From Darkness to Light

Chapter 1

Introduction of Myself

Growing up, I tried to convince myself that I was like everyone else by minimizing the fact I was living a life filled with darkness. My name is Lindsey Baisman, and I was born and raised in Resting Desert (fictional city). Many people love coming here to relax from the big city or hide away for a weekend or two. It was not like that at all for me throughout my childhood and high school years. I was raised by a single mother who had to care for four girls all on her own. From the time I was born up until I turned three years old, my father lived with us. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized I had lived such a weird, broken, and heartbreaking childhood. As a child, you don’t realize anything is wrong because children instinctually believe that everyone around them is normal and healthy. Thank God for my years in therapy and my walk with God. Now I have the strength, courage, and maturity to face my past in order to write this book. My only goal and hope in writing this book is to bring you closer to God, whether you are coming back to God or are meeting God for the very first time.

At first, we lived in a very small apartment in Resting Desert until I was three years old. Even though we appeared to be one big, happy family, something more sinister was brewing between someone very close to me. This person was grooming me for his future financial gains. It was his biggest secret. This person was the type to appear very charismatic and friendly, but in actuality he was the complete opposite. A few years later, we moved into a big, four-bedroom house in the Forgotten Place (fictional city). Although it was a brand-new house with a big backyard, things quickly changed inside our home. A darker side to this person came out, which was really his true self. He became very abusive. He physically, verbally, sexually, and emotionally abused me all the time. Then he started to be more aggressive in his grooming tactics. He would make me watch pornographic movies with him. Little did I know that I would become his future child prostitute.

Before I go into detail concerning this, I would like to give you more background on my life story. When I was growing up, we were a very religious Catholic family. However, I didn’t grow up hearing about the love of Jesus or that you can actually have a fulfilling personal relationship with him. Despite all this, God was determined to make himself known in my life by protecting and loving me as a child and throughout my life. When I was a little girl, I was enthralled with angels. I always felt I had angels around me to protect and care for me wherever I would go. Reading and drawing about angels was one of my favorite things to do. Thankfully, this gave me comfort and stability that I desperately needed in my life. One day I received a book with a gold angel necklace in it. I wore that necklace around my neck until the day it broke. I remember being so sad because I believed the angels would stop protecting me. However, whenever I went back and read the angel book, I was reminded that they had never left me.

One of the hardest things for me was being physically sick. It was the absolute worst and very torturous. Not only would I get punished severely by this man, but I would also hallucinate and have high fevers. On top of all this, I was emotionally and physically neglected. I was forced to bear through most of my illnesses and hope that I felt better before the hallucinations came. One day, I stumbled into the kitchen drenched with sweat because I had a high fever. This man was furious with me and then took me to the bathroom. I thought he was going to get some medicine for me, but at the same time, I was perplexed that he’d taken me there to begin with. Out of nowhere, he grabbed a bottle of Tapatio sauce and dumped all the sauce down my throat. The pain of the bottle being in my mouth and the heat from the spicy flavor sent me vomiting in the toilet. I also threw up because I couldn’t breathe and needed some air. He laughed and kept repeating this action until I blacked out completely. He was simply mad at me because it was bad business for him.

After this ordeal, I prayed desperately to God to heal me before anyone found out I was sick. Well, it didn’t take long for me to get a fever again. It happened one night as I was pacing back and forth in the kitchen. I felt so hopeless and desperate for anything to make me feel better. Before I knew it, my energy was zapped, and I had to sit down before I passed out. I cried out to God for help. I said, “Please, God!” Then right before my eyes, I saw Jesus. Yes, I actually saw Jesus appear before me. He was glowing so beautifully and majestically. Jesus then put his hand on my shoulder. At that point, he healed me instantly. It was an absolute miracle from heaven. He did not communicate to me physically but through our minds. I kept saying, “Thank you.” He then assured me I was going to get better and that everything was going to be okay. When he left, I felt so much peace and acceptance inside that I’d never felt before. I had this gift and treasure that I didn’t want to share with others for fear they may tarnish my memory of it. Because I had no one to talk to growing up, I kept this to myself. I kept both the good and the bad from everyone I knew.

Despite everything I dealt with as a child, I see now that God was watching over me the whole time. He doesn’t promise a perfect or happy life. What he does promise is peace. I received this peace whenever I would think of the angels and of God when I was a little child. Bad things don’t happen to us because of God; they happen because of the devil and his evil works. God allows it to happen because humans have free will to do what they want with their lives. He can’t just come and zap all the bad people and situations away. It doesn’t work that way. He didn’t create us to become obedient, perfect robots. He created us to be free beings in the hope we would worship and seek him on our own. He doesn’t force us to worship him.

Because we are naturally sinful, bad things happen all the time. It is the sin of humankind that causes destruction, not God. This is not a perfect world, because this is not heaven. That’s the sad part. People try so hard to make this reality their heaven. If you want a perfect world, then wait, because it won’t come until we get to heaven. Our efforts to make it happen here will fail, and what we build will tumble and fall before our eyes somewhere down the line.

One of the reasons why God doesn’t stop certain things from happening is that he is waiting for us to turn to him to make things right. He uses our good and blesses it tremendously. This is one of the ways God shares and expands his many blessings. The great thing is that God doesn’t force people to do good or evil. This means that everyone who makes it to heaven one day truly earned it and deserves a perfect and eternal heaven with Jesus. He doesn’t force us to do anything, because he planned for us to be free to make our own choices. In contrast, those who don’t listen and obey God are slaves to their sin. They are the ones who are not free. God does not want Goody Two-shoes robots inheriting the kingdom of heaven. Do you want to be a robot? God wants people to seek him and his goodness of their own accord. He also wants an authentic relationship with people. What he really wants is for everyone to inherit his kingdom in heaven one day—people who truly love, know, and worship Jesus. Jesus wants people to want to do good and make their lives better with him. God kicked out Lucifer and a third of his angels from heaven because they thought they knew better than God. They were prideful and did not trust that he was the only perfect God. In return, God sent them to hell.