When I was brought up my childhood was great. I didn’t come from a broken home. My dad was a Baptist preacher and we were a God-fearing family. My family moved around a lot because my dad was a preacher, but when I was born we pretty much stayed in Florence, Alabama. When I was about thirteen my dad accepted a call to a church in Alexander City, Alabama. I was totally against it because I would be leaving my friends, but everyone said it wasn’t just God’s will for my parents but for me as well. I didn’t see it then, but I see it now. After we moved our old neighborhood turned into a place to buy drugs. My old friends were either dead, in jail/prison, or on drugs. I had no idea what happened to them and neither did their parents. To be honest I probably would have been one of them had we stayed. And if we had never moved I wouldn’t have had the opportunities to discover that I wanted a career in fashion. So God protected me from danger and helped me with my future.
Then when it was time for me to go to college I had two options. My parents told me if I went to Auburn I could commute so I chose Jacksonville State. I didn’t even pray about it and after college I realized what a mistake it was. I fell in love at work and he was everything I wanted except that he was an atheist. We agreed on everything, liked everything except we never agreed on church and God. Eventually I let it go and I lost my virginity. In the mean time I tried every church in that county and none of them felt right, so eventually I quit going to church. Soon I started working at a tattoo parlor. My schedule consisted of waking up, going to school, going to work from 2-10:00. We would go to the restaurant across from work, drink pitchers of beer, and then we would go to the bar till 2 a.m. Then wake up and do it all over again. On the weekends I would go to a party after the bar. Eventually I drank by myself with no reason and took drugs. My boyfriend had so many friends staying at our apartment, because they had no place to go. At one point we had ten people living in our two bedroom one and a half bath apartment. I was the only one paying the bills. So eventually I dumped my first love and was so upset about it I had a one night stand with one of the many guys living with us.
I went looking for a new job and by the grace of God got hired in my field of study. On my second day there I passed out for no apparent reason. Panicked, I rushed on my lunch break and got a pregnancy test. It was positive. I set up an appointment with the health department and found out I was six weeks pregnant by someone I barely knew. He and I went out to eat that night and I told him. When we got home I kicked everyone out of the apartment. I flushed all the cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs down the toilet.
Eventually I told my family. I’m the youngest and I’d never been close to my sisters or my mom, but this situation brought us closer together. And after my son was born I realized his dad wasn’t growing up like I had. In fact I was supporting him and his drug habit, so I eventually ended it with him and got a new job that paid more. There was always the option of adoption. In fact my sister who had been trying for six years to have a child asked if I was going to put him up for adoption, but I told her, “You know I’ll be twenty-four when I have him and I’m graduated from college with a great job. I think I’ll keep him.” So I prayed to God and told him, like Hannah in the Bible, “If you let me keep my son and always provide so we never struggle, I’ll do my best and make sure he knows our Lord and Savior”, and He has. In fact I’m up for a promotion that only took two years with the company. I thought it would take fifteen years but if I get it we definitely won’t ever struggle. I have God to thank for everything. We found an awesome church and I talk to my son about God all the time.
