My Testimony

I’ve known that God had big plans for me from the moment I was born. I’m a miracle, you see. I was born 3 ½ months early. In 1993 that was kind of a big deal. The doctors really weren’t sure that I would make it. They said that if I did I would be mentally retarded and unable to ever function on my own. Fortunately, my family serves a VERY big God who had plans for me just as large and to this day I’ve never struggled with much as far as my mental/physical functioning goes. I got a 26 on my ACT the first time I took it and made A’s and B’s my Junior and Senior year of high school and got a 3.5 GPA my first semester of college! 
Anyway, my birth mother wasn’t at a place where she could properly care for me and she and my father weren’t married, so they decided to put me up for adoption. I wasn’t legally adopted until I was 10 months old because of all the time I spent in the hospital. My adoptive parents divorced when I was 7 and that’s when things really started affecting me. My first 7 years of life were fairly uneventful. Well, except for when I was first born, but I don’t remember it.

When my parents divorced my mom immediately remarried and my mom and I relocated to Moore, OK where we moved in with my stepdad. I had never even met him yet. Regardless, things were going extremely well. He welcomed me with open arms and loved me like I was his own daughter. I had never seen my mom so happy! I started playing softball and absolutely loved it! My stepdad was my coach and my mentor. I loved him like he was my dad.

My father and I weren’t very close when I was little because he lived in Texas and had other priorities and he was also trying to get his practice up and running(he’s a chiropractor).

Everything was fine for the most part, but my mom had a bit of a temper and one night it got out of control and I was placed in foster care because she left a huge bruise on my shoulder. I was 10. Ever since then I’ve known that I am going to be a foster mother.

When I was 13 my stepdad had an affair with my mom’s best friend. It really shook up our family, but even though my stepdad was the one that lied and didn’t come clean, she decided to stay with him anyway. Things really started changing after that. He became very bitter and wasn’t like himself. He had never raised his voice to me or my mom but that changed. He would work overtime so he wouldn’t have to come home to us. Sometimes I wish he would have filed for divorce, but he never did.

Then two years later, when I was 15, things changed again- for the worse. That was when he started molesting me. When I finally told my mom she didn’t get angry with him. She got angry with me. She said that she couldn’t believe that after all she had been through that I would try to ruin her marriage. To this day she doesn’t believe me. Things were very tense the next 9 months. I begged and begged my dad to come and get me and take me away from my mom and stepdad but since he didn’t know what was going on, he thought everything was fine.

Then one day I came home from school and there was this ugly green station wagon in my driveway that I had never seen before. It was weird! So I went inside and on the couch was my uncle Tiger. He drove 9 hours from Austin, TX to come see us which was extremely odd. He told me to pack a week’s worth of clothes because he was taking me to Norman to stay with my grandmother. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. At the time my dad didn’t either. My mom called him and said that he had to go get me from my grandmother’s house because I had to go live with him.

My dad wasn’t too thrilled but he took me in anyway. Things were alright at first. It was the summer before my junior year of high school. I got a job, started attending a local church, made some friends, and even got a boyfriend. After the third day with him I decided that I didn’t want a boyfriend at all so we just stayed friends. Looking back, I wish I had stayed with him because when school  started things really went downhill. I quit my job, started hanging out with the wrong people, started skipping school, and getting into a lot of fights with my dad and stepmom. I’m not even sure why.

My stepmom decided to leave and divorce my dad and he really blamed me for it. It was October at this point. She told both of us that she planned on leaving in December anyway, so it wasn’t my fault. That didn’t stop him from believing it was. Things were just really tense and I began rebelling in my own way. It was slowly, but I did. My dad got tired of it and decided to send me to Teen Challenge. In the beginning I was glad because I was out of that town. I didn’t even care about being away from my dad because he didn’t want to have a relationship with me anyway.

I entered the program on January 21, 2011 and it was hard and crazy and fun and everything in between. I lived with 14-19 other girls at a time and there was a lot of drama, but every moment was worth it! I remember when I finally gave everything to Him and it was like this huge weight was lifted off my shoulders!

The day I graduated was very bittersweet and I’ve regretted not staying on as an intern. Now that all this time has passed I know that God will open doors so I can continue to be a part of this ministry!