As many testimonies begin, I grew up heavily involved in church. I gave my life to Jesus for the first time at 5 years old, and told my mom that when I grew up, I wanted to be a missionary. But many of my most prominent childhood memories involve loud, aggressive verbal altercations between my parents. With me being the eldest of 3 kids, I was a scapegoat for a lot of the anger my parents held for each other. When I graduated from high school, I enrolled in a Christian university with a nearly full-ride academic scholarship. Things continued to get worse at home, and after 3 semesters, I failed out of college. I moved back to a broken home, and started a restaurant job. I quickly fell captive to the lifestyle that often comes with that line of work. I was out getting drinks with friends at any given opportunity. I had no structure or stability in my life. I moved from place to place, continuing the same toxic, self-serving patterns, ending up in Cleveland. I started a job there and quickly fell head-over-heels in love with a guy I worked with. Unbeknownst to me, he was in the beginning stages of a severe drug addiction due to trauma that he was not coping with. I spent years in a codependent relationship with an addict. I became critically depressed, developed an eating disorder, and flat-out didn’t want to be alive anymore. I had no hope. I thought that this would always be my identity. Just weeks before my 25th birthday, I saw those two little blue lines. I was pregnant and terrified. I didn’t want to bring an innocent baby into the mess I made. After a nearly fatal labor and delivery, my daughter entered the world 5 weeks early in November 2024. 3 days after she was born, her dad was sent hours away to enroll at Family Care Ministries due to his addiction. I spent the next few weeks in the hospital completely alone, angry and scared, with my tiny little baby in the NICU downstairs. I didn’t know it yet, but God was at work. When my daughter and I were finally discharged from the hospital, we were making the drive to FCM every 2 weeks to visit her dad. After 3 months, we were on our way home from a visit when I felt God telling me to turn around. I enrolled that day. I gave my heart back to Jesus, and I have a peace and a hope that I have never felt. God is actively restoring my little family. My daughter gets to have a healthy mommy and daddy that love each other the way Christ intended, and most importantly, both have a passionate love for God. I am so excited to be breaking generational curses, and to raise my precious daughter to know that her true identity is found only in Jesus!