This is the story of my life. It does get pretty scary and dark but please keep reading. This story starts in a hospital outside Boston, MA. It is the year 1998 and the month is August. There was a little baby named Jordan Edward Strable. He weighed 10 pounds 14 ounces, seems healthy right? If you said yes to that you are blatantly mistaken. This baby was born with two major birth defects. He had cleft palate and a hydro-nephrotic left kidney. A cleft palate is when the muscles and bone plate in the roof of your mouth never form, so the baby hardly eats and what it does eat comes out its nose. A hydro-nephrotic kidney is when the kidney retains more water than it is supposed to and grows to an abnormal size. The baby had many surgeries and eventually got those both corrected.

The year is now 2000, the date is January 17 and the time is exactly 7:41. This is when everything went wrong. Little Jordan was playing in his bedroom when one of daddy's work buddies walks in and locks the door behind him. This was the first day of exactly 15 years, 2 months, and 4 days of daily, sometimes even twice daily, rape and molestation. I will never forget that first time. It lasted no more than five maybe six minutes but it felt like forever. That was the day I decided that God didn't exist, or if he did he didn't care about humans.

Around my 14th birthday is when i first started to notice everything I thought was wrong with me. I was constantly bingeing and purging and sometimes i would go anywhere from four days to a week without eating. I would cut myself just to try to control the pain i felt. I was trying to live up to societies impossible list of demands for being beautiful and popular. This eventually lead to my first suicide attempt. I took about a bottle and a half of sleeping pills and just wanted to make it all go away. It obviously didn't succeed but ended me up in the hospital for a solid week. That led me to the last attempt I made on my life. This is where I first starting to realize God existed. It was January 20, 2015. My parents had just gone to bed and i was alone with the demons in my head. I decided it would be best if i just didn't exist anymore. I got the bleach and the last thing i remember before passing out is putting it to my lips and praying that this time i succeeded. The next thing i remember is waking up in the hospital with severe chemical burns on my face and chest but I survived. The thing about drinking bleach is, once you ingest it, it immediately starts corroding your throat tissue and you have no chance of survival. I ingested 12 ounces of bleach and there was no evident damage to my esophagus or throat. The doctors couldn't explain it. They told me that there had to be someone watching over and protecting me. There was simply no other way to explain it.

In that hospital is where I met my best friend Alyssa Marie. We were inseparable as soon as we met and we were closer than family. We talked every day up until the second worst day of my life, September 3rd, 2016. The day started out like every other one, with a good morning text from Aly. Today's was different somehow. I could tell something was off but at the time I didn't know what it was. She told me to come over to her house around 6:15 pm. We talked all day like we usually did and things were "normal." 6:00 rolls around and I'm my way to her house. She sends me a really vague text right as im pulling in to her neighborhood. It simply read; "I'm sorry....." I respond by asking why as im walking to her front door. I let myself in and hear a crash from upstairs. I run as fast as I can up those steps and blaze into her room to find her in a puddle composed of what seemed to be a mixture of vomit and blood. I call 911 and rest her head on my lap as the dispatcher sends the paramedics to my location. I realize that she isn't going to survive till they get there so I break down crying. She says in a voice barely louder than a whisper, "Jordan, logh iad." i barely had time to register that sentence as she died in my arms. The phrase "Logh iad," is ancient gaelic for the english phrase, "Forgive them."

I didn't comprehend the entire meaning for that sentence until the day before I moved to Huntington University. What I know now is God was using her to say, "Jordan, I know how hard your life has been. But i want you to let go of your past and forgive all those who hurt you." I was scared at first because I hadn't prayed in 16 years but my first night here, as I was laying in bed, I prayed to God saying, " I know now that you do indeed exist and you are very active in our lives. I am giving you all of me for the rest of my days here on Earth. I forgive all those who raped, molested, and abused me and, most importantly of all, help me daily to forgive myself and all those that wrong me in days to come. Amen."

I wrote this article to send a message that no matter what happens to you, God is there. It is always hard to forgive but forgiveness is vital for our eternal lives. In Matthew 5:43 it states, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." This is what should set us apart from nonbelievers. The words of an old hymn sum it up best, "They will know we are christians by our love, by our love, yes they'll know we are christians by our love." There will be more from me in weeks to come. God bless you.