Bethany Paget Testimony

I didn’t grow up in a Christian home.  I went to church as a child/youth but never knew anything about having a personal relationship with Jesus. 

I had a troubled childhood starting from birth.  My first painful memory was being sexually abused at age 11, that memory would impact the rest of my life.  I always remember feeling different from everyone else and always having a longing that I couldn’t describe.  A longing to fill that emptiness I remember feeling as a young child. 

I can remember God beginning to pursue me at 12 years old.  I became very active in my church youth group and thought maybe just maybe that Jesus was the way.  I quickly fell away from that and into a life of drugs, promiscuity and self destruction. With that came other abusive situations and painful things.  During this period of my life I was filled with so much rage, so much pain and so much emptiness and I continued to destroy myself any way that I could. 

All during this time God was continuing His relentless pursuit of me.  He was placing people in my path who were planting seeds and witnessing the awesome love of Christ to me.  I began to see that maybe this Jesus that people were talking about was the way.  But I never fully opened my heart.  I didn’t understand how God could let some of those things happen to me.

 

Finally in 2006 I lost everything and moved into the homeless shelter.  One would have thought that would have been my bottom but I continued to use drugs.  I finally thought that a new state would do the trick so I packed up and moved to Florida.  In December of 2006 after many suicide attempts, drug overdoses and trips to rehab I found myself pregnant with nowhere to go. 

I wound up moving into a home for unwed mothers, run by the Calvary Chapel in Ft. Lauderdale.   There were rules and we were required to go to church.  I didn’t care what the rules were I was willing to do anything to give my child a better life than I had. 

On February 11, 2006 I went to service and heard the message being preached out of the book of Ruth about how I could have redemption in Christ and how Christ was knocking on the door of my heart waiting for me to open the door to Him.  I couldn’t stay in my seat.  As soon as the pastor gave the alter call I literally ran to the front of the church to give my life to Christ. I didn’t know that is what I was doing I just knew I needed to pray. 

On that night God removed the temptation to use drugs.  I went on to have a healthy pregnancy and deliver a healthy baby girl who is now a vibrant, spunky almost 4 year old who is the joy of my life. 

The road since that night has been a rough one. I have struggled.  I dug myself into a deep pit of sin, rebellion and pain but praise the Lord I reached my hands up, grabbed His loving ones and was pulled out of it.  I can now say my heart is filled with the love of Christ and that I am overwhelmingly in love with my Savior.  I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that EVERYTHING I ever went through will not be wasted and that He has redeemed it all.  My purpose now is to take what I have gone through and share the hope, freedom and redemption I have found in Jesus with other hurting women. 

I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined to me, And heard my cry.  He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, Out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, And established my steps.  He has put a new song in my mouth (Psalm 40)