Standing: Through It All - Paperback

by Tonya Alston (Author)

Non-Fiction book about a woman Breaking Nearly All Ten Commandments But Still Finding Redemption - STANDING THROUGH IT ALL. As a young girl, the youngest of five, raised by a mother with a grade school education and siblings caught in the world wind era of drugs. Pregnant as a teenager she realizes that she wants a better life, takes her daughter and puts herself through college. In college she is trapped in an abusive relationship with a drug lord and struggles to free herself but not without incident. Escaping and relocating back to the city where she was born. Not having learned her lesson she revisits this relationship to find herself rape once again and falling into the arms of another man. Having never been loved or hugged by her mother she looks for it in all the wrong places mirroring her life to the Samaritan Woman at the Well as seen in the Bible. She finds herself going back to the Well again and again dating NFL, NBA, R&B Singers, Husbands and on dating sites. She is thirsty! After having to face the consequences of her action she has a life changing moment that forced her back to the days when she would talk to God. Determined to realign her life. She focused on being a mother to her daughter and bettering herself by obtaining an International Masters in Business Administrations. Yes, although she was in abusive relationship, having a sister murdered, losing her stepfather, her mother having a nervous break-down she managed to finish college with her daughter by her side. The loss of her mother was devasting and caused even more division in an already broken family. Being the only living daughter, after her oldest sister died, her relationship with her oldest brother, a Pastor who she looked up to like a father had been severely damaged. After the death of her mother and leaving her brothers church, she would not hear nor see her family again until after being pronounced dead, placed on life support, waking up nearly 30 days later; paralyzed in a diaper and unable to walk. While friends gathered, she saw the return of her family and the loss of a deep love all at the same time. Haven destroyed a marriage; karma returns when she is sick, and her love decides that she will not get better and moves on with his life. Broken, she returns to the church. Returning to the church was the answer, at least that is what she thought. The severed relationship between her and her brother's wife would soon raise its ugly head again. Jealousy and Pulpit rants spun out of control. Now she was being spiritually abused feeling that God was cruel, unloving and would kill her for the consequence of her actions. Struggling to hold on an find a better way; taken in the basement by her spirtutal leadership and made to cry turned off her light in her and once again, she was gone. Leaving the familiar, but still in search of what she believes to be a safe place, she finds another church. Being exposed to new levels of church and ministry her eyes are open to what some make call racketeering, performing and spiritual deceit. Seeking acceptance, she latches on to a spiritual mother expecting her to provide what only God can. Exodus leads to the young woman finally finding what she was searching for all along, Love! In a year of Rebirth, Refocus and Resetting her life she learns that it was never about the church but the love of God. That God is love and offers forgiveness no matter what you have done. Her journey demonstrates that God's love is life changing and in his presence is the intimacy that she had always longed for. Now she is in her year of Reveal walking in God's purposed plan for her life and understanding his redemptive power.