Really?!? God can use this?!?!

Growing up I always questioned why I had to endure certain things. I remember being a little girl and laying in bed crying to God about those horrible injustices that I was having to endure. At nine years old I didn’t understand why God never swooped down from His throne in Heaven and recused me from all the horrible things that were surrounding me. I would cry and pray every night for Him to save me, to help me get out of the situation some how. Yet I never was rescued. I didn’t get some bright light filling my bedroom and transporting me to a new family with a loving home. Although that was the cry of my heart all throughout my childhood. I would sit and daydream about what it would be like to live in a family where there was love abounding. What would it be like to have a loving mom and dad who where there to protect me? How would it feel to be secure in my surroundings? Everyday I wondered these things and with every passing day I was certain that God had abandoned me. I must of deserved the abuse and neglect that I was suffering.
You see by 11 years old I was beat up and destroyed by the world around me. I didn’t know who my dad was and my mom was wrapped up in any guy that would give her attention. So for me and my siblings that meant lots of men in and out of our house. That meant having to fight off the advances of a step-dad who my mom was certain was the one she had been searching for all her life. Nothing was ever consistant in our house. There was no structure or boundaries. I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional environment full of neglect, abuse, and destruction. I was certain that if God was really out there that He didn’t want anything to do with this horrible little girl.
At 20 years old I was burying my mom. The person in my life that I desperately wanted unconditional love and affection from. I had tried my entire life to become the daughter that I thought she wanted. How desperately I longed for her to just sit and hold me while I cried. All I wanted was to know that she loved me. That dream was shattered the day that she took her last breath in Methodist Hospital. Here I was addicted to alcohol, drugs, suicidal, entrenched in the darkness of self-injury burying the only hope that I clung to. What was there left to fight for?
I am so thankful looking back that I didn’t throw in the towel after mom passed. I am so glad that I kept fighting. Somewhere inside myself was this desire to survive. It wasn’t a pretty transformation. It has hurt deeply. There have been days that I have wanted to just stop. Days that I have been wore out from clawing my way out of yet another deep dark pit. But in the end I am eternally grateful today for my past. I wouldn’t trade all the pain and hurt for anything. Because you see along the way I learned that all of the junk that I have suffered through in my life God has used in other people’s lifes. At 9 years old I couldn’t see into the future and how the abuse that I suffered was going to be used to glorify God. I couldn’t see how any of the darkness in my life could have any good. How could the fact that I cut my skin with razors, knifes, or really anything sharp be something useful for the healing of anyone else. However today I can tell you that He has used EVERY horrible thing in my past for good.
It wasn’t until about 2 years ago that this became very evident to me. You see God brought this friend into my life and through the struggles she was going to face I was going to understand why I went through everything I did. I didn’t know that only a short few months after our paths crossed that she would be walking through the grief of losing her mom. I didn’t know that I was going to be able to give her support soley based on the fact that I had been in the exact same spot that she found herself. I knew the overwhelming pain. I knew what it felt like to have to plan your own mom’s funeral at a young age. I knew what is was like to let go of the dream of a relationship with a mom who wasn’t able to give us what we needed. I knew what it was like for your world to be spinning out of your control. I had walked this road. It was through this that my heart was reminded of the Scripture in Romans. That one that I had decided just wasn’t true years ago. The one where God promises to use ALL things for our good to those who love Him and are called to Him. He was showing me that even this promise is true.
In the past two years I can’t count the number of times that God has used a portion of my past, a part of my pain in someone else’s life. Just like I can’t count the number of times He has used the pain of another’s life to minister to me.
What is going on in your life right now? Do you have things in your history that you have allowed the enemy to lie to you about? Seek God, ask Him to send someone your way who needs to hear your story. He will cause there is one thing that I am certain of today: Nothing that I have experienced in my life, neither the great and wonderous or the painful and deading, will be wasted. He will use it to grow me and to grow others. I just have to be willing to be used.