The Pageant Girl's Past

CBN.com  When Lonna was a child, she suffered unthinkable abuse at the hands of family members and friends.  As a teen she dated men that beat her up. So it’s not surprising that by the time she was in college she wanted a way out.

“I had put the gun up to my head,” says Lonna. “And I’ll never forget -- it was cold, the barrel was cold to my temple, and it was a defining moment.  And I felt a hand on my shoulder gripping and I mean, the grip was getting tighter, and I knew it was God and I knew He had heard me.  But I also knew I had to make a decision.”
           
Lonna was only 20 when she put that gun to her head.  The violence and abuse she suffered in her childhood made living unbearable. 
 
Her parents had adopted Lonna  when she was just a baby.  But they divorced by the time she was 3 years old.  They shared custody. At her father’s house, she was horribly beaten by her stepmother. At her mothers home, a live-in boyfriend sexually molested her.

“I was never safe.  I was just never safe,” says Lonna. “I remember crawling down the hall to my room and climbing in the closet — the only place I felt safe.  And I remember looking up at the ceiling and saying,  ‘God, do you see me?’”

 When Lon was 13, friends invited her to a Christian youth group.  She jumped at the chance to learn more about the God she never really knew. 

"I said, 'Jesus, if you see me, would you be my Lord.  Would You be my Savior – the Savior they’re all talking about.'" says Lonna. " I felt his presence and I felt a love that was not associated with pain and I felt a completeness happen in me and a warmth and a safety like I’d just been wrapped in the biggest, best bubble ever.  And I floated home from that weekend."

Lonna’s new-found faith was quickly squelched when she returned to her troubled home. “I started believing those seeds of doubt,” says Lonna. “God can’t love you.  You’re used, you’re dirty, you’re insignificant.  God doesn’t love you.  He can’t.” 
 
As a young woman, Lonna wore a happy mask for the world, yet turned to drugs, alcohol and sex to numb her pain.  She remembers the first time she took a drink. She was only 13.

“I remember getting drunk that night and feeling relief -- feeling like I could take a break from everything and being able to be somebody else for a short amount of time,” she says.

She even won the Miss Coeur d’Alene beauty pageant.  But the years of molestation and abuse hung like a shadow over her life.   The men she dated were abusive. After a knee injury she lost her scholarship and had to leave school. By the time she was 20 she’d had two abortions.  The guilt and hopelessness drove her to take her own life.

“I loaded the chambers of that gun and I remember sobbing because I knew it was my last – my last day,” she says.  “I finally cried out to God, ‘God, if you see me, God if you would take me back, God if You could love me, even in this mess I’ve made of my life, if You could love me, would You take me back?”

That’s when Lonna says she felt the hand of God on her shoulder.  She had a decision to make. She realized she could pull the trigger and end it, or she could drop the gun and grab onto that hand.

" And I dropped the gun," says Lonna. "I remember sobbing, saying, ‘Forgive me.’  And I’ll never forget.  He said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’  Welcome home, daughter.’ And my life changed.”  

“I left everything that had covered me,” says Lonna.  “That shame that had veiled me, I left it at the cross and I walked away because His grace is sufficient.  And I moved into a new life.  My Christian walk was clumsy.  It was three steps forward and two steps back and three steps forward, but I continued to move ahead, even if it was baby steps.”

“God continued to bring people into my life to encourage and to teach and to uplift me,” says Lonna.  “And my faith walk began to grow and it was exciting.”
           
Eventually she met and married Kevin.  Today, they have 3 children.

“How I’m parenting our children is through the grace and the love and the compassion and the discipline and the understanding that Jesus gives us,” says Lonna.  “That’s the only way that I could have a healthy, intact family, was to go by that.

Then a few years ago, Lonna was asked to participate in the Mrs. Idaho pageant. “I walked into a room with just the most beautiful women from across our state and I was totally intimidated,” says Lonna. "So I began praying a lot."                       
           
Lonna became the new Ms. Idaho, and represented Idaho in the Mrs. America pageant. 

“I found that that was a platform to share my testimony,” says Lonna. “To share where the home in my life came from. God would use that experience to be the catalyst to open the door and encourage women to find their hope, their healing and their identity in Jesus Christ.”
           
Lonna now ministers to women and children full time.  

“I sit here today a restored, redeemed and uplifted by Jesus Christ, knowing I am beautiful,” says Lonna. “Even if I sat down and wrote out my greatest dream for my life it would be nothing compared to what God has done in my life today.”

“I couldn’t have written this story myself,” she says.  “But God loves me so much that He wrote this story for me.  And I get to sit here and I get to live it and He has that for every one of us.”