My raw story and proof that God NEVER leaves us.

My name is Jennifer and I am the founder of ( r I s e ) . and more than that, I am a daughter of the King. I have been saved by His grace. Again and again and again. Most of my time here will be me telling my story, so that you’re better able to understand ( r I s e ) . and why God has called me to do what He has asked me to do. 

 

Where should I start? In what order should I go so that it makes the most sense. I can be a little all over the place when I’m trying to tell a story and I’m very easily distracted. Look. A squirrel.  When I finally sat down and started writing it  I looked back over the list I couldn’t help but to think that there wasn’t a chance I got through any of this alone. Whether or not I recognized or acknowledged Him then, during each of those “things”,

 

His presence is the ONLY reason I’m still standing here today.

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With that being said, I think the only real place to start is the beginning. I had a pretty normal childhood by all accounts. Both parents at home, two little brothers (that I know for sure I tormented), always a dog and a cat or two. Pretty normal I would say. Small town. All four grandparents close by. Two grandmas that both went to church. Two grandfathers that both worked very hard - one who may have liked to drink a little more than he should have. And a big extended family that we were lucky enough to always have around. I was a shy kid. So shy that my parents agreed to have me attend Junior 1st grade. Never heard of it? I know. Most people haven’t. But whatever happened in Ms. Glendenning’s class apparently worked. My parents say I haven’t shut up since and I’ve never met a stranger.

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(WARNING this is where my story can be triggering for some)

 

Immediately after graduating high school I left for college. I started the summer semester. Probably required because again - the relatively unscathed part I mentioned earlier. Apparently extracurricular activities were my major in high school. I did just enough to get by. You know, like getting up in front of the 12th grade English class and reading the forward of the book I was to have read and written an oral report for. I was terrified to stand and speak in front of people. Still not a favorite thing of mine to do even still today.  I still feel a need to confess to Mrs. Ferrence. And I think I probably will. 

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My parents prepared me and got me where I needed to go. And they dropped me off at Wilson Hall on the campus of Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Where I would live for the next three months or so. And in true fashion, I quickly made

friends and partook in the typical freshman activities. IUP had the reputation of a party school and it didn’t take long for me to find out why. I do remember feeling completely overwhelmed by my classwork. I didn’t have a clue what I had gotten myself into. I was a little less overwhelmed though by the social aspect of my new found environment. I had a good group of friends and we all looked out for each other. 

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One of my friends dated the star football player and because of that I became friends with him as well. And who wouldn’t be enamored by that? I loved football. I grew up around it and it’s where I felt comfortable. We remained friends, he and I, even after she had left school. He was like a big brother to me. Or so I thought. It wasn’t uncommon to spend time in his apartment throughout the week and on the weekends. It just became a normal thing to do. Sometimes there were just a few of us and other times there were more than a few. 

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On one particular evening in the middle of the week, I was there in his apartment like I was a lot of the time by this point. It was the fall semester and I now lived across campus. The football season was in full swing. That evening it was pretty low key. Just me and my friend, a couple of other girls who I didn’t know, and maybe a roommate of his or two. I remember getting there and sitting on his sofa. The two girls who I didn’t know sitting beside me. I had a drink sitting on the table on the other side of me. An alcoholic drink? I can’t say for sure. I’m not sure that it matters one way or another.

 

Something felt off that night. I felt really out of place for some reason. Maybe just my gut trying to tell me something. And that’s where my memory begins to escape me. 

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It escapes me until the moment I unfortunately remember waking up in his bedroom. In his bed I assume. I don’t know for sure because I had never been there before that moment. I was confused and trying to make sense of what was happening. He was sitting at the head of the bed in a chair beside me. I remember feeling this enormous weight on me, but there was nothing there. I looked to him for an explanation and for help. And then I looked down. Down at the foot of the bed and I saw them. I don’t remember their faces. Just the silhouettes of bodies. And I quickly realized what was happening. They were waiting to take their turn. I looked back to my friend. My big brother. My protector. And he looked back at me. Said nothing. He just allowed the next one his turn. And by the grace of God I was out again. 

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I would see my friend around campus in the days after and when I did it left me sick, confused, and afraid. I would pass him on the street and he would smile at me and speak. He meant me harm still. I received repeated phone calls warning

me to stay quiet or I would be sorry. They were going to hurt me and I believed them. There were people following me around that campus. I know that because they would recite back to me in those phone calls my whereabouts throughout the day. To let me know they meant business. It didn’t take much convincing. They already proved to me what they were capable of. Whoever “they” were.

 

I left campus, but I didn’t leave alone. It was later that I realized I was carrying a child. 

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I went home and as far as my family knew, school just wasn’t for me. I needed to come home and figure out what I was supposed to do next. And they thought that because that’s what I told them. I was too afraid and too full of shame to share my truth. I honestly didn’t even know what my truth was at that point. I didn’t know what rape was. I couldn’t even stomach using that word. Not for many years. I was still wrestling with the idea that whatever happened in that room that night was the result of something I allowed to happen or even brought on myself. 

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And now here I am. An 18 y/o kid pregnant. I can’t tell anyone because if I tell then I have to tell the whole story. And let's face it. I wasn’t sure if the child I was carrying was conceived the night they raped me or did it happen before. I spent years praying for the best case scenario. I spent those same years counting on my fingers and trying to do the math every year when my son's birthday came around. Could it be one or the other and every year I had the same gut wrenching feeling. I would never know though. Or so I thought. I left school in such a hurry and I never looked back.

 

I carried that little boy and I raised him and I have loved him with everything I have in me. He is by the grace of God. We don’t make sense any other way. 

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A year after I had my baby boy and doing the young mom thing, I met somebody. I started dating again. He was a great guy, but it wouldn’t last. That relationship wasn’t for nothing though. He was sent to me by God. I know that now. He had some trouble in his life, but he found God and he would share God with me off and on over the years. And by this point I had been yearning for a relationship with God, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know if He would even want me. I was convinced by now that I wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love, let alone a perfect God. 

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And then I met somebody new. It didn’t take long for people to warn me about him. My friends and family. And even his. I had to love him if nobody else could. That could be me. If anyone knew the truth about me then maybe they couldn’t love me either. I had to love him and I had to make sure he knew I would never leave him. Until I had to. It was violent. And it was scary. I’ve never experienced violence in such a way. I didn’t know how I was going to get out of this thing alive. He would beat me in public just as severely as he would beat me behind closed doors. Everyone begged me to get away from him, but I was afraid. I couldn’t. I knew what he was capable of. I was pregnant with his child and he kicked that life out of me. Quite literally. And I very well could have lost my life in turn. And again, by the grace of God I got away. 

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I returned home to my parents with my little boy. To start over. A fresh start. Until I would meet my knight in shining armour. He swooped in to save my life and to take care of me and my little boy. He was a college graduate (a really good college) and was on the verge of a stable career. And he promised to love us and provide for us. Again. I was warned. We dated for months. And it was bliss. Until it wasn’t. A blow to my head with his ended with me in the emergency room explaining my way out of it. I was well trained by this point. Several stitches later and I was on my way home. To him. To console him because I knew he felt terrible for what he had done. He didn’t mean it. I was strong. I could handle it. I’ve suffered through worse. And had he not left me, I would have stayed and stuck it out. My heart was broken. I already had decided no one was going to be able to love me after they knew the truth about me. Well, he was in and out of my life. Back in long enough for me to end up pregnant again. If there is something I can get right, it’s getting pregnant. When I told him we were expecting, he explained that he wasn’t ready to be a father and handed me $200 for an abortion. I accepted the cash knowing in my heart that abortion wasn’t an option.

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I will, however, use that $200 for diapers. He left and as far he knew I did what he asked me to do. Until I gave birth to our daughter and he received a knock at the door with a letter from domestic relations informing him that he was a new father. 

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And I will give it to him. He rose to the occasion. He stepped up as our daughter’s father. I saw a change in him. He started coming around more and by this point had won my heart again. We were married and had two more children. Those years weren’t all bad, but there was for sure an underlying current of abuse. There were bouts of physical violence, but it was more mental than anything. I learned to be very good (or so I thought) at keeping things under control with the kids and I in such a way as to not incite his anger. To the world we were happy. We had to look that way. He was a teacher in the small town we lived in. If he lost his job then we were done for. He and the events of my past had me convinced that I wasn’t capable of much let alone caring for four children. I begged him to go to church with me or allow me to go to church. I needed help. We needed help. He refused. If I went to church he was leaving me and taking the kids. He was a Jehovah’s Witness (not a practicing one) and that is the legalism we all lived under. That religion suited his personality perfectly. 

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Seventeen years into our marriage, I was diagnosed with late stage cancer and told I had one year to live. Of course I have cancer. It makes perfect sense. It’s just the thing that would naturally come next in this line of things I had coming to me.

 

But again, by the grace of God I stand here today six years later. Fully alive and proclaiming the love of Christ. He wasn’t finished with me just yet. And it was exactly what I needed to get me back to God. Everything I had been praying for for so long. And He had to allow it to happen in a big way. 

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I could stand up here for another hour and share with you all of the ways he has shown up in my life and in the lives of my children, but we are out of time. My children and I have not only survived every part, but we have thrived. We are free. Free in our truth and free in the love of Christ. My daughter has spent years serving the nations in Christ’s name as a missionary when there was a time we had to sneak to allow her to even read a bible. My son, who we now know the truth of his conception has not allowed that to define who he is, believes there is a God when he refused to believe before. And that’s who he allows to define him as a man. And my two youngest twin sons by my husband are good, good boys who love fully. One of which has given his life to Christ. The other, we’re still working on. 

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I know now that He was with me in all of those places. In the doorway of that apartment bedroom where they took what didn’t belong to them but left me with my life and with a son, in the parking lot as he was beating me to the ground, on

the bedroom floor where he was literally kicking life out of me, in my home with my husband when he kept hurting us and leaving us, in the radiation tunnel where he had to still me enough for me to finally hear him, in the chemotherapy chair, and here now. It wasn’t until those moments in the radiation tunnel and chemotherapy chair that the healing began to take place. Both physically and spiritually. 

 

I serve a God of redemption and that is what we are in the midst of right now. He is restoring everything that was ever taken from me and He is giving back to me one hundred fold in ways that I can’t make up. This is His story. Not mine. 

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Just a little over a week ago, I was invited back to that grove on the campus of IUP and I stood by that tree. The one they watched me sit by over 30 years ago. The one they used to threaten my life with if I spoke. I was asked by that school if I would ever consider completing my degree there. To finish what I started. What they took away from me. That is the kind of redemption only God can give. So we will see. It’s His plan not mine. I’m just along for the yes. So if that’s what He will have me do, then of course that’s what my answer will be. I give Him a fresh one every day.

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And out of all of this, ( r I s e ) . has been birthed. We will come alongside men, women, and children who have experienced sexual violence and/or domestic violence and provide for them whatever we can in whatever capacity necessary. We will help them find their voice and the strength to use it. The first step in healing. And we will provide for them the safe space to begin that journey back to health. Both physically and spiritually.