My first childhood memory was my mother kneeling at the bottom of the stairs. She was eight months pregnant, begging my father not to walk out on us. She was 20 years old and had just found out she had cancer.
Because of that, I went through a lot of foster homes—so many that I can't even count them. Most of them were very bad in that I was neglected and sometimes beaten. The only thing that kept me going was knowing that I was going to go back to my mother. But when I did finally get back to my mother, I found a very sick and frail woman, withering away to almost nothing. This was hard to take because I loved her more than anybody in the whole world. But she was courageous. She didn't give up.
She fought for eight years and took care of us to the very end. She had chemotherapy treatments every two weeks and she still managed to keep my sister and me until two weeks before she died.
As a child, I was sexually assaulted by my father and by my cousin. I was adopted when I was 12 years old, a year after my mother died, by my cousin. She was very young and didn't realize what she was getting into. She got very frustrated and was also very abusive to us. I was neglected emotionally and physically there. I ran away from there and I was put into group homes and foster homes once again. But I just kept running away until eventually they gave up on me and didn't bother looking for me anymore.
At 13 years old I ran away to Toronto, and I met my first pimp who took me in and told me he loved me and would take care of me and was going to do everything he could just to show me that he loved me.
I believed him and I stayed with this man and I came to love and trust him, and when he had gained my trust he beat me very badly with a coat hanger and put me on my first corner. I was a prostitute for a long time. I became addicted to drugs and alcohol. I was a junkie for a very long time.
At the age of 16 I was put in jail for a year and a half because I hurt a girl very badly when I got high. At this time I had given up on God. I thought to myself, there must not be a God and if there is He's a very mean one. So I vowed at that time to give up on Him because obviously He'd given up on me and I forgot Him for a long time.
I went to dancing, it wasn't any better. I hated men at this point and thought that maybe women were the way to go so I tried that too and it didn't work. I felt I didn't belong anywhere. I didn't feel anything, I felt dead. I ended up pregnant at 17 and I lost that child. I continued on this road of destruction for another four years.
At 20, I got pregnant with my daughter. At this point I decided I wanted to change my life so I did what I thought was the right thing. I went to church every now and then, I was nice to people, I tried to do my best but I wasn't happy. I was in very many relationships with men trying to find somebody that just would care for me and show me the love that I was looking for. All of them were very abusive and bad relationships and ended unhappily.
I was never happy. I kept saying to myself, "Why does God hate me so much, what did I do to Him to deserve all of this?'' And He never answered me. I kept this up for a few years. I had three other children by three different men. I thought I was being okay and I believed in God so that should be enough, right? Wrong. I was very, very wrong.
I kept asking for the desires of my heart, I kept asking for stuff that I wanted and I wasn't getting it. I kept asking for a good man to love me and my children.
After thinking about all the stuff in my life, I started to cry and I couldn't stop. And I cried out to God and in that moment I felt something that I've never felt before, I felt something that I'd been searching to find for a long time. I saw some hope, I saw blessings and I saw curses.
I saw them as not so much curses but realizing that God's provided me with a lifetime of hurts, not just so I could sit up here and say, "Oh poor me," you know, "look what I've been through," but that I can go out to people who've been in the same situation as me and who are feeling that there's nothing out there, and there's nowhere to go and nobody cares and I can go to them and I can say. "Hey, you know what, there's Somebody who cares and I'm going to tell you about Him."
And I realize that God loves me so much that He has forgiven me for everything that I've done and in His eyes I'm no different than anyone in this church who has been a Christian for their whole lives.
I am reading a book right now called Shattered Dreams and in the first chapter, which is very much like my own story, after many disappointments and heartaches in his darkest hour this man cries out, ‘Bless me, not because I am good but because You are good. Bless me, not because I deserve Your blessings but because it is Your nature to bless, You really can't help yourself. I appeal not to who I am, You owe me nothing, I appeal only to who You are.’
And I thought to myself, "Wow, that's exactly where I am right now and that's how I feel."
So I prayed the same thing to God and at that moment a lot of things came flooding into my head and I felt really different and I felt very relieved. And I couldn't sleep for most of the night because there was just so many thoughts going through my head.
As for some of the things that God has done in my life since I have asked for this. He has taken a lot of bad people out of my life that I just could not get rid of. I tried and tried and they just would not leave me alone and they're gone. He has given me the strength to stand up to people and things in my life that are not good for me and He continues to do so on a daily basis.
He has shown me that all the things that I thought were punishments were not that but were in fact gifts that I could use to help other lost sheep find their way home just as I have. He has brought situations into my life that made me start to deal with the things that have happened to me in my past.
He has laid on my heart the desire to wait for the right man in my life. He has laid on my heart the desire for trust and honesty and love in a relationship.
But most of all He has given me the desire to give my life to Him and I thank Him everyday for waiting for me and putting up with me and most of all for sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross so that I, a child of God, could be forgiven and be helped return home to my Father.”
Do you see yourself in Elizabeth's story? Sure, the details may be different, but if you struggle with fear of being enough, if the pain of life has brought you to your knees again and again, remember, no matter who we are, what we have done, in Christ, God removes the curse and promises to bless us!
This story was taken from Blessings & Curses: The Key to Lasting Change by Pastor John Visser
See more information on Blessings & Curses: The Key to Lasting Change here.