I grew up in a violent house. Seeing my mother treated that way was heart-breaking. My father hadn’t allowed her to go out to work and any money the family had, he squandered on drugs and womanising. My parents eventually divorced. At 17, I met someone and two years later, we got married. We weren’t ready for marriage. It was his parents who pressured us into it because of his immigration status. But I was determined to make it work because of what I’d experienced with my parents. However my marriage soon started to go downhill because of my controlling in-laws. We split up after 2 years.
I then met someone else six months later. At first, everything seemed like it was going well but soon enough, his real character came to the surface. He turned out to be a violent drug user. I did try to break up with him in the early stages of the relationship but he wasn’t having it.
When he was violent towards me, I always fought back. I didn’t want to be like my mum who just took all the abuse. I didn’t want to see another relationship fail, so every time he said he was sorry, I would forgive him. But it got too much for me eventually so after 2 years of giving him chances to change, I cut him off completely.
About a year later I met someone else and I fell pregnant soon after. I was happy as the relationship was good and he was treating me well. He moved in with me but when my daughter Natalia was born, things started to go wrong.
John lost his job and started going out a lot with his friends and taking drugs. It seemed like he didn’t care about us. I felt very hurt and couldn’t believe it was happening again. We broke up a year later.
Now a single mum, I felt lost and depressed. I’d heard about the UCKG and started attending services. I began to feel peace and the services were a lifeline to me. I took part in a Campaign of Israel (where I sent my prayer request to the Holy land) for God to change my love life and soon after, John started attending the church too although just to see Natalia. He would sit at the back but he was hearing the messages. He saw that my life had changed and that I was confident, so he started attending the church.
In April, we decided to get back together and he completely changed. We got married last year!
Life is great. I feel peace and am so confident that anything is possible and that’s because I depend on God.
