found. I expected that my focus would be a lot on growing up with a deformity and how hard that was. Growing up was hard, but that was not what ended up being my main focus. If anything, maybe growing up with a deformity helped to make me stronger for what else I have faced in my life.
After I got home from speaking, I got to thinking that people were probably expecting me to talk more about growing up with a deformity. My testimony centered more around surviving an abusive marriage and learning to get past being dependant on the men in my life. I, myself was a little shocked when I got home and really started thinking about it. I did not plan it that way, I just started writing and wrote everything that came to mind and that was how it happened.
On my journey to speaking in public, I had to relive a lot of what happened in my past. The funny thing is, that getting made fun of in school was not nearly as hard as the life I had after school. Sure, growing up with a deformity has helped to shape who I am and has given me a passion for helping others that are like me and facing the same issues. But that is not the entire story of who I am. I hope that my testimony touched someone’s heart. I hope that God uses it to reach others that are struggling. Because I feel like He can still use it, I am going to post my testimony in hopes that others will read it that were not there at the meeting the other night.
My life has been a journey, some good, some bad… Over all I have learned that no matter what happens, with the right frame of mind you can use it all to grow and to become more like who God wants you to be. I hope that my life can be a testament to how far God can bring one person. I know that if even one person can see how far God has carried me, they will see that He can carry them as well if they will only open their heart.
My Testimony
I grew up being told that God made me special. For those that do not know what happened to my arm, I was born with a birth defect. For as long as I can remember my family has always told me, that I was born this way for a purpose. Which makes me think of a verse I like which is, Psalm 138:8 The lord will fulfill His purpose for me; your love, O lord, endures forever- do not abandon the works of your hands. While growing up I attended church infrequently. I can remember going to church for short periods of time but not consistently. I never remember my parents together, since they were divorced when I was still very young.
Growing up in school with a deformity was hard. I was not used to getting made fun of. According to my Mom, I got kicked out of kindergarten on the first day of school because I hit a kid in the face with my lunch box for making fun of me. That happened a few more times as I remember. The teachers either ignored me or acted like I was one to be pitied. I got called names like freak, or three fingers, and was told that I didn’t have to try to do things since I only had one arm. All of which made me more determined to learn how to do EVERYTHING that other kids could do.
During my younger childhood and elementary school days I had 10 surgeries on my arm. I finally told them I’d had enough. I didn’t want to go through the pain of the surgeries anymore. They still had many plans they wanted to do to make me look “normal”. To me THIS (holding up my hand) is normal. I do not need cosmetic surgery to make everyone else feel ok with MY deformity.
I was a fairly obedient child (at least I saw myself that way); I wanted to please my parents. I did test my boundaries now and then and as a result of that I became a teenage mother. The worst part was telling my parents, and facing the disappointment in their eyes. I found out I was pregnant with my oldest son Richard, when I was 18. I delivered him about 2 weeks before my 19th birthday and the end of my senior year. 3 months after he was born I married his father.
My first husband is an alcoholic and I believe he might be bi-polar. We were together for 3 years before getting married and I thought I was in “love”. We went on to have two more children, Kaitlyn and Kaleigh. Things quickly went downhill in our marriage. He job hopped, drank regularly and became increasingly violent. He was what they call a “cutter”. He would get mad at me and slash his arms and tell me it was my fault, and he would threaten me with knives. To this day I still have times when I cannot even cut up my own food because I can’t bear to pick up the knife. He abused me in numerous ways until one day I finally snapped.
We had been married for about 6 years and one day things just got too much for me to handle. He had recently dragged me out of my van by my throat, because I would not let him drive drunk in the only vehicle we had for me to get to work in and get the kids to school in. He was escalating in his suicide attempts and violence against me. He left for work one morning and as I lay there crying, I cried out to God. I begged him to show me a way to fix my marriage. I did not want to be divorced. Both of my parents had been married several times and I did not want that life. I prayed that he would protect me and my kids and I prayed for some direction in my life. For the first time in all of the years of my marriage I felt a calming peace come over me.
I found a church shortly after and I started attending, and I encouraged my family to attend as well. My grandmother, my aunt and my cousin started attending with me and we all got baptized on the same day. My husband even started attending with us and the kids. He however did not find peace or salvation; I think his attendance was more focused on keeping tabs on me. We attended for several months and I thought I was doing things right. I joined the choir, attended regularly, and tried to find time to read my Bible even though my husband made that very difficult. He found ways to keep me from going. Such as shutting off my alarm clock, leaving with the van, or simply refused to let me go. He tried to keep total control over my life.
It started to feel like maybe I was wrong. I still believed in God, but I found it easier on me to stay home and do what he wanted me to do rather than to face his rage. So I stopped going to church and reading my Bible. I still prayed every day, mostly for my kids not to hear the things he said to me, or to walk in on something that would terrify them and to keep his attention focused on me so that he would not turn his rage on them. When I think back to this time, I take comfort in a couple verses from Psalm 55 verses 16-17 But I call to God, and the Lord saves me. Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress and He hears my voice.
God answered my prayers, he kept my kids safe. They saw and heard more than they should have, but they were safe. After 9 years of marriage, being cheated on and abused, which at the time I did not consider abuse because he never actually “hit” me, just shoved me around, screamed at me, and many things that I cannot even bring myself to share, I finally had enough and I ran away. I filed for divorce and thought things would get easier. Instead he got more threatening. He would show up unannounced at my home, at my job, would threaten me or physically restrain me so that I had to listen to whatever he wanted to say. I started taking martial arts classes to learn to defend myself and eventually got a gun.
I was so scared of being on my own that as soon as I got divorced I jumped in with someone else. I married my second husband who was the complete opposite of the first. He is honest, he didn’t drink and he was not physically abusive. He was also a non-believer. Because he didn’t believe and I was grateful that he wanted me even with kids I did not go back to church. No one from the church ever checked on me when I left, so I believed they did not care. I felt like I didn’t belong and felt hurt that they did not care when I went missing and that maybe church was just not for me.
One thing I did not count on was my 2nd husband not loving me. We got married and had my son Drake together, I took on the responsibility of being a mother to his son D’Artagnan, who he had from a previous relationship and still he did not love me or my kids. I did everything I could to make him happy. I kept the house clean, I cooked, I worked and took care of kids while he worked and went through the police academy. Nothing was ever enough to make him love me the way I THOUGHT I loved him.
And after 3 years, I simply gave up. I felt like I deserved to be loved. I had been through so much and I was not going to stay in another marriage that I was not cared for and loved. Divorcing him was even harder than my first husband. For one because I thought I still loved him, for another I was scared that I was following my parents down the same path of multiple divorces and marriages and the hardest part was fighting for custody of our son. He never even wanted children but here he was trying to take our son away from me and split up my kids. I thought I would have a mental breakdown before it was over and maybe I did. While going through my custody case someone showed me a verse from Philippians it is Philippians 4:13 I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.
Then my mom and her husband invited me to Judgment House. That night changed my life. Watching this walk through play put on by Green Valley and seeing the results of denying God hit home for me in a way that I never thought possible. After that I started attending here with my mom and her husband. Pretty soon it became a regular routine. I rededicated my life to Christ and things started happening. I came to realize that the relationship that I had once again jumped into after my 2nd divorce was not what God had planned for me. The man I was seeing was a very long time friend and still is. We went to a couple’s seminar with the church and came back with more questions than answers and eventually realized that we were much better suited to being friends than possible spouses. Now for the first time in my life, I had a home for my kids and was living on my own. I started encouraging my kids to grow in their faith and my three older kids have become saved and have been baptized.
Today I am finding ways to serve in my church, sometimes God calls me to do things that are out of my comfort zone (like speaking in front of people), but I still do it because I know He is using these things to grow me spiritually. I have returned to college, and am now studying to get a degree in Human Resource management. I intend to start a non-profit for kids who are like me and were born with a deformity. I hope that through this venture families will be able to see what God has done in my life and see that with God all things are possible.
My life verse is Matthew 6:34, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” This verse is what calms my mind. After worrying for so many years about what MIGHT happen to me, I know better than some that each day indeed has enough of its own trouble. Being a single mom and working full time and going to school full time, I am still struggling with worry. When I get to this point, I start reciting Matthew 6:34 over and over and over again.
God has blessed me in so many ways and continues to do so in ways that I could never even have guessed. God has changed me from a co-dependent person who needed someone in my life even if that person was unhealthy for me, to a strong and independent woman. He has changed me from having no self esteem and thinking that I am worthless to having the confidence that God has my back and He made ME with a purpose in mind. I went from someone who thought that no one could love me, to knowing that my Father God has always loved me. I have great friends who encourage me in my faith and a wonderful church family who notices when I am missing. The best part, is knowing that God is with me and He is still shaping me into who I will to be so that my life will be a testament to His greatness.
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