A “Little” About Me!

At the age of 18, I found myself at the edge of committing suicide. I believed I was unwanted, a mistake, that there was no purpose to me living; I had lost all hope for the future. What brought me to this place was a combination of two men in my life.

The first man was my biological father. He left my mother, sister, and I when I was only four for another woman; yet stuck around just enough to have a great influence over me. Never wanting me because I was the son he would never have, my father let me know this from as young as I can remember. My father only ever decided to have me around when it was befitting for him; most usually, this was when he had started dating a new woman and wanted to show off his “fathering skills”.

The second man (or rather, boy for he was only 14 at the time) was my older stepbrother that I gained through my father’s marriage to his mistress. This boy, exactly eight years older than me to the day, sexually abused from the time I was 6-years-old and only stopped when I was eight because our parents got divorced. 

During that period of abuse, my own father knew what was occurring in his household but rather than defend me, he blamed me for trying to tear the family apart when I did try to tell my mother what was happening. So instead of gaining protection, I learned to keep quiet and never told a soul what had happened until about two months before my 18th birthday. 

What was engrained in me from these two men was the belief that the core of my being, my femininity, my femaleness is what made me worthless; I was a person to be manipulated and used for their own personal pleasure or gain. This belief runs so deep and wide within me, that still today God is extracting it from my heart and my mind. 

So here I am, believing myself completely void of value at 18, and contemplating how to end my life. What I didn’t know at the time, though, was that God had a bigger plan in mind for me than I could even imagine. My God has given me a mom who took me to church throughout my childhood so I knew that somewhere there had to be a God, though my perspective of Him was completely skewed at the time. This time at church also exposed me to missionaries and the reality of the brokenness of third world countries around the globe. At the age of 12, though I couldn’t understand it then, I began to feel the call to go overseas and serve. Yet, in God’s beautiful design, this set me up perfectly for God to call me to Him. 

In my desperation of that time, I began to call out to God. I challenged God to prove my worth, to prove He had a plan for my life or I would end it myself. And God did just that. Throughout my darkest moments, God would meet me, He would give me peace, tell me He loved me, and that He had great plans for my life, to send me overseas to Africa to love His people. [This concept at the time was scary, but I was also willing to accept anything in those moments. However, I have come to embrace it now!]

During January of 2008, after 4 months of living in a suicidal depression, I allowed myself to be dragged to a Christian seminar by one of my friends. Here at this seminar, the entire topic was the characteristics of God, our Father in Heaven, and separating Him out from our earthly fathers. This was the last puzzle piece I needed. With tears streaming from my eyes, I finally relented to God’s persistent request for me to trust Him, and I surrendered my life into His hands. 

In the last five years of my relationship with God, I have been all over the place; from running to His arms to running away from Him to straight up testing the boundaries of God’s love (let me tell you, there are none). Through it all, though, God has been my constant, always drawing me back to Him and His plans for my life. God has had to redefine love for me and to teach me how to allow myself to be loved by Him and others…something I am still learning.

September 4, 2010, on my 21st birthday, I got the word “Love” tattooed on my wrist as a reminder to myself that God loves me. Even in that small act of proclaiming faith, God has used it; for within a year of me getting that tattoo, God stripped me of everything I found worth in that was not Him, and again, I found myself desperately crying out to Him and He would always point me back to my wrist.

Yet this time of desperation was a time for God to break me down in order to build me back up again. With nothing left to place my worth in, I finally began to seek to understand what it meant to have an identity in Christ. I still find myself in this journey today, but I also know that I have a stronger and deeper relationship with my God than ever before. 

This leaves with me with where I am at today. I am 23-years-old and in my last quarter of college at Cal Poly Pomona. The desire God placed in my heart at such a young age to serve and make the world a better place led me to earning a degree in Sociology/Social Work. With my time ending at Cal Poly, my time also ends with my involvement with an organization called Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ). I have been involved and been on leadership with Cru at Cal Poly Pomona for over three years now, and I must admit, it is because of the people in that community that I have grown so much with God over the last couple years. I know what an honest biblical community looks like, I have been pushed to grown in the Lord more than I could possibly imagined, and I have had a skill set built within me that sets me up beautifully for missions. They are my Cru family. 

And as I look towards the future of this next year, I know that I will be going to 11 countries in 11 months; but I really can’t imagine more than that. I know God is going to grow me, push me out of my comfort zone, beyond my boundaries, and into a place where I am forced to trust Him daily to provide for me and give me the strength to keep going. And yet, I am so incredibly excited for it! 

  Baby me…and my first Oreo all over my face!

The three beautiful women I get to disciple this year through Cru at our annual Spring Break Trip. I had just gotten in a paint fight, hence the teal on my face. (I guess much hasn’t changed over the years!)

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