TRIGGER WARNING ⚠️ ( These photos and description may be too much for some people)

// The most redemptive thing about pain is knowing that it wasn’t in vain. //

(The third photo was taken in Brazil in the Summer of 2008 with at the time my step mother and her mother. I would’ve been about 14 years old. )

You wouldn’t have recognized this Mikaela. She was extremely malnourished, beat, and raped relentlessly and incredibly manipulated. And that’s to say the least. I was locked in a basement room with an alarm on the door for days and weeks on end. ( At one point I was handcuffed to a chair hand and foot 24/7)  I didn’t come out unless I was needed for chores. I was “ allowed “ as my step Mother would call it to shower MAYBE every three months or so. And even then I had no privacy and was forced to bathe in freezing cold water. Some weeks I was lucky if I had 3 meals that entire week. I was so thin that DFCS was called because the woman who called them said “ you can tell just by her hands that she’s malnourished “ I was so underweight that the Dr. said I was going to die if I didn’t start gaining weight.

My whole life I’ve been no stranger to pain. I know it all too well. But through my pain I have gotten glimpse upon glimpse of the Kindness of Jesus. He is such a God of redemption. He took what was done to me and what was taken from me and multiplied JOY for all of my mourning, HEALING for all of my pain. What seemed like a lifetime of abuse and deep hopelessness ( 10 years ) now feels so far away because of the restoration Jesus has brought. Where  the enemy tried to destroy and take away God only brought increase. I now have vision and way bigger dreams for my life than I ever would have. What Satan meant to break me down only made me stronger. Motherhood and marriage have healed me in ways I can’t even begin to explain.
My pain wasn’t in vain, it had a PURPOSE.

Does Yours?