“LORD Jesus,” at last, those two words escaped her mouth. Her tears streamed down her cheeks, making their ways down to her neck and making their destiny into her bras.

Driving 70 miles per hour, on the highway of 55 miles per hour speed limit, she looked as though she was driving in to eternity. It was around 8pm and nobody could see her face through the night light. Not that she cared about anybody seeing her face but she was scared of seeing her face through the car mirror.

Gasping for air and continuing what she began to say five minutes ago, she said, “LORD, can You rescue me one last time?”

“LORD, You know, if I get pregnant now, I can’t have the child. I don’t want to kill any more of my babies, please, please, please, LORD, please” and started crying loud.

She couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to pull over to the curb but she didn’t want to find herself in a none-moving motion state because she was scared what she could do to herself.

Her parents and two of her young sisters came from Ethiopia to the US a year ago. She was the first to come to the US six years ago. And all the responsibilities of taking care of her families rested on her shoulder. She was very stressed beyond measure.

She became a new convert (born-again Christian) just a year earlier before she left her homeland country, Ethiopia. As the first child of her family, her parents invested on her as much as they could afford. And the one way they expected her to pay them back was by her getting married. They have asked her about getting married more than four times already within the one year they’ve been in the US. Every time they’ve asked her, she replied to them, “Only God knows when I’m going to get married. Why don’t you two just pray for me,” hiding her face away from them, not wanting to show how that question stressed her out.

She wanted to get married more than they wanted her to but life was taking her somewhere she didn’t sign up for.

With the first year of her conversion, back in Ethiopia, her friends who introduced her to Christ kept close contact with her. She took a six month class at her church about salvation and everything. She used to go to church at least three times a week.

She had two or three boyfriends before she came to Christ but she broke up with the last one the day she took water baptism.

After she came to the US, she went through tough times as she tried to be independent. She joined the church which was closer to her apartment. During those times, she met a man who seemed to know about life in America better than her and actually helped her while she was settling in. After that, one thing led to the other, she found herself with him under the same bed sheet. She felt so indebted to him that she couldn’t say no to his sexual advances.

But their relationship ended violently after he slapped her when she told him that she aborted the baby without telling him. She did a couple of abortion (one when she was in Ethiopia and the other one, with this guy). After she broke up with him, she went down into serious bouts of depression for quite some time.

Her personality has been changed since then. She became angry for every little things; and used to fight with anyone and everyone who seemed to be on her way. She cut any contact with any believers and stopped going to church.

“Why?” I asked her.

She looked down and said, “Because I’ve been running away from God after the second abortion and I didn’t want anyone to confront me with my decision or anything. I especially don’t want anyone to ask me why I stopped going to church. I was thinking of getting it right before I start to go to church. And for some reason, I feel like people are talking about me a lot.”

Then when her parents and siblings got visa to come to the US, she won herself off of the depression medicine and worked more than 16 hours a day to save enough money to their transportation and other expenses.

After her families came to the US, she kept working long hours to make her siblings’ life in America as comfortable as possible, so that their first experience would be at least different from hers.

In the middle of all these chaotic lifestyle, she met a man who knew nothing about God or church. She liked him instantly when he made her laugh with his silly jokes. He was much older than her but life already treated her unfairly (as she put it) and didn’t care about his age or anything. The man didn’t really pursue her that much to win her body.

After she dated him for a month or two, she noticed some of the depression signs she experienced last time. But she used to feel relaxed whenever she was with the man. Whenever she was away from him like for a couple of days or so, her problem of depression or feeling just “blue” from nowhere without any reason used to grip her soul. Then she literally began using the man more as a pain-killer or a “vacation island” than a human being. If she feels depressed, she takes off from work and spends time with him. She knew she didn’t have any love for the man; only “addiction” of something she couldn’t make a name for.

After three month, it became evident for her that she would end up in the same road, being admitted to the ER for acute depression and panic attack. She was even scared of the thought of exposing her families to that kind of ordeal.

So she wanted to break up with him but didn’t know how. She was scared of being alone. Fear gripped her.

While she was arguing with herself what to do, she went to his apartment on Thursday night. He drinks alcohol. She began drinking alcohol after she started going out with him, (“but I used to drink only “one glass of wine” – as she described it). And it was their routine to drink alcohol and wrap up their date with sex.

The last Thursday night she saw him, she was taking shower in his apartment when he jokingly said to her that he was actually faking putting on the condom.

First, she didn’t understand what he was saying and when he repeated his statement again, she was about to stop breathing. Trying to act romantically, he said, , “I think we both belong together now and we may as well get married and have our own kids.”

“Then”, she said, “I felt like my whole life was mushed and squished together to mean nothing.”

“Why?” I asked her.

She started crying and said, “Because even if I looked lost from the outside, I was striving to come clean with every sin I was committing. Even if I didn’t have any prayer life, I used to pray on my way to work. And I always wished to marry a Christian man and live a life which glorifies God. At least that was my dream and I always imagined myself getting it right with God, somehow, someday. And,”

She stopped, gasping for air, and wiping her tears with her both hands, “and the last thing I asked God was never to let me go through that gruesome process of abortion. I want to have my own kids but I killed two of them already and I don’t want to do it again; and I asked God never to let me go through that again.”

So, that night she drove back to her apartment where she found her parents and siblings waiting for her to have dinner together, as a family. When she saw her families’ expectant and loving face, she felt like she was about to pass out. She felt as if the whole house was going around and around. It seemed as though the whole sky crumbled over her head. They all looked at her and her mom said, “Are you okay?” getting up from her seat, looking at her daughter with a concerned look. And her youngest sister said laughingly, “You look like you just finished fighting with a gangster.” Then she stopped laughing instantly after she looked at her sister’s stern and serious face.

She felt sick to her stomach. After she gave a soft kiss to her mom and dad, she said to them, “Please don’t wait for me. I already had dinner and I had a tough day at work today. I want to sleep now.”

The whole room got silent; as if they all were shot to death.

She went straight to her bedroom. Carrying her pajama, she went to the bathroom, locked the door behind her, she opened the shower, just to sit at the edge and look at the water fall.

“I’m not going to kill myself,” she said with a soft voice; but didn’t even plan to say that. Those words just came out of her mouth. And she looked up and said, “LORD, if I get pregnant now, I will kill myself, not my baby. If I don’t get pregnant, the rest of my life will be Yours”, and she jumped into the shower as if she was done with everything she wanted to do and say.

She stopped saying anything for a long time and I thought she was about to continue telling me the rest of her story. I waited patiently thinking that she was trying to pull herself together. But that was it. That was the last line of her ordeal.

She smiled at me and said, “My pregnancy test came negative. I broke up with the man. I’m now seeing a therapist twice a week just to help me sort things out instead of falling back in to another depression and going into ER for panic attack. I am now going to church regularly. I talked to the pastor of the church I go to and he put me under an elderly woman of God who is really helping me get back on track. I told her everything I told you and she knows everything about me. But may I ask you one question?”

I gulped nervously and said, “Sure” (saying to myself, I’m glad she didn’t ask me to comment about her story. Phew! My tears were hiding just behind my eye lashes, waiting something to push them over “the cliff”, if you know what I mean.)

I said to her, keeping my composer as normal as possible, “Sure, by all means, ask me if I have a good answer.”

She said, “I know God forgave me of all my sins. I’m free now. Do you think I will marry a man who is a believer in Christ Jesus and be married and have my own peaceful life?”

(The rest of this article is then my message for today; this is the message I want to communicate today with the person who is a child of God but broken into smaller pieces because of other hurtful and selfish deeds or personal wrong and unfortunate choices. This is my message for you who the devil managed to convince you that you are “unworthy” and beyond “any hope”. Yes, the rest of my message is for you, my friend, to you with whom I share the pain in one way or the other, to you, who Jesus still pursues so that He will bless and give you a brand new life as He did to me. Ignore everything now for a second and listen to me please as I continue writing the story.)

I said looking at her eyes, “You and I don’t know who we are worshiping. That is usually our fundamental problem in our Christian life. Our God is a big God. He created the heavens and the earth and the heavens and the earth and everything in them are His. He is a loving and a merciful God. He desires and yearns to bless you and me, more than we ever ask or imagine. The only thing He wants from us is this: So that we bounce back to Him in our brokenness; so that we come back to Him and seek His Kingdom more than life itself; so that we seek His righteousness more than anything this world may offer us.

Listen Precious, God wants you to seek Him more than marriage, more than a Christian man and more than having your own children. You see, you and I, once we move our eyes away from Him, we will destroy our lives and He knows that very well. He knows that you and I will get hurt when we are away from Him.

Rest in Him! Boast in His kindness, love and forgiveness while you are still alive today.

My friend, listen to me: For you and I, it is only good to be found in Christ. He loves to see us rejoice as He blesses us with every good and perfect gift.

But, my friend, we need to fix our eyes not on His gifts but on the Giver of all good and perfect gifts. Then everything becomes “nothing” before our eyes compare to what we see and find in Christ.

God loves to bless you with an amazing husband and blessed kids. But He needs you before He overwhelms you with His gifts so that you won’t disappear from Him again.

Yes, bring all your brokenness to Him. He knows how to put us back together so that our lives mean something in this life. Just first seek Him with all your heart, mind and strength. ///