“Adoption: is the word I have known from the beginning of my life” —ROLLIE’S STORY

Adoption: is the word I have known from the beginning of my life, from the time I was 8 months old when my mother decided she didn’t want me till the time when Jesus had found me at the age of 17.

So to back up a little, I didn’t have the chance to grow up like most with a mother and father that I could call my own, my mother decided I was too much for her to handle at the time being that I was a twin the last memory I had of that day was a fire that surrounded my sister and I as we lay on a bed and there was lots of screaming and seeing the only face I knew my sister being replaced by the face of a stranger later in the day remembering being snatched up in to mid-air with so much pain in my arm because it was snatched out of place from the urgency of getting me out of that fire, after that was a blur talk about traumatic. I was then Adopted into a family which I lived with for 16yrs where I was faced with lots of physical abuse as well as sexual abuse from the age of 8-10 not having the slightest clue that I was adopted but hoping deep down inside that I was. after I graduated High School at the age of 16 well on my way to a 4yr University on an Academic Scholarship. During that time, I was troubled with family problems such as now finding out I was adopted and the confusing hurt feelings that all came at once as well as decisions which needed to be made in such a short time concerning whether or not to take a year off before starting school to meet my biological mother and father.

While this rough period of my life I heard the voice of Jesus Calling out to me tugging on my heart strings and I responded with such joy because during all the hurts and pains that I went through physically or mentally, caused by those who claimed to love me and protect me I then sought for something or someone to help ease that pain if not rid me of it all together. So when I heard the loving warm voice of Jesus I jumped at the opportunity to get to know him any and every way possible, while I was in between classes at U.V.M I became friends with a minister who would come and have bible study with a group of students in study hall during the evening so I gladly accepted Christ as savior as did others there. As time went on and I was excelling in my grades, semester after semester I found myself not reading my bible, and praying when I felt it was needed, and just being like one of the kids on campus going to frat parties drinking and now doing drugs following the example of the upper classmen, not realizing that it was the beginning to a very long decline in my moral stability as well as becoming spiritually dead.

In May of 2001 I finally Graduated U.V.M with a B.A in phycology with a minor in psychiatry and Human Services, I planned to have this grand life, the first out of my projects in New Haven CT. and the first of my immediate family to be somebody, but the life I led while in school led me down another path of destruction that later I would see would be my demise if I didn’t do something fast, so for 11 years together I sought out help in AA, NA, programs while maintaining 2 jobs and a few residential but still no results then I had to go back to what made sense to what helped me before and in the midst of a drunken stupor I prayed and he hit me like a ton of bricks it’s me that makes sense it’s me so I cried out to Jesus and asked him to forgive me for my sins and for ignoring him when he called.

As I stand here today while in the Rescue mission I look back at how God has Kept me during the passing of my Father which cut me to the core of my heart and In a split second not making a bad decision to use because of it I can say now I realize that God has given me his strength to get over it and that to me was major imagine what he can do with the little things that hinder my life that I know for a fact God will take care of for me only if I trust in him believe without a doubt that Jesus my savior will show me the door or doors to deliverance peace and most of all love through his Sacrifice Death and resurrection making me a part of the Kingdom of God through his Adoption of Everlasting life as a Child of the Most High God… Hebrews Chapter 2:10-13 is a scripture which helps me to see how I fit into Gods Grand Puzzle as I rely on the example Jesus set before us. And it reads, IN bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom Everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering, both who make men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises, and again will put my trust in him. And again he says here am I, and the children God has given me.