AMAZING STORY
Alisha Debruyne: 'Jesus is There For You'
By Christine McWorter
The 700 Club
CBN.com -Fourteen year-old Alisha Debruyne was devastated after she was raped by her boyfriend. She was also afraid, but she kept it a secret. She still needed a way to cope with the pain. She had gone to church and heard that Jesus could help. Instead, she turned to drugs. "One of the things you experience when you're reaped is you absolutely hate yourself and you just want to die.”
By the time Alisha was 16, she was addicted to cocaine. She partied every night, and she gave her love freely to the men she met. "I would take anybody that would pay attention to me, anybody that would love me and care about me. At least, I thought they cared about me."
When Alisha reached her early 20s she got involved with a drug dealer. It wasn't long before she became pregnant. "I was addicted to cocaine myself, so what's going to happen to this baby?”
Alisha could only think of one way to solve her problem. She had an abortion. "Talk about hating yourself from being raped. Then do that. Then you hate yourself even worse."
After the abortion, she broke it off with the drug dealer and started dating an old boyfriend. She married him, desperately hoping it would make her life more secure. It didn't. She and her new husband fought constantly, and cheated on each other. She got pregnant and had a healthy son, but the couple still fought, and soon they divorced. "I didn't have a job. And I had a new baby I didn’t know how to take care of. I was just a mess. I was having a total breakdown."
Alisha spent the next 10 years trying to clean up her life, and failing. It wasn’t until she began dating a man named Charles that things started to get better.
She found a job as a secretary, and the couple even bought a home. But during this time, she began feeling pain in different parts of her body. She was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a disease that paralyzes different parts of the body. She was in and out of the hospital getting tests for weeks.
One day as she lay in her hospital bed, she tried something she had never done before. "I was laying there and I said, 'Lord, I am so sorry for everything that I've done in my life. Please forgive me. Lord, I want to change. Please Lord, I don't want to die now. I want to live my life for You, Jesus.’ And I didn't even know I was giving my life to the Lord right then and there in that hospital. I didn't know that's what 'born again' is."
After being released from the hospital, Alisha started going to church. Learning about God's love helped her heart to begin to heal. It also helped her find the strength to stop doing drugs. "He miraculously took my addictions away from me. I didn’t want to do drugs or smoke or drink or go to the bars, or hang out with any of those people anymore. And I had such a deep hunger for the Word. The Word… The Word... I couldn't get enough of the Word."
For the first time, in her life, she felt free. "Now I don't have to look in the mirror and hate myself anymore, because now I know I am a child of God and He loves me."
Today Alisha, Charles, and their son Chris are doing great. Alisha says she is thankful for what God has done for her. "I thought all the mistakes that I had done, and all the horrible things I had done in my life - how can God forgive that? Jesus is there for you and He loves you. He will do everything if you just come.”
CBN IS HERE FOR YOU!
Are you seeking answers in life? Are you hurting?
Are you facing a difficult situation?
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.
