Knowing Jesus and accepting him as my Lord and Savior has been the best decision of my life. At the age of 33, I not only found him, but I also found myself. I truly hunger for growth in my walk with him as his servant. My story is a bit too long to share in this limited space, but I really want to share a very powerful testimony that will move people.

I would have been dead by now if I didn't make that important choice that I made not too long ago. I love the Lord my God. He has helped me to let go of my painful past and to learn to live the present. I like to tell people about my story to let them know that he is real and alive, and that there is hope for a better life with him forever, if they only give their life to him. I no longer consider myself a victim, but a survivor from all the abuse I went through since I can remember; and because of him, I love waking up each day to another day of what my life is now. I've come a long way to finally begin to feel emotionally stable, and happy about my self, and all of this is because of him. I would love to let Pastor Dudley know how powerful his preaching is to me, and how much he has helped me to seek the Lord more and more each time I hear him. I look forward to every Sunday and being here at Shepherd of the Hills.

I was born out of wedlock in Mexico when my mother was only 15 years old and my father was 26 and married to his wife (who was not my mom). I was separated from my mom and was forced to come to Los Angeles to a new life with my grandparents. My mother was too young and naive to confront her own mother, so she was forced to let me go. Growing up I was always taken care of, but never really had what I should have had—my parents and their protection. I was raped by my uncle at the very young age of three years. I can still remember the physically painful experience I felt that morning. He robbed me of my innocence and traumatized me forever. Unfortunately my pain and fear didn't stop there. Soon after that incident, my grandfather, whom I was supposed to trust and feel protected by, molested me until I was 17 years old. During all of those years of feeling fear for myself, day and night, I was molested not only by my uncle and my grandfather, but also by a number of other people from the family, even including some strangers.

As a child I didn't know what to do or who to talk to about this in fear of what they might say. I didn't even know how to open up to anyone because of growing up with an old-fashioned grandmother who never opened up about life issues. I figured that was probably just part of life. And I felt that I just needed to deal with it. I knew it felt wrong and I didn't feel very good about myself. I started to feel insecure about myself and even felt a dirty feeling deep inside of me. I felt like I couldn't go to anyone and trust them with what I was experiencing. I will not explain any details of all those horrible experiences, because they are very disturbing to me.

I had to find a reason to escape from everybody that was hurting me. Besides the sexual abuse, there was also physical, emotional, and verbal abuse from an aunt who did not like me. I felt a sense of envy and jealousy from her. At age 16, I met a guy seven years older than me whom I thought would give me what I never got at home, which was love and affection. I had my first daughter at 18, and a few years down the road I had two more kids with him. I was with him for a total of eight years on and off. What I thought love was, turned out to be one of the most horrific experiences of my life. It took me almost losing my life to a suicidal attempt at least twice, before I realized that I needed to leave him. He turned out to be an abuser, physically and verbally, forced me to be with him, and was a drinker and compulsive liar. His family was very difficult with me and things were getting very out of control. I felt like a prisoner in my home. Not knowing where to go and in fear of going back home, I was able to get away from him a few times. However, it was usually not by choice, but because he threw me out of the house like an old rag. During some of those cold nights, I was forced out of the house without any of my children. I had no other choice but to leave and start driving somewhere where I could safely sleep in my car with out any blankets or money in my pockets. I didn't have the heart to put any of my children through such an experience. I was cold and hungry during those times, and I was very afraid for my life, but had too much pride to go back home and let everybody know that my life hadn't changed; it had only gotten worse.

After my suicide attempts and self mutilation, I ended up the in hospital. For many years my first thought of the day was how I was going to do it this time so I could finally get it over with. I thought I was worthless; I was made to feel so low about myself that I couldn't even stand looking at myself in the mirror. I felt like the ugliest person alive. My children were slowly being separated from me by him and his family, and my family had no idea who I was growing up to be. Many of them were in the dark about everything I had gone through all those years.

One day, I finally got away from him. I started to live my own life. I had my children with me, but many times he took them away. All that stress led me to develop a heart condition that almost took my life. I started to experience what I thought life was supposed to be, and ended up looking for love in all the wrong places—one bad relationship after another. I just wanted someone to love me and care for me the way I thought would make me happy. Instead, I was taken advantage of because of my sensibility and lack of experience. I felt very insecure and couldn't trust anyone. Trying to find myself kept taking me in all the wrong directions. Everything I lacked growing up was everything I wanted to gain right away.

Many tears I cried, and through so much pain, I never thought God could help me. As a matter of fact, I didn't even think he liked me because of everything I had gone through. My family claimed to be Catholic, but they never picked up a Bible and lived decent lives as believers. I remember asking my mom several times, since we were able to be with each other after my grandma had passed away, “Who is Jesus? And why do they say that he died for our sins? How and why would he do that?” My mom didn’t know.

So, God revealed himself to me. He used someone in my life who ended up leading me to him. In 2001, I met a guy whom I fell in love with almost immediately. Actually, we fell in love with each other. I had prayed and prayed to God to send me someone who can love me just as much as I would love them in return. Before meeting him, I started getting influenced by some people I considered my friends. They tried convincing me to go a different direction, since all my attempts to fall in love with a guy had failed. They suggested I should start experiencing being with women and took me out on a Friday night, got me a little drunk in order for them to get me to act just like them. When one of the girls kissed me for the first time and started to put her hands on my body, I had never felt so low. I didn't feel comfortable, and I was thinking of God the entire time it was happening. I had a huge feeling of guilt inside of me. The next day, I had a talk with my mom about a dream she had that night. She said she had dreamed about grandma and she wanted to give me a message. My mom told me that she was telling her to tell me that I needed to be very careful with what I was doing because she did not agree with the way I was acting, and warned me to be careful. When I heard that I left and cried because I didn't want to behave that way. I felt guilty and pleaded to God to forgive me, and asked him to please send me someone to love me so that I could avoid getting into that kind of trouble. I didn't want to go there, and that night in the club wasn't me at all.

Ironically, soon after that is when Sean came into my life. Sean came from a Christian family and showed me a whole different side to life. He made me feel special, and I had never before been treated so incredibly nice in my life. He was the most beautiful person I had ever met in every possible way. I was sure he was going to marry me. Things were amazing between us. I felt things with him that I had never felt before. As a matter of fact, I wasn't even aware that anyone could ever feel so many beautiful feelings when being in love. It was almost too good to be true. Then we moved in together. Unfortunately, depression showed its ugly face to me and it caught me by surprise in the midst of my bliss. All the years of pain, tears, and bad memories with never having any help or therapy had finally caught up to me.

So, a year and a half later, things started shifting a different direction between Sean and me. I was so sure of his love that I never imagined he would get tired of trying to find ways to make me happy, since I didn't know how to deal with my depression. I knew he was trying very hard and I started to fell that that he was forced to stick around as long as he could because he didn't want to hurt me if he ended up leaving me. I know he loved me very much because I felt it. But slowly that feeling started to fade. The father of my children contributed a lot to the misery I was going through since he didn't have anyone in his life. He wanted to drag me down in his bitterness, and what better way than to try to break up my relationship? I ended up in the hospital once again. I was trying to deal with a battle that existed only in my mind. I started to have psychiatric problems and wanted to end my life again. This time by overdosing on my heart medication which would make my heart stop in a matter of minutes. Dealing with my ex on and off relived all those insecurities that Sean had taken away. After that ordeal, my relationship with Sean was in the rocks and bound to end at any time. He had already talked to me about possibly separating to take some time off in order for us to find what we once had, to re-spark that fire that was deep inside of us. He wanted to see if by being apart we would miss each other to the point of getting back. If not, we would go our own separate ways. Just the thought of losing him almost took me back to the state I was trying to avoid—depression. I had learned to smile with him, to see life in so many ways, and the importance of communicating what we feel, which I had never known how to do in my life. He just taught me so much. He was the first person that ever treated me like a human being.

We started going to church in order to be better people. We both had been feeling kind of guilty for quite sometime about the way we were living, because we both knew we were living in sin. Going to a new church was a whole different experience for me, but one that I was definitely open to. The very first time I set foot in a Christian church, I felt such an incredible feeling that blew me away. I started crying because I was finding out who Jesus Christ was and the price he had to pay for my life. It all sounded so painful. Everything said there that day almost seemed that it was being directed towards me. And I know Sean felt the same way. From that day on I fell in love at The Church at Rocky Peak. That was the very first place I went to hear about the Lord.

Soon after, my hardest decision came when I had to give Sean his space in order to work things out between us, because we kept falling out. We were both feeling guilty and came to a conclusion that I really had a hard time accepting. So with tears in my eyes and my heart breaking in pieces, I now had to leave the best thing that I ever had besides my children, and I packed my stuff and left him. I have to admit I don't even recall how I got home driving in the freeway feeling like a hysterical widow would be after losing her husband. I was so devastated that it almost felt like I was mourning him. The next day, he called me and told me that he did not want to see me in order to make it easier between us, which was not the original plan, and I couldn't begin to imagine living my life without him. I was severely depressed to the point of starving myself. Because all I could do was cry, and cry, and cry staring at his picture.

A week later, he calls me to tell me that he and I will no longer be together because he is now with somebody new. A month later, after an effort to feel alive again for my kids’ sake, my grandfather died of a heart attack, so I ended up leaving to Mexico were he had moved to, to bury him. Soon after that, I was wrongfully terminated from my job, and a month later my friend was killed in a car accident. The following month a good friend and co-worker of mine also passed away, and during that same month I went in for my second heart surgery. Of course since that April when Sean and I broke up, I had to deal with my heart condition as well as new ones that developed (I wonder why?), and four months later, Sean put the icing on the cake by getting married to his new girlfriend.

I have to admit that the year 2004 will be a hard one to forget. It will live in my mind for as long as I live. So after getting the hint, I went and got baptized and dedicated my life to the Lord. I needed to fill the huge void in my heart, and really had no other choice but to pick myself up piece by piece from the ground. It has been almost four years since Sean and I have been apart, and I've had to rededicate my life to Jesus. I had made mistake after mistake and finally realized that the Lord works in mysterious ways. He doesn't change us from one day to the other; he takes time to change us. He wants us to understand why he allows us to make mistakes, why he allows us to feel pain just so that we can become better people. And if it takes many trials until we change enough to trust him with our lives and fully believe in him, he will allow whatever needs to happen not so that we can suffer, but so that we can come to him. And that is exactly what I have done.

For the first time in my life, I have realized that all that time I thought he wasn't around is when he had me in his arms. He was allowing everything to happen to me in order for me to be the person he wants me to be, which is exactly how I have ended up being--caring, compassionate, forgiving, and loving. I was being molded all along. The sad little girl that always felt alone, neglected, and in fear is now someone who loves waking up every day of her life, thanking the Lord for everything he is doing in her life. She is thanking him for her children, her family, her friends, her job, her car, a place to live, and for Sean. Because even though we are not together, he was the one who led me to the Lord, taught me about him, and showed me so much I didn't know I could feel by loving me the way he loved me.

I love my life even with the few things I have, and I will never ever think about hurting myself in any way or taking my life. I have found out that I was meant for something more. That there is a purpose for my life, and I've come to find that out only through Jesus Christ. I know that he has forgiven me for all of the things I have done to hurt him and others, and I have been able to forgive all of those who have hurt me all throughout my life. That is what has allowed me to move forward. Letting go of the past is what I needed in order for me to move on, and trusting and believing in him has been my reason to live. I have forgiven everybody that took away from me and pierced me, my uncles, my grandfather, my aunt, and even the father of my children. I am interested in doing ministry trips and sharing my testimony with others who need Jesus in their lives. I have already gone to one and had an amazing, life-changing experience. I can only hope that the Lord can use me in many other ways.

Bernice Ruvalcaba 

March 14, 2008