“My name is Christina Baker. And by no means necessary should I be alive today. And I want to take you a little into the journey of my story, where my life began. And I came from a broken home, my parents divorced when I was seven years old, my dad was an atheist, my mom was a non-practicing Catholic, so there was no God in my home.
By the age of 14, I was going out to the bars, I was doing drugs and I was hanging out with the wrong crowd. I got into self-harm because I felt like I was dead inside and I just wanted signs that I was still alive. And by the time that I turned 15 years old, I was partying all night, drugging all night and drinking at the bars.
And I came home one night and my stepdad was standing at the top of the stairs and told me, first he told me that I wasn’t worth it, and before he almost pushed me down the steps, my mom said, he told my mom that I had, she had to decide between me and between him. My mom made a decision that night that I had to leave, and so they put me on a one-way ticket from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where we were living to Maui, Hawaii.
I hadn’t seen my dad in ten years, so with a duffel bag with my entire life in it and an electric guitar on my back, I showed up in Maui, Hawaii, looking for my dad, not knowing if I would recognize him. After about 6 hours sitting in the airport, my dad shows up and I had black makeup around my eyes, I had spikes, I was black on black, on black. And my dad gives me the news that after many years of working in the oil field, he lost everything, he had a bad cocaine addiction. And as I followed in my dad’s footsteps, the news dawned on me that this would also be my reality. And he said that he ended up homeless, living in a tent on the beach.
And so I asked myself that question, Does that mean that I’m homeless, too? Well, my dad spent some time on the Maui Beach for many months, and after that some family members found out that I was living homeless and they brought me to Houston, Texas, and I went from house to house to house. Nobody wanted to deal with a drug addicted goth teenager, so they shipped me off to Pennsylvania, where I was living in a Red Roof Inn, and my brother’s coach, my brother was going to college in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and my brother’s coach went to a staff meeting at a church that he attended and said that there was a, an atheist, drug addicted teen living in a motel. A couple stands up at the staff meeting and they say, we’ll take her in.
A week before 9/11 in 2001, I show up at this couple’s house and they said, Welcome to my home. We only have two rules in our house and the first one is that your curfew’s 11, and the other one is that you have to go to church with us every Sunday. At that moment I looked around, I was like, You guys don’t understand. I’m an atheist. They said, That’s okay, Chris, welcome to our home, we’d love for you to stay, but you got to go to church.
So every Sunday I did everything that I could to not go to church. I wore fuzzy slippers. I’d have these black hoodies with obscene words on them, and I would come downstairs, and her name was Mrs.
Hatch.She would say, “Great, Chris, come on, we’re on our way to church.” So every week I would go to church and I would hear the pastor preach on the love of God. And at that stage in my life, I didn’t know that anything was out there or even existed. And the truth be told, is that I had an anger in my heart that I felt like if there was a God that he had put me in this position and he had done this to me.
So when I left their house, I graduated from high school, I got back into the lifestyle of doing drugs and ended up dating a drug dealer, and everything in my life continued to spiral downward from that moment.
The moment that changed everything for me, even though I didn’t know that God was real, was when I was on my way to have, I had already scheduled an abortion after I had found out that I was a couple months pregnant, I was leaving my apartment, and I get a banging on the door and it was my drug dealer’s girlfriend. She says that she needs to talk to me. She was huge, pregnant, had two children in tow. And we go to the bathroom of my apartment and she pulls out a bag with a file in it. She had just printed off some papers and I could see that it said the state of Texas versus this doctor. And the more that I read, I saw that a young girl, 15 years old, had died on the table having an abortion. And then I recognize the name of the doctor was actually the doctor that I was going to see to have an abortion.
At that moment, this young woman grabs my shirt and she says to me, “Christina, I know that you don’t believe in God, but my God will provide for this baby. I’m asking you not to kill this child.” Well, at that stage in my life, I didn’t even know that the child that was living inside of me was a child. I always thought that a baby that was inside of you was just a clump of cells and just an embryo. So who is an embryo to dictate my life? But at that moment, looking back on it now, it was God’s intervention in my life. See, God doesn’t need you to have it all together or even know him for him to be working in your life. And so that was when the grace of God met me in my darkest place.
I collapsed on the floor and she said that God would provide for the baby that was living inside of me. And she pleaded with me to not kill this baby. I ended up keeping that child, and I named him Evan. His name actually means God has given grace. God has shown favor. But I didn’t find that out until many years later.
I continued doing drugs. I had quit doing drugs for a certain amount of time after I had my son. But once again, I got back into the life and I was living a double life. I was working as a school counselor during the day trying to provide for my son, and I was drugging all night.
And so I was driving down a road in Houston, Texas, after going to my dealer’s house, and I got pulled over by the police. I was smoking weed in the car, rolled the window down, and the smoke was coming out as the officer was asking for my insurance and my driver’s license. And he pulls me out of the car and he says, “Ma’am, you’re under arrest.” And I’m like, “What for?” And so I belligerently got put in the back of the cop car, and I, it was the moment where I prayed what I believe is my first prayer.
And I looked up with my hands in cuffs on my back and I said, “If you’re real, why are you doing this to me? I hate you.” That moment I went to jail, I was out on bond, I went back to my job and I was sitting in front of my computer screen where I was contemplating how to take my life. And the enemy will do that to you. He’ll get you to the place where he starts convincing you that you don’t matter and that you are worse off being alive than you are dead.
And so I was going down this road when I got a tap on the shoulder, and it was a man at my job who said to me that he had a word from the Lord for me. And at that moment it could have been anybody. Buddha, Muhammad, I didn’t know anything about God. I just wanted someone to help me. And he invites me to a prayer meeting where I walk into this prayer meeting and people are pacing the floor, they’re praying in languages that I had never heard of, and everybody begins to lay hands on me, and this man, his name was Hillroy, he says to me, “This is a matter of life or death.”
And at that moment, I didn’t know that it was a vision, but I had an open vision in my spirit of me dying in a car accident. And he says to me, “Would you like to receive Jesus into your life?” And I said, “Whoever you are, Jesus, come into my life and change my life.” At that moment, I felt like a warm oil from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I began to shake and it was like the boulders that I had been carrying around for 20 plus years in my life all of a sudden just lifted. I truly came through the birth canal for the first time, I had seen, I was seeing more light, the colors were more vibrant, the lights were brighter. I’d given my life to Jesus, and I wish I could tell you that I rode off into the sunset and everything was hunky dory after that.
But the reality is that I was facing a court case that was going to change the rest of my life and the life of my son. So I had been walking with the Lord for three months, I was fully delivered from drugs and I was walking like a new woman, but I was facing going back to jail. So I show up to court that morning and I hear the voice of the Lord speak to me while…
I hear the voice of the Lord speak to me while I’m sitting there in the courtroom. He says, “Trust me, Christina. Trust me.” And at that moment, a peace came over me, a peace that surpassed all understanding. The case was called, and as I stood before the judge, I could feel the weight of the consequences I was facing.
But then something extraordinary happened. The judge looked at me and said, “Based on the evidence presented, I’m dismissing all charges against you.” I couldn’t believe it. The room was filled with disbelief and amazement. It was a miracle. God had intervened once again and turned the situation around.
From that day forward, my life took a different path. I fully surrendered to Jesus, and He began to transform me from the inside out. I left my old lifestyle behind and embraced a new life in Christ. I found purpose and meaning in serving others and sharing my testimony of God’s grace and redemption.
Today, I am a living testament to the power of God’s love and His ability to bring beauty out of the darkest situations. My life, once filled with brokenness and despair, has been redeemed and restored by His amazing grace.
I share my story not to boast about myself, but to testify to the goodness and faithfulness of God. He took a lost and broken soul like me and turned it into a vessel of His love and mercy. I am forever grateful for the second chance He has given me.
So, dear friends, no matter how hopeless or broken you may feel, know that there is always hope in God. He can turn your life around and bring purpose and healing to your deepest wounds. Trust in Him, for His love knows no bounds, and His grace is more than sufficient.
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