A testimony by Erica

    Hi! My name is Erica. I was born on September 15 in San Angelo Texas to my mom Mary. My mom says that her labor and my delivery was fast and easy but that I had come into this world punching and kicking. She says she knew I would be a fighter. 

    My mom was hardly in my life as a child and growing up. The first memory I have of her as a toddler was her visiting me and the police taking her away. I stood at the door and watched as she was in tears, being arrested and taken away by the police as my grandmother closed the door. I was three years old. 

    Shortly after, my grandma’s mom was dying, and she moved in so my grandmother could care for her until she passed. Soon after her passing, my aunt and her husband (at the time) moved in. My grandma and grandpa weren’t around, and my dad would come and go. 

    My life changed for me at this point. My aunt worked the graveyard shift, and my uncle was the babysitter. He started molesting me. He would send the other kids to the park at night so he could do what he wanted to me. 

    It went on for a few years until they were suddenly gone, and my sister and I were back in my grandmother’s care; my grandma and grandpa lived separately. I was told it was so she could receive government benefits for us then. You were disqualified from benefits if you were married and lived with your husband. 

    As a young girl, I remember my grandfather pasturing an all-Spanish church. I can remember always wanting to be called on to read the Bible. I had memorized the whole first chapter of Genesis, which I was very proud of. I didn’t really understand what was happening or what was being said; I just knew I wanted to be a part of it. 

    My grandma was deeply involved in the occult; I always felt a dark presence around me as a child; I was always in fear, especially at night. Nighttime was the worst time my sister would see things. Women would always come to see my grandma, and they would come bearing gifts for her, my sister, and me. I’m thankful my grandmother kept what she was practicing hidden from us. It still affected our lives with the things we had seen and felt. 

    I was about 7 to 8 (third-grade age) when my dad appeared in our lives. He asked my sister and me if we wanted to live with him. She declined and stayed with my grandma, and I went with him.

    He works for Taco Villa and is hauling around me and a Taco Villa trailer all over Texas to baseball games selling food. We settled in Midland. 

    One day, my dad decided to drop me off at a public pool alone. I was small, and I couldn’t swim. I kept seeing a man watching me. I was hanging onto the side of the pool, and I thought I could just follow this dip to the 4-foot side, and as long as I held on, I would be OK; bad idea. 

    I let go and started being carried by the water towards the middle of the pool. I couldn’t scream. I started drowning. The man I had noticed earlier was now jumping into the pool and swimming towards me. He saved me that day. The reason this is significant is because this man who saved me and laid me out on the concrete had disappeared. People had surrounded me and I kept looking for him through the crowd to thank him, but he was gone. He disappeared. I really believe an angel saved me from drowning that day. 

    After this, my dad started dating, and I remember my dad would physically beat this woman black and blue. One time, he was so mad he grabbed an iron that she was ironing with, and he put it on her leg and burned her. I remember looking at the burn mark on her leg, which was the outline and shape of the iron. It even had the steam holes burned into her leg. 

    During one of their breakups, my dad was searching for the spiritual, and we went to every denomination of church you can think of, and three of them left me with permanent trauma. My dad’s girlfriend was no longer around, so he couldn’t abuse her, but unfortunately, I was, and I became my dad’s literal and physical punching bag. 

    I was walking on eggshells in fear of setting my dad off. I had developed a self-soothing nervous tick: I would shake my hand. It only happened when my dad got angry and he hated it. It would set him off even more. I quickly learned what not to say or do, but unfortunately, this would not stop the beatings. 

    My dad was a full-blown heroin addict and was dealing with his own demons. I would hide from him to avoid getting beat. This quickly stopped, too, because it would send him into a rage. 

    One day, I was in school, and my dad pulled me out and told me we were leaving town because my grandma died. We came home for the funeral and returned to Midland with my sister in tow. This was in 1991. I was eight years old, and my sister was six years old. Our stay in Midland was short-lived. 

    My dad would leave us home alone, while he was at work one day, we got a call from a man saying things on the line and that he knew where we lived and he was coming over to kill us. We called my dad at work, and he told us to go to his job. Right after, we moved back home to San Angelo. 

    We shortly moved in with one of his girlfriends that he was dating at the time, and I was about ten years old. It was one of the worst beatings I had gotten at this time. I thought this was it; I was going to die. He was whipping me with a jump rope. Anything he could get his hands on, he was body slamming me on a tennis table. He was beating me with a tennis racket, and it broke off on me; he got to the point that he was using his fist, and I was in and out of consciousness and he was trying to slap me awake.

    My dad would send me to school in his clothes. When I took my backpack off, the teacher saw the markings on my body and asked what happened. I said I fell off a bike, and she said that doesn’t happen from falling off of a bike. I was immediately afraid. I got taken to a room, and CPS was called; the next thing I knew, I was back with my grandpa along with my sister. 

    My grandpa is an old man and has trouble caring for us, so he starts taking us over to my aunts, and the same uncle who used to babysit us when we were little is sexually abusing me again. At one point, my sister wanted to play with Barbies, and I told her playing with Barbies and watching cartoons is for babies. I can’t do these things anymore; I have to grow up. 

    Some time passed, and my dad showed up with a new girlfriend. My dad came back for my sister and me after CPS was involved in the molestation, and unfortunately, this new girlfriend didn’t want to have anything to do with my sister and me. She just wanted my dad. 

    I was a teenager at this point, and my stepmom and I were budding heads all the time, and she was using my dad as a pawn. Thankfully, my dad was more lenient. I went to parties and friends’ houses and stayed the night, while my sister went to school. She was trying to escape with every afterschool program she could get into to stay away from home as long as possible. I was promiscuous, doing cocaine, smoking weed, and drinking alcohol. 

    One day, I didn’t make my bed. I was sitting on it doing homework when my stepmom came in and told me to make my bed. I told her I would after I was done with my homework. She walked away. I thought nothing of it until my dad walked in with the belt, telling me I was in trouble for talking back to my stepmom. This was maybe the second worst beating that I had received at the hands of my dad. He was hitting me everywhere across my back, my arms, my legs, my face, my butt, all over my body; my stepmom watched and laughed with a smirk on her face. I screamed, “God, please help me!” My dad stops and says, “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll stop when your God shows up.” He went to whip me again and suddenly stopped. He ran out of the room and out of the house quickly, jumped in his truck, and peeled out; I still wonder what he heard or saw. 

    My sister would always plead with me after the beatings to let her call the cops, and I would always tell her that it was OK, that (Dad) didn’t mean it, and that he was sorry. I started to tell her the same thing that night, but I said, “go fast and don’t get caught, or he’s going to do the same thing to you.” 

    As I was waiting for my sister to get back, I didn’t have pain, and I had a peace I couldn’t explain. When the cops and investigator saw me, they gasped, but were stunned because I was smiling. The police took us to a different aunt and uncle’s house, and my grandfather and aunt showed up and took us from them. 

    My mom gets word of what happened, and we go live with her for a little while. It doesn’t last long because she can’t care for us, and we’re living out of a homeless shelter; I ran away from Amarillo and came back to San Angelo to be with my boyfriend at the time, now husband. 

    While in Amarillo, I discovered my dad wasn’t my real dad. When I came back, I asked him why he had never told me, and he said had it been up to him, I would’ve never found out, so then who am I? Who is my dad? That’s where the questions all started. 

    I never did feel when I was growing up that I belonged. I somehow knew that the family I grew up with was not my family. It’s been a few months since the beating. I’m back with my grandpa again. 

    Some years go by, I’m going to school, and I find out I’m pregnant at school in my sophomore year. One day at school, I got sick, and something wasn’t right. I was rushed to the hospital and found out I had toxemia. There was a chance of me dying, the baby dying, or both of us dying. 

    My baby was born prematurely. So then comes the day of being released from the hospital, the same day I moved in with my husband. I was only a few months into my 17th birthday, and my in-laws said I had a week to recover from having my baby, then I had to be a wife and mother. They gave me two days. 

    There was an age difference between my husband and me. I don’t think either of us was ready, and the age difference played a huge part in our relationship. I had kept all my promiscuity documented in a journal, and a lot of it took place after I was supposed to be in a committed relationship with him. Once I found out I was pregnant, I went wild, and I had it all documented. The relationship changed drastically within a few months; we were always fighting on and off. 

    The first time I left, I was pregnant with our second child. The first child’s paternity came into question after the journal was found, and I was even accused of my son being my uncle’s child because the molestation hadn’t stopped until I was 16 years old. We suffered miscarriages, and we never trusted one another. 

    I began to have mental health problems. I was so angry, and I just started to hate everyone. Everyone who was supposed to love me, care for me, and protect me hurt me in some way, and I was depressed all the time. I avoided Friends and even my family. I became a shut-in and just pushed everyone and everything away. Everything became a fight. 

    The very last breakup was the worst of every breakup; my husband would hang taking my kids over my head, and I felt trapped. He would always tell me I would never have them. This last fight we had, I was done. He left and took my kids, and I told him to take everything. Without him, without my kids, I had nothing. He literally took everything down to the stove. I was left with the dog, a mattress, and my clothes. I had nothing. I told myself this was it. 

    I tried to stay with my sister so I wouldn’t have to see him or see the things being moved out. I asked him to please lock the door because I was out of town staying with my sister, and he didn’t, so I had to come back home. I was alone for a whole week. No one to call, no one to see, nothing to do. I was completely alone. I had decided I was going to say goodbye to my kids, and I was going to kill myself. 

    I tried many times in the past and had never succeeded. My kids came to visit. I said goodbye to them, and that night, all I could think was how bad my life was looking back at it, how much of a failure I was. All I could do was lay there in a ball, rocking back and forth, crying this painful cry that had come from deep within me. I did all I could think of to do. I got on my knees and asked God for help. The same peace and joy I had the night of the beating was the same peace and joy I was filled with. 

    I couldn’t explain it. I said, “God, if you’re real, talk to me.” I found a Bible that had been thrown on the floor from the move from my husband, and I opened it, and it opened to Psalm 34. I started reading, and I knew the Lord was talking to me. I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me; I was having dreams of the Lord and dreams he had been giving me by this point. 

    By this point, I’m still not serious about the Lord, and then I have another dream of his love. I woke up crying and reaching towards heaven that morning. I still don’t get serious at this time, but I have questions in the back of my mind. 

    One day, I passed out coming out of the shower, and until this day. I think I died. I saw nothing but black, and I was conscious in the blackness. From that, time went by, and I was still not getting serious about the Lord, but I was thinking of him more than I got into an argument with my son’s girlfriend, and he and his girlfriend moved out; this is when I start to look more into the Lord. I started reading the Bible.

    COVID-19 happened, and I felt a lot of what was happening was biblical. One day, there was a Christian concert happening in town. One of the rappers I used to listen to was no longer rapping about drugs, girls, and cars. He was rapping about God; I watched the concert on TV just to see what it was about. My husband watched it with me. 

    They did an altar call, and I got on my knees. I invited my husband by extending my hand, and he said, “No.” In front of my husband and in front of God that night, I gave my life to the Lord! All the pain, all the guilt, all the anger, all the hurt and rage I had been carrying all my life was gone. I felt brand new! 

    After this, everything started to change, and at a rapid pace, I asked God for the truth, and he showed it to me. Now, I have a love for everyone, and I want everyone to experience the same love, to know they, too, can be loved unconditionally, to realize they, too, can be forgiven – to know they are not alone. Jesus is my everything, the love of my life, the bread I eat, the water I drink, the air I breathe without him. I am nothing. Jesus is the glue that holds me together. Jesus filled the hole I had and made me whole. 

This is my testimony,

Erica

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Amen! Amen! What a powerful testimony! Our God is so good! The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords – praise Him for the work He has done in Erica’s life and in our lives as well. 

As Jesus says in Luke 4:18

“The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed;”

So much healing, recovery, love, and freedom for our Sister Erica!! Thank you, Jesus!!

God has a purpose for you! Jesus is your savior! You can have the free gift of eternal life today! If you don’t know Jesus Christ, don’t hesitate! We are not guaranteed a tomorrow. Give your life to him – you can do it right here and now! 

Here is the gospel 

1 Corinthians 15

15 Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,

Jesus Christ died shed his blood on the cross for our sins, was buried, and was raised again the third day. He did this so we could be reconciled, saved by grace and grace alone! 

If you believe, then join me in this prayer: 

Oh God in heaven, I know I am a sinner. I am sorry for my sins and the life I’ve led – I know I need your forgiveness.

I believe that your only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, shed his precious blood on the cross at Calvary and died for all of my sins, and I am now willing to turn from sin and towards him.

You said in the Bible that if we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. Today, I confess that Jesus is Lord, and I believe with all my heart that God raised him from the dead. At this very moment, I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour according to His word. Thank you for saving me, Lord! Thank You for Your grace, truth, and eternal life. Amen

If you’ve just said that prayer with me, congratulations, and welcome to the Kingdom of God!! We’d love to hear from you! Please email us at info@tolministries.com – we want to help you grow in your discipleship, connect with a home church, and get you into reading God’s word!

Maranatha Brothers and Sisters, Maranatha!!