SEX, DRUGS, ABUSE... My life before Jesus. I have had requests to share my testimony. I was praying and Holy Spirit told me to include my story on my "ME" page. Here goes...

I was a WILD teenager. I grew up with an alcoholic mother who was   addicted to diet and nerve pills. She brought men home from bars. I was left with my grandparents a lot. In my teenage years, I had no curfew, no rules... so at age 13, I lost my virginity. I started smoking pot and drinking.

Most of my friends lost their virginity by highschool, and most smoked pot and drank. I went to a local Church with my friends all of my childhood years and even my early teen years. I was involved in the youth, I went on mission trips, and I was baptized. BUT, I was hurting and looking for love and security. I was looking for the love of a Father that I never knew, and I found it in multiple boys over the span of my teenage years. These relationships led to abortion and rejection.

I ended up marrying a guy I met while out partying. He was a cocaine dealer and ended up in drug rehab at age 17. I met him the summer of my Senior year in highschool. We partied together and were married by age 19. After highschool, I was determined to find a stable, normal life. Chad(my husband) and I stopped all the alcohol and drugs. I went to college and got my RN Nursing degree. Chad ended up with a great job from a hook-up by a neighbor. We thought we had the makings of the American Dream.

Well, we soon found ourselves in DEBT. Plus, we got pregnant right after marriage and had one after the next for a total of FOUR!! We filed for bankruptcy by age 21. $75,000.00 worth of credit card and automobile debt. We didn't even have a house. We lived with my grandfather at the time.

With the help of family, we eventually got a loan for a house. We were trapped into working overtime due to our lifestyle. Too tired from working 96 hours a week to enjoy all our TOYS. It was a horrible cycle. The American Dream became a nightmare. The house, cars, boats... they controlled us. We had gone from alcohol and drugs to material things.

Years down the road, I was working at our local hospital on the night shift. Long 12 hour nights left room for many conversations. I found myself working with a CRAZY Charismatic girl. She was close to my age, had been married to a drug dealer, had a past similar to mine as a teen... and she was in LOVE with Jesus. I don't mean your average, everyday Christian. I mean she lived the life too! She talked to me about miracles she had seen. She put her hands on sick patients and prayed and they got better. She worshipped at work! She was DIFFERENT than the religion I had known that was dry and tasteless.

She became my bestfriend. She gave me the Left Behind book to read, and I passed it on to my husband. The book peaked his curiosity...

Now, my husband couldn't stand this girl. She got on his nerves talking God to him over the phone when he called me at work. My husband's take on Church was... " The Church is full of Hypocrites." True enough she agreed, but she was not one of them!

Two years passed. Now married around nine years, we had tried a few Churches here and there on Easter, but we had never regularly attended Church. We were GOOD people. We didn't drink or do drugs. We had four GOOD kids. We were living a GOOD, normal life. BUT... something was still missing.

We ended up at an Assembly of God Church on Easter 1999. We had no idea what the Church would be like, but we liked the Pastor from hearing him on the radio. My friend from work lived an hour away, so we weren't driving to her Church. That Easter morning, I watched my husband walk down to the alter weeping and weeping. Not only that, he was trembling. He was a broken man. In a second, out lives changed direction.

We jumped in head first. We both fell in love with Jesus. We found out that the Church we ended up in was a Pentecostal/Charismatic group that believed in many things I had never seen in the Church I grew up in. The talking in tongues, raising hands and closing eyes in worship... It all was a little scary at first, but very drawing. If all this was really God, we wanted it!!

In the mean time, my friend was so happy for us. We were answered prayer to her. She had cried out to God in intercession for us for years. She had told me the first year I knew her... "You and your entire family will be saved before I die". I remember laughing at her and saying "yeah, right." She was prophesying to me, but I didn't know it then.

Ay age 32, a year after Chad and I received Jesus, my friend was killed in a car wreck. It was very devastating to me. I just didn't understand why Jesus would allow the death of one of HIS greatest witnesses. She had prayed us into the Kingdom. She was HIS example whether at work or the store. Dead at age 32. Why?

Now, years later, I still don't have all the answers. My husband and I are both 33. We have been saved 6 years. We have taken up the cross my friend put down at her death. Our love and passion for Jesus has not faded. We feel called into full time missions and have both gone on short term mission trips. My husband has been to Africa, Brazil, Chile, and Nicaragua. We even took our 10 and 12 year old children to Mexico last summer.

Jesus totally changed everything for us. We can't get enough of him. He still does miracles, healing, signs and wonders... He just uses us to do them. He is not BORING or DULL. If religion has left you lukewarm, I promise you, JESUS is the real thing.

We don't live the perfect life. I still have many issues with hurt feelings from my past. I have had to walk out forgiveness of my mother, and it is a daily process even now. Not having a father, left me with such a void. But now, I have a DADDY in Jesus that loves me. We made stupid financial mistakes, even after our salvation experience. But, we know God promises to complete the good work he has started in our family. 

I bless you who have read my words. We overcome the world with the blood of Jesus on our lives and the words of our testimony coming from our lips. 

You can argue doctrine and religion all day, but you can't argue with personal experience.