I grew up the third of seven children, all struggling for recognition, moving often and traveling from school to school with no place to really call home. I decided early in life to build walls for protection. My parents married at the young age of 17 and started quickly popping out children causing a lot of stress just living day to day! There was certainly no way or time to learn good communication skills! Now looking back where I came from, born in upstate NY in the early 60's, I wanted to make my mark, so I had decided to excel in academics as well as sports and music.
Soon living in Florida when my dad was 24, he had a life-changing experience with the Lord, so we started going to many Pentecostal churches and Spirit-filled revivals. At the age of 13, back in NY, I was invited to a small church hosting missionaries who were showing some slides of suffering humanity in other countries. One asked the small group if anyone would ever want to help, and immediately I raised my hand and stood up and said, "I will! I will go!" Something happened to me that day, and since then, when I remember that experience, I start to cry.
Still, my teenage years were filled with many family issues and self-performance striving for attention and approval...from school, boys, drugs and alcohol. At age 16, I felt trapped! In 1977, my parents took me to a clinic and made me have an abortion. I had gotten pregnant, and back then that was the thing to do. Afterward, the guilt and shame made me bitter and I lost the desire to excel in school, dropping out the following year. I see now that I was trying to run away from my problems, not facing my real issues, and was looking for love and approval in all the wrong places. I met a guy in the small town we lived in and ended up leaving home and moving in with him. We didn't really have much, so I soon broke up with him and moved to Texas with some friends of the family. I decided after being away from home for a few months, I would write him a long letter and say if he wanted to come to Texas, maybe we could get married and start a family right away, which he did.
In June of 1980, our first son Michael was born. By this time we had moved back to NY near our family. The real troubles had just begun and I know that through it all, my Lord kept me safe. After 23 years of marriage, my parents got a divorce, and the very next year my older sister was killed in an alcohol-related car accident. My own marriage had crumbled and now I had a small baby to take care of along with all the stress of these family crises! So by age 21, I was admitted to a facility for a nervous breakdown, chemical imbalance, and bi-polar disorder, while my dad and step-mother took care of my son. Over five years of medication, doctors, and life without making sense, proved to me that God will never leave us nor forsake us! I'm a living miracle! The doctors told me I would never be able to drive, hold a job, or have any more children.
In 1987, with no more medication and no more doctors, I was still very promiscuous and became pregnant again. During this pregnancy, I was completely healed of the chemical imbalances I had suffered. My second son Shawn was such a blessing to me and I got to have my first son Michael come and live with us. What a blessing to have both of them and to actually have my own apartment and a somewhat "normal" life! After going back to get some higher education, I met and married a fellow student at college and had a daughter Tiffany and a son Brian, which ended in divorce within five years. Throughout this time we were in and out of church and never expected that this would happen to our marriage and family.
I remember desperately praying, "Please, Heavenly Father, send me a husband that will serve you faithfully and be a father to my children and love me sincerely." Well, God answered my prayer Michael and I have been married for 14 years, growing and seeking God! I believe his daughter Gabby, is also a gift God gave me in the place of the little baby that had been aborted. We are now the proud grandparents of 6!
In 2016, as we were studying the Bible and growing in the Hebrew Roots of our Christian faith or Christian Testimonies, we became interested in, and started, blowing those shofar horns. I was led on-line to "The Shofar Man," Jim Barbarossa, and our lives have been so blessed ever since!
In recent months, a friend came to visit and was shown by the Holy Spirit that I still had a source of bitter rejection, and through prayer and agreement with that, the Lord was able to release and deliver me at the subconscious childhood source! In moments of time, the picture I saw of Jesus was a very loving, merciful Father who accepted me without needing to perform, washing away my ugly behaviors and affirming to me my worth to Him!
I am casting all my cares on Him and setting the desires of this world aside to keep him Lord of my life. I am following in His footsteps wherever He leads me. I now trust that He has a perfect plan for my life to be a witness of how He can work our messes into something good, and that His ways are far better. What He has done for me, He can do for you, too! Forever grateful, giving God all the glory, honor, power, and praise! He is the only Way, the Truth, and the Real Life Stories!
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