Chapter 1
I fell in love with the quote, “Not fragile like a flower, Fragile like a BOMB” a few months ago and it has become the catalyst for a change in my life that is SO huge God has called me to tell my story. Through his Word and his leading me I have found peace, wholeness, and most importantly purpose. I am excited to share these findings with you because I no longer have to hide who I am in fear, shame, or guilt. Let me tell you, the weight that I had been carrying around my whole life was insanely heavy and it was crushing me. I felt unloved, unwanted, used up and empty on the inside. If you have felt this way, then you understand the despair that comes with facing your future in this isolated mindset.
I grew up in a church and asked Jesus to be my Savior very early in my life. My parents were young and had left Catholicism to find their own answers. We landed in a church of theology….a word that still gives me shivers when I hear it because to me, theology would come to mean a list of rules that I could not stop breaking or even attempt to understand. It was a cold and lonely, unloving place. Through my church experiences and my parents infancy in Christianity, I learned that not only was God not excited to have a Wild Child in me, but he wasn’t accessible to anyone who wasn’t already clean when they came into the church. I was different then everyone else there…and I didn’t know why. I listened to the stories about God in Sunday School but I figured he must have been a very important man that only attended the adult section of my church. I never felt God inside of me no matter what I prayed or how good I tried to be. I remember thinking, “I’ll feel like a Christian when I’m older. I’ll feel good enough when I’m older. God will love me when I’m older.” Older came and I felt no presence of God, no love and eventually I truly believed that I had only been put on this Earth to serve as a stepping stone for someone else’s greatness, not good enough to be great on my own.
My road included all different types of abuse, like so many of God’s children today. The abuse I was subjected to led me to a pit of hopelessness and brokenness that froze me in time. I didn’t realize how frozen I’d become until I started working in a public school. I was a perpetual middle schooler no matter how old I got. I was angry and always feeling like everyone else had access to some secret to happiness that I would never find. Three years ago, I was so broken that I destroyed someone else’s life that I had never met, never even laid eyes on. The guilt was too much and I was convinced that I didn’t deserve love from anyone, let alone a God who had never shown himself to me in a way that I could feel. I was ugly and worthless and beaten down.
In my work with my students, I found my road back to God. This blog will contain stories from the road that God gave me to travel and the peace he brought to me through several very unexpected sources. I tell my students that I will never ask them to do something that I myself will not do. In keeping that promise, God has given me new life. He has shown me that He gave me this life for a reason…nobody could live it the way I do. God CHOSE me to live it because he knew I was his WILD CHILD. Nothing tame could have ever taken down the monsters that abuse created in me.
I invite you to come with me as I open up about spiritual abuse, physical and emotional abuse, and just in case those didn’t come with enough demons, I got to add sexual abuse to my dirty laundry list as well. This has been one incredible path to travel and all I can say is HANG ON. God is not finished with me yet….so if you know me personally, and you’ve seen my WILD SIDE, you know how much work God would have to do in order to mold me into a person that was WILD enough to make it, but pliable and compliant enough for him to shine through me.
If you have a WILD side, I encourage you to keep an open mind. You may not know what you need right now…and that is okay. I started this journey with a semi trailer of baggage and a heart as broken as they come. I had no idea what to pray and the thought that God didn’t love me enough to hear my prayers even if I had exactly the right words. I watched an episode of Star and I have adopted what I like to call my Queen Latifah prayer. I invite you to pray the lyrics to her song “One Day”. God knows your heart and your fears and through him you WILL find life. Link is posted below.
Love in Christ,
Jackie
King's Wild Child 