My Testimony....

                                                                 The Life Of BJ George.....

                                                                                               Past.... Present.... Future.....
 
 
I guess I need to start out by telling you who I am and where I am from. My name is Betty Jean George. AKA. BJ I was born and raised in Butler, Pennsylvania.  I am now residing in West Des Moines, Iowa.  I moved here August 2003.  To be near the only people in my life that matter to me, and the only people in my life besides my sister in law and my foster family (The Hays') that have ever shown how much they care about myself and my children.
Hmmmmm, where do I start, I guess there is no better place to start than in the beginning. I was born June 11, 1965 to a recently divorced mother who didn't want me from the time she was pregnant with me.  She purposely tried to miscarry me by throwing herself down steps and a lot of other things from what I was told.  That alone was hard enough to understand and hard enough to accept.  It is hard enough to go through life but then to think your world is over at a very very young age. There is something very wrong when a child feels they wish they were dead and when they would like to end their life.  I was very young when I though it would be better to die than to live.  I thought my world was over when I was at the young age of 11 years old.

I was being abused in all ways imaginable for as long as I can remember. Although I didn't know it was abuse at the time, I thought it was a normal thing for kids to be treated the way I was being treated at home by my mother and step fathers. I thought that being beat with belts, weeping willow switches, horse whips, having sex with your uncle, your dad and other men was a normal thing for a child to go through, having knives throw at you by your Mom because you didn't get them clean or because you forgot to get one off the end table, being kicked with steel toed boots because you can't carry 4 jugs of water at one time, up a 800 ft driveway because we didn't have running water or have them thrown at you because you cried. You learn that you better not cry and that crying showed that you were weak and if you were weak you had more problems than you already had.  I thought all this was a normal thing, a normal way of life. Being locked in small rooms for hours and sometimes days at a time was the worse. dark and cold.  Scary place for a little kid. Being beat for little things, I thought that I was being punished for what ever I did wrong, and if I would be good enough then it would stop. But no matter how hard I tried to be good, it was never good enough. How do you be good enough to be loved? I always asked that to myself but never got an answer. I used to beg myself to be better, to be a better kid, to listen better, but no matter what, it still happened. The physical pain was bad enough but the pain inside my heart was something I could not bear to deal with. I started to self mutilate myself by cutting myself with anything and everything I could get my hands on to relieve the pain inside my heart. When I couldn't find anything sharp to cut myself with, I would get matches or lighters and burn the palms of my hands with them. I still have scars from the self mutilations and self torturing that I put myself through, but as a child, I thought that was the only way. I thought I deserved to have the pain, I deserved the abuse, and if I would get better then it would stop. But it never did. So I self Mutilated. That is when more problems started to happen to me, it didn't get better, it got worse.  All I wanted to do was die.  I figured death was better than living, boy was it a hard thing to keep trying to go on.
 
You get to a point where you pretend somehow that the things you are going through really are not happening to you. You think about the most beautiful time and place in the world and pretend you are there, so you don't feel the pain so much, so you can get through one more day. You think if I can get through just one more day it will all dissapear, and that one more day is all you needed and then all the bad will go away, but it never did. What do you do then?  You turn to cutting yourself to release the pain from within your heart.  But even that didn't help much, only for alittle while then the pain came right back and then you started a vicious circle of self mutilation just to keep you from dying inside. Cuz if you die from within what good is it to continue to live?

That is when I was 11 years old and my mother put me into a Psyche unit for kids who would self mutilated their bodies in one way or another. I was in the hospital for 2 months. When I couldn't stay there anymore because I was there for the maximum stay the hospital permitted for one person, I was transferred to another hospital. But this time I was farther away from my mother and she couldn't visit me anymore, not like she visited me on a regular basis, but it was so much harder for me because I never got to see her anymore. I felt like she didn't care what happened to me since she didn't come to visit very often. That is when I started to self mutilate even more. Yet again, I outstayed many of the other kids, and was there for the maximum time allowed. And yet again, I was transferred out of there to another hospital. I spent 2 years in and out of the hospitals before I was allowed to go home.

Once I was back at home, things went back to the same old family life of abuse, physical, emotional and sexual.  You name it, I probably went through it. Yet again my world was falling apart and I could not deal with it properly. I could not stop it from happening. I started to burn myself with candles, and cut myself with anything that I could get hold of.  When they would take all the sharp objects from me, I began to use my fingernails, pencil erasers, pen caps, you name I probably used it.  I was desperate to have the pain in my heart to go away.  I would do anything to get it to stop. As I figured it, it was better to hurt on the outside than to hurt on the inside and I would do anything to make the pain to go away.  I even tried to kill myself but no matter what I tried nothing seem to help me stop hurting on the inside, yea maybe for a little while but not on a long term basis.

I was 13 1/2 years old when I met a girl named Marci Lynn Hays.  Before I knew it, her and I became best friends.  We sat together at lunch time, and we were in a lot of the same classes. I thought "well maybe now I will belong".  Feeling wanted was the best feeling I had ever had in my life.  I was wanted by my friend.  The only real friend I had.  She liked me for who I was. I do not know why she did, but she did.  It wasn't until later on in my life that I realized why she liked me for me.  After we became close friends I was invited one day to go to her house for the weekend. I knew the answer I'd get from my Mom, before I even asked, so I told Marci I couldn't go. I figured my mother would not let me go, so for a long time I kept making excuses why I couldn't go. Then one day she called my house and asked my mother if it was okay for me to spend the weekend at her house. She said that her Mom and her would pick me up and bring me home, and to my surprise my mother said yes.  I went there a couple of times, but it was really weird for me. They were like the brady bunch family almost. They always loved each other and never was mean.  They never hurt you there. This was a really strange thing for me to see.  I thought this family was out of the fairy tale stories or something.  That is when I thought maybe this is how it is supposed to be.  No hitting, no punching, no cursing, but still I wasn't sure. Maybe they were being this way just because they had company.  I ended up going to her house almost every weekend for a while, then the day came that would change my life forever.  It was the beginning of the end, of my family life as I knew it. Because I asked one question while I was at my best friends home. I was still a child and didn't understand, that what was happening at my home was not a normal life for a child. We were sitting at the dining table for lunch on a Saturday afternoon with her family when I asked Marci , " Why doesn't your daddy touch you like my daddy does me?"
I didn't know that one question was going to change my life forever.  Everyone just stared at me like I was some kind of creature from a horror movie.  I didn't know what I said wrong. I got scared and I got up. I took off like I was running for my life.  I ran and ran until I couldn't run anymore.  I finally decided I needed to go back, but when I got closer I got scared again, so I went into the barn and I stayed there for along time. Until Marci and her Mom found me, and Ellen hugged me and told me that it was OK, that nobody there was going to hurt me. That was the first time I ever felt safe and knew it was going to be okay, some way, some how.

I didn't know that I would never get to go home again by asking one simple question. If I would have known, I probably would have never asked. But the question was already spoken out loud and I could not take it back.
Oh how I wished, at that time, that I could rewind time so I could take it back and never say it.  To make a long story short, I spent the next 5 years in and out of foster homes, and group homes and hospitals. I seen my mother maybe, at the most, 5 times in 5 years and she grew to hate me more and more.  Her hatred towards me has never gone away.  She would tell me that I needed to come forth and say I lied and made up everything. I told her I can't say I lied about it when I was telling the truth. So when I didn't say I lied, she stopped coming to see me. I thought I would just die without my mother. I thought "How could she just throw me away? How could she not love me? I was her little girl". But none of that mattered to her, not then, not later and not now. I swore that I would never treat my kids that way when I had kids. My kids would always come first in my life before any man.  I swore my kids would always know that I love them no matter how messed up the world is or how messed up I am. I spent most of my child hood in hospitals, foster homes and group homes, on drugs to keep me comatose so I wouldn't be a burden to anyone, so I wouldn't give anyone a problem, what a life to live, eh?

Well, as I got older, I learned of my real fathers where abouts when I was 17.  I met my Uncle Ray, my Aunt Nancy, My Uncle Sonny, and I got to have them come visit me, and I got to go visit them. When I turned 18, I was released from the Lutherans Children's Home and went to meet my father. I never thought or felt like I belonged with them either. I always felt like I was a nobody, someone that couldn't be loved, someone that didn't belong anywhere, someone who didn't deserve Love, so I pushed myself away from them too.  I don't think I gave them much of a chance to prove to me that they loved me and would be there for me no matter what.  

I started on drugs and alcohol, you name it, I did it. I couldn't handle feeling alone anymore.  If I was doing drugs and alcohol, I had people who cared about me. Maybe not the way it should have been, but they cared to be around me, because I could always get high with them, get wasted with them. I knew that no matter what, I had my drugs to numb the pain within my heart.  I would drink, get high, and the pain would go away, or at least it would go away for a while.  A temparary fix of relief but it was all I had, and it was all that mattered at that point in time.  I did't care much for anything else except to make the pain stop.  

I met many men and slept with many men to get drugs, money, or whatever I could to get by.  To keep the pain to numb, in one way or another. But the pain always was there.  Sometimes worse than others but I was always able to get high or to get drunk to numb the pain. That is how my life was for a long time.  It didn't really matter, but it was how I exsisted.  I was 19 years old when I met a man named Butch. He treated me well, at least that's what I thought.  But he too was not a very caring person in my life. He got what he wanted, a girl that thought she was in love with him. He worked at a place called Glenshaw Glass in Pittsburgh Pa.  I thought he was the person that would change my life forever.  Little did I know, he did, but not the way I thought he would.   When I found out that I was pregnant, I told him and he tried everything he could to get me to have an abortion.  We lived together for 6 months when I found out I was pregnant.  When I told him, he said I can't have the baby because he was married. I was floored with the worse nightmare of my life. I was pregnant by a married man. What kind of life was that, to bring a baby into?  I wasn't sure of anything except that I was pregnant and I was not going to have an abortion, no matter what anyone said or did.  So this was the beginning of my single parent life.

I had my son on November 15,1985. He weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces and had a full head of hair. I couldn't believe how cute he was.  He was sent home 3 days after he was born, and for the first 2 weeks he was what changed my life.  But all the happiness that I knew for 2 weeks was about to come crashing down on me.  I named my son David Anthony. When he was 2 weeks old he stopped breathing.  He was turning purple.  I didn't know what happened or what to do.  My son ended up spending alot of time in the hospital and was put on a heart machine, because his heart stopped many times.   David lived for 9 months on a apnea machine.  When that machine went off, the whole house would hear it.  I almost lost my son more times than not his first year. I moved more times than not his first year too.  I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada for the most part of his first year. I had 3 boyfriends in that years time.  Jesse a man I met at work, Ron a friend of my brothers, and Jeff a friend of my next door neighbors.

Little did I know that I was going to end up involved with Jeff.  Jeff treated David like his own child and treated me really well at the beginning.  We moved to Ohio and stayed with my Grandma Kate until we got in our own place.  That didn't take long though.  Not long after that, I found out that I was pregnant again.  Boy did that make Jeff happy. I thought as long as he was happy, then I would be happy and my son would be happy.  
But something happened, something terribly went wrong. The day I gave birth to my daughter, Ashley Elizabeth on August 18,1987, Jeff was arrested. My life went really downhill from there. Ashley was born with Hydrocephalis. I thought I was going to die without Jeff, he was the only person who I really loved and thought really loved me.  My best friend Becky Miller would take me and my kids up to see Jeff at the jail every week. Eventually it went to every other week, and it soon became was once a month, then she stopped taking me all together.  It wasn't until I read it in the newspaper that I realized why.  My best friend turned on me and she married my boyfriend, my daughter's daddy.  My life was over as far as I was concerned. They crushed my heart, my trust, my love for anything or anyone. I was so withdrawn and sad, that I thought it was better to die than to live.  I turned back to self mutilation, to drinking, to drugs. I was a single mom again with 2 kids now.  What was I going to do?  How was I going to do it.  I had no idea what I was going to do.

That is when I went to live with some friends, because I didn't know what else to do.  That is when I met Bobby Lee.  He was so handsome, but I knew I didn't have a chance with him, not a real chance. I was a single mom with two children. Nobody in their right mind would want anything to do with me, other than sex. Boy was I right.
I ended up pregnant with my third child and as soon as he found out that I was preganent, he left a note on my kitchen table and was never to be seen again. Casey Marie was born on October 5, 1988.  I had no contact with Bobby Lee for a long time.

In 1989, I was living with my friend and his wife, and they were helping me to get straight. I was starting to get better.  I was beginning to smile and laugh. Then one day, I went for a walk. I was picked up by some guy. He forced me into his car and took me out into the desert. He beat me and raped me. I begged him not to kill me. All I wanted to do is get out of there. I wanted to get back to my kids. I wanted to forget it all.
Well I found out that I got pregnant when I was raped.  Everyone tried to get me to have a abortion.  There was no way I was going to do that. So when I didn't have an abortion, they tried to get me to give my daughter up for adoption, but I didn't do that either.  Now Stephanie is 12 years old.  She was born September 3, 1990 on Labor Day. Stephanie was born with epilepsy but we didn't find out until she was 3 months old. She has been seizure free for almost 18 months until January 1st 2003. It was really tough for me to see her have another seizure after all that time.

By the time I was 25 years old, I had 4 children and was never married. I thought of myself as a 4 time loser. I had 4 children, all with medical problems, and still felt alone. I was still doing drugs, alcohol, and wanted to die. I was still self mutilating my body to get the pain to go away, yet it never did, maybe for a little while but the pain always came back.

By the time I was 27 years old, I was married. Not because I loved him, but because I was tired of being alone with 4 kids. I was married August 9th, 1993. I was baptized into the Mormon religion on August 10th, 1993, and I was rushed into emergency surgery for a total Hysterotomy on August 12,1993. Busy week eh?  That was the beginning of the end of my marriage. My husband couldn't look at me without punching me, kicking me, telling me I was not a woman anymore. I took all the abuse he gave me. I didn't care as long as I didn't have to be alone.
But one day he hit my son, and I left the next day when he was at work. I took my kids and left.
Once again, I was a single Mom all alone with 4 kids. Once again I moved, this time back to the East coast to where my friends and so-called family were at. That is where my life started to take a turn for the better.  I don't mean that it was a great life, because it wasn't, but things did get better for me for a period of time.

In my life as a single mother, I thought of myself as a failure as a parent.  A parent is supposed to take care of their child, Protect their child.  I failed in both cases more than once.  When my middle daughter was only 9 years old, she was raped by my cousin, an active member of our church, a church deacon of our church.  I failed at protecting her from him.  He and his attorney stretched the case from going to trial for 2 years. Finally it was going to go to trial and we were subpoenaed to court and were scheduled to fly out for court. The night before we were to fly out, we got a phone call stating that he plea bargained down from 6 rape charges, down to 1 charge of child aludness, which got him 5-10 years in prison instead of 40 years to life.  Where was the Justice in this?  There wasn't any justice.  But hey, my daughter along with other children, were just victims. The law didn't care about the innocent children, only the criminal.  I don't understand to this day, why the criminal gets more legal rights than the victims.  My daughter stopped talking to anyone for quite sometime.  All she ever did, for over a year, was sit and rock and hum.  She hummed the same song over and over again. The song was How Great Thou Art. We found out later that He played that song over and over again, when he assaulted these children.  Telling them that God told him to punish them for being so bad.  

A little bit about one day a little girl came into my life and she changed my world forever. 
She became my daughter due to special circumstances and was my daughter for almost 7 years until she was killed. The little girl's name is Della Lena.  When she came knocking at my door one day, I had no idea why or what she wanted. She was crying hysterically, saying that her momma was dying.  Her mother had attempted suicide in front of the child, and the child had already lost her father the month before. This little girl showed me just what love meant.  I felt as if maybe my life had a meaning for a change.  I wasn't sure what the meaning was, but I felt as if I was needed by someone besides my own children.  When February 24, 2001 came, I thought my life was over again.  My daughter Della, whom I had adopted, was killed.  She was beaten, raped, stabbed, and thrown into the city pond to die.

I began to ask GOD questions. I hated the thought of anyone talking to me about God. My life was just totally turned upside down when my daughter was killed.  She was killed for loving the Lord so much, and for sharing his word with others.  Everyone kept telling me that God loved her so much, but they couldn't answer me why, if He loved her so much, how could He let her suffer such an excruciating death, especially since she was out in the community sharing the word of God when she was killed.  How could He just walk away from her suffering and just let her die.  That was the question that nobody could answer.  It took a long time for me to accept the fact that Jesus loved her so much, He took her home so she didn't have to live through the pain that the men who killed her put her through. I turned back to drinking, drugs, and staying in the house 24/7, until one day I met people on the net and they would not let me give up.

I met a lady who told me a lot of things that I believed in.  She said she was dying of cancer, that her husband left her and her little boy, that her little boy was deaf, the list went on and on. I believed her for everything she said. I believed that nothing but what she told me.  She then asked me to come live with her in TN, to help take care of her.  I did that and then found out she was not totally honest with me.  I stayed with her for almost 2 weeks. I gave her all my money and all my food, and then she kicked me and my children out on the street with no money, no food and we had no where to go.  I called a friend of mine whom I met from pal talk and talked to him. Then she pulled up beside me while I was on the phone and asked me to come back until I got my SSI check.  My friend, whom I was on the phone with, told me to swallow my pride and go back to her home. So against my better judgement I went back, so my kids would have a place to stay and food to eat. It didn't last a week and she went crazy on my little girl, screaming in her face, and I decided I was going to leave. My girls and I was packing up our stuff when she went balistic on me and started cussing at me, saying I wasn't a Christian and that God would condemn me. I left and didn't go back.  I called my best friend and she told me to get to Iowa.  The Lord got us there safe and sound.  We stayed with her and her husband until we got our own place.  They took us in to their home, their family, their lives.  They Loved me like I was their family.  They loved me and showed me the true love of the Lord.

   Then I met some other people from pal talk who came to stay with me, and they literally tore my trust of Christians to a pulp. I swore I would never trust another person for as long as I live, I would not open my heart to anyone ever again either... I changed my nic from BJ_611 to Pain4Life4Me... that is when I met Gary... and he wouldn't let me just give up. He invited me into a room on pal talk that had "Real" Christians, and with his love and their love, they showed me it was okies to love and it was okies to live and love again. Well to say the least, I rededicated my life and now trust the Lord to get me through the rest of this life, and know that others won't get to me again... Because I am going to live for the Lord for the rest of my life.
It wasn't an over night acceptance of love from others for me, I always thought that they were just was saying these things to me, only to gain my trust so that they could turn on me like everyone who was important to me has done. Finally one day, I realized they were here to stay no matter what I said or what I've been through. That was because of the love of the Lord, that they had inside them, and they showed me that with Jesus in my heart, I too can have a peace inside of my heart. I'm not saying this happened over night either, because the LORD is still working in my heart and in my life, and I know He will for the rest of my life here on earth. But I am saying that with the LORD on my side, I know that I will be OK. I will be better than okay, because I always have HIM to turn to, in the good and in the bad of my life.

Now in the present, as in the past, my mother still doesn't love me, she still don't care, but I have finally come to realize that what she feels for me isn't so much of what matters in this life.  The Love of the Lord, and the Love of other Christians, is what will get you through this life.  It isn't what you get in life that matters, but what you can give.  I may not have what you call a great life, but I do have a lot of Love to give to others, and I am not afraid of giving love anymore.   

This brings me to the conclusion of my testimony, I Pray for all the children out there in this world that are going through the abuse, that they too can get out of the pain, and one day love themselves and know that the Lord is with them even through the pain.  He has been with me through it all and when I cried, He cried, when I hurt, He hurt, and He has brought me through it all and has brought me to where I am right now. And that is... To a life of love and a life of happiness he will give me as long as I stay close to him.  This is what I will be doing for the rest of my life.

    Now I am preparing a center to open up, to help the hurting youth... After moving once again from Pennsylvania to Iowa, on a God sent mission, and with no idea of exactly what I would be doing, a large parcel of property in Missouri has been donated to me by a special Christian man whom I will always love... He is a sweetheart and has touched my heart like nobody else has. He has a special place in my heart that won't ever go away. Johnny is a very special Christian man who has a heart of Gold.  This parcel of land is now called, Heaven On Earth Refuge Center, and will be used to help the Youth and uplift the Lord always.
 
  Anyways, thank you for taking the time to read my testimony. God bless you all and I hope you have been blessed from it somehow. I pray that this has been able to help someone to know that no matter what you go though in your life, the LORD still loves you and He always will.

May God Bless You all abundantly
Now and Always
Love,
BJ