Trigger warning
By Jasu Diaz —
The day Cathy Day told her mom a neighbor had molested her — and her mom “told me not to talk that way,” was the day Cathy’s self esteem “disappeared.” She was 7 in Prescott, AZ.
When Cathy was 10, her mother divorced her dad and remarried the man with whom she was having an affair, only to be beaten by him weekly. She found out her brother was adopted.
“I tried even harder to be the good girl so all these bad things would stop,” she remembers.
When she was 12, her brother raped her. “That solidified the feelings of being bad and worthless,” she says.
She moved from Dad’s house to Mom’s house, playing one parent against the other. When at her mom’s, “I heard my mom’s screams, heard her being slammed against walls and saw her with a gun pointed at her,” Cathy tells.
Mom married and divorced that same abusive man five times. Meanwhile, Dad married a barmaid.
After some time, Dad divorced and remarried a lady with three kids. This lady brought the family to church. When Cathy was 13, she heard the Gospel and accepted Jesus into her heart. It was the first time she had some semblance of stability.
But when Cathy turned 16, she feel into sin because of friends. She went to a high school football game and got drunk on mixed wine, vodka, beer and tequila. When her parents asked her she did it, she replied, “I just want to have fun.”
That one incident led to many more. She got away from God and moved back with her mom because she knew she could do what she wanted. “The people I was hanging around with changed the whole direction of my life,” she says.
However, the day she graduated, she came home to find herself locked out of the house and all her belongings packed in her car. “I was on my own, adding to the rejection,” she says.
She moved to California but got ripped off by her friend. She fell in love twice and got “destroyed twice,” she says.
She was sleeping in her car in an alley.
At 19, she moved back to her dad’s and her childhood church friend visited and insisted she go to church.
“I told her it was quarter beer night, and I couldn’t go,” she says.
But Debbie kept insisting, and Cathy relented.
The sermon was for her. “Pastor spoke about being ready for God and His coming back to take us home,” she remembers. “No one was guaranteed that ‘their time’ would provide the opportunity.”
After fighting the Holy Spirit for the entire service, at the end she responded to the altar and dedicated her life to God once again.
“The rejection I had felt all my life was lifted off of me,” she says. “I felt truly loved. god had forgiven me and taken away my shame and guilt.”
She made a clean break from her sin and starting serving God. After a year or two, she met Scott, who became her best friend and later husband. She’s been married now for 40 years. She had two children and now has four grandkids.
“God has healed my heart, mind and body,” she says. “God who hears me, loves me and accepts me has given me a purpose and a reason to live life to the fullest.”
