Christ’s Grace, My Story
I didn’t grow up in a Christian home. I was raised Catholic, and as a child, I was naturally curious, quiet, and always drawn to books. I loved reading so much that one day, after finishing all my school textbooks, I found a small white Catholic prayer pamphlet that belonged to my Mama. I began reading it out of curiosity.
At that time, all I really had was information about God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. I knew about Him, but I had yet to truly know Him.
That changed when my uncle, who is now a pastor, invited me to their church’s Thanksgiving anniversary. Through that invitation, I was formally introduced to Christ. Eventually, I made a personal decision to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.
From there, my faith became a significant part of my life. As a young person, I became very active in church. I attended prayer marathons every Wednesday, Youth Reload every Friday, and Sunday services. After Sunday worship, I would join fellow young people at a nearby park to evangelize and share the Gospel with others.
Church became a big part of how I understood my faith.
But life eventually brought me to another city for work. While I was there, I continued attending church every Sunday, and I found myself deeply drawn to the teachings. They were centered on Jesus Christ, and through them, I began seeing His love from different perspectives. Some of what I was learning was very different from what I had previously been taught.
When I eventually returned home, I made the difficult decision to walk away from my former church. I left quietly, without saying much. From the outside, some of my former churchmates may have thought that my faith had withered like a plant left without water. Perhaps they thought I had entered a wilderness and was walking through it alone.
But they didn’t know that Jesus Christ was with me all along.
Although I was unchurched, something unexpected happened during that season: my relationship with Christ became more intimate and personal than I had ever experienced before. I learned to trust God in a deeper way. I began getting to know the Triune God personally, not simply through the structure of church, but through prayer, Scripture, worship, fasting, communion, and quiet moments with Him.
I listened to preaching online. I worshiped through songs. I read the Bible. I prayed. I fasted. I spent time with Jesus. And that season with Him was beautiful.
Eventually, after moving to the province, I decided to attend church services again. I enjoyed being part of the church, but I eventually realized that something was missing. After prayer and reflection, I formally left by respectfully sharing my decision with our pastor.
My journey has taught me something that I deeply value,..
Being unchurched does not mean being without Christ.
There can be a stigma surrounding Christians who no longer attend a traditional church. Sometimes, when people see someone stop going to church, they immediately assume that their faith is falling apart, that they have become distant from God or that they are no longer serious about following Jesus.
But my story has taught me otherwise.
My relationship with Christ is not defined solely by my attendance in a building. My faith does not depend on people’s approval or their assessment of whether I am a “genuine” Christian.
God sees my heart.
He knows my journey.
He knows the seasons when I was surrounded by people and the seasons when I walked quietly with Him. He knows the questions I have asked, the things I have learned, the moments I have struggled, and the ways He has continued to draw me closer to Himself.
And even though I am unchurched, I still want to serve God.
I still want to live out the purpose He has given me.
I still want to share Jesus Christ with people.
I still want others to know the love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and hope that I have found in Him.
Being outside the traditional church structure does not mean I have stopped being a witness for Christ. If anything, my journey has made me realize that I want to use whatever God has placed in my hands, my words, my story, my experiences, my creativity, and even the things I have walked through, to point people back to Jesus.
That is one of the reasons Christ’s Grace, My Story exists.
This is not a platform built around me. It is a place where I hope my story can become a small window through which someone else can see the grace of Christ. I want to talk about faith, brokenness, healing, waiting, surrender, love, purpose, and the complicated parts of walking with God. I want to share what I have learned, what I am still learning, and how Jesus continues to meet me in every season. I don’t claim to have everything figured out. I am simply a person who has encountered the grace of Jesus Christ and wants to tell others about Him.
Jesus gave His followers a mission…
Go to the people of all nations and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. -Matthew 28:19, CEV
That calling reminds me that the Gospel is meant to be shared.
So whether I am inside a church building or walking through a quiet season outside of one, my desire remains the same: to serve God and make Jesus known.
I may be unchurched, but I am not without purpose.
I may walk differently from others, but I am still walking with Christ.
I may not fit everyone’s idea of what a Christian journey should look like, but I know the One who has walked with me through mine.
Unchurched, but never alone.
Still learning. Still growing. Still serving.
Still sharing Jesus.
Still His.
And this is my story.
Christ’s Grace, My Story.
W
The Silent Cry Of A Little Girl
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who knew very little about the darkness of the world. She lived in a small and quiet place where days were measured by the sound of children calling one another from across the neighborhood, by dusty feet running from one house to another, by the fading light of afternoon and the familiar voice of a parent calling, “Come home.”
She was an only child then, and her little world was small enough to believe that the people around her were safe simply because they were familiar. She was loved. Deeply loved. She had a home, parents who cared for her, friends to play with, and a childhood that, from the outside, looked ordinary. Perhaps that is why no one noticed when something inside that childhood quietly disappeared.
There are things that do not announce themselves when they happen. No thunder. No shattered glass. No screaming for the world to hear. Sometimes, the door simply closes. Sometimes, children are told nothing at all, and yet something happens that their little minds cannot understand but their souls somehow remember.
There were afternoons that began with nothing but play, and somehow ended with a silence the little girl could not name. There were moments she would remember only as fragments, the kind that sit quietly at the back of the mind, waiting for a language that would not come until many years later. She was too young to understand the meaning of what had been done. She did not know that innocence could be crossed like a line drawn in the sand. She did not know that some things adults later call terrible can happen while a child is still wondering what they mean. She only knew that something was strange. Something was wrong. But childhood has a strange way of continuing even after something inside it has been wounded.
The sun still rises. Children still play. Parents still call their daughters home. Dinner is still served. Life keeps moving, completely unaware that somewhere inside a little child, a secret has already begun growing roots. And then, after some time, there was another room. Another ordinary moment. Another familiar face. Another door that should have meant nothing. She was sitting there, innocent in the way only children can be… curious, trusting, unaware that the world sometimes hides its worst intentions behind ordinary faces. She thought she was safe. She thought adults were there to teach children about the world, not become the reason children later fear it. She did not understand what was happening. She only knew that something had crossed a boundary she did not know existed.
And when the moment passed, the world returned to normal. That is the strange cruelty of certain wounds. Nothing outside changes. The chairs remain where they were. The television continues playing. Someone walks into the room. Someone asks an ordinary question. And yet the child who was there is no longer quite the same. She carried on growing. She went to school. She read books. She learned words. And perhaps that was how she eventually found the word for what had happened to her. It came much later than the wound itself. And when the meaning finally reached her, it was as though an old room inside her had suddenly been opened. She stood at the doorway of memories she had never understood and realized that the little girl inside them was not someone else.
It was me…
If I were to strip away the years, the silence, the explanations, the armor, and everything I have learned to say since then, I would still find her there. That little girl was me. And I am writing this with hands that do not always know how to remain still, with a heart that sometimes remembers before my mind is ready to.
There are memories that do not stay in the past. They wait. They hide inside certain words, certain stories, certain moments, certain things I see or hear, and suddenly I am no longer entirely here. I am somewhere between then and now, carrying the weight of a child who never understood why she was afraid.
For years, I thought silence was the same thing as healing. I thought if I buried something deeply enough, perhaps it would stop existing. So I became good at burying things. Good at continuing. Good at appearing stronger than I felt. Good at making sure nobody could see how easily something inside me could tremble. Perhaps that is why some people misunderstood me.
Perhaps they saw the armor and called it pride.
They saw boundaries and called them attitude.
They saw a woman who would not easily bend and never wondered what kind of child had to learn not to bend.
I became hard in places where I once was soft.
I became guarded in places where I once trusted.
Not because I wanted to become this way, but because somewhere along the way..
…my heart learned that vulnerability could have a price. So I built walls. And I called them strength.
For more than two decades, I carried this story without allowing it to have a voice. I was afraid of what would happen if I opened the door. Afraid of the eyes that might look at me differently. Afraid of pity. Afraid of questions. Afraid that people might somehow believe that what happened to me had stained me. Afraid that the people I loved would think they had failed me. But my parents did not fail me. They loved the child they thought was safe. They protected her in every way they knew how. They simply could not protect her from something they did not know was coming.
And perhaps that is one of the hardest truths to accept, sometimes the people who love us most are not there when the world becomes cruel. Not because they did not love us enough, but because evil does not always knock before entering.
For years, I wondered why God allowed that little girl to go through something she could never understand. I still do not have every answer. Perhaps I never will. Faith has never meant having every question answered. Sometimes, faith is simply remaining when every part of you wants to disappear.
And there were moments when disappearing seemed easier.
Moments when the weight of everything I had carried became too heavy for the person carrying it. Moments when I wondered whether there was somewhere beyond this world where pain could finally become quiet. But somehow, I remained. Somehow, through years I cannot fully explain, God remained too.
“The Lord is there to rescue all who are discouraged and have given up hope.” – Psalm 34:18, CEV.
I did not always feel saved. I did not always feel helped. Sometimes I felt forgotten. Sometimes I felt terribly alone. But looking backward now, I see that perhaps God was present in ways I could not recognize while I was drowning.
Perhaps, grace sometimes looks less like a miracle and more like waking up one more morning...
Perhaps, mercy sometimes looks like having just enough strength to stay...
Perhaps, healing does not always mean forgetting the room where the wound happened…
Perhaps it means eventually being able to stand outside that room without believing you still belong inside it...
I am not telling this story because I want anyone’s pity. I am not opening this door because I want the world to know my name. I am opening it because I have been quiet for long enough. Because somewhere, there may be another little girl who grew up and became a woman who still wonders why certain things hurt.
Someone who learned the truth years after it happened. Someone who carries a secret so carefully that even the people closest to her have never seen its weight. Someone who smiles when she needs to, works when she has to, speaks when expected, and then quietly falls apart when no one is watching.
If that person is you, I wish I could sit beside you without asking you to explain. I wish I could reach into the place where your younger self is still waiting and tell her that she did not deserve it. That she was not responsible. That she was never ruined. That what someone chose to do to her does not become the definition of who she is.
I wish I could tell her that there is still a future beyond the room. There is still morning beyond the night. There is still a God who sees what people missed.
I have forgiven those who hurt me. Forgiveness, however, does not mean the wound was insignificant. It simply means, I do not want their darkness to become something I carry forever. Some of the children who hurt me were children themselves, and I cannot help but wonder what darkness had already been placed inside them before they ever placed it upon someone else. I do not excuse what happened. I simply refuse to let hatred become another chain around my heart.
There are still questions I carry. Questions that may never receive answers this side of heaven. I wonder how many others were hurt. I wonder how many children grew up carrying things they could not name. I wonder how many adults are still living with ghosts that nobody else can see. And perhaps that is why I am finally speaking. Not because I am fearless. I am not. My hands still tremble. My heart still races.
There are still moments when I want to close the door and pretend I never opened it. But perhaps, courage was never the absence of fear. Perhaps, courage is opening the door while your hands are still shaking.
So if you are reading this, please be gentle with people.
You do not know what someone is carrying beneath their silence. You do not know why someone keeps people at a distance.
You do not know why someone seems too strong, too guarded, too difficult, too quiet.
You may be looking at armor and never realize there is a frightened child underneath it.
Listen when someone finally finds the courage to speak. Do not take their story from them. Do not carry it into rooms they did not choose. Let them tell it at their own pace, in their own words, when they are ready.
And if I disappear for a while, if I do not answer, if I seem distant, please understand that sometimes I am simply trying to find my way back to the present. There are days when the past becomes louder than the world around me.
I am learning.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Imperfectly.
I am learning that surviving is not the same as living, and that perhaps God is now teaching me something I could not understand when I was younger, that I was never meant to spend the rest of my life hiding inside what happened to me.
That little girl deserved more than what the world gave her. But she also deserves to know that her story did not end there. Mine did not. Maybe yours has not either.
Maybe the darkness took something from you, but it did not take everything. Maybe there is still a small, stubborn light somewhere inside you that refuses to die. Protect it. Hold onto it. And when you cannot hold onto it yourself, let God hold it for you through Christ Jesus.
Because there are stories that begin in darkness but do not belong to darkness forever. And perhaps, after all these years, this is what I am finally learning,
I was not the door that closed. I was the child behind it. I was not the darkness. I was the one trying to find the light. And by the grace of God through Christ Jesus, I am still here.