Behind the Scenes: Home

I was raised in a small town in Gautier, Mississippi. This town is so small that when people ask where I’m from, I normally just say one of the surrounding cities. Depending on the day, I can be from Mobile, AL, or Biloxi, MS. I grew up in a home with both parents and five siblings. We didn’t have a strong faith household, I can’t even recall going to church after about first grade and before that, my only vivid memory of going to church was a car ride with my pastor and his wife. My family told stories of us going to church and honestly, I simply adopted those memories. Funny how we do that, But it’s amazing that we can because memory and families passing down their memories is how we got the bible, aside from the Holy Spirit. I would like to say that I know the moment I turned my back on the Lord, I simply don’t have that memory. I do however know that my jr. high school years are where my path began to darken. I began doing things I never even thought of like becoming a bully, I started on drugs and drinking, sneaking out of my house, running to parties, and even had my first experience in calling my parents in the middle of the night from jail. When we are young and living a life without parental guidance, reckless, and naive, the road that everyone sees as “the wrong path” or ” the self-destruct path”, the enemy can turn it into a road of spiritual destruction. At the beginning of my ninth-grade year, I had gone deeper into the pit of destruction. By this time I had started having sex and was now exploring doing spells. I took my first hit of acid at school of all places. Shortly after that I dropped out of school and my vision of life became a tunnel, my only focus, sin. After that my spiritual life started moving towards the enemy, I commenced exploring Ouija boards, palm readings, and tarot cards. Not having any true understanding of how I was getting any results from using these tools because, to the physical eye, they looked “harmless”. I had even purchased them in the toy section at Walmart, I mean come on, right? No! That is simply the world that we live in where everything looks harmless because of how and where it is sold. Perhaps someone glamorizes it to make it look more appealing to our sinful nature or make it look harmless by placing it in a place meant for the innocent, for example, the toy section of a grocery store. When truthfully there is darkness just lurking and waiting for some naive, reckless, youth to use it and open a door that was never intended for them to open. Thankfully we have an amazing father who shows up and will close the door, and then it becomes our choice to open it a second time or walk away. How does he do it? Many different ways. How did he do it for me? He sent it to my mother. Some events were lined up perfectly, so that she would enter my world for the first time in over a year. Her stay was brief, but during her stay we shared many conversations including my new hobby and some new insights that I had been told about God. I’ll spare you the insight on those, honestly even trying to write them breaks my heart. She never shamed me or pointed fingers and when the time to leave came, she departed. Still, about a week later she returned only this time with a man, a man I never met and never saw again after that night. They came in and we talked, my mom was pretty quiet and their visit couldn’t have been more than 30 min. A little side note, at this time my mom was living 4 hours away, so this 8 hr round trip was simply so God would have 30 min of my life to close a door that didn’t belong to me. Thank God for his protective providence and the faith and obedience of a mother and a man. Rewinding back to the visit with the man, as they were getting ready to leave my mother invited me to walk them to the car. As we approached the car the man started to tell me about the evil in this world that is hidden behind the scenes and how some of those entities will attach themselves to specific people. He followed this talk up with a request to pray over me, I consented. I would like to tell you that after this encounter I returned to the Lord and never sinned again, that however simply isn’t true. You see God only sent my mom to close a door not to draw me back to him. Wondering why? I did too, I believe because God allows us to take part in his plans. At times we forget that in the end this war and the victory belong solely to him. Yet how loving he is that he would give a mother a victory in the battle for her daughter’s soul, how compassionate that he would give her a victory that she could see unfold. You see I didn’t turn back to the Lord, but I did start to fall away from the door, he gave her authority to shut. And I know if he was willing to do it for me all those years ago, for a girl that completely turned her back on him, I know he can do it for any of you. So I ask, do you have a door he needs to shut? Because I am a living testimony that he is willing to shut that door for you. All you need to do is pray and ask. Let him know that you can’t shut that door, ask him to shut it. Your prayer could sound something like this.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for this moment you have given us to come before you. We thank you for your sacrifice for our lives. We know and understand that it is only through your grace that we find freedom. Lord, we have doors that have opened by either our own doing or that of something unseen. Lord Jesus, we fall before you. We ask you to do only what you can do. We cannot close these doors. Lord, we choose not to live a life walking through doors you have not opened for us. Please, God, close the doors that are not of your will. Give us guidance to redirect our hearts back to you, where we know we are loved and safe. Thank you, Jesus, for taking the time to hear our voice as we speak. Thank you for looking into our hearts and finding our truth. Thank you for your presence in this moment of prayer.

In Jesus’ mighty name we pray Amen!