My Last Shot at Freedom, My Last Chance to Live

Marcela says, “It was in middle school where I started noticing waking up with depression and waking up just angry and having really weird behavioral and emotional issues, that's when I realized I don't have a lot of my memory from childhood.” There is one memory that stands out from Marcela’s childhood, one she could not forget - being lured into a bedroom by her father’s best friend - when she was six years old. “All I remember after that is laying down on a bed, being pinned down with his arms on top of my arms, just pressing me into the bed and remembering me feeling like, how do I get out of here? How do I get out of here?”

From that moment on, Marcela’s young mind was distorted with thoughts of murder, hate and violence. She says, “And I would think About killing him. And I would have dreams. And I look back now and I'm just I realize that I just wanted them to hurt the way I was hurting. I didn't have words for it. I was never talked to about people touching you. That was just unfathomable for that to happen, especially with a family friend. It was just the hatred and the pain on the inside manifesting into these dreams.”

By the time she was in middle school she directed her thoughts of hate and rage back at herself. “And it was constantly how terrible of a person I was, how terrible of a kid I was, how ugly I was, how fat I was, how much of a failure I was; constant. That was my normal, was to be constantly having those intrusive thoughts.” She says.

She had emotional outbursts, then began cutting herself, hiding the root of her pain, even from her mother. Marcela says, “And I remember just telling her, ‘I feel like someone died. I feel like someone died.’ And that's the only way that I could express how I felt. And I think when I was cutting, I was expressing something that I didn't know how to explain. I would be in class and I would be thinking about how I could cut myself, so I'd be thinking of what sharp objects I could go and get to go cut myself. I just became obsessed with hurting myself.”

She also began using food and starvation as a form of self-punishment and control. “Eating until I was physically in pain, and then going and vomiting. And the life of someone who's bulimic is really lonely, it's terrible. It's strenuous. It's not easy.” She says, “You put your body through a lot to do it. And I was, I became addicted to it. All I would think about is that there's food on the table. How do I get to it? And then how do I throw it up -every day.”

One day, exhausted from the compulsions that were destroying her, and desperate for hope - Marcela prayed. She recalls, “God, if you're real. Take this from me and I will never go back.”
Soon after, she stumbled upon a local pastor’s online sermons. A spark ignited in her spirit. “He was just talking about the Bible.” She says, “He was talking about dying to yourself, being born again. And I was like, ‘If there, if that's real. Like if you really get to live another life,’ I remember thinking that I was like, ‘I want it. if I can throw away all that I've done wrong. And I can really, like, not like kind. Of, oh, I forgive you.’ But like the way he was preaching about it, ‘like really live a whole new life.’ I was like, ‘sign me up.’

She began going to church and reading the Bible, “The more that I read the Bible, the more sound my mind became. And I could not get enough. I would just digest the word. She says. 

Marcela, gave her life to Christ and began going through deliverance, submitting her heart and mind to Christ’s authority.

She says, “I now had the Holy Spirit and ability to say, I know the temptation, but I don't have to do that. And so the self-hate was like, you don't hate yourself. And I learned more about the enemy, I learned more about the devil. I'm like, oh, he hates me. This is the enemy versus me, and the Lord now in me saying, ‘You don't get to be here anymore. You don't get to take territory in my thoughts anymore.’ Depression, anxiety, fear, go in Jesus’ name. I'm realizing for the first time. Oh, what Do you mean? They can like leave? I was grasping that, what do you mean ‘fear leave, go. Anxiety, depression,’ I'm like, ‘wait, no, those are like, those are my diagnoses.’ Like, those are, that's me. All of that responding to one name, Jesus. The power of Jesus in display. Not like oh, go to church and do it routine. I mean the power of God in the room. In the name of Jesus, and all of that darkness coming up and having no choice but To leave me. like, you don't, you don't have a hold on me. Those were lies from the pit of hell, and you have no ground on the inside of me.”

Marcela was set free from the mental prison and compulsions that used to bind her, receiving a new life in Christ. “I always have help. I always have hope. She says, “I can always find joy. Like the person I was before, I can't even recognize. The Lord led me to say the words I never wanted to say and so I said, ‘Lord.’ I was like, ‘father, I forgive that man for holding me down and pinning my arms to the bed,’ I mean, detail specific forgiveness. And I was like, ‘and I bless him, and I repent for the dreams. I repent for wanting to murder him. I repent for all of that.’”

All that had been lost has now been restored under the lordship of Jesus. “I couldn't feel purity. Today, that's what I feel.” She says, “And that's what I am. And I feel complete peace, complete freedom, complete deliverance, complete healing. And just knowing that the Lord is God and He's the God I serve and that's my father.”