Teena Myers

Tasha met me for lunch. When the food arrived, she prayed, “Lord, thank you for this food and fellowship. Guide me to say the right things so that others will be blessed.” I pressed record and listened to a sordid story of molestation, physical abuse, rape, and abortion. Several times I asked, “Do you want that public?” Tasha assured me I could share everything she told me. She wanted to give hope to women who were suffering as she had.

Tasha’s parents fought often. Her father believed a woman should depend completely on her husband. To keep his wife from going to school, he put broken glass in his son’s crib. “My mother grabbed my brother and ran out of the house,” said Tasha. “We didn’t see her again for a long time.” Free from her husband’s control, Tasha’s mother became a nurse and then remarried Tasha’s father.

One morning, Tasha awoke to find her father in bed with her. She complained to her mother, who ignored her plea for help. Tasha turned to drugs to escape the harsh reality of her life.

“My mother didn’t know how to help me, so she sent me to mental hospitals. The treatment became a game to me. I knew how to act so they would give me medicine. When the insurance ran out, I escaped from the hospital, lived in Florida, and then went to Alabama. Finally, I called my mom for a bus ticket home. The police picked me up and brought me back to the hospital. The psychiatrist diagnosed me as manic-depressive, prescribed medicine, and discharged me.”

Tasha returned home no better than when she had left. Her mother gave her $500 and told her to leave. She used the money to return to Florida with her boyfriend and became pregnant. Tasha’s family pressured her to marry the baby’s father. The marriage ended four months after she gave birth to their daughter.

When Tasha became pregnant by a new boyfriend, her mother insisted she have an abortion. Tasha refused. “The fetus is just a blob of tissue,” her mother said as she dropped Tasha off at the abortion clinic.

Tasha felt troubled the moment she stepped out of the car. “The clinic told me if people were picketing to look at the ground and walk straight in. I wish someone had been picketing that day because I would not have gone inside.”

Tasha’s chin quivered as tears filled her eyes. “While they were doing the abortion, I looked up. I don’t know why. I just looked up and saw tiny bones. Everyone had lied to me. It wasn’t a blob of tissue. My baby was being torn apart. I wanted to stop, but it was too late.”

I stopped my recorder and touched Tasha’s trembling hand. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“No,” said Tasha. “It’s all right. I never want to have such a hard heart that I don’t weep. I know God allowed me to see the truth.” She wiped her tears and continued.

Tasha returned home in physical and emotional pain. She tried to drown the image of her baby’s mutilated body in a sea of drugs. Angry that Tasha had aborted their baby, her boyfriend became physically abusive. “I ended our relationship, and I just went wild,” said Tasha. “One morning, I awoke from a drunken stupor and realized I had been raped.”

Seeking an escape from the out-of-control whirlwind her life had become, she called her father and threatened suicide if he didn’t send her a plane ticket to join him in Malaysia. Six weeks after arriving, Tasha discovered she was pregnant again. Unwilling to bear the child of the man who raped her, she felt justified in having another abortion.

Tasha returned to New Orleans, where she met and married Christopher. He was different from the men she usually dated. He showered her with presents and surprised her with flowers. After Tasha gave birth to their son, she fell into postpartum depression. She left her children in the care of family members and traded some jewelry for 500 Valiums.

“I went to my mother’s house, took all the Valium, and then lay down to die. Several hours later, a friend woke me. I was so angry that I wasn’t dead, I stayed high for two weeks.”

When Tasha descended from the two-week high, she confronted her mother about the abusive way she had been raised. Her mother had little sympathy. Wounded by her mother’s callous attitude and disappointed by her failed suicide, Tasha grabbed her mother’s car keys and drove to a nearby Walmart. The car idled in the parking lot as she contemplated driving through the store. Then a lamppost caught her eye. She pressed the gas pedal to the floor. As the car gained momentum, she prayed, “God, take me now. I just want to be with you.” The force of the impact pushed the engine into her lap.

Tasha slipped in and out of consciousness. Fear on the medics’ faces. Darkness. A police officer writing a ticket suddenly stopped when he saw her. Darkness. Sirens wailing. Muffled voices. More darkness. Medics wheeled her into the emergency room. The shocked looks on the doctors’ faces scared Tasha. Before she lost consciousness again, she heard, “Your daughter will be dead by the end of the week.”

Thirty days later, Tasha awoke from a coma to learn she had crushed every bone in her foot, cracked her pelvis, lost all her teeth, and nearly severed her arm. After months of reconstructive surgery, the doctor discharged her wearing a cast on her left arm and right leg. Christopher picked her up from the hospital, berated her about the bill, and then left her at her mother’s house.

“My mother ignored me. My brothers stole my medicine. I couldn’t open a can of soup to eat. I couldn’t bathe myself. I remember sitting in my wheelchair, crying. One of my brothers finally wheeled me outside and washed my filthy hair with the garden hose. I don’t know what I would have done if my aunt had not taken me into her home.”

Tasha’s aunt taught her about God and brought her to church. A guest speaker shared how God had brought him to heaven. Tasha knew what the speaker would say before he said it. Her mind, free from the fog of drugs, welcomed a precious memory.

“I visited heaven when I was in a coma. I remembered a river. Everything was green and bright, but there were no shadows. Someone walked by my side. I guess he was an angel. He told me I was in heaven, where there is no darkness. That’s why I didn’t see shadows. Then he gave me a piece of fruit. I bit into it, and juice dripped down my chin. A line of people dressed in white passed us as we walked toward a gate with names carved in stone. We walked through the gate, and I stepped onto a street made of gold. I saw God. He wore a hooded robe with light shining from the openings. The moment I saw him, it felt like all the bones left my body, and I collapsed on my face.

“When I looked up, Jesus stepped out of God and extended his arms to me. The third time he extended his arms, I was instantly at his feet. I saw the holes from his crucifixion. An overwhelming sorrow swept over me, and I wept. Suddenly, I was sitting on God’s lap. His face looked like fixtures of light. We talked, but not with words—an exchange of thoughts. God cried and told me how much he loved me, how he had always been there and never left me.”

Once again, Tasha could no longer contain her emotion as she told her story. I sat in solemn silence until she regained her composure.

“There are no words to describe what I felt. After remembering that experience, I changed. In the past, I cried all the time. God must have healed something in me because I stopped crying. Even when I felt like crying, I couldn’t.”

Christopher divorced Tasha. She was pregnant from another failed relationship when she met Earl. “The night I met Earl, he had just come from church where he had prayed for salvation. I told him I was giving my baby up for adoption. We married and joined a church. This time I was determined to obey God.”

A month into her marriage, Tasha discovered she had married a drunk and a wife-beater. Her marriage problems and lack of maternal feelings for the child she bore made it easy for her to sign the adoption papers.

“After I gave up my baby for adoption, I became pregnant by Earl. We named our daughter Tarrin. My marriage was seven years of hell that broke my pride. I guess God had to give me someone really rotten so I could see the rottenness in me. I fasted, prayed, and learned to lean on God for everything.”

As Tasha grew closer to God, Earl became distant and stopped attending church. When he started watching pornography, she grew concerned about the safety of her daughters. She wanted to divorce Earl but had no means to support herself and her children.

As Tasha fretted over her future, three-year-old Tarrin walked into the room and sang, “God is in control and will not let his children be forsaken. Don’t worry, now is not the time to worry.” Encouraged by her daughter’s impromptu admonition, Tasha prayed and fasted forty days for God to heal her marriage.

Earl enrolled in Teen Challenge, a drug rehabilitation program. While he was away, Tasha’s pastor paid for her to attend a retreat where she could seek God and receive professional counseling. Before she left, she warned Earl that if he quit the Teen Challenge program or sold anything in their house to buy drugs, their marriage was over. In the middle of the retreat, Earl called to confess he had gone on a binge but was returning to Teen Challenge. Tasha left the retreat early, fearful he had sold everything they owned. Her suspicion proved true; their home was empty.

Tasha moved into a cheap motel and found work at a dry cleaner in a nearby strip mall. She was flipping through the tags on the clothes when she saw the name Shanks. She wondered if it was the same Pastor Bill Shanks she had met briefly at an abortion protest. Later that day, a man walked into the dry cleaners to pick up his clothes.

“Shanks,” he said.

“Like shanking in a prison,” Tasha replied, then looked up. “Are you a pastor?”

Pastor Shanks smiled broadly and nodded.

“Can I come to your church?”

“Sure,” he replied.

“I don’t have a car.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

“I felt healing just standing next to Pastor Bill. God used him to repair the damaged image I had of a father figure. Sometimes he would hug me, and I’d tense up, thinking something sexual would follow. But it never did. He made time to talk to me and listened when I talked as if I had something important to say. He gave me the father’s love I’d looked for all my life, and it made me feel whole.”

Few people are privileged to experience heaven and live to tell about it as Tasha did, but it wasn’t her trip to heaven that changed her life. Finding the love of a father made her shattered life whole again.