Laying it All Out

I have been through a lot of, so called "crap" in my life. At twenty-one, I think I have the right to say that I have seen things that I wish I would have never seen, said things that I wish I never said. I have gone here and there to look for things that I, myself, at the time, didn't even know what I was searching for. I have lived behind the curtain and with the label of "homeless" and "will work for food" attached to my forehead. I have witnessed and have been a victim to scenes of violence, abuse, and manipulation. I have gone through the trials of a pregnancy that had a result of numbing loss in the grief of miscarriage. I have from the life of where  I lived in the secrets of truth of being a victim to countless touchings and vulnerability that I had no sense of control over.  I have lived behind a masquerade of trying to be the "wild one", while in all reality, I was making myself more vulnerable to be attacked by humans like a lion and its prey.

 I have traveled as far as the east is to the west, and have come in contact with many different people with many horrific stories and testimonies. I have lost loved ones along the way. I know what it is like to live a life of addiction, mental and physical addiction to figurative garbage. I have seen the infamous dirty work and rebellion on the sidelines of "one night stand", not once, but more times than can be counted with my fingers. I have been the girl who searched for love and acceptance in the eyes of men, men who were complete strangers and who tore me in a million pieces like paper going through a shredder.

I have been the one who would be called fat and ugly all because I wasn't what society wanted me to be. I have been the woman who has suffered with the disgusting addiction of sex, party scenes, hatred, and anger. I was the girl who got caught up in myself that I went off the "band wagon" and jumped on the train of depression and suicide thoughts that raged through my vulnerable mind. Day in and day out. The acts of binging and purging were a part of me. Gripping my life in its hand and holding me hostage with absolutely no escape or sense of freedom, that I would be able to gain with my own power. I considered myself to be nothing. I was just like the next criminal to run away from the police, except it wasn't cops and the law that I was running from. I was running at high speed from those that wanted to help me.  I ran until there was nothing left of me or in my nature to continue going. I ran until that person simply...

DIED.

Today...one year later, I am ALIVE. I am alive in Christ, and my old self has died and a new spirit in me has been born. I am no longer that girl who struggled with addiction, but I am now a woman who is free. I am a woman who is loved and who has been rejuvenated to being a different person with a different heart. I have found what I have been searching for my whole life. I have found a reason to live. I have found that I am a woman of God. Loved, pursued, chosen, and equipped with words of life. I am blessed because I believe! I have found exactly who I am and what I am here for...and His name is

JESUS.