My Fall from God's Grace

By following my friends and the flesh I lost my faith in God when I was a teen. I did things in my life that I am not proud, but as a teen you don’t put much thought into things, you believe you are too smart to get caught. I lived a thug life with my older brother and I followed him everywhere as I was a tom boy. My first sins in life was beating up people for money that was owed to other friends for drugs. From that I went to stealing stuff in exchange for money. Being younger than my brother I was not allowed to go with him at all times. My brother went robbing people and I was not able to be a part of this because it was done at night and I had to attend school the next morning. 

They always say that God intervenes in some things, and my brother was caught one night robbing someone and got arrested. So off course he went to prison and I was left alone. He went to prison for several years, got out on probation and is currently a youth pastor. He is the founder of Radical Impact Ministry for troubled teens in the Connecticut area. I didn’t have a close relationship with my mom. Mostly my mother worked and my father was retired at the time I was at home. My mother was not a very good communicator. At 17, I felt alone in my home even though there were other older siblings, I still felt alone because my older siblings had either moved out or had families of there own. I started hanging out with girls who where interested in cosmetics, clothes and boys. I met a man who was in his twenties and I started believing every word he said and soon got pregnant while living in a christian home. I was forced into marriage to him. A few months later he went to prison for theft and drugs. I filed for divorce later and got into a heated argument with my mom so I left the house and lived moving around having multiple jobs while being pregnant and still going to school.

After giving birth to a beautiful baby girl, I went back to living with my parents but still wasn’t close to the Lord. I was forced to go to church on Sundays (house rule). In between church and baby activities I partied and still hung with the wrong crowd which was only about clubbing, drinking, and meeting guys. I met my second husband while working and this slowed me down from going out regularly, I soon got pregnant with my son out of wedlock so we got married a few years after my son's birth. Several years later we had another child. We were together for 5 years before getting married and we were together for 10 years before we got divorced. My marriage got broken because we both wanted different things, and had differences in our approach to maturity and making a life for each other. During this process, I rekindled my faith in God and embarked on the road of redemption.