Beauty from Ashes.

As I look at back at my story, my testimony God has brought me through, I’m overwhelmed by how much love and grace and beauty there is in it. It certainly isn’t one that took a well-lit, easy path. It’s one full of pain, but I wouldn’t have I any other way. There are so many things that make up my testimony, and I couldn’t possibly share them in one writing. But I will give you the big highlights, the ones I feel like God can use for His good. So bear with me...

I grew up in Denver in a middle class divorced home, in the church, and in a Christian school. I was super involved in the church and ministry – the worship director at school, a worship leader at church, a youth leader – but I struggled with so much insecurity. In middle school and high school, I wasn’t really the athletic type, and I was always a little overweight. I only had one relationship in high school, so when I met my first husband at 18, I certainly wasn’t prepared for marriage, despite what I told myself and him, yet I was so flattered by the attention. 

When we first met, he made the comment that he always wanted a girl who was active, fit, and he could throw around on the dance floor. While we dated, I began getting super involved in fitness, working my body to the bone. I was losing weight, and everyone was commenting how good I looked. But I started obsessing about the gym and food, sometimes working out for hours and just eating green beans for dinner. One night, I indulged on nachos my dad had bought. I felt so guilty, like that in and of itself would make me overweight again. And so began my six year battle with bulimia.

I remember at one point my ex told me he loved how tiny I was when the reality was I was downright sick and brittle, and somehow I was able to hide it.

We got married when I was 20 years old, and over the next couple of years our marriage fell apart. I wanted to be out doing things as an early 20-something, and he wanted a 50s style marriage. We fought constantly to the point that our friends commented on it. Not to mention, I was still killing myself trying to stay “small” and harboring the deep secret. Two years into our marriage, we had drifted so far, pulling in opposite directions, but in my mind, I could never put divorce on the table. I ended up having an affair, and we filed divorce papers the week before my 23rd Birthday. 

The next couple years felt like the Israelites wondering the wilderness.
Lost. Hopeless. Depressed. Self-loathing.

I sought out attention everywhere and anywhere, and for the first time in my life, I felt attractive and confident. However, when I sat at home, I felt completely alone and forgotten. There were so many points in those years that I felt like I was useless. So broken, so far from Him that there was no hope for what He could do with me. I remember sitting on my bathroom floor one night after making myself throw up thinking, “Really? This is my life? I’m in my early 20s divorced and messed up with an eating disorder. Will I ever be free from this? Will I ever actually be happy?” I hated myself for where I was, and all the attention in the world never filled the ache I felt. 

At 24, I met my now husband. We had both sworn off marriage. He was a divorced single dad after a very traumatic experience where his ex-wife, who was an addict, left when his son was 10 months old. When we first started dating, we were brutally honest about what we wanted. With his son involved, we sure needed to be. Instead of pushing each other away, it brought us closer. Two months in, I broke down drunk one night and told him everything, my addiction, my affair, just my brokeness. Instead of walking away, he asked me, “Ok, what can I do?” (And get this, he wasn’t even a believer at the time...who gives that kind of grace?) That was 4 1/2 years ago, and I have never looked back. 

In the past 4 1/2 years, we have gotten married, he came to know Christ, battled to make his little boy my very own, had a second little boy, and build a wonderful home on the foundation of Christ. In all honesty, I am not sure how I got from point A to point B, but I do know that God directed the whole path. We still have our daily struggles (for me right now it is anxiety and trying to find my purpose), and we have been through hell and back with things I don’t have the space to write about, but God has redeemed that broken girl, sitting on the bathroom floor hating herself, to a woman who has a blessed life, married to her best friend, and getting to love on the sweetest boys ever.

I am still learning to be confident in my own skin and still learning that the love of my Father is enough, because, let’s be honest, I am still flawed.
But God has broken the chains that my past has held on me and brought light to lies Satan has fed me all those years. After all that I put my body through, the body He created, and after all the decisions that pushed me farther from Him, He redeemed my story; and He redeemed it in a way I never deserved. He truly has brought beauty from ashes.