The story of Sara is a testimony of what God can do in a person's life no matter what they have done or what kind of background they have come from. He can, and will, turn things around in miraculous ways!

Sara didn't have a chance for a "normal" life right from the beginning. She was conceived when her brother was only 4 months old and her parents were not ready, emotionally or financially, for another child. Sara's mother tried to abort her with some home remedy that, obviously, and thankfully, did not work. When Sara was born prematurely, Sara's mother did not make the effort to bond with her which instilled a deep root of rejection in Sara from birth.

Sara's father was a truck driver and away from home for several days at a time so he was often unavailble to nuture Sara either. As a result, Sara suffered from failure to thrive syndrome mostly due to emotional neglect.

Sara's mother had mental health issues and when Sara was around 3 years of age, her mother felt that the only solution for her was to commit suicide, only she wanted to take the children with her. Sara's father collected rifles and they were proudly displayed on the walls of their home, Sara's mother's first thought was to shoot the children and then herself. When she read a newspaper account of someone being shot in the head and surviving, she decided to try another method to ensure that none of the three survived.

Sara's mother made a trip to the beach one night. Her plan to drown the children and herself was halted when she felt a voice say "This is not the answer, go back" and she returned to the shore.

Undaunted, Sara's mother came up with another plan. After putting the children to bed one evening, she lit the gas stove in her kitchen. She stuck her head in the oven and began inhaling the gas fumes. To her dismay, the phone began to ring, and ring, and ring. This was before answering machines, and the phone continued to ring to the point of distraction, so Sara's mother answered the phone. On the other end was her mother who had a bad feeling and was checking to see if she was okay.

After three failed attempts, Sara's mother made an appointment with her family doctor and went to ask him what the best method was to carry out her suicide/homicide plan. The doctor told her that he couldn't help her but that he knew someone that could and directed her to another doctor, which she didn't realize was a psychiatrist.

A series of electric shock treatments and Sara's mother could continue with her life, at home, and no longer suicidal.

While Sara's mother's mental health appeared to be stablized to some degree, Sara experienced physical and emotional abuse by her mother. (She also grew up with a terrible fear of lake water.)

Her parents divorced and both remarried shortly after. Around the same period, Sara was sexually molested by a teenage boy that lived on the same block but she never told anyone.

By the age of twelve, Sara was taking sleeping pills at night and the next year began using street drugs. Although she became familiar with marijuana, mescaline, and LSD, she never started on speed or heroin. Looking back, she would tell you that if she had of tried those drugs, she most likely would have become addicted and we know what follows from there to support a habit. Running away from home didn't solve things, and again, it was a miracle that she didn't end up on the streets those times when she did run away.

At the terribly young age of fourteen, Sara attempted suicide. She truly believed at the time, that if her own mother didn't, couldn't love her, that she must be unloveable and that no one would ever care about her. She survived her first overdose.

At fifteen, she was self-mutilating, and continuing to run away from home and do drugs. At sixteen, Sara was sexually abused by a young man she knew and endured unwanted sexual advances by a lesbian. She was skipping school, failing grades, drinking, and so forth. At that point in her life, she felt she could no longer cope with the emotional pain she was feeling and shut down mentally so that she would be emotionally numb. That way, she didn't care if she lived or died. She didn't care about anything.

Shortly after Sara's seventeenth birthday, feeling unwanted at home, she moved out on her own. She had witnessed a lot of violence in the home and it was a relief to be out of that environment. She recalled the physical altercations between her mother and her brother and between her step-father and her brother, and, of course, there was the time when she was beaten by her step-father as well.

She got a job as a clerk in an insurance company. Her landlord sexually harrassed her. When she refused the sexual advances made by a male co-worker, he promptly fired her when he became her supervisor. So, began her adult life, going from job to job, apartment to apartment, boyfriend to boyfriend.

She finally found someone to love her, and when her relationship with this young man ended, she was profoundly devastated. When she looked to her mother for comfort and support, her mother told her that she didn't want to listen to her problems anymore. Sara survived a second sucide attempt at eighteen.

By the time Sara was in her early twenties, she had endured numerous health issues which required eight different surgical operations, she had been hospitalized twice for clinical depression, and she had also been pregnant three times. Sara had a pregnancy in the fallopian tube, a miscarriage, and an abortion. At the time of the abortion, she believed that the fetus was equal to a blob of protoplasm or something and she did not relate to the pregnancy as an unborn baby, and therefore, experienced no guilt then.

In retrospect, even though she had wanted the baby that she miscarried, Sara would say that she would not have made a very good mother at that time in her life.

Sara seemed to attract trouble in her life. She relates an account of having a loaded rifle pointed in her face by a friend of one of her boyfriend's. She wasn't afraid because she didn't think he would really pull the trigger, and she didn't really care if he did anyway. Sara believed that she would die by her own hand and that she wouldn't live to see her twenty-fifth birthday.

Fast forward to Easter one year. Sara was watching the movie "Jesus of Nazareth" on TV. It seemed like the thing to do at Eastertime. It was the most well done "religious" movie she had seen for a long time.

At the very end of the movie, there was a close-up of the actor portraying Jesus. He said "Don't be afraid, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." What happened next changed Sara's life forever.

It was if, at that moment, the real Jesus Christ was in her living room, speaking to her directly, and she suddenly realized and understood that Jesus was real, God was real, and that she would never have to be alone again. Her life flashed before her and she saw all the wrong things she had done as well as things she neglected to do that she should have done. Overcome with feelings of remorse, Sara wept on her knees beside her bed, asking God to forgive her again and again. The worst was the horrific realization that when she had the abortion, she had committed murder and taken another's life. It was almost too much to bear.

The next few days, Sara experienced feelings of peace she had never known, feelings of unconditional love she had never known, and a joy she had never known. She knew that something was radically and wonderfully different. It was like she had been living in a black and white world and now she was in a world full of color, or like she had been in a dark room with no light source all her life and then someone brought a lit lamp into the room. And, thus began her Christian journey.

She had been spiritually born-again by receiving Jesus' sacrifice on the cross in place of her punishment for her wrongdoings. Sara was learning to live with new values, new guiding principles, new motivation, and could now grasp the meaning she had been searching for all along. She hadn't found that meaning in ologies - astrology, numerology, parapsychology, and so forth. She had even dabbled in occult practices trying to fill a spiritual void that she now realized only God could fill.

Even so, she struggled with the idea of surrendering control over to this God she was just getting to know on a personal basis. It took about six months, and then she gave her life over to God and asked that He do with it what He willed for her.

God blessed her immediately with friends who were strong Christians, with a church that helped get her grounded in her faith, with a pastor that was like a father to her, with a best friend, with a Christian boyfriend, with a job she had always wanted, working with behaviourally-challenged children, with a better place to live, and so forth. In accepting God's love for her just the way she was, she was able to learn to love and accept herself. Sara was also able to let go of unforgiveness toward her mother and others who had hurt her. Sara was so enthralled with God's goodness and grace toward her that she was willing to do anything or go through anything for Him.

There is a time, as a Christian, when one is strong enough spiritually, that we may have to undergo trials and tests and it was no different in Sara's case. She had prayed for unshakable faith not realizing at the time, that meant circumstances that would stretch her in every imaginable way.

One year was unbelievable. Sara had become engaged to a prison chaplain and they had started a prison ministry together. It seemed that all her dreams were coming true of having a real family at last and being in a ministry serving God when the entire bottom fell out.

Three weeks before the wedding, her father shot himself. There weren't any indications that he had ever accepted Jesus as his Saviour so not only was it a tragic death, but the thought that he could have ended his own life to get out of physical pain (due to diabetic neuropathy) only to land in hell was too painful to accept. Even so, she clung to the verse in Romans 8:28 "All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purposes."

A week later, she felt it was necessary to call off the wedding and break up with her fiance even though the wedding invitations had already been mailed out.

A week after that, it became clear that they were not going to be able to work together and so Sara bowed out of her position in the prison ministry. In a span of three weeks, her entire world had been turned not only upside down, but inside out as well.

An old boyfriend that went to her church was there to comfort her, and it led to them resuming a relationship. He convinced her that he loved her and proposed. She accepted, but was was still reeling from all that had happened and was in a very vulnerable state.

When the pastor pronounced them husband and wife some months later, an unexplicable feeling of doom shadowed over Sara which she didn't understand. It became evident within a month, that she had made a massive mistake. The man who she had prayed with before they married, and who she had read the Bible with her before the ceremony was now refusing to do either. She quickly learned her new husband had a long-term addiction to pornography and that he had a bad habit of not telling the truth. Without trust as a foundation in the marriage, it became evident that their relationship was headed for major trouble.

Sara had become pregnant right away, as planned, as she longed for a child and then had a miscarriage. When she became pregnant again, she almost lost that baby too.

After four months of marriage, Sara wanted out of the relationship, however, she believed that with enough prayer and Christian counselling, they would be able to get back on track and work things out. She didn't know that her husband wouldn't agree to counselling until their pastor strongly advised him to attend with her. He would agree with everything the counsellor said in the session and then go home and behave the same way. When Sara had another child, she knew that she was probably going to end up a single parent. Her husband had gone from being emotionally abusive to being physically and financially abusive as well.

The abuse toward the children in addition to failing to provide for the family left Sara desolate. She went to the pastors and elders of her church and told them what was going on in the home. They advised her husband to move out and the plan was to ensure he received Christian counselling and then they would reconcile.

Her husband, however, did not receive counselling and Sara was too afraid to let him back into the home. Thus began a nightmare that consisted of an ongoing legal battle, having to call the police to have her children returned to her on more than one occasion, and of her being stalked and harrassed for a period of seven years.

In the midst of getting a restraining order and trying to protect herself and the children, Sara decided to make the most of the situation and go back to school. She did not want to rely on government assistance so she completed a university degree to ensure that she could support her children on her own. With no support from her family, she went to school full-time, worked two part-time jobs inbetween, raised the children, and led groups for church on occasion as well. These whirlwind years took it's toll on Sara in terms of stress, health issues, and financial struggles.

At one point, she tried to walk away from God. Feeling vastly disappointed and discouraged, she felt that it didn't matter that she had prayed, that she had praised, that she had tried to be the best Christian she could be.

God is faithful. He reached down and picked her up at the worst moments and got her going again. Sometimes getting through the days and weeks felt like she was crawling on pieces of glass, her life was so painful and it was so hard to make gains of any kind. Sara thought of suicide many times but as a Christian she realized that only God was in a position grant or take a life.

When she completed her educational pursuits, Sara had come to the realization that she would never escape her ex-husband's harrassment and stalking unless she left the city that she had lived in all her life. She prayed and the Lord opened doors of employment and an apartment in another city and she moved, but not without another legal battle as her ex tried to prevent her from leaving the area.

So, now she was in a new place with a new job and expecting her life to finally turn around for the good. Things didn't happen the way she hoped. For several years, she faced poverty, obnoxious neighbors, bouts of pneumonia that almost killed her, and the ongoing burden of single parenthood.

It seemed like the hard times would never end. Once again, the Lord intervened, just enough to take the edge off her pain so that she could carry on. In her spare time, she started up a non-profit organization and it helped to have something positive to focus on.

Finally, Sara got a break when she got a full-time position in a nearby city. She packed up and moved herself and the children and started anew all over again-this time renting a house and being able to manage financially.

Around the same time, Sara confronted her mother about her childhood. She had given up on hoping that her mother would ever apologize and be accountable for the abuse, but she was hoping that her mother would at least validate Sara's childhood experience by acknowledging what it had been like for her as a little girl. Her mother just kept saying she did the best she could at the time.

Shortly after, her mother was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Hope rose up again in Sara's heart, that with her mother about to leave this world, that maybe she would want to restore their relationship, but her mother went to her grave without validating Sara's experience as her daughter. Interestingly enough, however, was the sense Sara had a few days after her mother's death, that somehow, now she loved Sara.

Sara received enough of an inheritance to purchase her own home. She leads a full, active life at present. The Lord has opened doors for Sara to minister to others on a regular basis. She is nothing like the person she was before becoming a Christian. Considering her early childhood, the odds of Sara totally overcoming her past without the help of the Lord were astronomical. To go from an abused, neglected child with zero self-esteem to being a sucessful mother and career woman is indeed a miraculous work. No amount of psychology provided the inner healing she needed.

The Bible says that when you accept Jesus as your Saviour, you become a "new creation" - old things pass away and everything becomes new." (2Corinthians 5:17) This is exactly what Sara and anyone else can experience. Once accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour, you need to get grounded in your faith, find a good local church to attend, read the Bible (there are new versions in modern day language), and develop relationships with other Christians. Then, they too will experience the miraculous!

If you would like to know more about experiencing a brand new beginning with God in your life, please go to http://christian.sunrisecounselling.com and click on "How to become a Christian." The same site also offers Counseling by email or chat so that you can discuss experiences you have had that are similar to Sara's or discuss problems with valuable self-help resources.

© Sunrisecounselling.com