I am a member of the Eastern band of Cherokee Indians; I was born and raised on the reservation in Cherokee, North Carolina when the reservation was extremely poor.
I was the fourth child of a beautiful, full-blooded Cherokee woman. Unfortunately, she loved her alcohol, and she already had four children; all of us had different fathers.
As a result of her drinking, after I was born, I became the responsibility, along with my other siblings, of my grandfather, who was a full-blooded Cherokee. He was also a Baptist preacher, and my grandmother was also a full-blooded Cherokee. My mom came in and out of the house, but my grandparents didn't want the alcohol around the children.
I remember those very early years being very hard. At times, food was limited. There was also a spiritual, emotional hunger. I also was afraid of my grandmother. She projected a lot of her resentment against my mother toward me, because I had green eyes and lighter skin. My other brothers and sisters looked more Cherokee. So as a result of that, she didn't like me and always reminded me that I looked white. I don't ever remember her ever speaking a kind word to me.
My grandfather spoke Cherokee and very limited English. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather; my grandmother, trying to get me out of her sight, would send me with my grandfather when he went fishing.
There was such a wonderful peace about my grandfather. Many times he told me to watch the line while he sat under the tree and read his little Cherokee testament.
He read Cherokee, he preached in Cherokee, he spoke Cherokee, and he would share much with me. When I was with him, there was such a peace and just a sense of contentment.
When I was four, my mom moved us into a shack that had old army cots in the corner, an old wooden table, and a wood stove. My grandpa built an outdoor toilet for us, and we got our water from a spring near the house. All three of us girls slept in the same bed.
My mom continued to drink. She would come in and out with her men; they would be in the other bed, and that was very painful to witness.
During this period of time, my mom brought a man home that my sister said, "Ah, she's going to marry him; this is going to be our daddy." I didn't know what a daddy was because I never had one.
On this particular day, they were sitting at this old wooden table, drinking their beer. He wasn't Cherokee; he was white. My mom looked at a bulge in his boot and said, "What is that?"
He said, "It's a gun," and he pulled it out to show it to her.
In a flash, a shot went out. My mom had accidently pulled the trigger and the man slumped over.
Our lives changed after that. I remember her being put in jail. We had to go to court. I remember visiting her in jail.
My sisters and I continued to live in that shack, and they took care of me. My mom was gone for a long time, and when she did come home, she never drank again. She just ended up settling into a lot of anger, bitterness, depression, and shame.
Unfortunately, during this time, my grandfather died as well, and so there went that person whose presence had always given me peace.
But then, a special aunt and uncle moved back to the reservation, and my aunt sort of took me under her wing. She started telling me Bible stories about Jesus and how He was the Son of God and how He loved me.
She always told me, "God loves you." She helped me memorize John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."
I still could not relate to how there was a God who loved me, for the only emotions I really knew were anger, resentment, bitterness and shame-not love.
My mother would not go to church; she would get us up on Sunday morning and tell us to go to church, but she would never go with us. As I went into my teen years, my older sisters moved away, and I always wanted to go to church.
I would hear the preaching; I even went forward and made a profession of faith, but I still did not understand the Bible or what it was about. I thought I had to be perfect, so when I was in high school, I always tried to be good, thinking, "Oh, I've got to be good, God loves me if I am good."
Unfortunately, though my mom had given up alcohol, she hadn't given up men. When I was ten, she had gotten pregnant again and had another boy. Her love was given to that little boy, and I became the target of most of her emotional battles and a lot of her anger and bitterness. So in my teen years, I began to settle into depression.
I would go through the motions; I would go to church. I felt like if I went to church every Sunday morning and every Sunday night and every Wednesday, then I was being good, but I still hid my feelings, and I became very depressed.
But I was book smart; I was able to do well in high school, and I was convinced that if I could get a scholarship, I could get away to college and escape all of this.
I graduated in the top of my high school class, I got a scholarship, and as soon as I graduated, I moved away, and I started college that summer.
When I got to college, I didn't realize how naive I was.
I started drinking. I didn't get involved in the church there. I met friends who drank. I'd never even dated, so I was very naive and fell into a lot of the same sins of my mother. I ended up falling into this bottomless, emotional pit of shame and loneliness and lack of direction.
In order to escape that, I decided to return to North Carolina. I transferred colleges, thinking I would get out of this trap I had myself in, the alcohol and the men.
I ended up meeting a Seminole from Florida and marrying him very quickly. I had no idea he was abusive until after we were married, and I went through four years of physical and emotional abuse. On top of all the baggage I had brought in, I had allowed him to pack down even more.
So I ran away again. By then, I was in my mid-twenties, and for four years I stumbled around trying to find purpose, trying to find hope.
During this time, I never went back to the church because I never thought I was good enough. Then I met my second husband.
There again, I jumped into a relationship, and he turned out to be very harsh. We'd only been married for a few months when I fell into even deeper depression. One night I cried out to the Lord, "If you are really real, help me! I don't want to die and go to hell."
This went on for several weeks. I was trying on my own to give up alcohol, and after another night of fighting with my husband, I got down on my knees and said, "God, if you are really real, please help me."
My husband and I moved close to his family in Kentucky, and I made one friend who was a Christian. Through that friend, I began to have a stronger desire to go to church. One Sunday, I woke up, got in my car and said, "I'm going to go to church."
I started driving and ended up at a church I had no intention of going to. I went in, and it was like the preacher was just talking to me, telling me that there was a better way, that I didn't have to live like I did, and that God wanted more for me. I found myself wanting this new life he was talking about.
I went back to my house and pulled out my Bible and started reading it; it just seemed foreign. I had a hard time understanding that Bible. "Who is this God that loves me?"
I heard it all my life, but it just was not making sense to me, and I kept reading. I read John and found that verse: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."
I got on my knees and said, "Who is this Jesus? Who is this God? Who are you?" And I cried out to Him, "Lord, save me, I need you. My life's a wreck, but if You loved the world and were willing to give yourself, then I want to know You."
I went from being on my knees to being on my face before God. When I got up, I picked up my Bible and started reading the book of John, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, He was with God in the beginning and all things were made through Him and nothing was made except through Him."
And as I continued to read John, where Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6), I began to realize that Jesus is God in the flesh. All this time, I been trying to get to God, and God was saying, "I already provided you an avenue to me. Just believe."
He filled my heart with such a love. He filled my heart with such joy, and I realized, "That's what it means to be born again."
Now did my problems end? No, my husband was an agnostic. For the next five years I stayed married to this man, and he became abusive, emotionally and physically, because he started watching me as I began to grow. Jesus became Lord of my life. I wanted to live for Him.
I wanted to learn everything that was in that Word because I knew if I read my Bible, I'd know more about God. I hungered to know Him. I hungered to be in the Word and be in prayer; I loved talking to Him in prayer.
But as I grew in my relationship with my Jesus, my husband became more distant and started calling me a religious fanatic. He told me that I had to make a choice between him and God. And I told him, "I live for God now." He walked out and divorced me.
At the time, I was a nurse. I went on and got my master's degree, but in the meantime, the Lord was busy working on that agnostic husband, and a year later, he told me that God had spoken to him, and he'd given his life to the Lord.
See, I realize that God can change anyone, because He changed him, and He changed me.
Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me."
So what does He mean by that? He means He was the only one, because He was perfect. He was the perfect person because He's God. So how can we get to God? Through Jesus.
Jesus had to shed His blood, because only perfect blood could cover us before a perfect God, and He was willing to do this for us, and Christ came with that purpose and that mission.
From The Storyteller Radio Broadcast © 2025 Without Reservation (www.withoutreservation.org). Edited for space limitations.
