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Hopefully they won't be needed, but okay. And make sure this is on.

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Okay.

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Okay. The day has come. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. My name is Elizabeth Marchant. I'm the office coordinator here at VFC. So a lot of you should remember me from calling up to get you to sign up for things. Forgot to sign up on Sunday. But I'm truly glad that you're here today. I'm super excited to share my story with you. In my story, you will hear how I was born into generational dysfunction. I experienced a childhood that was filled with trauma and brokenness, and I grew up just striving to fix myself until eventually I finally surrendered my life to the Lord. Through God's faithfulness, He and His truth, He took a life marked by trauma and he rewrote my life with healing, with redemption, and with purpose. If there's one thing I hope you take away from my story is this no matter how broken your story may feel today, I believe that God is able to redeem, restore, and rewrite your purpose. And I know it because I lived it. So my story really began before I was even born. Both sides of my family, both my mom's side and my dad's side, had long histories in their families of addiction, instability, abuse, and deep emotional pain. My mom was only 16 years old and she was already struggling with mental illness, addiction, and grief after losing her older brother to an overdose while she was pregnant with me. This just gives you kind of the context to which I was born. But there is hope because as you will learn today, where you begin does not have to dictate where you end up. We may not get to choose what we're born into, but through Christ we can choose what continues through us. And so I was born in July of 1983, and here is a picture of my 16-year-old mother, my 17-year-old father, and this was taken on their wedding day. Growing up, I began to experience abuse at a very young age. This abuse did include sexual abuse and emotional abuse. I began experiencing sexual abuse before I was even out of diapers. And I would continue experiencing these kinds of abuse throughout my childhood. When I was only three years old, my mom was really struggling with addiction and mental illness, in addition to now being a single mother with two little girls. Due to us girls being abused and being around addicts so much, a friend of the family realized that we really weren't safe. I had a dad that would get me often, whereas my sister did not. Therefore, that lady adopted my younger sister. Losing her felt like losing a piece of myself. In the picture of the two little girls, that's me and my little sister, the day that her new mom took her to her new home. Throughout my childhood, we would move constantly. We were homeless a few times. I went to many different schools, preventing me from building relationships with teachers or peers or kind of mentors in my life. I was also exposed to substance abuse and domestic violence. As a child, I never knew what version of life I was going to wake up to each day. It was a regular occurrence for me to be left with people I really didn't know. Sometimes they could be on drugs or drunk. Sometimes there were wild parties or violence. I was always just looking over my shoulder, trying to read the room, trying to stay a step ahead of whatever might happen next. Places that we would stay never really felt like home to me, and I never felt settled. I remember lying awake at night, listening, waiting, wondering, you know, what was going to happen next. I never knew if someone would come into the room where I was sleeping on the floor, on a couch or a bed, wherever we were, and take advantage of me. I felt like I was always bracing for something bad and never really able to just relax or be a kid. But I could make a really good crown and coke. Before kindergarten, I knew the glass bottle and the purple bag went in the cup with the red Coca-Cola, and all the grown-ups loved it. In addition to trauma, I also experienced a very serious illness. In the first grade, I had spinal meningitis and was hospitalized for roughly a month. The photo of me in the hospital bed is the one from the hospital. Oddly enough, I felt safe in the hospital. I had a safe place to stay, I had a nice warm bed, I had plenty of food, there were people that were caring for me. So God's hand was protecting me even then. Not only did he heal my body because a lot of people die from meningitis, but he also gave me this supernatural peace and joy during what should have been a really scary time. Even though my family did not go to church or teach me about Jesus, somehow I just always knew of God. And I prayed a lot. I remember one night when I was very young, I would guess around four years old. My mom had left me with a young couple that I didn't know. They began screaming and fighting, furniture was flipped over, things were broken. I was just terrified. And so I ran and hid behind a couch that had been flipped over. This was my first encounter with Jesus. I actually saw Jesus sitting behind that couch with me. He pursued me before I even knew him. Just like it says in Jeremiah 1:5, before I formed you in your womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. Even without knowing this scripture existed, I felt that connection with the Lord, that intimacy with him in my heart. I realized the story of my childhood can be quite difficult to hear, especially if I were to go into more detail. People often ask me how I survived everything I went through without becoming angry, bitter, addicted, or self-destructive. And the clearest answer I can honestly give is Jesus. When we think about the fruits of the Spirit, we all desire love, joy, peace, kindness, and goodness. But who desires long suffering? Right? Who's signing up for the long-suffering conference? You know, nobody wants to go to that. Yet I believe that the Holy Spirit gave me the grace to endure this hardship without being consumed by bitterness. I do believe he gave me the fruit of the spirit long-suffering. It was not my resilience, it was not my inner strength, it was God's grace that carried me through seasons that should have broken me. So moving forward, abuse and instability followed me throughout my childhood until I moved in to go live with my dad in eighth grade. Life slowly began stabilizing. In high school, I had teachers and peers that loved me and really built me up and poured into my life. I started feeling a real hope for my future. And most importantly, I started going to church in high school. I would spend the night with any friend that I could that was, if your family was going to church on Sunday, I wanted to spend the night with you on Saturday night. And then once I got a car, I began going to church on my own. Then in the 10th grade, I was reunited with my sister after just over 10 years of being apart. She was still living with her new mom, and they met through my dad, who we had different dads. But she did meet me and it was great. We still have a relationship today, praise the Lord. The picture of us hugging is actually the first day that we met when we were reunited after almost 10 years. And the picture of us jumping up and down was at a sleepover that we had together a few weeks after being reunited. And then when I was in 11th grade of high school is the year that I gave my life to the Lord at a youth event, and then I was baptized shortly after at my home church. So as a young adult, I became convinced that education was going to fix everything. My master plan was to get a PhD in psychology. So I worked multiple jobs taking classes to earn my various degrees. By age 31, I had completed my master's degree. I had spent years trying to educate myself out of trauma, trying to work myself out of poverty, and trying to just earn the life that I felt I deserved. Only to discover that God's grace was really all I needed, and I didn't have to work to earn that. These photos were taken at each of my graduations and represent the years I spent striving to fix what was broken inside of me. After finishing my master's degree, I decided to take a break and focus on raising my daughter and focus on her education. But I was determined to build a life that I had always dreamed of. And I wanted the American dream. So I bought a house. Almost immediately after buying my house, my life began to spiral downward. I became deeply depressed, anxiety attacks became common, and I developed hypersomnia, which is insomnia is people who can't sleep, hypersomnia is people who sleep all the time. And I took the phrase, I love Jesus and naps to a whole nother level. My relationship ended. My career was not progressing the way I hope it would. And you know, I was angry with God. I never stopped believing in God, but I thought if anybody deserved healing and to have a good life and a successful career and a husband and family, it was me, after all. Look at everything I had been through. I deserved to have a good life, is how I felt. But the harder that I tried to get the life that I wanted, the more everything just continued to fall apart. Eventually, I was so worn down and exhausted that I decided I did not want to live this life anymore. I thought that I was damaged beyond repair. I thought the trauma was too great to overcome, and that no matter how much education I received, I was never going to be whole. My thoughts became so distorted and so irrational that I began to plan my suicide. I genuinely believed that my daughter would be better off in this world without me because I was never going to be able to give her the life that she really deserved. I thank God today I had a primary care physician who recognized how serious things had become. When I told her what I was thinking, she urged for me to get help. I voluntarily admitted myself into a mental health crisis facility where I stayed for the next 10 days. During that time, I cried out to the Lord. I rededicated my life to the Lord. I was ready to finally stop trying to fix everything myself and hand it over to him. I was to the end of myself. And during that season, I felt God showing me just how much of my life had been driven by striving instead of surrender. I sensed him calling me to a completely new chapter, one that required me to fool him, to sorry, required me to trust him fully. That meant letting go of my American dream and moving to Thomasville, Georgia. It was time to stop building my own plan and start following his plan. Today, when I look back at that season, I realize that the Lord taught me something very important. Healing did not begin when I started trying harder. Healing began when I surrendered. So in June of 2017, I began taking the steps to walk out that surrender. I quit my job, I put my house on the market, we sold or donated a bunch of our stuff and packed the rest of it up in a U-Haul, and I moved to Thomasville. I didn't know exactly what the Lord was doing, but I was ready to put all my hope and all my trust in him. As soon as I arrived in Thomasville, God began moving, and within days I had a place to stay. I had a job.