Successful Life Changes in Teen Girls | Thrive Girls Ranch & Home

Thrive Girls Home Testimonials: Successful Life Change in Struggling Girls

Lindsey

lindsey photo When I found out I was going to Teen Challenge, to say I wasn’t happy about the situation is putting it lightly. I was an angry teenager who didn’t think anything my dad or any other adult suggested was a good idea. I was a 15 year old teenage girl who thought she knew everything. After being there for a couple weeks I knew I would need to open up and embrace everything they were offering me to truly have a change in my life. I was able to forgive and build a relationship with my dad that I never had before. My dad to this day is one of my best friends and we speak multiple times a week and I can confide in him. Having a relationship with God and my dad happened because of Teen Challenge giving me the tools and showing me that path to make this happen. I am married and have a beautiful 19 month old little girl and am studying to be an RN. If you open yourself up like I was able to the possibilities are endless.

-Lindsey is the daughter of Thrive Girls Home director Rodger Anderson and graduate of Teen Challenge Springboard

Julianna

Overall you could say that I had a pretty good upbringing. My dad was a pastor so I automatically grew up in the church. I was told time and time again about this “relationship” with God and how it transforms your life. I truly wanted that but never experienced it for myself. I was adopted at the age 2 ½ so there were natural questions and confusion there with wondering why my biological mother gave me up, this caused problems with my adoptive mother. I had so much anger towards her and wanted nothing to do with her. Other events that had happened in my family just caused me to completely shut God out and run from him. I did what I wanted, and what I thought would fill this void I was feeling, I turned from one unhealthy thing to the next, trying to find love and acceptance. The void was never filled though, but I just began to go deeper and deeper into my mess. I was completely lost and broken, I had no purpose for living and I knew that. My parents noticed that I was going down a path of complete destruction and it was happening fast, they wanted to help me as much as possible. July 2nd, 2019 I entered Central Indiana TeenChallenge. I did not want to be there one bit, I was angry at everyone and everything. When I started that program I had no idea that I was about to find out how truly broken I was. I had so much anger in me from burying all my emotions for so long. All of that anger came out on the people that were just trying to love me. All I did was rebel and disobey authority. I got in trouble with the law multiple times and had no respect for them. After 4 months in Indiana, I was no longer able to stay there because of my complete disobedience. I was forced to look at myself and who I had become. I genuinely hated that person.

While I was waiting to find out where I was going I finally broke down. I was more broken than I had ever been, I was scared, lost, and what felt like hopeless. But God! God stripped me of everything so that I was forced to reach out to him and that’s finally what I did. I accepted his love and put all my trust in him. I experienced the love that I had desired all along, I experienced a peace that I will never be able to explain.

On November 11th, 2019 God brought me to Thrive Girls Home. There were 65 people on the waiting list before me and I got excepted in one weekend. Rodger felt like that is where God wanted me, and if he didn’t listen to God I don’t know where I would be today. The journey definitely wasn’t easy, I still was old julianna, still had the same old behaviors and anger. But this time around I was determined to accept Christ’s love and the love of the people that he put in my life. As I began going through the teen challenge work and actually applying it to my life that’s where I started to see transformation happening. I gained self-control, self-love, respect for authority, and forgiveness. As I began to forgive the people that hurt me in my past I was set free. The anger started to go away. My relationships started to be restored. I started to find my identity in Christ and not what the world tried to label me as. I started to walk everyday living for christ. I began to become on fire for God and had a passion to see girls’ lives transformed as much as mine had been. My life was completely changed. Rev. Anderson and the staff never gave up on me. My advisor pushed me when I thought I couldn’t go any farther, she saw something in me that I couldn’t, and she did whatever she could to get me there even if I didn’t like it at that moment. I became whole and restored, I found purpose in my life. All of that has carried on since I left Teen challenge, it definitely has been a struggle but all the stuff that the staff taught me has applied to my life today, whenever I’m struggling I always have a place to look back and realize that God is bigger than any struggle.

My mom and I now are so close. She’s my biggest fan, I’ve completely forgiven her and God has set me free from every bit of anger I’ve ever felt towards her. I’m doing so much better in school, I have a future for myself now and that’s nothing I saw before. I’m using the passion God gave me to help the girls at Teen Challenge in my school, My life will forever be changed all because Rev. Anderson listened to God and took a leap of faith for me. After I am done with high school, I want to give back just partially what I was given by going back and working there.

Simone

Being adopted from China at the age of 1 ½, I already showed signs of abandonment issues. As I grew up, these issues began to worsen and my relationship with my dad became unhealthy and toxic. My mom and I became victims of domestic abuse and struggled to get out of it. When the 6th grade began, CPS started becoming heavily involved in my life, but there was still no resolution. I began quickly going downhill when 7th grade came around, trying to fulfill a place in my heart that was taken by my dad. I hung out with the wrong people and started getting involved in drugs. When 8th grade began, the depression and anxiety I had took over my life and I wanted to kill myself.

My multitude of suicide attempts led me to be hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital for two months. During my stay there, I progressed, and digressed, but in the end, I taught myself to compress my feelings and hide what I was struggling with because I was ashamed and embarrassed. Throughout this whole time, my mom and I continued to be victims of abuse from my dad, and eventually he chose to walk out of my life.

The feeling of not being loved and feeling like I was not enough to be a worthy daughter took over. During my freshman and sophomore years of high school I was always getting in trouble with my family and school. I did not listen to anyone or care about anything. I did not deal with any of my emotions and instead, I acted out with drug use, sex, etc. I threw myself at people and allowed others to control what I did, who I was with, and what I valued in myself. Things got so bad that I was placed on probation from consistently getting into trouble and ultimately, I was kicked out of school for selling drugs on campus. As punishment, I was sent to military school. I continued breaking rules, getting into more trouble and eventually found myself at Thrive Girls Home.

My first church service here, I broke down and began to cry. I was so tired of living my life in shame, guilt, depression, fear, anxiety, and I wanted to stop hating myself. Coming from a family that did not believe in God, I wrestled with my faith. When I began to read the Bible, and receive help, I felt an unexplainable peace that flooded over me and through my life. I was beginning to be at peace with myself.

I started to see restoration with my mom and I began forgiving my dad. Right after the New Year began my sophomore year of high school, we went to church. By growing closer to God and stronger in faither, I know I can count of the Lord to take me through each valley and storm step by step. I’ve learned the importance of trusting the Lord in everything I do. Through this, I am free of guilt, shame, condemnation, depression, anxiety, and all fear. I have figured out that I am called to pour into others for the rest of my life. Looking back I know that God was protecting my mom and I, even when I did not believe it or see.

Fiona

All my life I knew of God, but I never knew who he was. I grew up in a loving family that just wanted me to be happy, but growing up I always felt different than the other kids and never liked the way I looked. When I was 13 I got into a relationship that made me really happy, sometimes. I say sometimes because it wasn’t until after it was over that I realized he hurt me mentally, emotionally, and then physically. He harassed me, manipulated me, and made me feel like everything was my fault. There was always a lot of fighting with this person because they set expectations that were way too high and as soon as I gave everything up to meet those expectations, they raise them even higher and it’s like they were never satisfied. This went on for about 3 years and it was definitely something I was ashamed of because I have hidden it from everyone I knew, including myself. I completely disconnected from my family. I never told anyone because I thought that if he wasn’t in my life, then I wouldn’t be happy anymore but the thing was, I had already lost who I was. I isolated myself on the inside but on the outside, I started going to parties, smoking, vaping, and especially drinking because I didn’t trust anything anymore, I just trusted the alcohol and the temporary feeling it gave me. I depended on it.

Summer 2021 came, and there was this one night the police brought me back to my house at 3 am after sneaking out. I’ve never seen my mom cry so hard until that night. To be the cause of those tears falling down your mother’s face really breaks your heart and makes you question “Who are you?”. That night, before she left my room, she told me, “God is bringing everything to light for me and your dad because he loves and cares for you.” And I was like what? Because my parents were not Christians at all, especially my mom. She has never mentioned God’s name until that night.

In August 2021, my parents finally chose to send me down here, to Round Rock, where I was forced to go to church 2x a week and do bible work 24/7. I really struggled at first and got myself into Pastor Rodger’s office a couple of times and during one of those encounters, he told me something along the lines of, “Do what is un-natural until it becomes natural” and that really stuck with me because it was so hard for me to put my complete trust in someone, let alone someone that I’ve never seen or felt. I kept trying to find him in things but nothing caught my attention until, 6 months later of going through the motions, we had a church conference, Collide. I remember thinking that it was going to be a long and boring weekend.

The first day there, during worship, there was this song that came on and I started getting waves of chills, but I wasn’t even cold. Then I started crying because that song made me realize it wasn’t my family that I hated, it was my life. I had pushed away my family because I was being mistreated. At that moment, one of the girls that I lived with came to me hug me and she told me that before we went, she had prayed for God to speak to me. I knew God put that on my mind because I never came to the understanding that I was being abused by someone I had sacrificed everything for. That was the first time I had EVER felt him, and since then there have been a lot of windows opening in my life with people that truly care about me and I have been able to earn my parent’s trust back. It has been a really, really long time since my heart has been in one piece. I don’t remember the last time that I’ve ever had this much joy and peace in my life.

One of my favorite verses is James 1:2-3, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters when you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” Even after all the eye-openers God had given me, I still had a lot of anger, regret, and resentment but this verse resonates with me because you can choose to dwell in the trials and tribulations that you choose to pick out all the darkness and see the sun behind the storm. God has consistently been draining all the pain and weakness from me over the past 10 months, and I know that if it wasn’t for him physically picking me up and forcing me into a place where I can see what real love is, I would’ve never been able to cut out that fake love. I said forcing, but not in a bad way because I am gifted with parents that love me enough to say, “Stop, let me help you”. That was the first miracle God blessed me with, my parents.

Kennedy

I grew up in a suburban city near Dallas. My parents were fairly young when they had me, but they were both God-fearing people. I went to church almost every Sunday when I was younger so I was introduced to God at a very young age. I did normal kid activities in school and had a small group of friends.

When I was in the 6th grade I found out that my dad was going to prison. From that point, I felt that my life started going downhill. My parents were constantly arguing and I had a three-year-old baby sister and an eight-year-old brother whom I was often left to take care of. For a long time, I was in denial. I couldn’t believe that my dad was going to leave. I didn’t talk to anyone about my feelings which turned me into a very angry person.

After my dad received his sentencing and went in, I felt like things got even worse. My family was left homeless and we moved from place to place based on who was kind enough to let us stay with them. As time went on my anger became a normal part of who I was. I had accepted the fact that my dad was gone for a long time. I blamed my dad and would go weeks at a time without talking to him. My relationship with my mom got even worse, though we weren’t very close in the first place. I would get into trouble at home and I was grounded a lot. I felt that I never had freedom. Around the time I started high school I was depressed and I tried smoking weed for the first time. From then on I would always sneak around trying to find a way to smoke. As my high school years went on, smoking became a habit. It led to me pushing away the people I was once closest to.

My mom became sick of my rebellious behavior and decided to send me to Thrive. Since being here, I have rediscovered God and learned and practiced healthy ways to deal with my emotions.

Camden

My parent’s divorce left me struggling with a whirlwind of emotions. I stopped all contact with my dad but took my anger out on my mom. We fought constantly. She remarried and I struggled with the feeling of being replaced. To get more attention, I acted out in school and at home. I used drugs and drank, all the while covering my shame and guilt with pride as I laughed the whole thing off with my friends.

I became very isolated from my parents and rarely spoke to them. We had no relationship or hope of fixing it. I hated my life and regretted all I had done but had no desire to change my behavior. My parents began searching for programs. I was so angry at them both and I blamed my stepdad for all of it.

I arrived at THRIVE, the adolescent girl’s program of Adult & Teen Challenge, and my old habits resurfaced but this time I began to see the mistakes I was making. I made good friends who showed me that making the right decisions was a way that I could please God and grow stronger in my relationship with Him. After I was baptized in February, things changed as I began to heal things with my parents and to set a good example.

Now, my parents have gone from strangers to becoming my #1 supporters and best friends. I’m looking forward to going home and becoming part of the family again. I went from addiction to nearly a year sober and I will never go back. At THRIVE, I have learned to love myself and to forgive the people who have hurt me. The verse that I stand on is 1 Peter 5:10 “And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.”