Finally, a Christmas worth celebrating!

Wendy was 18 when she first started using drugs.

But unlike her teenage pals, it wasn’t to fit in as part of the “cool crowd.” Instead, she was desperately searching for a way to numb the pain of a sickening childhood.

Up to that point, almost every adult in her life had betrayed her. Her mother’s boyfriend molested her. Her own mom stuck her in foster care after blaming Wendy for instigating the abuse. And the man she fell in love with — 10 years older than she was — got her pregnant and then went back to his wife.

She eventually placed her baby for adoption — a decision that broke her heart and her spirit.

“I truly believed God hated me because of everything that had happened,” she remembers. “I wasn’t wanted, wasn’t loved, wasn’t cared for.”

ON THE STREET

Angry, grief-stricken, and without direction, she spent years doing drugs and wandering the streets, sleeping in parks, under bridges, in run-down hotels, “every place a person shouldn’t be.” She could herself with the fact that “I was safer on the streets than in my own home.”

It got to the point where Wendy thought, If I don’t wake up tomorrow, I’m perfectly okay with that. And every time she did wake up, she was mad at God for not letting her die.

“Now I know why,” Wendy admits.

With another baby on the way she completed a recovery program and went back to the baby’s father with promises of his taking care of them. But the support she was promised quickly escalated into another abusive relationship.

Two years ago, at the friend’s urging, she came with her daughter to the Orange County Rescue Mission in a last-ditch effort to salvage her life. That’s when the dark cloud over her began to lift.

“I thought recovery alone could save me,” she says. What she discovered, instead was that she needed God to heal her from the inside out. Wendy’s life has changed dramatically.

She has gone through therapy to address past abuse and domestic violence, finished up her high school education, gotten her first driver’s license, and even opened a savings account.

RECONNECTING

But what Wendy is proud of is reconnecting with the son she gave up for adoption. He’s now 23, in college, and getting acquainted with his baby sister.

“I’ve now learned that Jesus can make broken things beautiful,” she says. “I never thought this would be possible.”

But it is possible, thanks to your support. Now she can’t wait for Christmas, when she and her kids will all be together for the first time. Finally, a Christmas worth celebrating!

“If God can change me,” she says, “he can change anybody.”