I'm from a very small town in Pennsylvania. My mom was into the punk music of that time period. She was in a few different bands, doing drugs, living in a musicians' commune, and soon met a guy on the same track and got married. Mother had always lived a pretty wild life, and after I was born it didn't change, so when I was very young I mainly stayed with my grandparents.
Then our lives took a drastic turn. When I was seven my mom met a kind pastor and got saved. Then I got saved, and a while later my dad also. Around this time, I came back to live with my mom and dad. My mom would travel around to different churches, and she'd sing songs and tell the congregations how Jesus had changed her so much and so fast. I liked to hear her testimony; I had seen much of it happen.
Slowly but surely, though, things started to die down spiritually. Instead of traveling around telling our testimonies, we just started going to church but didn't really do much for others. I was starting to question the hypocrisy and spiritual monotony I was seeing.
My dad still forced me to go to church, but I refused to pay attention or take any of it in. Over the next years I started losing hope. Everywhere I looked and everyone I looked at depressed me. I didn't want to be like my parents, my teachers, the people at church, the kids at school, or the people on TV! I didn't want any of their cliques, money, materialism, fashions, intellectuality, fake smiles, or religion!
I became anorexic and bulimic. I was suicidal and at one point even took a bunch of pills in an attempt to end my life. My stepdad took me to the hospital, of course, and I ended up staying there for a month. Right around then my mom became very depressed as well. She got sick of the churches, and she and my stepdad divorced. We quit going to church, and she started partying again.
A few months before I turned 16, I had my first experience with drugs. One of the hippie guys at school approached me. "Hey, do you want to smoke some pot tonight? My friends and I can bring an ounce over to your apartment. It's on us."
It was common knowledge amongst the partiers that my apartment was "open" on weekends, when my mom stayed at her boyfriends' houses and left me alone. Even though I hadn't done drugs yet, I had been drinking and various friends would bring beer or tequila or whatever to my apartment on the weekends. My mom didn't care. She just told me to make sure that anyone drunk slept over rather than drove home.
I started getting serious with one guy, and he became my boyfriend for the next two years. We had a real crazy relationship, and we started doing a lot of cocaine together. We'd go to parties and raves, do Ecstasy, get drunk, and if we didn't have any pot, life was terrible. He had an awful temper.
Our relationship ended right after I turned 18, and shortly after that I started hanging out with a group of traveling hippies. Then I became pregnant. I was so happy that I quit drugs completely, and my new boyfriend and I stayed with my grandparents for the last trimester of my pregnancy.
When the baby was four and a half months old, we left for Alaska in our school bus camper. We had saved up some money, but the big old bus ate it fast. I remember sitting in the bus one day and thinking, What am I doing? Where am I going? I realized at that moment that I was truly lost.
While at a truck stop in Indianapolis I noticed a couple and a few kids. They looked my way and smiled, so I smiled back. Then the lady came over and sat down beside me. Her name was Lily, and she and her kids were friendly. She and her husband, Jonathan, invited us to their home for a hot meal and showers.
At their house I helped Lily make dinner, and she told me all about her many years living communally and being a missionary around the world. It was impressive. I also spent a lot of time talking with Jonathan, and I remember thinking there was something really different in his eyes, something I really liked.
We ate dinner and then sat at the table for a couple of hours talking. We got into talking about religion, and I had a lot to say. I told them everything I hated about the churches, and asked them many questions about things I disagreed with Christianity about. They had such a good answer for everything! I had never heard the Bible being preached like that. I was never against love, freedom, hope, or any of those things. I was against the world's "System," and I had never realized that Jesus was too.
My life truly turned around from night to day. It's hard to explain what it feels like to be searching so hard that it hurts. And after that, it's amazing to actually be content in my heart, positive as to why I'm here and what path I'm following.
