As a child, I experienced sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. I became rebellious and a partaker of risky behavior. I made many bad decisions, one being to trust a man to help me escape what I was experiencing at home. I believed his promises and left with him only to find myself used to transport drugs, drugged myself and eventually forced into prostitution. When I was able to escape, I returned home but I was unable to cope with the way I was treated and I returned to the streets and life as a prostitute. I sank deeper into my addiction to alcohol, pot, and cocaine. A ‘trick’ turned bad ended in me being violently raped. I was beaten so badly that he left me for dead. This experience shook me enough to get me off the streets.
I spent the next 20 years trying to overcome the damage my years on the street had caused to my soul. Attempting to heal through achievement and acceptance in the workforce and my profession as a Master Pet Stylist. I still consumed alcohol and had times when I had to smoke pot to help ‘get over’ the evil I was a part of and all the evil that happened to me in my past. I had also made the decision to abort three of my children. I buried all this and tried to forget it ever happened. God blessed me with two children I raised alone until marrying the man He had for me in 2000.
In 2007, when I came to believe that Yeshua shed His blood for my sins to be forgiven, I became a new creation. The old passed away and behold all things were new. God began to heal my brokenness from my past. God caused me to believe His truth that I was forgiven of my sins and through His grace I believed Him. Today I serve as a missionary Prison Chaplain in a maximum security women’s prison. God uses my past and how He has healed and changed me to bring hope to the women I minister to in prison and also to the women I have been blessed to meet at the Red Carpet Center in Tel Aviv.
The words of Isaiah 61 are so dear to me “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to those who are bound.. to comfort al who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness”. This my Lord has done for me and He is no respecter of persons, He will do the same for all who call upon His name and believe in Him.
