She Met Jesus at Five—and Spent Years Being Told to Let Him Go
Abuse, rejection, and homelessness tried to take everything… but God never stopped providing
SunnyFlower met Jesus in a kitchen at five years old… and spent the rest of her childhood learning what it meant to cling to Him when everything else fell apart.
Beatings. Rejection. Spiritual confusion. Families that promised love but demanded she deny Christ. Again and again, the world tried to take Him from her—but every time she cried out, Jesus stayed. And, It wasn’t always easy answers or instant resolution. It was protection, provision, and a quiet faith that refused to die.
This isn’t a story about a perfect life.
It’s about a faithful God who never let go—no matter how dark the room became.
And it raises a hard, honest question for all of us:
If God can clothe the lilies and feed the birds… can He be trusted with a life like this?
“Consider the lilies of the field…” (Matthew 6:28–30)
Stick with me. This testimony has something to say to anyone who’s ever wondered if God really sees them.
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A Faith That Started Early
Her oldest sister led her in the sinner’s prayer at home, standing in the kitchen. Even at that young age (five years old), she knew she needed Jesus. There was already a hunger in her heart for something more—something she wasn’t receiving at home.
Her home life was emotionally neglectful and abusive. There was physical abuse as well. Her stepfather was Jewish and emotionally abusive, often enabling the harm instead of stopping it. From early on, she felt different—like the black sheep, the outcast. While others around her accepted ideas like evolution without question, she didn’t. She didn’t have a solid Christian foundation at home—only what she could gather from others—but even then, Jesus seemed to keep her protected. She believes now that He spared her from even worse harm.
When False Faith Didn’t Sit Right
Around age six or seven, she spent time with neighbors who were Catholic. They taught her the rosary and introduced her to Catholicism. She routinely visited those neighbors. Once, she visited their new church, when nobody was in it except the two families. Something felt deeply wrong to her. Even as a child, she knew this wasn’t the Christianity of Jesus. She recognizes now that it was the Lord warning her spirit.
Fast forward to age nine, during Christmas, she was simply standing in a room where her parents kept the Christmas presents. That moment led to her first severe beating. She was beaten brutally. In the middle of it, she cried out to Jesus to protect her. And somehow, every time, the abuse stopped short of becoming even worse. As the beatings continued over time, she would cry out to Jesus again and again because the pain was unbearable—and He continued to protect her.
Around the same period, she visited relatives in Georgia on her stepfather’s side of the family, who were Jewish. Her stepfather’s mother’s husband confronted her harshly when she spoke about Jesus, demanding, “Were you there?” He aggressively challenged her faith, even though she was only seven. She didn’t know how to defend herself with words—only with what she felt in her spirit. Her parents stood by and did nothing, later telling her she wasn’t allowed to defend her faith.
Despite everything, she always knew Jesus was with her. Whenever she had the chance, she went to church. She always went to the altar. She explored different churches over the years, but the message often felt watered down.
(Pictured below, a poem that kept SunnyFlower going throughout her childhood)
Drifting, Doubting, and Wanting Belonging
Around age eighteen or nineteen, she went through a deep crisis of faith. High school had led her into poor decisions. She was using the home computer one day, and when her mother discovered it and demanded the password (which was written down & kept in a kitchen drawer), she refused. This resulted in a brutal beating—worse than before. She fought back only to survive, genuinely afraid she might be killed.
Afterward, her mother kicked her out with nothing. No belongings. No glasses. No backpack. Just the clothes she was wearing. She stayed with a classmate and his family for a time. His mother was involved in astrology and predictions, though she didn’t understand then that it was demonic.
Later, she moved in with another family—a Jewish family who were also Freemasons, though she didn’t know what that meant at the time. She wanted a family more than anything—more than even Jesus. On the outside, they looked perfect. Siblings. Structure. Everything she had longed for. But God eventually revealed that the dysfunction ran deep. The mother rejected Jesus as the Son of God. The father was born Jewish, and both were involved in Masonic orders.
Desperate to belong, she even considered joining the Freemasons. The family offered to adopt her—but with one condition: she would have to reject Jesus Christ. At this point, she was far from God, even involved in the Gay-Straight Alliance club. She is nowhere near that now, but it shows how far she had drifted.
The Prayer God Refused to Ignore
She prayed a desperate prayer:
“God, if You’re really real, keep me. But if You’re not, let me go.”
She spent months wrestling, praying, and thinking. God never let her go.
When she finally told the family she could not reject Jesus—that she could not stop believing in Him—they turned against her. After she moved out, they tried to destroy her reputation and dragged her name through the mud.
She returned to church again, trying to reconcile her relationship with Jesus, but still felt empty—until she realized the Bible itself is the true doctrine, not church tradition.
Over the years, her family has been homeless five times. Yet every single time, God provided—food, shelter, money, gift cards, free meals from strangers. They never gave up on their faith, and God never failed to provide exactly what was needed.
We can learn from her testimony, that we should always trust in God’s provision. As it is written:
Matthew 6:28–30
“And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field… will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”
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The part about experiencing homelessness five times but God providing each time really captures something economists often miss when studying poverty. When I was working at a shelter briefly, the materialprovision stuff (food, gift cards, shelter) isn't just luck or randomness. There's often a network effect where communties step up in ways that formal systems cant. The vulnerability of repeated housing instability though takes a huge toll, regardless of faith support systems that help survive it.