The Gift of a New Beginning | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: The Gift of a New Beginning | Previous Challenge Entry
By nicole wian
01/22/08
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As I write this, my grown daughter is laying in her childhood room. It’s Christmas and she is home to visit. She’s newly married and expecting her first child. She is so beautiful and has grown into such a wonderful woman thanks to the grace of God, who did the larger part in her rearing. I am so grateful that I found the Lord and only wish I had sooner. She was nearly seven before I cried out to Him that night asking Him to save us both from the destruction that was wreaking havoc on our lives.

I was so young when I had her. Only seventeen and I had no idea how to be a mother. I’d grown up in a home with an abusive mother and an absent father. I didn’t want to be a child anymore, so I married the first boy I thought I was in love with. We ran off together, and shortly after we eloped, I became pregnant.
Not only did I not know how to be a mother, I didn’t know how to be a wife and the marriage disintegrated before Sarah‘s birth. I was too far along to have an abortion. I know that sounds horrible but it’s the plain truth. That’s where I was in my life. Scared, confused and totally without a savior.

I couldn’t go home, so I tried to do things myself, get a job, make a life for my daughter, but it wasn’t long before the pressures wore me down. I was lonely and immature. I had never been healed and had nothing to offer Sarah. Though I loved her, I wasn’t healthy and was still a child myself. Before long, I began partying with friends, leaving Sarah with baby-sitters. And then I was doing drugs and Sarah was really suffering. We were moving all the time, because we were always getting evicted. Strange men were coming in and out of our house. I was failing miserably. I don’t know if I cooked one meal for Sarah in those seven years. God knows how she survived.

I don’t know what would have happened if He hadn’t intervened. I won’t go into the details about what brought CPS to our door, but it was the day that changed our lives. The worker shared with me her faith seeing that I was hungry. Starving. Literally and spiritually. I was at the end of myself and had been waiting for someone to introduce something to me that could save me. I now realize that she probably wasn’t supposed to be talking about her faith with clients. But I’m so grateful that she risked her job to share the truth with me. I sobbed as she told me that Jesus had died for my sins and that He wanted me to allow Him into my life. At my kitchen table, I said the sinner’s prayer. God performed a miracle on me that night and I turned away that moment from the drugs. It was a long road back to any semblance of a normal life, but with God by my side we got there.

Then I met John, and we took our time getting to know each other. He was a Christian also, and we made a commitment to keep God at the center of our relationship. Seventeen years later we still do that. He never looked at who I used to be, always saw the new me, and that also was an example of God’s love. He has been a father to Sarah in every way, and she would say she’s lucky to have him in her life.

I’ve prayed for Sarah since the day I was born again. She was born into confusion but I know without a doubt the Lord had a plan for her. He watched over her when I could not and kept her safe during years of chaos. I never have once regretted having her.

But I’m so glad it’s different for Sarah. She loves the Lord first, which enables her to love her husband and the baby yet to be born. She knows who she is in Christ as a woman, a daughter and a mother. I get to watch my baby raise her own babies the right way as a mother who can help Sarah in her own journey through motherhood. We grew up together in a way, and today we share the same loving Father. His grace is all together amazing.

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