Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

“I would always think about cutting myself or I would get on the floor and smash my head on the wall, or on mostly the floor. I'd try to suffocate myself.” The memories and scars of her parents’ verbal and physical abuse would haunt Kimberly Smithers for years. 

“My bed was a cardboard box,” she says. “And I remember just lying there, you know, like just, angry and hurt. Being abused, being hit, being talked down on. And always bring me back to that place of, like, ‘Oh, wait, I'm not worthy; I was a mistake.’”

When Kimberly was small, her parents split up, and she lived alternately with both before going into the foster care system. It wasn’t until high school, she found the love and affection she’d wanted - her first boyfriend, who got her pregnant at 15. “I was so obsessed with him, because I really, really wanted him to love me,” Kimberly says. “I was looking so much for love and acceptance.”

They broke up and she moved on to the next boy—and the next, still unable to find or accept anyone’s love. “I would find myself angry...they’re not loving me the way I’m supposed to be loved. So you know, I would get angry. And I’d fight with them and hit them, and I’d throw things at them, and then I’d cuss them out and then I’d leave. And then I’d feel bad again.”

After aging out of foster care, Kimberly and her son moved in with her new boyfriend. Then she got pregnant again. “I was the only one working. He was on drugs, always high. We were constantly arguing, just fighting. We both decided, ‘Ok, we can’t have this baby. We can’t do it. So, I went and had an abortion. When I had the abortion, though, that's when it really--it really made me feel dead inside. I felt terrible. I was just really distraught and that's when I started doing drugs with him.”

Over the next seven years Kimberly had two more children, still using drugs and trying to keep her head above water, working low wage jobs or on public assistance. One night, she was at a party when a rival gang came looking for a relative.

“There was a big fight. Everybody was fighting-two rival gangs. So, my cousin and I started running,” Kimberly, recalls. “We went underneath a car. I don't know how they didn't see us going underneath that car. They parked right in front of the car we were under and they ran to a wall. They thought we jumped the wall. They were looking over the wall like, ‘Oh, do you see them?’ And I was underneath the car begging God for my life. I was like, ‘Please, God, don't let them see us. I don't want to die.’ They didn’t see us.”

That close encounter with death caused Kimberly to examine her life. “I started going to college, taking it more seriously. I was tired of being on drugs. I just – started thinking there has to be way more to life.”

One day, she and her boyfriend went to the library looking for ‘self-help’ books. Scanning through books on the supernatural and religion, she found one she couldn’t ignore. “It just intrigued me right away. I took the book, and as soon as I got home, I started reading it.”

At the time, Kimberly, now 26, didn’t realize the book she’d chosen about renewing the mind was by a Christian author. As she read, something happened she couldn’t explain. “As I read it, I was like– because it talked about Jesus--is this Jesus? And then I found myself not craving drugs. I knew it was gone.”

A former foster family had talked to Kimberly about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but their faith never made sense to her—until now. “I started crying. And I saw the clouds part,” she says. “He was showing Himself to me. I wanted to know this Jesus. I want to know God, I wanted to know Him more.”

Kimberly surrendered her life to Christ and found a church. Before long, she was baptized. “It felt so good, you know, like the drugs: nothing could compare to God's love. Nothing could compare, you know: being high, being drunk, everything. Everything that the world has to offer: the guys, the lies, everything goes.”

Kimberly says with God’s help she eventually forgave her parents. She also met Christian at church and they were married. He adopted her three children. Today they’re raising them together, teaching them about a loving God. “I'm so overwhelmed with His love and compassion and His forgiveness,” she adds.

“His forgiveness is beautiful. I didn't deserve the Lord to come back for me. You know, in reality, He was always there. Even as I look back in those hard times, in those places, the Lord was there. It's just beautiful that He loves us so much, you know, that He comes back and that He is constantly revealing Himself to us. It's beautiful because He doesn't have to. He doesn't have to, but He wants to because He loves us.”