Our guest author for today’s post is an assistant pastor’s wife who lives in the East Coast. I firmly believe that it is only through being vulnerable enough to tell our true stories of God’s grace towards us that we’re able to help other women who struggle with knowing the goodness of God’s grace towards them. 

We read in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, “ Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.” My prayer for the girl who may be reading this story is that you will find comfort and consolation in the Heart-Healing God of our guest author’s story.

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How many of you have duct tape laying around the house? We do and a lot of it. It fixes everything!

Ten years ago, I was in a place where I knew what was best for myself. I didn’t want to listen to anyone. I was the only one who knew how to make myself happy. After all, duct tapes fixes everything even broken hearts, right?

I grew up in a Christian home and was taught how to have a relationship with God. When I was 10, I said I had gotten saved at a church camp. I remember coming home and telling my parents. It made then so happy. I read my Bible, prayed, and acted like a Christian… but that’s exactly what I was doing: acting.

It was time for me to graduate high school, I was excited. I was going to go to a Christian college, I was going to marry a Christian man, have a family and always go to church.

Life doesn’t go the way we plan. After a year and a half of college, I left: I wanted to go back home with my parents. I didn’t see a need for me to go to college anymore.

I moved back home and got involved in my dad’s church again. I went to a youth outing and there I met what I thought was a great guy. After a couple of months talking to him on the phone, I decided to move in with him.

This caused a rift in my relationship with my parents: we didn’t talk for awhile.

While living with this guy, drugs and alcohol played a big part of our relationship. Everything seemed good between us though for the first year, but by the second year, he started pushing me around. Once it got so bad, he slapped me in the face and my head ended up hitting the oven door and bouncing off the refrigerator.

The consequences of drugs, alcohol, and this relationship kept coming. I ended up getting pregnant a couple of months later and I thought that now he would surely change. 

But he never changed.

I almost lost my baby because he started jumping on my stomach. I was ready to run away after that night, but I couldn’t follow through because I was so scared he would hurt me even even worse.

So I stayed. 

My eyes didn’t really open until I saw my 10-month-old was scared of this man: my baby would scream whenever he was held by this guy.

I wasn’t happy. I’d make my own decisions and didn’t listen to anyone: I chose this life that left me broken. I chose this life that I thought would make me happy, but my happiness left me broken. I was so broken that duct tape couldn’t even begin to fix me and my problems.

Psalm 147:3 tells us, “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”

I had a lot of wounds that needed mending and I had a soul that wasn’t saved. It took 14 years and many shattering decisions to realize I was breaking myself and I couldn’t make myself happy making the choices I was making. I had broken relationships that kept me from wanting to go to church. My decisions not only affected me, but also affected others around me.

I put myself in a horrible relationship, because I was so sure that I knew what was going to make me happy. This bad relationship wrecked many other relationships of mine. 

I could feel the brokenness inside. Duct tape couldn’t fix these problems. I had nowhere to hide from my own brokenness: it followed me everywhere.

Little by little though, God showed me that I needed to get back to the church. Little by little, I met good Christian friends again. By this time, I had started outwardly acting the part of a Christian (my version of duct tape). 

In 2012, I started a new job at a fast food restaurant. My first manager cam around the corner to get me started on manning the fry station. We didn’t know it at that moment, but one day that man would become my husband: we like to say it was love at first fry. 🙂

We got to know each other over the next year and got married about a year later. In the meantime, our pastor had been preaching through the book of Revelation over the course of several month. Our revival meeting started the following may and one Sunday, my life changed forever. 

The morning I got saved, the evangelist had preached on how alcohol and drugs had almost destroyed his life, but God had other plans for him. When the speaker said that, I felt like he was preaching just to me. 

When they gave the altar call, I told the preacher I wasn’t saved. I knew I was not saved, but I was scared that God wasn’t going to be able to forgive me for the things I have done.. I knelt down and prayed, asking God to save me. Romans 10:13 tells us, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That morning, every sin I had ever done was washed away.

That day God pieced me back together. You see, God has the only “duct tape” that can mend all broken hearts and bind all wounds. Maybe today, you’re reading this and feel broken inside: know that God can heal our brokenness.

I have now been happily married to my husband for 6 years: God gave us three handsome, little boys. My husband serves as an assistant pastor in our church and we both help in the children’s ministries. We look forward to our future serving the Lord faithfully however He made lead us. 

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Our guest author’s story was not an easy one for her to share and it is not an easy one to read: I have yet to read it without crying over her brokenness and the brokenness that I experienced in very similar circumstances when I was younger. But if you take nothing more away from her brave story of God’s grace and healing, I hope you take the knowledge that there is a God who desires to pursue you, wanderer. There is a God who wants to heal your brokenness, no matter how ugly that brokenness may be. There is a God who loves you dearly and wishes for you to come back to Him no matter how far you have gone away from His truth.

He wants to heal your broken heart, dear girl. Just ask.