I have believed in God ever since I was born and it wasn’t because I was raised that way. It was because God showed himself to me throughout my entire life. It’s hard to explain to people who don’t believe because it’s something you have to experience yourself. I get asked how I can believe in something I can’t see, it’s basically make believe but I always say that I can see Him and I do daily. There is no doubt in my mind God is real and Christ is alive in me. There never has been.

I remember the first time I heard Ephesians 6:10-20 like it was yesterday because it was the first time I heard God speak to me through His word. As I was sitting in church listening to the sermon from the pastor both me and my sister had a crush on, something awakened in me. It would take me years to find out what exactly it was though. I was inspired but I continued to live my life the way I always had. Sinning but with a twinge of guilt. Even though I believed, I never looked deeper into the word. I’d go to church on Sunday and sometimes Wednesday but the rest of my week the only thing on my mind was whatever teenage girls think about, probably mostly food, boys, how my parents LiKe ToTaLlY dOnT UnDeRsTaNd Me, and whatever was happening on Degrassi. So fast forward to after high school and I’m starting to be faced with real world problems. There are suddenly drugs and drinking in the picture.

I know doing drugs and drinking underage is wrong but I’m not really sure why. Whats the worst that could happen?

I’m finally being invited to parties and making friends and that’s a good thing right?

I knew I never belonged. When I would go to a party with my friends or my roommate would invite people over, I always felt like an outsider. That was the christian in me attempting to tell me to get out now but the other half of me, the sinner, who just wanted to fit in, stayed. One party in particular would be the end of it all, because it would end in a sexual assault. The next day would bring an attempted suicide from someone close to me and my assault would be pushed to the side for me to face on my own.

That night, I saved this person’s life by getting them to the hospital but my life was completely and utterly falling apart. This one weekend of events would create in me a problem I hadn’t dealt with before and that was crippling anxiety and depression. I would try to cope with these things without God. I’d try therapy a few times, yoga, meditation, weed, sometimes alcohol, relaxing music, essential oils, you name it. Why, after being raised in church, did it not occur to me to turn to God? Not just pray it away but really devote myself and surrender to God? Eventually my anxiety would get so bad that I’d be faced with a mental breakdown that made me feel like a shell of myself.

I thought I was going to kill myself and if it wasn’t for my husband, who is also my guardian angel, I might have. He was there to remind me the lessons I had already known and been taught all my life and that is that God is in control. He has a plan. I am made with a purpose and if I’m alive, He’s not done with me. 

I went through all of this so God could free me from what was holding me captive and that was sin. Let’s get back to Ephesians 6:10-20. God knew before I knew that I would refer back to those verses more than any other passages in the bible. He planted that in my heart that one day back in high school for me to realize today how much God’s strength, not my own, got me through.

When I picture these verses I imagine a sole survivor head to toe in armor and at his feet is the entirety of satan’s army defeated and above in the clouds is Christ. That sole survivor is me and the army is my anxiety, fear, sin, depression and we, me and God, have defeated them all. How could I be the same person after that? 

Thank God I am a new creation. I am born again. No weapon formed against me will prevail.

-Melody

Do you have a story to tell of what God has done in your life? If you’d like to have your testimony featured, please send an email to lamourinchrist@gmail.com and include (Your Name) TESTIMONY in the Subject Title. Try to keep it between 4-5 sentences if possible.