LOVE FROM AN UNLOVED CHILD
by Katie Guadalupe King
At the age of twenty-one, I had nothing to live for, so came up
with the perfect plan to end my life: Take a week's vacation off
work and buy as much cocaine as I could get my hands on, plus
three bottles of sleeping pills and a twelve pack of beer. I
would go to sleep and never wake up again. But God had other
plans.
I grew up in a home where love could not exist. My real dad, whom
I never met, separated from my mother before I was born. He was
in and out of Big Mac (a prison in McAlester, Oklahoma). He came
back for a one-night stand; I was the result of that night.
My mother never forgave my father for getting her pregnant and so
blamed me for everything that ever went wrong in her life. Thanks
to her drug habit, I was born addicted to cocaine and screamed
for the first nine months. My mom admitted years later she would
have done anything to make me quit screaming.
She did do anything - like trying to kill me before I was two.
Weighing only eighteen pounds, I suffered from malnutrition to
the point my hair turned orange and my stomach distended. I could
not walk or talk. While I was in the hospital receiving
treatment, the nurses couldn't take the diaper off me without
ripping the skin, so they soaked it off. Because of such gross
neglect, the authorities removed me from my mother's care.
But I also failed to find love with my adoptive parents. They
were church leaders who knew how to look good at church while
they tortured me physically, sexually, and emotionally at home.
By the time I was five, my adoptive mother convinced me I was
pure evil - the antichrist. If she was right, I told myself, even
God could not love me. Checking out would save God the trouble of
the final showdown.
After the age of five, I begged God every night to let me die.
Each morning when I woke up, I was furious with Him, convinced
that He hated me, too. I vowed to hate God the rest of my life.
Two weeks after graduation I was kicked out of the house and
never went back. I worked five jobs at fast food stores to make
ends meet and to keep from thinking about my life.
I eventually met a guy named Bryan and married him two weeks
later. He became abusive in time, and we divorced.
During this time, my greatgrandfather took ill and died. He was
one of the few people in my life who truly loved me. On the night
I tried to take my life, he appeared to me in a dream. He tried
to convince me that my life wasn't over, that he loved me, and
more important, that God loved me. He was sure I'd get my life
straighten out. He hugged me and the disapeared.
I was furious! I screamed at God, "If Grandpa is right and You do
exist and love me, then You have to send someone who can explain
You to me so that I'll want to have something to do with You."
That was no small order.
Eight years later, I gave birth to a daughter by Billy, a man I
eventually married despite an on-again, off-again relationship.
I ended up leaving Billy because I was convinced he was abusing
Shelby. I wanted to protect my daughter and myself at all costs,
so we left Arkansas and moved to Idaho when Shelby was four.
After five years of separation, Billy moved to Idaho and
convinced me that he had changed completely. Because Shelby
wanted a dad, I married Billy.
But the marriage didn't last. After a year, I left Billy for the
last time. He wouldn't agree to a divorce without trying to get
custody of Shelby, so I remained legally married but separated.
Three years later, Billy's dad begged me to come see him in
Arkansas, so I took Shelby with me. He told me he knew that this
was the last time I would see him alive, that he was ready to
die. How can he be so at peace about death? I wondered. I was
terrified of it. I couldn't ask him because it would be like
giving my OK for him to die.
When my father-in-law died three weeks later, I cried for the
first time in over thirty years. God, why? Why Dad? He was the
closest thing to a dad I'd ever known. You know he loved me!
Standing at the casket, I told God, "I had just decided to give
You another chance, and You did it again! I hate You!"
I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't die (God wouldn't let
me), and couldn't live. I hated God yet wanted the peace Dad had
before he died. I was preoccupied trying to find out if death was
the end. I felt like a thirty-seven-year-old child who had lost
her only parent. I was lost, scared, and lonely.
At that time, I worked for a school bus company. After a month of
constantly bugging two of my drivers for answers, I gave my life
to Christ. The drivers are now my pastor and his wife.
Coming to Christ was not easy for me. Two weeks after attending
church, I was confronted with a lesson on marriage in Sabbath
school. I shut down emotionally and wanted to get up and walk
out. I knew I couldn't serve a God who wanted me to go back to
Billy and give up the peace and safety my daughter and I
had just gained. Billy started stalking me in Idaho and even
tried to kidnap Shelby, so I was awarded a temporary protective
order. After finding out how much trouble he could be in if I
pressed charges, Billy agreed to a divorce. I also wanted to
break the last of the bonds with my past, so I legally changed my
first, middle, and last names to match the new person Christ had
made me.
Somehow I knew that giving my life to Christ wasn't the end. I
wanted to show God's love to the unlovable, to share what I
had found with them. But how? When I heard about Pioneer
Missionary Training, I knew I'd found the right answer.
God made a way for me financially to go on the trip, so in late
December I found myself serving beside my fellow Christians in
Monterrey, Mexico. During the ten-day trip, I learned how to
minister to others and share my faith. One day during street
witnessing I shared my faith with a stranger. The man asked the
interpreter if I would pray with him to accept Jesus as his
Savior.
That's not the only transformation I saw thanks to participating
in PMT. Last summer Shelby (then eleven years old) gave her life
to Christ at the Meridian, Idaho, campmeeting. She could hardly
believe the change in me over the last year, especially as I
prepared for and served through PMT. Now Shelby can't wait till
she's old enough to go on a PMT trip herself.
So many times Christ should have given up on me, but He didn't.
He went beyond what I thought He could do - saving me from my
past - and planted a desire in me to share the peace I have found
in Him. I want those who have nothing to live for to know that
there is hope. I want them to know that if God could take an
unloved person like me and love her, He can do it for anyone.
.........................
From the April/May 2009 "The Bible Advocate" - a publication of
the Church of God, Seventh Day, Denver, CO. USA.
......
NOTE:
Now you think you've had troubles? Maybe you have. I know for me,
that when I read something like this, I've had no troubles at
all!!
It can be hard for people who have had a relatively smooth life,
to comprehend having a life like this lady had. Yet there are
children out there who are going through hell as we say. We see
reports of it on TV news specials and the like. It is truly heart
breaking. We should be shedding tears when we see what some
children are experiencing as they go through life. We should be
crying and sighing for the evil, the sin, the wickedness, that
lies around us. We should be praying "Thy Kingdom come, THY WILL
be done on earth as it is in heaven."
If YOU are one of those persons who thinks God cannot possibly
exist because of the horror you have or are experiencing in life,
please take heart from the above article. Other than sin in the
world I have no specific answer for you, as to why YOU have had
to go through such misery and heart-ache. But I know that God
does LOVE YOU!! Yes He does, and if you will come to Him, if you
will put your burden on the shoulders of Christ Jesus, He will
carry them. Not only will He carry them for you, He will give you
PEACE, COMFORT, HOPE, AND JOY!! He will give you a NEW HEART, and
a NEW MIND. He will give you the very nature of God. He will give
you the very Holy Spirit of God. Both He and the Father will come
and LIVE within you.
If your burden is heavy, let Christ Jesus lift it from you and
upon Himself put it. Pour out your heart to Him, ask Him for His
peace, ask Him to wash away the past horror of your life. Throw
yourself upon His love that He has for you. Ask the Father for
His mercy and grace. Ask the Father to wash away all the sins
DONE to you and all the sins you have done againts yourself and
others, through the blood of Christ. Ask the Father and Jesus for
a NEW heart and mind.
No matter what the past may have been; no matter how much sin and
evil it contained; it is never too late for the grace and love of
God to flow over and into your life.
If you have not yet done so, just go NOW upon your knees, seek
the true God with all your heart and mind, let Him into your
life, let Him into your mind, let Him fill you with a LOVE and
PEACE that overflows all that has been or ever will be in your
life.
If your soul is weary and tired, if your soul is tormented by
hate and pain, if you have been walking through a dry and desert
land, let Jesus and the Father give you rest and refreshment with
the water of life. On this Website you will find that the Father
and Jesus have expounded the waters of eternal life to you,
FREELY, just for the seeking and taking.
My prayer for YOU, is that YOU will drink of the water of life!
Keith Hunt (April 2009)
