amazing story
Taryn Davis: A Dying Man Saved Her Life
By Mary Ruth Goochee
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– In the words of Taryn Davis:
“Hi, I’m Taryn Davis. I’m 21-years-old, and I’m from Lima, New York.”
“In high school, I just felt like I didn’t have a place, and I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere, and I just felt really rejected.”
The rejection started when Taryn found out that her birth father had abandoned her, and the man raising her was really her adopted dad. This confused Taryn, and put her on a path of self destruction.
“I turned to drugs and alcohol, and anything that would just make me feel like I fit in somewhere.”
“When I just felt like I couldn’t cry enough, I couldn’t get angry enough, I would cut my arms just to find a way to release the pain, in a way, and just control situations that I felt like I couldn’t control.”
One way Taryn controlled things was with bulimia. And even though she was raised in a Christian home, she still didn’t know what she believed.
“I just kind of saw, well, I’m being hurt, so it must be God’s fault, in a way. So a lot of it I started to blame Christianity and God for the troubles I was having.”
“One night I was hanging out with my friends, and we were drinking and smoking and driving around and all of a sudden I just got this feeling that something bad was about to happen. And I remember driving in the car and just begging my friend to stop and just begging him to pull over and he would just go faster and faster. And for the first time in a really long time I prayed to God that he’d protect my life and he would put his hand over the car and bring us to safety. Before you knew it, I was back in the parking lot and I forgot all about that prayer that I had prayed it, and I just continued hanging out with my friends.”
“Then I got a text message from another friend of mine saying that my friend had just died in a car accident. I was just so shocked that could happen. Life can be short. I mean, life can be over before you know it. And I just remember asking God, 'Why?' And I just realized that this could happen to me if I don’t really take my life seriously and head in the direction I need to be in.”
Taryn thought that direction meant going to Bible College.
“I thought that it would be a quick fix in a way. I just thought since I was here, all my problems would be solved.”
It didn’t work that way. Taryn got a few semesters of head knowledge at Bible College, but there was no change in her heart. So, after her first year she got involved with her old friends again.
“I thought I’d be okay. I thought I had made the right changes. But just seeing my old habits again, I just fell right back into them.”
“I really felt alone and just further away from God than I’d ever felt.”
But Taryn returned to Elim Bible Institute for a second year. She started an internship and that’s where she met someone who changed her life.
“I met this one guy who was terminally ill. And in the midst of all that was going on in his life, he was raising his hands and worshipping God. And that really touched me in a way and I just thought, ‘If this man, who is in this hospital alone, can praise God for who He is, then I can too.’ And that was the moment when I really wanted to change, and I really wanted to have a relationship with God.”
After that defining moment, Taryn got serious about God. And with the counsel of one of her professors, she started breaking free from her addictions, and from her rejection.
“With God’s help and God’s grace and reading the Bible and really learning who God was and who I was and how God saw me. I love Jesus because he has redeemed my life. He died for my sins and he has freed me from the pain of rejection and my depression.
He has forgiven me of all my mistakes.”
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