When I was little, my mom took us to church.

My dad never went with us and I wondered about this. It wasn’t until I was about 5 that I learned my dad was a moonshine maker. Dad and mom fussed a lot about the way he wanted to make money. I loved going to church and I loved God with my whole being. There was not a thing I thought God could not do. We lived on a 100 acre farm and raised registered Belgian horses for a living. Children that lived near us would come over and we would ride horses together. Up until I was 5 my life was great, then it happened.

          My dad started raping me when I was 5 and did not stop until the age of 12. That's because my mom was told what had been happening and she left my dad. My mom told me that my dad use to lay in bed and say he ought to just go into our bedrooms and blow our brains out. He told my mom we would never amount to anyhing. I don't have to tell you how this affected my life. I was scared to death of my dad and what he was doing to me. I never understood it, because I didn’t know what was happening to me. Sex was taboo talk in our house; we could not talk about it.

          At 16, I met a boy that I liked, and he was a preacher’s kid. He had gone to church all his life. He asked me to go to church and right away I told him I would never go to church. You see, in my mind, God had let me down and I was disappointed in him. In fact it would be fair to say I hated God more than anyone. In my heart I knew God could do anything and if he wanted to he could have stopped my dad from raping me. 

          It wasn’t until years later that my husband made me see that it wasn’t God who let my dad do this terrible thing to me. It was the devil, not God. I remember being so scared to die. I was not pure and white as snow. I could not enter into heaven being a dirty trashy whore, for that is how I saw myself. I was so unclean, how could God ever let me even step on his ground in Heaven? I thought I would go to hell when I died. I didn’t even deserve to breathe God’s air.

          At 21, I got saved and 3 weeks later I was baptized. The day I got baptized is The Day I Met God. That night as soon as I went to bed, God showed up. God was outside my window and the whole night turned to daylight. God is the purest light I have ever witnessed. I did not have to tell God who I was, for he already knew me. God spoke my name and told me I would go to Heaven. He spoke scripture out of Psalms to me, but I was so scared I have to admit I didn’t hear much. I do remember going to the doctor the next day because my ears hurt really bad and the doctor said it was the worst ear infection ever. I didn’t tell the doctor that it was God’s powerful voice that had hurt my ears.