Elladee Thomas

I come from a family where addictions had kind of just been a normal thing. My parents had problems with drugs and alcohol, and it caused me to have to constantly move from house to house and school to school. My mom ended up getting arrested and sent to prison when I was 6, which meant I moved in with my dad, whom I hadn’t seen most of my childhood up to then. At this point in my life, the prison my mom went to helped sponsor a Bible camp for children who were at risk of never hearing the gospel. I started going every year, but nothing ever stuck since I was only a little kid, and I didn’t go to any kind of church. My dad had an alcohol problem, which led to my little sister and me being mistreated. By the time I was 12, I had fallen into a deep depression. At the beginning of 7th grade, my dad relapsed on methamphetamine and left us to go live back with my mom. She had been out of prison for a few years now and was clean. At this age, I couldn’t quite grasp why my dad had left us, and I blamed him for everything that I thought was wrong with me. I moved from this small farm town to a city and couldn’t adjust to the culture shock. As a middle schooler, I had so many insecurities and was a huge introvert; I refused to talk to anybody, and it caused me to start feeling worse about myself because I thought there wasn’t anyone who cared. I hated myself and I’d say I was at my lowest. Throughout all of this time, I thought that nobody cared about me, but little did I know, God was looking out for me. I was planning on running away the first weekend of December, but there was this girl in one of my classes who started to notice I wasn’t doing okay. She pulled me aside in the hallway and invited me to come to church with her and her family. I hesitated, but then thought to myself, “What harm can it do?” That Wednesday, three days before I was planning on running away and never seeing my family again, I surrendered my life to Christ. For those of you who have never felt the touch of God before, it was like a warm embrace from all around me. In that moment, I knew everything was going to be okay. I started to live my life through Christ and reading my Bible every night. Ever since then, I’ve been going to church every chance I can, and I've convinced my family to start coming too. It’s been a huge blessing, and I thank God every day for sending that girl into my life to rescue me. To this day, her and I still talk frequently, even though we go to different schools now. I still struggle with obedience sometimes, but I keep my eyes set on God, and all of the bad things go away. I now participate in a club every Thursday called First Priority, where students get to share the gospel with each other, and I was given an opportunity to share my testimony with my friends and other people who were struggling. This new life I live is full of joy, grace, and peace. My life has changed completely for the better, and I pray that whoever may be reading this will have the same transformation that I did through following Christ.