Bonus Feature 2 of Journey Through Daniel | Sarah

Growing up, I walked to school, I was a crossing guard and the ice cream truck would come by; it was idyllic. We used to run around and play cops and robbers in the neighbors’ yards. It was wonderful. It really was. My name is Sarah, and I grew up in Schaumburg, IL. We were raised Catholic, and while I still really enjoy and love that tradition, I never had a relationship with God then. I always thought it was the priest who had the relationship with God. But I still loved church. I love to sing in church and growing up, I would see my dad doing his quiet time at the kitchen table. There were a lot of things that he instilled in us that, now having this relationship with God, I can see was a lot of biblical wisdom. I grew up in a house with nine people. I have four brothers and two sisters. They made me resilient, but when I left Schaumburg at 19, I was ready to go. I was out of there. My parents used to have a sign on the door, and it was hilarious. It said, “Leave now when you’re 18 and you still know everything.” So I moved in with friends, and oh my goodness. It was such a reality check, like a punch in the face. Finances were a huge shock to me, as was having to be self-sufficient. Nobody came to wake me up so that I would be on time for school. Nobody came to check and see that my homework was done. I had to do that on my own. That was definitely interesting. And I had a lot of interesting roommates; some were very difficult. Those difficulties brought out things that had been hidden parts of my life. I was 13 years old the first time someone introduced me to cocaine. At 13, I thought I was an adult because of the things that I had seen and gone through. It set me on the path of thinking, “Oh, this is normal.” It took being sober in Christ and time to look back and understand that was not normal at all. But there was abuse I had experienced and situations where I was introduced to very hard drugs, things that I just don’t think a young person should ever be subjected to, and those things began to shape my choices. Experiencing sexual abuse at a very young age was one of those things. The aftermath of that was that my idea around what sex is was completely broken. When you’re really young and those things happen to you in your formative years, it also starts to form your idea of what love is. I started to choose abusive partners because I was really trying to heal from past hurt, but that just led to more abuse. As a coping mechanism, I sought out a drug, pride, buying something, eating something, or just spacing out on whatever I could as a means to cope. It compounded and then I was just drowning. Then I would change location, my hair, my job, or my boyfriend. It would always be external things. At the time, I didn’t know that the only thing that was going to change me truly is Christ. The first time that God introduced Himself to me was actually God putting this thought into my head. God said, “I want you to be radically honest.” Unfortunately, it’s so normal to lie, and lie on top of a lie, on top of another lie. I really began to wrestle with that at the beginning of 2017, which was a really hard time in my life. I actually refer to that season as the “dark ages” because it was just so dark. But I was able to start facing those demons and facing things that I was projecting onto other people and saying, “This is their fault.” God was introducing me to who I really was and the sin in my life, which was heavy, but God did it in a beautiful way, and I was able to see what redemption looks like in the process. I had a twisted view of what love should be and of who I am. But that has changed so much with God. I remember one of the first things I did was write on my mirror in lipstick, “I am a child of God,” because every time I would look in the mirror, it would be a place of self-deprecation, hatred, judgment, or trying to find the value in my appearance. I had to remind myself, “No, God is going to stand with you here, and you’re going to find your identity in Him. You’re going to find your worth in Him.” The radical honesty was so amazing because God led me down this path of forgiveness to talk to everyone who had hurt me or I had hurt. To talk to my abuser and forgive my abuser, to talk to a girl that I made a mean comment to in seventh grade. It was amazing. I chopped off all my hair. I didn’t wear makeup. I lived in the same dress for a while. It was awesome because all of that, all of those things that I had placed so much value in, God said, “Let it go. This is who you are, and you’re beautiful just as you are.” Now I can look back on my life and see that I stopped going to church shortly after my abuse and that was when I was 13. I can connect those things now. But my dad, throughout all the time since, would ask, “Hey, do you want to come to church?” He was always inviting, never shaming, but just always inviting. So it was really cool that once I was ready, I could say, “Hey, dad, I want to go to church.” I knew who to call. A seed was planted. For all the parents reading this, the prodigal child can return. I felt the Holy Spirit telling me, “Go to church.” At that point my stepmom was having surgery on her foot, and she had asked me to pray for her. So I thought, “Okay. I’m going to put a prayer request in the prayer box at church. I don’t need to talk to anybody. I’ll just put my little prayer in.” One Sunday, the prayer box wasn’t there, so I walked up to the Welcome Center and lo and behold, it’s Grace, and she asks, “Oh, are you here to sign up for small group?” I said, “Ugh, yeah. Here’s this prayer I have too.” Oh, wow, did that change everything for me because then I found myself in this small group, and it completely changed my life. There were a lot of assumptions that I had before about Christians in general, like these people are judgmental and perfect, and I am so deeply broken that I absolutely have to pretend to be perfect in order to do this. Of course, my own shame shows up as perfectionism in my life all the time. But the group was so not like that. It was so authentic. It was so incredible. My small group still meets and there are girls in my small group who are standing up in my wedding. It’s incredible, and the group changed my life because it was this authentic place that taught me about grace. Before that, I was hiding, drowning, searching everywhere, searching in every religion. Really, like the Bible says, sort of tossed in the waves. My whole life had been fake, flighty, and anxious. I remember waking up every morning and having this pit in my stomach from all of this unresolved conflict and pain and all of the lies I had told, things I had done, and who I had betrayed. It was just this ball growing, rolling down a hill and growing. That was before Christ. After Christ, there is light, compassion, grace, a chance. Philippians 4:7 is real. It is real. It is a peace that surpasses all understanding. I went back to my journals, which I’ve been keeping since I was a little kid. It was actually a way that I was able to meet myself in my abuse. I would write a lot of really dark poetry and hide my abuse there. I was able to see that it was real. That was what my life was like. I had been broken. I was lost and sad. I was just so sad. It felt like I had no one but myself. I could never depend on anyone but myself so I was going to do it myself, even if it killed me. But then God told me, “You don’t have to die. I already did that. You are my child. You matter, and your life matters, and there’s forgiveness for you and for everyone around you. It’s going to be okay.” And that revelation came through radical honesty and having the courage to look at myself and my world through new eyes. You can’t be free from something you’re hiding from or something you’re not acknowledging. Of course we don’t want to acknowledge that. Why would I want to acknowledge any of these things, especially when you have a reason to say, “But this person did this to me?” “Hurt people hurt people” is so true. God gives you this new vision. Jesus gives you eyes to see the thing beneath the anger, the mean comment, or how that person treated you in the meeting at work that derailed you. And then He shows you the hurt within you and says, “Can I just sit next to you in your suffering? Can we just sit here together in it, not try to fix one another, but just sit next to each other?” That’s what God did for me, and that’s what He does for everyone. God sits with you and holds your hand in places that you think He doesn’t exist. But that’s where He’s actually the most present. Wherever you are, you are not alone. One of the most profound moments I had in my small group was when I had relapsed with weed. With any addiction comes shame. It doesn’t matter what it is - drugs, pornography, food, TV, whatever. There’s shame, and I think the enemy wants to lock you in this little shame prison and isolate you, but I remember the Holy Spirit bringing to me the book of James and saying, “Confess to one another so they can pray for you.” I remember sitting in my friend’s house and confessing and crying. These women just held me. There was no judgment and they prayed over me. I’ll tell you what, I’ve never gone back to drugs and it’s been amazing. Even that failure was a reminder that God transforms failures too. You think you’re failing, but God is teaching you. He is guiding you. He is making you resilient so that when He’s ready to bring you into that next thing, you’re prepared. So talk to someone. It is not weird. Therapy is the coolest thing ever. It is amazing. Everybody should go to therapy. Learn to speak about God and how He’s working in your life. Learn to feel exactly how you’re feeling when you’re feeling it and not feel bad or hide it. You don’t have to be anybody but who you are. God already knows who you are, and God loves you. I’ve discovered that I don’t have to be ashamed of my story. My story is beautiful because God saved my life and He made me who I am. Your story is beautiful, and God wants to give you the vision to see that truth too.