“I was raped when I was nine, that is young isn’t it? Too young…”
I met Lynda at IHNFA, a juvenile detention center for girls. We did cardboard testimonies. Mine declared, “Depressed” the other side revealing, “Now I have the joy of Jesus.” She came up to me after. Pointing to her cut-up arms, she said, I’m depressed too.
Lynda had never opened up to anyone about her story. It was time. She was raped when she was nine. Less than a year later her mother died. Her father abandoned the family and she was left to live alone on the streets at ten. Pointing to a long scar from her elbow all the way down to her wrist she said, “I did that with a razor when I was 11.”
She blames herself for getting raped. Feeling worthless and alone. She was sent to IHNFA because she tried to kill herself and was in the hospital for many days. In order to escape the pain, she hurts herself. With no razor she now scratches herself so deep it bleeds.
At only 14 her arms are covered in scars, some as recent as yesterday, her eyes are vacant, her hair crawling with lice. She is a girl who has nothing, no hope, no family, and no apparent future.
Kat told her story of redemption from a life of cutting. I cried as I looked into Lynda’s hopeless eyes. She told us that all she wanted to do was die. That she couldn’t face it anymore, it was too much to handle.
Kat gave her a bracelet and told her that every time she cut, she should look at that bracelet and promise us that she wouldn’t kill herself. Lynda told us she couldn’t promise anything; life was too hard.
We prayed for her, hugged her, and told her that she was beautiful, that she was worth something, that no matter what God would never abandon her.
As we were leaving she said, “I promise, I won’t try to kill myself.”
Lynda’s story is a story of sadness. A story of hopelessness. A story of agony. I will be praying for Lynda. I pray that one day she can turn over her sign of hopelessness, revealing her hope and joy in Christ alone.
