What if your mom was a drug addict, in and out of jail? What if you were just one of five children that your mother had conceived by four different men? How would you feel if you were suicidal by age nine and a ward of the state at age 13?.
“I felt hopeless,” says Jacqueline Cleveland, a member of Pastor David Abbott’s church in Scottsdale Arizona. “It seemed that I was destined to live like this always. I thought that only people in books lived happily ever after. By age 12, I was young, but I felt so old.”
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It was only with the help of relatives who introduced Jacqueline to Christ that her life began to change.
Today she sits in the grass, snuggled up in a blanket, wisps of her light blonde hair blowing in the wind.
She laughs, “You ask me what I liked to do in my spare time. Like duh! I like to do what other girls do, talk about guys, go shopping, talk about guys, hang out with my friends, talk about guys…you know, the usual.
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For this young lady, being a typical young person is a dream come true. “I dreamed it, but it was an unreachable dream,” she says. “Deep down inside, I always thought I would be just like my mom.
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Though she’s not on that path now, it is easy to see why Jacqueline would feel this way. Only as a teenager did Jacqueline emerge from this ongoing nightmare.
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In a home filled with alchoholics and druggies, the nighttime was always the scariest for Jacqueline; she never knew what was going to happen while she and her siblings tried to sleep. Her mom’s boyfriend regularly beat her mother. She remembers one night more than all the others.
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“One night I woke up to the sound of sobbing,” Jacqueline states. “I just laid there and listened as it got louder and louder. I watched as my mom came in the room and crawled into bed with my younger sister, sobbing the whole time. I kept watching as my mom clung to a little seven-year-old for protection. The he came in. He picked my mom up by her hair while she still clung to my little sister. Then he began to beat her.
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After that, Jacqueline always had trouble sleeping at night.
“I used to wake up every morning to a wet pillow," says Jacqueline, "because throughout the entire night, even while I slept, I cried.”
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Jacqueline first began contemplating suicide when she found out that her step-dad was not her biological father. All she knows of her biological father comes from a few pictures and an old love letter that he wrote to her mom. In the letter he writes about how excited he is about having his own child. He talks about marrying her mom and become of him.
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“For a while I hated my dad for leaving me in situation I was in. But I don’t even know him, and I really don’t know what happened. No one will ever talk about the time of my birth,” says Jacqueline.
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Life began to change for her when her Grandma Cleveland began bringing her to church as a ten-year-old girl. Her Grandma, Betty Cleveland, is actually the mother of one of Jacqueline’s step-father’s, also the mother of Sis. Darcy Abbott who is married David Abbott, the pastor of Landmark Pentecostal Church in Scottsdale.
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Jacqueline had grown up a strict Catholic girl, so her first reaction to an Apostolic church was,
“These people are weird! says Jacqueline with a laugh.” However, even though she thought the church was weird, she enjoyed the social aspect and kept coming.
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Jacqueline says she will never forget the night she got the Holy Ghost. It was May of 1996 at a church retreat at the campgrounds in Prescott, Arizona. She says she doesn't remember what Bro. Hopkins, the visiting preacher, preached about that night, but she responded to his call to pray.
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"I remember thinking, I want to know what this is all about," says Jacqueline.
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Jacqueline says when she got the Holy Ghost she honestly felt confused. She says it was like love, joy and peace collided head on with hate, brokenness and strife. Instead of clinging to what she had received, she began to shy away from it.
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Off and on for the next two years, she would come to church with her Grandma but never made a commitment to God. Jacqueline's best friend says she remembers begging Jacqueline at a picnic to be at church the next service.
“Promise me you’ll be at church on Sunday?” Her best friend asked as she hugged Jacqueline goodbye. She says Jacqueline would would give a quick, yes and try to get out of committing to it.
“No!” she would say to Jacqueline, holding out her hand, “pinky promise me you will be here on Sunday!”
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Meanwhile, Jacqueline was miserable. What she had of a family literally began to fall apart. Jacqueline and her siblings got taken away from their mom and became wards of the state of Arizona. Her mom would move around and was always in and out of jail. At first Jacqueline lived in a group home for foster kids, then she lived with one of her step-father's for a short time, eventually she ended up with her Grandma Cleveland.
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Once she lived with her Grandma she started coming to church regularly. However, she still had not completely given her life to God. There were still some things in her life that she wasn't ready to give up. At the end of the school year she had tried out for the Freshman cheerleading squad, much to her disapointment, she didn't make it the team.
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During the summer she got involved with church activities. She went to Old Time Campmeeting, another church camp, but with a lot more Apostolic/Pentecostal churches involved. While she was at camp it appeared to everyone that she was really, truly living for God. However, in her heart she knew she was only acting so she could fit in with the people she had become friends with.
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One night at the camp, Bro. Randy Keys preached a message called “Are you a Contender or a Pretender?” As she stood at the alter that night she knew she was only a pretender. Even though she didn't change anything at the camp, the message got to her. For the next two weeks after camp she thought about it.
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She says she felt like her life was in shambles and that living for God was her only hope. At the time her pastor was on vacation. So unknown to anyone, she wrote a letter to her pastor telling him that she had decided to live for God and that she wanted to be baptized.
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After she wrote the letter and sent it, Jacqueline got a phone call from her school cheerleading squad. They said that one of the girls had been disqualified and that she was the next girl on the list to take her place. Jacqueline says she remembers feeling so excited. Then disappointed as she remembered, she was living for God now, she didn’t dress that way anymore. Yet, no one knew she had made this decision.
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Jacqueline and her grandma were going over to the pastor's house while they were away to check on the dog and get their mail. She says she remembers getting the Abbott's mail and seeing her letter on top. The letter was right there in her grasp. She could take it out and no one would ever know about her decision. Then she could join the cheerleading squad, just like she had always dreamed. For moment she was torn, then she made up her mind, she took the letter and stuck in the middle of the pile.
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“I remember feeling so desperate, she says. “I thought if living for God doesn’t work then nothing is worth living for. I remember feeling like I was freefalling into God's arms,” says Jacqueline, "and being very, very, surprised that He was there to hold me."
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When Bro. Abbott got her letter he was pleasantly surprised with her decision. That Sunday she was baptized in Jesus name and from that day forward Jacqueline has been committed.
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Jacqueline says one of the hardest things for her to learn was forgiveness.
“Forgiveness is something you have to do over and over again," says Jacqueline, "you think you have forgiven. Then it creeps back up on you, and you have to do it all over again.”
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Previously, she hated her mom for the life she put her through, but she also understands the way her mom felt. Growing up, her mom was also foster child, tossed from home to home.
“We were both striving for love,“ she explains of her mom.
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While her mother turned to drugs and men to ease her pain and fill her loneliness, Jacqueline turned in another direction. At age 14, she found solace in the love of God.
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“When I finally gave my life to Jesus, I found hope," says Jacqueline. "I still had a lot of things that I had to work through, but now I had a reason to live.”
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Today, Jacqueline is still standing strong to the decision she made in 1998.
“No one has forced me or fooled me into doing this. It is my own choice,” she says. “This is the life I have chosen to live.”
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Jacqueline excitedly looks forward to the future. She dreams of her family getting in church, writing a book, traveling and of course getting married someday to a Godly man(“Like duh!”).
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Although, her life isn’t perfect, and there are still things she struggles with, she has learned to love life.
“I no longer wake up every morning to a wet pillow, and thanks to God, I no longer want to end my life,” she says.
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Many people may not understand how after such an awful life, Jacqueline can still give thanks.
“Really,” she says, “there are people worst off then I was. Most children don’t ever get taken out of these kinds of situations. I was blessed.”
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Because of her past Jacqueline faithfully helps pick up African refugee kids with her best friend for church. Even during the summer, in 110 degrees, no AC, a 25 minute drive both ways and lot's of body oder, she feels they are worth it.
“That’s the only reason I am here,” she says, “Because someone took the time to pick me up.”
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Jacqueline sums up the way she feels in a song entitled, “My Tribute”.
It’s a Sunday evening at Landmark Pentecostal Church. With eyes closed and arms raised toward heaven, she gentle sways to the music, as her strong soprano voice sing out.
“The voices of a million angels could not express my gratitude. All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe it all to thee. To God be the glory, for the things He has done.
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