The following post, which has the honor of being the first-ever guest post on Daughter of Pearl, depicts a woman’s journey from death to life.  It’s my pleasure to share with you the testimony of this woman to the redemption that occurred in her heart as a result of getting to know the real person and the author of our souls, Jesus Christ. This is the true story, an autobiography, written by one of my good friends.

 


 

Satan, through the guise of curiosity, seduced my imagination from a young age, blindly leading me toward damnation. His promise, similar to Eve, was to sate all of my queries concerning the world through some form of ultimate knowledge. However, unlike Eve my forbidden fruit represented a luscious and ripe mango, mine for the taking. I ripped into its tangy flesh with all of my zealous childhood innocence, and the truth of the planet burst in overwhelming my senses — so horrifyingly saccharine. What might that truth be?  It rests on everyone’s lips as silent as a whisper:  “our world is an imperfect place,” the realization that our society is harsh and unforgiving, that the current state of humanity is not what God had intended.

My realization of the world, my fall into sin and away from the everlasting arms of my loving Savior, began at the young age of six… molestation would be the acceptable description. The burning embarrassment and guilt blaze through my memories as I recall a young girl, barely older than I, kissing my young adolescent body. Thus, Satan began to obliterate the beautiful act God created to exist between the holy union of man and wife. Scarcely a year later, a vile instance of physical abuse ingrained itself into my increasingly unstable, developing mind. I recall water rushing into my gasping airways, searing my lungs, which expected the relief of much-needed oxygen. How did water burn my lungs? The water in my throat came from my step sister, who viciously grasped my hand and forced me under.

Perhaps you have heard the tale of Cinderella the ugly stepsister — not a horrid description in this instance. However, instead of two sisters, there was a sister and a brother. I vividly recall at 12 years old, a brother’s face nuzzling into the nape of my neck, a brother’s hand slowly trailing from my thigh to my breast leaving a path of fire and disgust. A betrayal arrived next, at the ripe age of 13, perhaps not from an unlikely source — my father. After severe difficulty I unearthed the memories, sometimes desperately wishing I had left them in the dust: the blinding flash of a camera seen behind lidded and sleeping eyes, a hand resting between my thighs massaging guilt into them, a hand placed “innocently” on my shoulder, leaving slimy fingerprints.

Satan thoroughly enjoyed leading others astray and utilizing their sin to rip my faith. He rejoiced in my fall from God, my fall from any future intimacy, my fall from believing in the innate goodness of human beings, and my fall from hope in humanity. I wish I could say I was alone, that Satan solely stole my immortal soul; however, there exist millions of others plummeting, running, from grace.

Satan ripped my hand from Jesus leaving me with the pulp of the mango dripping down my chin, and with an overpowering feeling of despair and helplessness. However, I did not drop that fruit, my mouth kept salivating, and I bit further and further into sin and farther away from God, continually believing the lies I munched on. Almost to the core, and at the brink of destruction, Christ led people into my life that knocked the mango from my hand, and exposed Satan for all his hideous deceit. I became aware of the fact that, no matter what I did, I could not change myself, let alone resolve anyone else’s sin — that the flesh of the aforementioned fruit would never satisfy.  The juice on my chin was sticky and unwanted, the sin in my life revolted me, and more importantly, appalled my Savior. I received unbelievable clarity as to how much I had allowed Satan to enter my heart and instill feelings of malice and bitterness towards people, and to all of the unrighteous motives behind every decision made in the relatively short years of my life.

My stomach churned in maddening circles as the awareness that, throughout all of the years that breath had entered my being, I had been consuming death, allowing the acid of sin to obliterate my life and transform me into a repugnant being before Christ.

Even though I incarnated such an abhorrent being in the eyes of God, He stimulated the Holy Spirit in the aforementioned people to whack the mango from my hand. He pursued me because of His unconditional grace and astounding love.  The spirit moving in them to touch a despicable creature, such as myself, and to wipe the remnants of the mango from my face, stunned all of the lies Satan poured into my life, and left me speechless. Instead of desiring death, I craved Christ with all of my being, and my tongue confessed Jesus as Lord on September 2, 2011.

The Holy Spirit burst from my soul in an astounding light that evening, in the midst of darkness, on the grassy slopes of the Oval on Colorado State’s campus. The knowledge I had so desperately bitten into was irrevocably altered, as Christ satisfied my intense hunger, transformed my despair into a resounding joy, and filled me with immeasurable strength. I sprinted back in tears to my Savior; He began to heal all of my fears for romantic relations; He gave me the strength to pursue all those tumbling from grace, and he renewed my hope in humanity.

Ever since that fateful day, I no longer hunger for Satan’s mango; his temptations have lost their grasp on me.  I now constantly crave the abundant amount of fruit God has continually provided, each their own distinctive and unexplainable flavor. Some incarnate daily necessities being fulfilled, such as money, work, and housing. Others involve tasting a glimpse of Christ’s joy when Satan’s fruit falls from another’s hand. The most scrumptious of all represents an eternal hope that will never again be smothered by circumstance, or the consequences of another’s sin.

However, don’t for an instant believe that Satan is not persistent. Until the final breath escapes your lungs, he remains ever watchful, waiting to offer a bite into death, preying on your hunger for immediate resolution.

Rely on the fact that my Savior, and hopefully yours, solely withholds at certain moments present gratification for the offer of a taste of the most delectable fruit of all: a taste into eternity.

 


 

If you find that your own heart responds to this story, you can choose to get to know Jesus yourself. I encourage you to talk to one of your trusted friends who knows this Jesus and who lives a life of love, and to ask how you can accept Jesus into your heart, so that He can be yours, and so you can be His, as He becomes actively involved in helping you overcome trials and celebrate triumphs.

And maybe you could cross from death to life, too.  You won’t regret it, and I guarantee that it will be the most important decision of your life.