Growing up in a healthy Christian family, life was generally very good. However. at the age of 16, I became the victim of a violent sexual assault. That night, I also became a mother. My life, as I knew it, would never again be the same. The shame and guilt gripped every part of me, paralyzing me from being able to share the details. the whole story of the trauma. Those nine months seemed, simultaneously, to last a lifetime and be far too short. I agonized over my decision to give my baby up for adoption. but my love for her was so great. I needed to give her the life she deserved. In the years that followed, I never abandoned my relationship with God, but I certainly found myself in and out of new and unimaginable pain. I needed God's complete healing and I needed to learn how to trust both God and man again. He healed me so deeply that the impact of the rape could not define me. Although man let me down. God rewarded my faith with healing and a new joy, deeper than anything I could have ever imagined. This is a story of hope in overwhelming tragedy and turning that tragedy into triumph.