CASSANDRA’S STORY.

Before

When I think about the little girl I once was, I remember someone who was innocent, loving, curious, and full of life. She loved exploring the world around her, and she loved people. She had a heart that was open to others, but the world she grew up in was not a safe place for that little girl. My childhood was filled with abuse and trauma. My mother was an absent alcoholic, and my father was an abusive alcoholic. Throughout my childhood and into adulthood, I experienced sexual, physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. The very people who were supposed to love, nurture, and protect me were the ones who caused so much of my pain.

Growing up, I had no real understanding of what it meant to feel safe. I didn’t experience the affection, love, respect, or healthy boundaries that every child deserves. Instead, I learned how to survive in an environment where I never knew what might happen next. Those experiences shaped the way I saw myself and the world around me. By the time I reached adolescence, my self-esteem was almost nonexistent. I hated myself, and eventually, I began to hate other people, too. I was carrying so much pain, and I was doing everything I knew how to do just to survive it.

Yet even in those early years, before I really knew who God was, something was drawing me toward Him. I remember finding a Bible when I was around five years old. No one had ever really taught me about Jesus, but I began reading that Bible over and over again. I even went through it highlighting God’s name wherever I found it. Looking back now, I believe God was already present in my life, even when I didn’t know Him or understand what that meant. In a childhood where so much was missing, He was never absent.

As I grew older, the abuse didn’t stop, and neither did the pain I was carrying. My mother introduced me to drugs, and what followed was a ten-year battle with addiction. I also turned to self-harm and developed an even deeper hatred toward others. At the time, drugs seemed to offer something I desperately needed: a way to stop feeling. They numbed the pain and allowed me to escape, even if only temporarily, from the things I was experiencing. I wasn’t thinking about what those choices were doing to me in the long run. I was simply trying to make it through another day.

The Breaking Point

By the time I was twenty-one, I began to recognize that the very things I had been using to survive were also destroying me. That was also the year I accepted Jesus Christ into my life. My transformation didn’t happen all at once. There wasn’t a single moment when every wound was healed or every struggle disappeared. It was a gradual process of learning who God was, discovering His love, and beginning to believe that my life could be different.

Coming to Christ also meant making some incredibly difficult decisions. I had to separate myself from family members who continued using drugs and who did not share my newfound faith. Walking away from people I loved was painful, but I was beginning to understand that following Christ would sometimes require leaving behind the very things and relationships that had been part of my life for so long. During that season, God surrounded me with brothers and sisters in Christ who helped save my life. Through their love, encouragement, and faithfulness, I began to experience something I had never truly known before: the love and support of a family rooted in Christ.

The Encounter

One of those people was a woman named Suzanne Johnson. Suzanne had experienced the unimaginable loss of her young daughter, yet her love for God never wavered. I remember watching her faith and thinking about how I had only just allowed God into my life, while this woman had endured such tremendous heartbreak and still trusted Him. Her example left a lasting impression on me. She played a significant role in shaping my relationship with Christ, and I don’t think she even realizes how much her faith influenced my own.

One of my most profound encounters with God happened when He saved my brother’s life. I was driving in my car one day when I audibly heard the words, “Go check on your brother.” I listened to that voice, and when I reached my brother, he was in a life-threatening situation. The doctors later told me that if I had arrived just sixty seconds later, he would not have survived. That experience changed something deep within me. Before coming to Christ, I knew very little about God. But after experiencing His presence and hearing His voice so clearly, I knew I could never deny Him again.

As my relationship with Christ grew, I began to understand something that would change the way I viewed my entire life: God had been there all along. Even in the years when I felt abandoned, unloved, and completely alone, He had never lost sight of me. I began looking back at the darkest parts of my story and recognizing His presence in places where I hadn’t been able to see Him before. The little girl who found a Bible at five years old, the young woman desperately trying to numb her pain, and the twenty-one-year-old who finally turned toward Christ had all been seen by the same loving God.

Redemption

Perhaps one of the most important things He began teaching me was that I had worth. For so many years, my experiences had convinced me otherwise. I had learned to see myself through the pain others had inflicted on me, but God began showing me a different truth. I was worthy of love and care, not because of anything I had accomplished or because I had finally changed my life, but because He had created me with that worth from the very beginning. I started learning how to love myself, how to care for myself, and how to recognize that my life mattered.

Healing, however, was not easy. It was deep, dark, and painful. There were things I had to confront that I had spent years trying to forget, and wounds that could no longer be buried beneath the ways I had learned to cope. Some days felt overwhelming, and the process required more strength than I thought I had. But somehow, with each new morning, there was a little more strength to face the day ahead. God didn’t erase everything I had experienced, but He continued walking with me through the pain, teaching me that I no longer had to face it alone.

Following Christ also meant learning how to grieve. I had to let go of family, people I loved, old ways of living, and the things I had once relied on to survive. But one of the greatest things I have been able to leave behind is the overwhelming loneliness that followed me for so much of my life. For years, I had lived without the security of knowing I was truly loved and protected. Through my relationship with Jesus and the people He placed in my life, I began to understand that I was no longer alone.

One of the most beautiful parts of my redemption has been the opportunity to break the generational cycles that shaped my own childhood. I know what it feels like to grow up without safety, affection, or protection, and I wanted something different for my children. Through Christ, I have been able to become the kind of mother I admire, giving my children the love, care, and security that I longed for as a little girl. I have also witnessed God bring healing and restoration into my children’s mental health, something that means more to me than words can express. What once seemed destined to continue from one generation to the next no longer has to define our family.

Where She Is Now

Today, when I think about how Christ has changed me, I realize that He has also changed the way I see myself. I no longer have to define my worth by what happened to me, the choices I made while trying to survive, or the way other people treated me. God has shown me that I am worthy because He made me that way. I am His daughter, a mother, and a woman whose life has meaning and purpose. My past is part of my story, but it does not determine who I am.

And when I think about how God sees me now, I believe He sees the same person He always did. He sees His daughter. He sees a loving mother and a woman He created with value and purpose. I don’t believe He looked at me differently when I was lost in addiction, consumed by self-hatred, or struggling to survive the abuse I endured. I believe He saw that same daughter then, too, only with the sadness of knowing how much pain I was experiencing.

Looking back over my life, I can see that God’s love did not begin the day I accepted Christ. He loved me long before I knew how to recognize His love. He was there when I was a little girl searching through the pages of a Bible. He was there through the years of abuse, addiction, and loneliness. He was there when I began the painful process of healing, and He is still here today.

My story is one of trauma, addiction, loss, and difficult choices, but it is also a story of faith, healing, and redemption. It is the story of a little girl who grew up without knowing what it meant to be safe, who became a young woman desperately trying to survive, and who eventually discovered that she had never been forgotten by God. Through Jesus Christ, I have found the love I once believed was missing, the strength to face what I thought would destroy me, and the opportunity to give my children a different beginning.

And perhaps the greatest truth I have come to know is that I was never beyond His reach. I was always His daughter, even before I knew Him. He saw me then, He sees me now, and He has been with me through it all.