How did I get here?

How did I get here?

How did my health, my marriage, everything just crumble?

I mean, I was the perfect wife, I never did anything wrong, I was the perfect Christian woman and had an issue free life.

Ha! Lies, not true at all! Nay, Nay I say and another "Nay" for extra-ness...because this would not be a blog written by me if there wasn't a little "extra" in it. 😁

For the past 4 years (maybe even more when it popped it from time to time) I've been dealing with my past, something that I have never wanted to deal with because it hurt so much. I believe God was bringing these things up so that I can be healed and see that I need to stop holding them down and give them fully to Him.

So come on a little journey with me, lets go to the very beginning of all this. Grab a delicious snacky snack, a blanket and your favorite beverage. LOL! Yes, it's going to be like that...but don't you worry your little heart, this will be in parts; a series if you will.

I was born into ministry, into Christianity; preaching and intercession flows through my veins. My parent's grew up in church, their parents were pastors and their parents pastors.

My Grandmothers were spirit filled prayer warriors and were always praying with power in their voices. Even if you had the smallest cold they were calling down heaven to heal you and you better believe...you were going to be healed!

Even my parents today are ministers, have a post abortion healing ministry, Dad travels to other churches as an evangelist, my little sister is even a reverend and preaches the word. I've seen Jesus move, I have had Holy Spirit encounters that I still give me chills...I know Jesus! Is this enough?

Just a year or so after I was born my parents decided to end their marriage, to get a little taste of the world and see what it had to offer.

For a few years it was just Mom, my older sister and me. My mom was a good single mom, if there where any financial struggles or if she was ever sad or mad about our situation she never showed it. She worked and did her best to provide for the 3 of us, we had a roof over our head, clothes on our backs and food in our tummies.

After some time I can remember lots of parties at our house, drinking, drugs, loud, and crazy. We lived across the street from our pastor grandparents and was sent there a lot when these parties were happening. Went to church with them every Sunday, loved Jesus but never had a personal relationship with Him because we'd go back home to the craziness, I think I was confused at times of who Jesus was, how could He love me so much but then allow us to go through the things that were happening at home?

My mom had a boyfriend who I liked (sometimes) but our house became sort of crazy. Lots of partying, drug use, physical and verbal abuse. I remember nights being woken by the sound of screaming, hitting, then mom yanking us out of bed, packing our bags because we were running to stay with a friend.

My biological father did take us on weekends from time to time and brought us around family during holidays and cousin's birthday parties, but wasn't fully "there" for us he also had his own struggles that he was dealing with personally.

Now I will say that my mom's new man did step up and took very good care of us, he did not want my mom to be on welfare so he took care of us financially, he put my sister and I on his medical insurance, we never went without new school clothes, toys, and food. I was grateful for that.

I am the type of person that really holds my problems in, if I'm hurting, or something done to me that hurt my feelings....it goes pushed down and never mentioned. I always walk around with a smile on face like I'm good but deep down I'm screaming for help.

I tried really hard to love my life and everything that was going on but I was mad for my mom, going through her abuse, I was mad that we had to leave our home and sent to Nana & Papa's so that my parents can party all night and do drugs with their friends, I was mad because this is not how it is supposed to be.

Kids from school had their parents together and had been married for years, no divorces, had a nice house with the white picket fences, they ate dinner together and held conversations about how their day went, sons played catch with their dad and mother's helped their daughters braid their hair and even had and a dog!

Our family was just a little chaotic, drugs, partying, drinking, abuse, mom ran over her boyfriend with the car, and he was just an angry man.

Along with all the home and daddy issues as young as kindergarten I remember being teased for the way I looked, I was told that I had a big head, a big nose, that I was ugly...the man my mom was dating was black and that was gross.

As I got a little older still in elementary school it was all about style; I didn't own any Guess jeans, Espirt or the cool Swatch watches (LOL!! Did you just get that 80's nostalgic feeling? Cue the Karate Kid soundtrack!) We purchased a lot of our clothes on layaway at Mervyns (Did you feel it again? Did ya?) or at the local Thrift Store.

We would hit the mall from time to time but never to purchase a name brand pair of jeans or shoes, it was whatever was on sale.

If you are a parent you know you are mostly on a tight budget especially when by this time my mom had 4 children.

So when a kid at school asked where I got my shirt and I said "The Thrift Store" I was pointed and laughed at, or when I wore the generic brand of Guess jeans it didn't go unnoticed.

My Aunt did our "at home perms" (LOL!! I just pictured it...the perm!) because no way we could go to a salon and have a professional do it, and plus they came out great!

Of course I was still teased because of my looks, my face, I was very skinny with a head the size of a watermelon (at least that I what was told to me over and over). Any boy I ever had a crush on would find out and come up to me and say "EW! No way! You're ugly!"

So, I never believed I would ever be liked or have a boyfriend in my life time; If I had a crush on a boy I never told anyone because I didn't want him to find out and be grossed out by me.

To cover my low self-esteem I was really outgoing and made a lot of friends and I smiled a lot to hide the hurt in my heart.

I was happy go lucky, fun, "the life of the party", always cracking jokes and being silly; that was my outlet, my safe place.

I felt there was too much happening at home and I didn't want to cry or be a burden to my parents, let alone have them avoid me.

Once I got into Jr. High and High School the pressure to "fit in" was worse 13 year old's had very high expectations!

I was still looked at as ugly, still teased about my "out of style" wardrobe.

I will never forget there was a boy I secretly had a crush on and come to find out he had a crush on me too!! Awesome right? Nay! (ok, overuse of that word? It's fun just roll with it😂)

He did the whole thing: passed a note to me and it said and I quote "I like you, do you like me? Circle YES or NO". (Huh? Remember those?)

Of course I circled YES! and that was it! I think I had a boyfriend LOL!!

We walked out of class together and we stopped to talk about the test we had to take, he was leaning against the wall and I was facing him with my back to the crowd when a group of his friends came up to him and I turned around to look and his friends jumped back, all gasped in shock and loudly said, "Oh man, her? She's ugly!" They all laughed at me and he didn't say anything but laughed and they all walked away together. I was just standing there all by myself just wondering what just happened? There went my boyfriend I had for 2 seconds.

I fought back the tears and put on my happy face, went on with my day but at bed time I cried myself to sleep.

The next day in class I looked over at him and waved but he ignored me like nothing happened and avoided me like the plague.

When reminiscing about a local skating rink in town I remember the big 8th grade graduation field trip was to this popular hang out spot. All us girls gushed about who we wanted to "couple skate" with and there was a boy I had crushed on for years! He was cute, popular, athletic...and ITALIAN! I hoped with everything in me that he'd ask me to skate with him. When the time came to pick a partner he walked my direction and my heart was beating thousand miles a minute but he just said to me "I don't ever want to couple skate with you, I don't like you!" and asked the girl sitting next to me to skate with him. There I was alone and just sitting in the corner watching everyone skate with their crushes.

In High School it was worse...peer pressure to have sex and smoke pot was everywhere! If you didn't well, you were lame. Having a boyfriend was the trend, just as much as buying your clothes from Wet Seal and Contempo Casual (I know that made you smile!😊).

Of course I chose to never do any of those things, by this point in my life my mom had been married to her boyfriend, 2 kids with him and they had gotten saved! Delivered from drugs and the wild lifestyle, preaching the gospel to thousands of young kids a month, He had joined a power team and the family traveled a lot for ministry.

Home life went from chaotic to very strict. My parents grew up very old school, especially mom, in church no chewing gum, no wearing short skirts, no secular music and Dad grew up in a military home so everything was orderly and you must be obedient to "the man of the house". When my parents got saved they brought those values into our home and we could not do anything! No boys! Even they were just friends, No boyfriends until you're 16 and even then that poor boy had to be drilled by Dad, No makeup, no secular music, no school dances, no going to the movies unless it's rated G, we were forced to wake up at 4 AM in the morning to pray, We HAD to left our hands during worship time at church, if we didn't we'd be punished...you get the idea SCRICT!

This made the teasing worse, not only #1 was I ugly, #2 I was a Christian, #3 I didn't do anything so don't ever invite Diana anywhere because she can't come anyway! I was not the cool chick at school at all!

Then started the "You can't do anything and you'll never be anyone".

You see all throughout my education I had struggles learning, when I read my eyes would jump around the pages and I'd get easily distracted, I was very poor in math and I never understood anything. I needed one on one learning, I need you to come here and explain it to me...show me how you did that. I was even held back in 2nd grade and struggled to graduate each grade, I was just making it. Instead of being asked if I needed help or maybe a tutor I was punished for having bad grades.

I was beaten, had privileges' taken from me and even sent to live with my biological father as punishment but he didn't do anything.

This just put fear in me and didn't help solve my learning disabilities at all. No one in my home saw it, noticed it or asked about it.

At school I was sent to the "special education classes" and even when I didn't understand the simplest of math problems my teacher would then tell me I was stupid, I'd never make it in life and how did I even get into high school?

I was determined to have friends because then at least I would like going to school and someone would listen to me. As always I put on my happy, fun face and was very outgoing and I can say I had lots of friends, I wasn't super popular but a lot of kids knew me, there were also ones that didn't like me and a bunch of mean girls would spread nasty rumors about me just to make me look bad. Again, I'd go home and cry myself to sleep.

I had a very hard time in my teenage years trying to balance fitting in at a public school and youth group at church and remember that my Dad was part of a very popular ministry back then so I had to represent the ministry too.

I wanted to fit in but not too much because I knew the dangers of drugs, alcohol and wasn't looking to have sex, I mean I couldn't even look in a boys direction.

I felt like everything I did I was punished for, I could not do anything right; not in school, at home, or at church.

These were the years when I should be able to talk to my parents, even God about everything but I just couldn't! I didn't want to be shot down or punished for thinking about things a normal teenager was thinking about. I didn't feel worthy enough to come before God and talk to Him because I wasn't sure what He would say, would He punish me for being mad at Him for creating me so ugly? For making me so dumb?

I didn't feel wanted by my own earthly Father, why would a Heavenly Father want me too?

Not only did I have a very low self esteem, but I had daddy issues, learning disabilities that were never addressed, and I just didn't know who Diana was and I thought I'd never find her. I stuffed all of these issues in and never wanted to bring them out to face them.

This was just in my school years, and I left out a lot because I didn't want this to be too long.

I will share with you my young adult and adult years next blog.

I don't want to leave you all feeling sorry for me or if your stories are similar feeling sorry for yourself.

There is something wonderful happening in my life and God is revealing to me what I need healing from and has healed me from a lot of these things and as days, weeks, and months go by I will be blogging about how God has released these strongholds from my life and replaced them with His words spoken over me.

Don't for one minute think that God will remove your low self-esteem and not replace the words "Ugly", "Stupid", "Worthless", "Never be anything", without replacing them with "You are beautiful" Psalm 45:11 "You have a purpose" Jeremiah 29:11 "You are special" Ephesians 2:10 "You are important" 1 Peter 2:9 "When you need a father" 2 Corinthians 6:18

Until next time, I'm praying for you and Jesus loves you!

Good Stuff:

Psalm 139:13-14

For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Ephesians 3:12

In Him and through faith in Him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.