My Testimony
Daddy, if you read this, you will find things here that you never knew. I have much in my life that I did not want you to have to hear. Daddy, thank you so much for showing me the Jesus that I have so come to know and love. Mother, your mind is no longer able to understand. I know that I told you I was sorry, Mother and Daddy. I have to tell my story that others may find the hope that I have found in the Jesus that you showed me. Thank you, both, for the love you have shown me. Most of all, thank you for teaching me of Jesus. I love you!
I have omitted the names, purposely. I do not wish to cause any harm to these people.
I have agonized and prayed over when and how to write my story. I know that this is a long page and if time is a factor for you, feel free to print it out and take your time in reading it. First, let me say that in my life I have been guilty of many wrongs. I have harmed many people. If I have harmed you in any way, I want to start by saying with all my heart that I am sorry. Please, forgive me. This is not just my story. This is the story of an awesome God who met me where I was, called me unto him, and changed me. I am no longer the same person as I once was. This is a story of the one who is in the business of changing lives. This is a story of Jesus.
My name is Amy. I was born of a mother who conceived me out of wedlock. I was told that she was young and made some bad decisions on her life. I have also been told that her family had money, and lots of it. This is the story of my birth as I have been told. My birth mother was 17 when she gave birth to me. Abortion was not legal at the time of my conception and for that I praise the name of Jesus. Had it been legal, I might not be alive today to tell you what the Lord has done. My mother was told that she could not keep me. She was told she had to choose between keeping her illegitimate child and the wealth of her parents. She chose to give me up for adoption.
Now, my parents had been trying to have a baby for years. They had been unable to conceive so they applied for adoption through Buckner’s Adoption Agency in Dallas, TX. When the home visit was made to determine if they would make good parents, they had been told it would be at least two years before there was a baby for them to adopt. However, at the time of the home visit, at the conclusion of it, they were told that there was a baby available right then if they wanted this child. My mother said that she wanted it and my Daddy said no. Now, it was not that he did not want me, it was that it was too quick and he was not ready. Satan took these two things and formed what I have learned to call the original lie that he was going to use to destroy me. That lie went something like this, “You are worthless and unwanted.” What satan meant for harm, God meant for good. The home I was placed in and the people who have been such wonderful parents to me were Christians and they raised me in church where I heard of this man named Jesus. I wish the rest of the story was that I accepted him at a young age and lived happily ever after. However, as Paul Harvey says, “This is the rest of the story.”
As a young child my mother used to say that I was very compliant, never disobeyed and was always seeking to please others. I was the child that the other kids hated. I was skinny, gangly, uncoordinated, and wore glasses. I was invited to the birthday parties of those who attended my church, not because I was desired to be there, but because one of two things had happened. Either they were forced to invite me or they invited me to have someone there to torment and make fun of. My life from the age of about eight (as best as I can recall) on up was made a living hell by those around me. In the fifth grade, what had been bad got worse. I was always a straight A student, well behaved, never got into any trouble and there was a teacher who used me to discipline her class. Where I had been despised already, I was not only despised, I was hated and those classmates made sure I was well aware of it. I was miserable. I remember crying over and over again for the torment to end. The thought that I was unwanted and worthless grew.
As adolescents grew closer, my desire to be accepted became more and more overwhelming. I had this, what I will call a black hole, inside of me that it seemed that nothing would fill. I spent the next 15 years or so trying to fill it with anything I could find. When I was around twelve years old I found a crowd that would at least seem to accept me the way that I was. By the age of 13, I had met the man who would “save” me from the hurts of being rejected. He turned me on to drugs and alcohol. Of course, my parents being who they were, would never have allowed me to see him so it became necessary to sneak out at night, run away from home, and lie, lie, lie to be able to be with him. In my mind, he was what I needed. As long as I ran with him, I was cool. He was 18 when we first got together. I was 13. Of course things were not what they seemed on the surface. For years, the reality of all that went on with him was nearly more than I could fathom. I had been raised so sheltered and naïve that I could not believe anyone could be as terrible as he was.
The very first time I had snuck off to be with C he raped me. I could not bring myself to call it what it was for that would have meant that he did not love me and accept me like he said he did. For the next several months I snuck out with him, did drugs, got drunk and got caught. Things went from bad to worse in that this man that I thought loved me like I had never been loved before, began pressuring me to marry him. I begged my mother and daddy to let me get married at the age of 14. I threatened, I ran away from home, and I did nearly everything you could imagine to pressure them into letting me marry him. What I have never told them was what was going on behind that sworn love. I was so confused and so desperate to find love that I could not even be totally honest with myself for years. Behind the scenes, C had gotten control of my mind and my body. He gave me drugs then threatened me that if I did not marry him he would tell my parents exactly what I was like and who I was. Now, I was responsible for the situation I was in as far as it was a result of choices I had made leading up to it, but I had no clue how far this would all go.
Finally, after months of pressure and heartache, Mother and Daddy took me before the judge to allow me to marry C at the age of 14. I had won, or so I thought. Now, that black hole would be filled and all would be rosy. We had a wonderful, small church wedding. Then, on our wedding night the real nightmare started. On our wedding night, C got drunk and raped me terribly, beat me and told me that now I was his and he could do with me as he pleased and there was nothing I could do to stop him. During the next few months, he beat me nearly every day. I was forced to hide drugs and smuggle them from place to place. He used my body to pay for his drugs, forcing me to have sex with man after man. He would beat me if I refused, then he would beat me for being unfaithful if I had sex with them. In order to be “redeemed” from my sin of unfaithfulness, he made me eat feces and drink urine. He would lock me outside while he had sex parties inside. One night it was less than 20 degrees out and he shoved me out the door in just a shorty nightgown and left me there till well after daylight the next morning. This became more than I could endure.
I know that the Lord has his hand upon me even during this time, long before I came to know him. On three different occasions I made very serious attempts to take my life. I saw no other way for the nightmare to end. Twice I slit my wrists to the bone and yet, I never bled a drop. Once I took an entire bottle of nearly 300 Sinequan. I later learned that was a totally fatal dose, yet nothing ever happened to me. The Lord was not through with me. Even in the midst of all this, he was calling me.
I finally managed to get out of that disastrous marriage and by the grace of God I got out alive. I had left him and moved in with my mother and daddy while he had gone to join the Marines. While he was gone, I met a man who promised to help me to get out. I divorced C and 30 days later I married R. I was married to R for ten years. He did not abuse me like C did, but he was abusive all the same. For the first several years of our marriage I was not allowed outside my home without him. I could not even walk to the mailbox to get the mail. I was fifteen when we married. During this marriage, I conceived and gave birth to three beautiful children. I began to go back to church when we had been married several years. I was still seeking Jesus. That black hole threatened to swallow me. R hurt my kids, especially the middle one. He was a control freak, insanely jealous, to the point that I was not allowed to speak to any man for fear that he would accuse me of sleeping with him. Several years into this marriage, I learned that it was not normal for a woman to be made a prisoner in her home, that women were allowed to have friends and go to town without have to be accompanied by their spouse. This caused a great deal of trouble. All during this time, the Lord called to me. He was trying to get my attention.
When we had been married for ten years, I had all I could stand and filed for divorce. Our pastor called us in for counseling to try to hold the marriage together. I sat in his office and listened to R lie to him and I could not take any more. I believed that I was a Christian. That is what I told the pastor that counseled us. I had made a “profession of faith” at age eight and thought that I truly was born again. However, my life did not reflect this. For the first year after R and I divorced, I drank, went to the clubs to dance, and was seeing several men. We had been divorced around a year when I learned that I was pregnant. This was a wake up call for me. I realized that the baby’s father was an alcoholic and knew that I could not raise another child the way I had been living. I was working at a local 7-11 the night shift and made the decision to have my child and raise her alone.
When I was about three months pregnant, I met the man of my dreams. I just knew that hole that had followed me all my life was gone forever. He courted me, just like something out of the storybooks. He flew me to California to ask me to marry him. He was a prominent businessman in a town near where I was living. Of course, I told him I would marry him and I believed we would live happily ever after. He knew I was expecting another man’s child and said that was no problem and he would raise her as his own. We married when I was six months pregnant. I worked hard with him at the business he owned. I was happy and content. I no longer needed Jesus in my life. However, five months into our marriage, when my baby was two months old, all the rules changed and I did not know what to do. The day after Christmas, 1987, I found myself homeless, jobless and alone with four children, one of whom was barely over three months old. This would prove to be the best thing that could ever have happened to me.
Because I had been raised to believe in Jesus, when thing got so bad, the first place I went was back to church. Sitting in a worship service, December 1987, I realized that I had never truly made a decision to give Jesus Christ his rightful place in my life. Jesus had pursued me all those years and I had not heard him. It took me losing everything that I had ever hoped for and dreamed of. That day, I can testify that I was a changed person inside. I longed for a new way of life. I began teaching in church, playing handbells, and being active in many areas of the church. I had truly given my life to my Savior for the first time ever. Now, I wish I could say that from that point on I followed Jesus the way he wanted me to follow. I am a very prideful, stubborn, hard-headed person and when I found adversity in the church, I returned to the old way of life, clubbing, drinking, and eventually, I became sexually involved with more than one man. However, I was not the same person as I once was and that lifestyle no longer fit me. I lived it, but I was miserable. I was uncomfortable and knew that something had to give. That something was the way I was living.
I met a man in the church and we became involved. He moved in with me. We drank together, and eventually, we married. I was not happy. I quit drinking and returned to the life that I knew the Lord had for me to live, but I was a bitter and quarrelsome wife. My home was full of strife. My husband continued to drink and his drinking became a real problem for me. His drinking graduated to his using illegal drugs and things went from bad to worse. During this time, I began to truly seek the heart of God. That was the only thing that would fill that black hole that had tried all my life to consume me. Slowly, over the next several years, the Lord led me to a wonderful recovery group that begun to point me to the only true help there is. Due to the continued drugging of my spouse, I found myself sitting in the office of a wonderful Christian counselor who showed me the way to live my life for Jesus. Over the next several years, I began to grow in the Lord and to see that I was truly a changed creature. I learned that I am loved more than I could imagine. I learned that not only was I wanted, but that he had died that I might have life and have it more abundantly. I learned that the things that I had done in my life and had been done to me did not have to destroy me or harm me any longer. I learned that he truly had come to me and taken the old me away. I was a new creation in Jesus.
Today, my life is still, at times, filled with adversity. However, I am continually learning my worth in Jesus and I no longer believe the lie of satan that I am worthless and unwanted. That black hole, that once demanded more and more to be filled, is gone, filled once and for all with the only thing that can fill it, Jesus. Today, I am still married to my husband. I made a covenant with my Lord Jesus the day I married him and I cannot break that covenant. I am learning to be content. My life is full of joy. I now have six beautiful children, five gorgeous grandchildren and I live my life for the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a new creation in Jesus. Jesus took the pieces that had been so badly damaged over my lifetime and has made them into the beginnings of a beautiful work. As long as I focus on him, there is nothing that can harm me. He is my peace, my joy, my love, my all in all, and most of all, he is always with me. He had his hand on me from the time I was young and today, I have come to know him for who he is. I have to tell you that Jesus Christ is my reason for living. He met me where I was, when I was most unlovable, called to me, brought me unto him and made me new. I know that I am his. The day I gave my life to him, I was changed. The changes did not necessarily come overnight, but the inside of me was changed immediately. Have you had this life changing experience with Jesus? Have you come face to face with the God of creation? Have you been made new by his blood? If you have not, He will do that same for you as he has done for me. Please, follow me as we journey together and I tell you of the wondrous Savior who found me and is creating in me a new being.
