When Jesus Becomes Your Best Friend

“After everything was done, I was curled up into a ball in the corner of the car, just looking out the window and just watching the rain,” Malorie remembers. “I started crying because I didn't know what happened to me.”

Malorie was just 14 years old, a freshman in high school when she agreed to meet an 18-year-old senior one evening. She says, “He convinced me to go see a movie with him. And I thought we were going to just go see a movie. I was naive. And when we got there, he was he was telling me like, Let's go, we're going to leave. he drove around until it got dark, and he wouldn't speak to me. I started feeling like something was wrong, like something was like almost evil, and when he parked, he told me to get in the back seat. And there was no way for me to get out because it was it was a two-door car, and the seat was pushed back onto me. So, I was just pinned there. He kept trying to touch me and grab on me. And I kept trying to fight him off of me. And he raped me in the back of the car. After everything was done. I was curled up into a ball in the corner of the car, just looking out the window and just watching the rain. And I started crying.”

She was later dropped off back at the theater, hurt and confused. Her innocence was taken, and her self-esteem shattered. She remembers, “I felt so broken, and I would often look at myself in the mirror and tell myself that I was disgusting and that I was not worth anything.”

Mallorie then began living the reflection of how she saw herself, using drugs, drinking, and sleeping around.

“I hated myself on the inside,” says Mallorie. “So, I just kind of did things that are going to make God hate me too. I started cutting myself and it led to an addiction like a very severe addiction. And it was all over my legs, my arms, everything. It was years of being in that.”

She became severely depressed, retreating from friends and family.

“It got to the point I didn't want to get out of bed,” says Mallorie. “I didn't want to go see friends. I was ignoring people's phone calls. Every day I looked at myself and I would just tell myself, ‘you are ugly,’ and I felt so used and disgusting And those are just things that I kept telling myself, ‘you are nothing. You're not going to be anything.’ And I ended up trying to overdose.”

After a failed suicide attempt with pills, and several days in the hospital Mallorie returned home, still stuck in her emotional prison.

“It was one of those days I was crying myself to sleep and I was just like, I was just I was about to give up. I was like, crying out to God, ‘I don't know if you're real. I don't know if you're actually there, if you're listening to me, but I need something from you.’”

Her prayer was answered in a moment. She received a text from a youth leader who shared a Christian song and a message of hope.
Mallorie remembers the message, “She just texted me one day and she was like ‘I just felt like the LORD wanted me to send you this song.’  Before the first word even was said, just like the music that was happening, I immediately felt the Holy Spirit, like just completely fill my room. And it was like the Holy Spirit was just talking straight to me. And I just felt him, like, kneeling in front of me. And it was to the point that I looked up and I was like, ‘Is that you? God? Are you right there?’”

Mallorie continues, “and I felt his hand. It was it was a hand just like this. And it landed on my heart. And I was like, ‘If that's you, I need you. I feel you.’ And I started just sobbing and I was saying, like, ‘I need to be filled with you. I am tired of living this way. I don't want to be depressed anymore.’ And I felt that hand go into my chest, like around my heart, and I felt every individual finger. I felt the holes in his hands around my heart, and he just squeezed it. Every single bad thing that happened to me, every bad thing I had done, all the anger and rage and depression and everything, I felt it all just exit me. And then I felt his hand let go and I was just filled with like, indescribable joy. I started laughing. I just started laughing and happy crying. It was the strangest feeling. I just I felt like the LORD had really just went into me. It's like he squeezed everything negative out of me, and then he put everything of him in me, all the fruits of his spirit, all the peace and the patience and the love and everything that he knew I needed to feel. I felt that and that was just the day that I gave my life to Jesus on my bedroom floor, right in front of my closet.”

Mallorie’s life today continues to reflect the love of God she received during her moment of deepest need.

“Ever since that moment, I have not been the same. Everything has changed. I started following Jesus that day and I've never stopped. He, all the joy that I felt in that moment, I feel it every day still. I am happy and I have the joy of the Lord. I am called. I'm a mama. I am a wife. I just. I love the life that I have now is so far different from what I used to be. I feel like the Lord really has just almost washed my memory clean.”

Mallorie encourages girls who have faced similar issues, to embrace their true identity as a dearly loved child of God.

“Jesus is my best friend. He's my best friend now. He is somebody that I know I can go to and I'm not judged. He's going to believe me because he already knows what happened. He's going to let me then tell him he is going to speak to me. He's going to correct me. He's going to lead me. He’s my best friend.”