Testimony
Legacy Name: Testimony

A testimony can cover any amount of time. That moment when you understand who God is, and how He changes lives. My testimony is going to start a long time ago, when I was about 9 years old. My grandpa, my dad's dad, passed away from a stroke. It was the day after my dad's birthday and he took it really hard. He picked up his drinking around this time, and while it wasn't very noticeable at the time, it was the start of a long road of trouble.

Years passed and my parents began to have troubles. They were consistently talking of divorce, and I was in on everything, regardless of whether I wanted to be. They would fight and argue and try to turn me against each other. I have 3 younger siblings, and I didn't want any of them to have to go through anything I was experiencing, so I tried to take it all myself. I was also trying to raise my siblings, since my parents weren't doing a really good job with it, and they hated me for it. They would call me names and argue with me at every corner. They wanted nothing to do with me and it hurt.

The years continued to pass on by, and things hit rock bottom. When I got to 8th grade I was at my breaking point. I had dark thoughts in my head, and I couldn't understand how God could be there for me. I didn't even believe there could be a God. How could He, in all of His supposed greatness and wisdom, care for something like me. I was positive that He didn't exist, because I didn't think He could ever let me go through what I was going through. It was around this time I began putting on weight, I was getting made fun of by my family for things out of my control, and I was so lost.

I thought long and hard about what my life was looking like. Though there was some good through this time, there was so much bad it far outweighed what little good I had. My boyfriend at the time, who I had been dating for a year, broke up with me halfway through my 8th grade year, and I thought that was pretty much the end. I was young and in love, and having him in my life was the only thing that had kept me going through the past year. It didn't help that he lived nearby and was friends with my brother, so he was still very much in the picture. I was mentally unable to handle this, on top of the fighting my parents were still going through, and the hatred from my siblings.

Thankfully, it was right around this time that a girl I knew from school invited me to go to her youth group. I don't remember the first activity that she invited me to, but I remember that I didn't want to go. She was persistent though, and eventually she talked me in to it. While there I saw quite a few other people that I went to school with, and I remember thinking how shocked I was to see some of them there, but how others seemed to fit in perfectly. I was still skeptical at first, and I went because my friends wanted me to go, but in time I started to go because I wanted to. I started to want to learn more about this God everyone was talking about, and I started to believe.

Towards the very end of the school year, at the end of May, there was a weekend long conference for middle school. I had talked my brother into going, even though I knew he was even more skeptical than I had ever been. I had been praying for him for months, and at the conference, on the very last night when they called down anyone who wanted to be baptized, he went down to the front. I was so excited I went down as well, and when we got back to our church we both got baptized.

I would love to say that was the end of it all, and that things started to look up right away but that is rarely ever the case. Things continued to get bad, then worse, but through it all I kept my faith. I held on to God in the toughest of times, and He got me through. I won't say I was a perfect Christian, or that I am now. I am full of mistakes, but I understand that no matter what I go through, and how hard I have to fight, God is always by my side. Because I believe in him, and because I share His Word, I am Saved.

This is my testimony.

P.S. That boy I dated in 8th grade, the won who broke my heart? He is now my husband of over 4 years. God really does work in mysterious ways.