VIVIAN D’AGOSTINO: GOD STEPPED INTO MY LIFE AND CHANGED EVERYTHING

I HAVE A SONG IN MY HEART AS I WRITE THIS, my story: “You won’t relent until You have it all…My heart is yours …I set You as a seal upon my heart.”

Thank you! Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share what God has done in my life.

I have walked a bumpy road full of twists and turns, mountains and valleys, and through it all, God has kept me, He has never given up on me, and He has never forsaken me. Even when I turned the wrong way and opened doors for myself that weren’t my doors to open, He has been there with me.

I want to encourage you and remind myself that even the deepest wound, the darkest secret, the biggest mistake we’ve made, He turns into something so beautiful, so precious, so sacred for His name to be glorified in our lives. God uses what’s left, what remains. I ask myself, “What will I do with the years I have left? How long am I going to let the enemy steal my joy, steal my peace, steal my future, steal the years I have left?”

I’ve been running all my life, from relationship to relationship, from job to job, city to city - I made bad decisions, walked away from God, sought acceptance from people and things that were only destructive, split up my family, ruined my marriage, hurt my partner – and then one day when it all just felt like I couldn’t go on anymore, that the things of the world could not quench the thirst in me, God brought me back. God stepped into my life and changed everything! He told me that He loved me, He told me that He’d never taken His eyes off me, He told me that I am His beloved daughter, that what I had left was enough for Him to work with. It wasn’t the time to give up, or stop hoping; it was the time to fight, to wake up and strengthen what remains. I came back to God broken, with broken pieces, a broken heart, and despite that He loves me with an everlasting love, He never stopped loving me.

I praise God for being so faithful, powerful, and forgiving, for the healing and restoring of my heart, for strengthening me to go on, and for showing me that I still have some fight left in me. I’m His warrior; I’m His girl. I’ve been bought with a price; Jesus took the pain FOR me and let me live. I believe God for: healing my family and to break any stronghold so that my children’s children can receive the promises of God for their lives.

Thank you, Father, for restoring me, for breaking down the walls and rebuilding me, for planting me back in the House of Victory Church, for the breakthrough I received from the Divorce Care Group, and for putting me alongside friends who love me and who push me to go forward.

To the girl inside each one of us, the girl who can relate to the lie of “I’m not enough”, the girl who tells herself that things will never change and that this is how it is… well, it’s not. When God says “ I will show you, I will take your hand and lead you, I will fix the broken pieces” He means it.

We see all the trauma and the tragedy, and we say we can’t see how God can get the glory, but God says,” Take me to the unseen places and watch me take it and make it into something beautiful.”

“I will do a new thing, it will spring forth, do you not know that I am doing it in your mind, in your life, in your business - I will even make a way in the wilderness and I will cause rivers to come from the desert.”

I soar from that broken space. Not to give glory to what “happened” but to give Glory to God for bringing me out of that - don’t forget the desert even though it may have felt dark and lonely and painful, don’t forget that desert, because that is where God restores, replenishes, revives, look back on it and reflect, but just don’t stay there…..

Amen.

VIVIAN D’AGOSTINO