An Unhappy Childhood is a Writer’s Gold Mine

The unhappiest of childhoods furnished a lifetime of compassion and joy…and the birth of this site.

My childhood was distinctly different from those surrounding me. 

Earliest memories steeped in much sadness…primary days clouded…

even at the tender age of 4, I remember feeling not right, quite separated from children around me –

a lesser being.

This feeling latched on to me and became a dark companion for many years, through my formative period. Nursing such feelings of low self-esteem at a time when the building blocks of my life were being set laid a false foundation for me, as I believed the numerous lies coursing through my head. 

My life was running a destructive race with no hopes for a prize at the end. 

As entangled as I felt inside, each year seemed to bring more pain and misery as a web of hopelessness suffocated me. Attempts to bring some sort of satisfaction through personal success or popularity was to no avail, leaving me feeling emptier than ever.

Beginning as early as elementary school, my thoughts and actions turned to ending my life, hurting myself…and I did.

Hurt myself, that is.

Dark poetry, masochistic ways, nightly ventures with the wrong crowd…my life careening down a painful path. Many appointments with many doctors, a multitude of testing – left me nowhere. Unable to breathe in the panicky prison of school, I dropped out for a short period in high school.

A turning point?

A glimmer of hope –

An acquaintance invited me to attend her church’s youth group in ninth grade. Yes, I had heard about Jesus many times already – I was raised Catholic and would sometimes attend a Baptist church with a friend in middle school.

Yet this was different.

I heard the gospel seemingly for the first time with fresh ears. So, if I lived the rest of my life in the deep depression I felt, I had the hope of Heaven awaiting me??

I was in.

In the depths of my heart, I believed I would never escape the misery. I would stick it out, this tear-filled, anguish-ridden life. There would one day be an end. I committed my self to Him, accepting His death for me on this cross.

Little did I understand back then…

💛 God is a planning and purposeful God

💛 Nothing is wasted with Him 

💛 He works all things together for the good of His called people (Romans 8:28)

He spent those excruciating years of my youth coursing me along a path that would lead straight to Him. To know Him, to love Him, to enjoy Him.  

Interestingly enough, my life did not get better or easier immediately after turning to Jesus. Those lies I had told myself over the past decade were a kind of brainwashing, deep-seated in my core. I lived by them, ascribed to them truth, and to suddenly be told the completed opposite shook my whole existence.

Though it took another 15 years, the more I walked my days pursuing Him, the more I felt, albeit very slowly, a change within me. Isolation had always been my way of life…but I began attending a reformed charismatic church.

Being surrounded by believers who truly care for one another and live in a way as to be the hands of Jesus, constantly hearing such sound, biblically-based preaching of the gospel, the Holy Spirit worked powerfully in me to completely crush and then rebuild the broken foundation I had always relied upon.

The exhausting work of reframing my belief system was done, step by step, until I found the lies replaced with the truths of the Bible as my solid ground.

Yes, it’s true –

~ I can look back on the many years seemingly lost and I can mourn.
~ I can envy the numerous common graces of youth that never were mine to hold and yearn for another chance.
~ I can wonder why all this had to take so…dang…long (and why I still struggle greatly, at times).
~ And I cannot count the number of failures, sorrows, anxieties, painfully wrong decisions made in the midst of anguish over the decades, and on and on….they are too numerous, the grains of sand on the beach, the droplets of water contained by the sea.

YET, there is ultimate beauty in this: the Lord looks on our past and amazingly promises He “will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you” (Joel 2:25).

Years of utter desolation brought to years of bountiful fruitfulness.

The more He’s carved me out with sadness, the more capacity I feel to hold joy. 

If you’ve never considered this notion, ruminate on it now:

Without the depths, how can I comprehend the heights?

And if my depth is even lower than those around me, is not my understanding and experience of the height that much greater?

Happiness was a foreign concept in my troubled youth. My first experience of really walking in constant, joy-filled days, abiding in the Spirit, didn’t come until I was 30. Each year, I’ve progressively seen deep and rich transformations in me, as He’s brought me along the process of sanctification.

Overall, my days are a new journey, as I come to know and love Him more and more.

Decades to reach that precious milestone.

Yet I could not have brought back rare pearls without diving into the sea of affliction.

So now we stand full circle. Not only can I be free from the dark knife of misery, I can take the tool and wield it for use. God has birthed a heart’s desire to reach into that pit and be a light.

He created me for this.

I distinctly recall the pattern of my youth – desperate cries, voiced again and again into a seemingly dark void. One of my greatest yearnings was to have someone, anyone – to help me, care for me – that role was always painfully empty.

My heart aches to think of this repeated, in lives like mine, for those lost and alone. Compelled by compassion, I don’t want to let want to let that person who’s a younger me slip through the cracks. 

And that is how this site was birthed.

He used the pain…misery…struggle..to furnish a compassionate heart within me for the suffering. That excruciating journey was preparing this ministering heart for the years to come, to take the comfort I received from Him in my affliction and comfort others who are in affliction – namely, you (2 Cor 1:3-5). 

Whether you’re like I was and every day is a struggle to stay afloat in a sea that engulfs you, or you need a dose of encouragement amidst the happenings of everyday life, you are welcome here.

As I view the past, I see it – the amazing work of His hand in my life.

I see the horrid pit from which I originated, and the amazing transformation that only came by miracle.

He chose the weak of the world, me.

I’m filled with an extreme thankfulness for salvation…for changing me into the person He’s made me…and especially for being able to know and enjoy Jesus now and for all eternity.

*Title is a quote from the novelist Graham Greene