H&HM CINDY I was born into a home filled with both mental and physical abuse. My mother and father would fight physically and mentally with each other and my mother always blamed me for it. She was very abusive to me. As children, my brother and I went to Sunday School, but at the time it was just a place to go and didn't really mean anything in my heart. I had always believed there was a higher power, but it was never really real to me. I had no self-esteem, no confidence in myself and blamed myself for everything that went wrong no matter what it was. I had been told all my life I was worthless and everything bad that happened was my fault. When I was 17, I married a violent alcoholic and became one of the domestic abuse statistics. I lost a baby to the abuse. I went through so much depression I sat there one day wondering if my two children would be better off without me. Right at that time, a man came on TV telling me that someone loved me and that I was perfect just as I was to Him. His name was Jesus Christ. He gave a verse to look up in the Bible and I ran to my Bible to find it. From that moment on I started learning about Jesus and His love for all his brothers and sisters. That verse was John 3:16, the most important verse in the Bible. I got down on my knees and cried out all the years of pain and sorrow that I had suffered. The love and warmth that Jesus surrounded me with was more then I had ever felt in my whole life. To this day, I go to Him whenever I have a problem in my life and it always makes me feel better. I have such a sorrow in my heart for those victims of abuse and I feel that is my ministry. I want those people to know that they are loved and very much wanted. They never need to feel alone or abandoned. Jesus can change his/her life just as He changed mine. Hugs Cindy