my life in christ :)

Beautiful testimony emily.
You are so precious to Him.

Em,

That is so wonderful. It's inspiring to hear what others have gone through. I'm glad you never gave up on God, and I know that God is going to use you to do great things in life.

I'd like to share my testimony and I'll try to keep it as short as possible. I grew up in South Korea. My mother is Korean and my father was from Texas. I was homeschooled through second grade. My parents could not afford to send me to the school on the military base because it was reserved primarily for military kids. My dad was a civilian contractor. If I was to be placed on the waiting list, my parents would have to pay double, or even triple the cost of attending the school that would later open for us.

My mother and many others went door to door to obtain signatures for a petition. It was to form a school - a Christian school in our area. They had doors slammed in their faces and they were spat on, but they did not get up. My mother is Buddhist, mind you. What mattered to her was that her daughter got the education that she so needed. Their hard work paid off. A few months later, Liberty Christian School was formed in Songtan, South Korea. When I first attended, I was spoiled rotten. I had never heard about God, and my teacher prayed for me daily because of my disruptive behavior.

I later came to accept Jesus into my heart. I remember my teacher telling me that she noticed a change in my behavior. The school continued to grow. When we first started out, we had no windows, railings, or walls to divide classrooms. As I continued to attend, major changes began to take place. We expanded into two rented buildings. What that school has available to them now is something we only dreamed of. (They had a huge building - to my understanding, it was an old factory - donated to them.) You see, my school had to use the gyms of other schools for P.E., sports practices and games. It was an embarrassment.

Back to my testimony. As I grew older, I began to lead a double life. I was part of my church youth group called N2J (into Jesus) and faithfully went to church every Sunday. During the week, I would be out with my other set of friends, drinking and smoking and basically leading a double life. These friends made fun of me, so eventually, I stopped church altogether. Before I started my junior year of high school, my best friend's father died from a heart attack. He was a close friend of my parents, so it affected them deeply. They soon started to have petty arguments. Stress took its toll. My mother sought help in her sister, but her sister refused because my mother hadn't bought the family anything from on base. (It's much cheaper than buying them off the blackmarket.) So my mother, in addition to arguing with my father, starting arguing with her family.

The irony is that my aunt told my mother that she would make her life so miserable that she would end up in the mental hospital. This is exactly what ended up happening. My mother's behavior was very odd. It was a cross between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. I won't get into detail on this, but eventually, we had no choice to but to hospitalize her in a mental institution. The first time, we kept her in for a week. When she came out, she was bruised and fragile. She told me that they would beat her and drug her. She'd be passed out for what seemed like days.

She refused to take her medication and her behavior worsened. We hospitalized her for a month. The doctors told us that there was nothing wrong with her, so they referred us to a Buddhist temple. Apparently they believed that she was possessed by an evil spirit. It seemed absolutely preposterous! We were desperate. I had my schoolteachers praying for me. At times I would lie in bed for hours, with tears streaming down my cheeks asking why. I was awakened to all that I had taken for granted.

I was never close with my mother. I can even say that I hated her with a passion. I was daddy's little girl, and I always went to him because he hardly ever said no. When people asked me who I loved more, I would tell them that it was dad, without a doubt. I coped with extracurriculars, studies, and my share of chores at home, and the whole time I was struggling with my faith. I bargained with God. I told Him to bring her home for Christmas and I would be His forever. She did show up on our doorstep a few days before Christmas and I was overjoyed. No matter how tough it was, it was an event that brought our family closer together.

I learned all the hardships that she endured: rape, losing both of her parents by age twelve, and being abused by members of her family because they blamed her for their death. She was the black sheep. She brought bad luck into the family. She even told me of times she tried to help the poor kids in the neighborhood by giving them buckets of rice because they were hungry, and she endured severe beatings for that. I was informed of my polygamous uncle and the fact that he married both of my mother's sisters. I was told that he tried to go for three, but my mother refused. I could not look at my family the same again.

When we thought she had recovered, she ended up having to be hospitalized again, and again, but she has been symptom free for over a year and a half now and I can only thank God for that. She is not even taking medication.

My trials did not end there. When I first moved away from home, I was only seventeen years old. My other best friend had already made the move to Phoenix, Arizona, and was pressuring me to come and live with her because life would be great. My parents wanted me to think about joining the Air Force or staying in Korea while taking college courses on the military base, but I just wished to be free. I worked hard to pay my own way into the U.S. Life was great for the first month.

To sum it up, I fell into sex, drugs, and was surrounded by trouble. Trouble as in gang-bangers and ex gang members that carried around Uzi's and AK-47's. They made drug deals in our apartment and fights broke out. I dabbled in drugs a bit, but my awakening moment was when I was sitting in my apartment, waiting for my roll to kick in and saw the ridiculousness of the picture. Guys were hugging each other and singing Chinese love songs to each other. Some of them had eyes rolling into the back of their head with mouths gaping wide open. The girls were rapidly losing weight. They were headed nowhere and I knew that if I stuck around, I would be in the same predicament.

I made the unpopular decision, but I am glad I did it. I lost my best friend temporarily and my reputation was shattered. Later, I was being stalked by a guy so messed up on drugs that he couldn't even think straight. He threatened to kill me because I refused to open my apartment door for him. I was prisoner in my own apartment! I got fed up. When I threw open the door, he headed for the car, and I knew what he had gone to get...his gun. I know for a fact that I could have died that night but the Lord had other plans.

That night, I gathered my clothes and fled. The next few months, I hid. I dropped out of my classes and I started to dream up of ways to leave. I found my ticket through a service program called AmeriCorps NCCC. The day I heard about it, I applied. I was disappointed to hear that I was placed on the waiting list, but I kept praying. I went online and asked others to pray for my situation as well. A couple of weeks later, my acceptance letter came! I was to leave in just a few more months.

Through that 10 month service program, I was able to heal. I was able to gain back my self-esteem. I served with 9 other diverse individuals on my team. We endured manual labor day in and day out. We also helped each other through personal issues. Just before the program had let out, my teammate's brother had committed suicide. A few months thereafter, my own friend (not my teammate) committed suicide. God uses these trying times to shape a person. We may not always understand, but we just have to keep going and seeking the answers.

I'm back on track with God. I know God has called me to service. I strive daily to become better equipped to serve Him first, and to serve others. The Lord has always been right by my side. I just needed to reach out and grab His hand.

Life is like a stroke on a blank canvas. With every stroke, we are closer to the Masterpiece.

Thank you for allowing me to share.

wow...