From Pain to Prosperity

By Sophia Williams

What do you do when one day you return home and life as you knew it had changed forever?

Well I can answer that, the only thing you can do is trust God to get you through it. Most people would probably not share the things that I’m going to share in this memoir. In fear of being judged or even embarrassed. I choose not to feel neither, I believe that what I experienced, many have experienced and refuse to talk about. I know God allowed me to get through the most difficult time in my life, so that I can speak to his people about it. So that they can be encouraged to go through what life throws at us and come out on the other side, whole, happy and healed. Don’t get me wrong, it was challenging being so vulnerable, but I believe God wanted me that way so that I can reach the broken so that they can see his faithfulness. There were times that I did not think I would make it through this devastation, but I continued to trust God throughout the process. I am still healing daily, but I am so much further along this long journey. God is truly amazing, and his grace has been sufficient in my life. For those who can relate to what I’m about to share, my heart goes out to you. No one should ever have to endure this pain. But if this is why I had to experience this, to help others, then, so be it, I am a willing vessel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716845765

Sophia Williams

Sophia Williams lives in London with her family. She has loved reading Regency romances for as long as she can remember and is delighted now to be writing them for Harlequin Mills & Boon.  When she isn’t chasing her children around or writing (or pretending to write but actually Googling for hero inspiration and pictures of gorgeous Regency dresses), she enjoys reading, tennis and wine. 

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ISBN: 978-1-6847-4085-7 (sc)

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I would like to

thank my entire family for being there for me during

the most challenging time of my life. I love you to the moon.

You will never know how much I appreciate you. ♥

A very special thank you to Nina and KB.

CHAPTER 1

To Be Broken Gracefully

I have been on a long and tough journey, but knowing what I know now, I would not change it for the world. Sometimes we go on with life, not understanding what our purpose is, what God has planned for us, or what God has called us to do. I always wondered who I was, what I was, and why I existed, but I know now.

God is so amazing. He has covered me when I didn’t deserve to be covered. He covered me when I didn’t know who I was and when I didn’t really love myself. I thought I loved myself, but I was unsure about what love really was. He has allowed me to go through this life with trial and error, disappointment after disappointments, loss of loved ones, and sickness. I am not proud of my many bad decisions.

However, his grace kept me, my mind, and my body when I was abusing it. I didn’t understand the hurt and pain that were deep within. I thought I was fine. I thought I was just living life and that life had just gotten the better of me—until I realized that I was not okay and that I could not live this life without a blueprint.

Don’t get me wrong. I have always loved God. He has always been so special and important to me. However, just because you adore him and love him does not stop you from doing you. You are an individual who has free choice to do as you please. That is the wonderful thing about God. He doesn’t force you to come to him. He doesn’t force you to do anything that you do not want to do.

He will allow you to experience life and circumstances that will have you bow and call out the name of Jesus. That is where all of your help comes from. He allowed me to understand that nothing in my life has happened by chance. All that I have been through and endured was by his grace and mercy.

God knew the pain, the hurt, and the brokenness I would feel, but he still allowed me to go through them gracefully. Now that I have gotten through it, he’s made me understand that he allowed it—and it did not kill me. It didn’t have me placed in a mental institution. It didn’t require me to be on antidepressants or anxiety medications. His grace allowed me to come out of it in one piece.

I am whole and full of his wisdom and strength. He allowed me to endure so many things. If I could tell you my life story from beginning, you would not believe that I am still able to communicate with you. I know that I should have been put away somewhere to be cared for or at least taking medication for the rest of my life.

God said, No! I am breaking you gracefully. You belong to me, and you have work to do. Although you don’t know what work I have for you to do, you have work to do.

God is faithful that way. He has had an assignment for you from the moment you were created, but you might not walk into it until you are fifty years old. This is not through any fault of his, but it sometimes takes us that long to get it together and obey.

Obeying might not be the problem. Maybe we can’t hear his voice. We must train ourselves to hear God speak to us by praying. The more you talk to him, the more he will speak to you. I had to learn that over time.

I always speak to God, and he has been my life, my strength, my go-to, my salvation. I contact a friend or a family member from time to time, but there is nothing like going into my closet and speaking to my Father.

He is everything to me. He knows when I’m weak. He knows when I’m weary. He knows when life has just gotten too hard. I know that I can count on him to restore me, to build me up, and to let me know that it’s okay to cry.

I know it’s okay to feel like life is too much. He has strengthened me with what I need to endure all this pain. He has strengthened me to keep going when I want to quit and give up on my life, give up on my family, and give up on my ministry.

It’s amazing that I can say ministry. I never thought I had a ministry. I would dream about things that would come to pass. I knew that God loved me, and I always felt like he had a plan, but I could never put my finger on what was going on.

There were times when I thought God didn’t love me or that he had given up on me because I had never figured out what he wanted me to do. I didn’t have a clue when it came to why I was put on this earth.

I thought my choices had made my life what it was. I thought I had to live with my choices—whether they were good or bad or whether I married the right man or was completely off on everything.

I sometimes say, I must have made a mistake because God wouldn’t do this to me. I thought, I must have a curse on me to be going through so many things. I would pray, I serve you, God. I’m a good person. I try to do the right thing. I have a good heart. I help people. Why is my life so jacked up?

When I was saying those things, I did not hear God’s voice. I heard no answers, and I really thought he had left me. I thought he no longer heard my prayers, that he no longer wanted to use me for anything, and that I had made too many mistakes.

In the fall of 2017, I was going through some hurt and loneliness. I had come back from Chicago a couple weeks earlier after training for a new job. I was settling for something I didn’t want, and I was all messed up.

I had so many issues, and I did not know how to begin to deal with them. I was tapped out. I had been carrying so many people mentally, emotionally, and physically, and I was tired. No one knew what I was feeling because I kept it all bottled up inside. I was the one everyone looked up to. I was the one who seemed to have it all together. Nobody knew I was miserable—and the wheels were coming off.

I had no control anymore. I was angry, and I felt like I had the right to be angry. I felt like everyone around me had mistaken my kindness for weakness and were just going to use me until there was no more me to use.

I was angry at the world, and I shut it out. I stopped receiving phone calls, erased numbers, and blocked others. I wanted no part of family or friends. I completely went into seclusion. The only people I would speak with were my daughter and grandson in Chicago.

This feeling started in October and lasted until February. I was so sad and depressed, and it felt like it was spreading throughout the household. The crazy thing was that it was unspoken. Everyone was feeling it, but no one was saying anything. I felt like I wanted to leave behind everything and everyone. I felt like God didn’t want me—so why not just do whatever I wanted to do? When I think about it now, I can see that he was working even then.

We went to church one Sunday, and I was so bitter. I really didn’t want to go, and I didn’t care if my makeup was right or if I was together. I didn’t look like a mess, but I was not myself. I normally would have put a lot more into it. I was in a bad place.

My son doesn’t always go to church with us, but he will go on occasion. That Sunday was one of the Sundays he told me he wanted to go. We were in church, but I was not worshipping like I normally did. I was just standing there and being angry.

I was not feeling anything. I was not crying. I was not praying. I was just there. The pastor was speaking about depression and how the enemy is busy trying to destroy your mind. If that was happening, she wanted to pray for us.

I was not participating in service, but I found myself walking toward the altar. When I got there, my husband and my son were right next to me.

The pastor came over to me, stared at me, and asked me to raise my hands. When I did, she spoke a word to me and told me that God was going to visit me. She stated that God was going to give me what he had for me—and it didn’t matter who I was with.

That spoke volumes to me because I was feeling like I wanted out of my marriage. I also thought I would be cursed if I left the marriage. I was thinking that way because I felt like I hadn’t waited on the Lord for direction, including the move to Florida. I thought I had made a mistake with my decisions.

She went on to speak to my son and my husband. God had a word for each of us that Sunday, but the enemy was trying to get me to stay home and be angry and miss it.

God didn’t allow him to steal that from us. He knew we needed it to be able to hope again and keep moving forward. We were all broken during that season, but I was the worst. When I look back, I can see that the enemy was trying to destroy me. Without me, they didn’t have direction. My husband was no longer seeking God like he once had.

I was not perfect. I didn’t know everything, but I knew I was the one who was going to be praying, worshipping, and calling for God’s presence to come into our home.

The enemy did not want that because he knew he would be defeated if that happened. I knew what the pastor had spoken over me, but I was not prepared for what would come later.

A couple of weeks passed, but I was not feeling any better. I decided to reach out to an old friend. Whom I knew she heard from the Lord and was a prayer warrior. I spoke with her for several hours, and she put so many things in perspective for me. She explained that God wanted me to pray every day and seek his face. She explained that so many things in my life were assignments, and I was looking at them as problems or bad decisions.

I realized I was looking at things as problems, bad decisions, curses, and everything else. How could so many bad things happen to one person? It was like a demonic force was torturing me.

For every good thing that happened in my life, something bad happened along with it or right behind it. For instance, when I got engaged to my husband, I was excited but quiet about it because we had decided to keep it private. I had not even been able to share the good news with my family.

A week later, I got a call that my oldest brother had been rushed to the hospital. He was not breathing. By the time I got there, he was gone. I was completely devastated. I could not believe it was happening. My baby brother, my beloved father, and my oldest brother all died within an eight-year period. It was too much to deal with. I could not understand how God could allow such tragedy to happen to one family. They were not distant relatives, cousins, or aunts. It was my immediate family: my brothers, my protectors, and my world.

I did not understand. He had not even gotten to meet my fiancé yet. How could it be? When I was told that he was gone, I crumbled to the floor. I had nothing left. All the good things were followed by bad things.

I felt like I had been cursed or something. That type of thing happened all the time. Two weeks before my wedding, I slid along a seat at a restaurant and damaged the bursa sac in my knee. I walked down the aisle and honeymooned on crutches. It was a pattern in my life, and I wondered if I would ever be truly happy.

Once I hung up with my girlfriend, I vowed to God that I would spend time with him daily going forward, starting the following day. That was exactly what I did. I would wake up and start my morning routine of getting myself together, taking out the dog, feeding the dog, and spending time with the Lord.

When I started, I did not really know what to say. I did more crying than anything else. I had so much hurt, so much pain, and so many mistakes pinned inside of me that all I found myself doing for an hour was pouring out to God with tears.

I was sobbing uncontrollably. I was lost, and I felt like I had nowhere to go and no one to help me in my time of need. I was angry because I felt like I was always there whenever my circle needed me. They would call me for the smallest things, when they had a crisis, or when they could not handle something.

I was the go-to person for a lot of friends and family. I was angry at my husband because I thought, What good is he if he can’t recognize his wife is in trouble and that depression is overtaking her? Why didn’t he know? Why didn’t he ask if I was okay?

I answered myself with negative energy. I would say, He’s selfish—or he’s too busy with work. I was in a dark place, and I knew that if I was coming out, it would only be because God allowed me to come out.

I knew his grace was always enough, what did I have to lose? I had no other resources. God allowed me to continue that way for several days. I hardly said the Lord’s Prayer. Each time I tried to pray; I would just cry. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t pray. It was almost as if I had forgotten how.

I didn’t understand. I would speak to God all the time. I wanted to tell him what was wrong and ask for his help in fixing it. I didn’t know what to do, my life was crumbling before me, and the only one who knew—besides me—was God.

Even when I walked away and did things my own way, God was there. I was trusting him to bring me out of it. I wasn’t always living a saved life. I had my time in the clubs and doing what everyone else my age was doing.

I thank God that he kept me from drugs and other addictions, but I know that was only by his grace. I was no better than anyone else. I loved God, but I thought God understood that I was young and was just living my life. I always knew I would find my way back to him. I knew that was where I belonged.

I knew he wanted to use me. I have had words spoken over me so many times, but I didn’t see what they saw. I was wondering when I was going to get the same memo. I knew that I loved God with all of me, but I could not explain it.

I had strong emotions when it came to him. I could not think of him and his goodness without crying. I couldn’t say his name without feeling something. I paid attention to all those things,