Happy Birthday to a Former Gang Member

January 2, 2026

Would you have believed it if I told you I joined a gang?

If you met me today, that sentence might feel hard to reconcile with who I am now. An active Christian, a professional businesswoman, an engaged community member. The founder of a nonprofit rooted in restoration and hope. Someone who speaks about faith, dignity, and healing with conviction.

And yet, this is my story.

Birthdays slow me down. They turn memory into a mirror and invite questions that cannot be avoided. Not just how old am I, but who have I become, and what shaped me along the way. When I look back now, I see how quietly and powerfully our circumstances form us long before we understand what is happening. The environments we endure teach us what to expect from people, where to place our trust, and what we believe we must do to survive.

As a child, I was vulnerable in ways no one could see. I grew up in the suburbs, in a neighborhood where homes looked safe and life appeared stable. But vulnerability has never been about income or zip code. It is about being unprotected, abandoned, neglected and abused.

I learned early that humans are unreliable. Adults disappoint and authority figures fail. Promises are broken, sometimes loudly and sometimes quietly. When stability feels uncertain, a child does not stop longing for it. She simply learns to search for it elsewhere, and she develops a deep sensitivity to pain in others, even before she understands her own.

For me, the promise of belonging and permanence appeared in the form of a gang.

On my birthday, thirty three years ago, I was a member of the Gangster Disciples. The leader was a man known as T-Money from Chicago, already known to authorities for trafficking young girls and boys between Minnesota and Chicago. I did not know any of that then. What I knew was how he carried himself, how people moved when he entered a room, how power followed him. To a vulnerable child desperate for safety, power felt like protection.

Gang life offered structure where my life felt uncertain. Loyalty where trust had been fractured. Identity where I was still trying to understand my own worth. It promised family, and I wanted that more than I knew how to name.

But false foundations always come at a cost.

Initiation was violent. I was beaten by the other girls, not because they were heartless, but because cruelty had already been done to them. Pain was the price of belonging. Endurance was proof. Even then, I noticed how suffering hardened some and softened others, and how pain often passes from one person to the next when it is never healed.

Soon after, I was claimed. Labeled someone’s “girl.” The words sounded protective, but they disguised ownership. I was a child. He was twenty seven; I was thirteen years old. I was sold to strangers, controlled, and used in ways I did not yet have language for. I did not know the word exploitation. I only understood patterns. Obedience reduced consequences and resistance made them worse. Watching others endure the same treatment shaped a compassion in me long before I knew what to call it.

This is the part of the story where shame still tries to speak the loudest. The part that urges me to soften details or keep things vague. But silence is where abuse survives, and Christ did not redeem my story so it could remain hidden.

Here is what I understand now.

Gang life did not create my brokenness. It exposed it. It revealed what happens when a vulnerable child builds her identity on something other than God. When belonging, protection, and worth are rooted anywhere else, the structure may feel strong for a season, but it will collapse. Mine nearly took my life with it.

And still, God was there.

I did not know Him yet. I did not know Scripture or prayer. But looking back, I see His presence in moments of restraint, interruption, and survival. There were paths that could have gone further and did not. Outcomes that could have been fatal and were not. I am alive, and that alone speaks to a mercy I did not yet recognize.

Eventually, my father discovered what was happening and intervened. I was removed physically, but trauma does not disappear when the environment changes. Fear lingers. Shame settles in. Hyper vigilance becomes normal. Distorted beliefs follow quietly into adulthood. Those beliefs shaped my relationships, my reactions, and my deep awareness of suffering in others.

This is where Jesus entered my story, not as an idea or a moral framework, but as a Savior who meets people exactly where they are.

When Christ found me, He did not ask me to explain my past or justify it. He did not require me to minimize what I endured or clean myself up first. He washed me clean. The horrors I closed my eyes to survive. The emotions that lingered long after. The shame I carried silently. All of it was covered by the blood of Christ on the cross, completely and finally.

That does not mean the past disappeared. It means it was redeemed. My story no longer defined my worth. Jesus did.

For years, I prayed Matthew 5:16, asking God to let my light shine before others so that He would be glorified. I understand now that light is most visible when it emerges from places that were once very dark. Redemption does not erase history, it transforms it into testimony. What once felt like contamination became refinement. Salt preserves, and God wastes nothing.

Scripture tells us that the wise person builds their house on the rock, so when the rain falls, the floods rise, and the winds beat against it, the house does not fall because its foundation is secure. That is what Jesus became for me. After every false foundation collapsed, He remained steady, faithful, unmoved.

This is the meaning behind the nonprofit I founded.

Restorative Hope Ministries exists because this is where my compassion for others was formed. It was shaped in places where I learned what it feels like to be unseen, unheard, and unsafe. It grew from understanding how trauma lingers and how deeply it shapes behavior, identity, and choices. My compassion did not begin in classrooms or conferences. It began in survival, and it was redeemed by Christ.

I know what it is like to be shaped by trauma, and I know what it is like to be reshaped by Christ. I know that people are not beyond restoration. I know that dignity can be rebuilt. I know that faith, meaningful work, and healthy community can restore what exploitation tries to destroy, because that is exactly what God has done in my own life.

I am not proud of my past, but I am no longer ashamed of it. Shame lost its power the moment Jesus showed up.

Situations shape us, but they do not have to define us. Humans will disappoint us, but Christ never will. False foundations will always crumble, but Jesus remains.

So today, I say happy birthday to a former gang member. To a survivor. To a woman redeemed by grace. To a life rebuilt on the only foundation that lasts... Christ's firm foundation.

If my story surprises you, maybe that is the point. God specializes in transformation, and He turns compassion born in suffering into light that helps others find their way home.

A Prayer for Those Suffering and Recovering

Lord Jesus, for every person reading this who is suffering, surviving, or quietly healing from wounds no one else can see, draw near. For those still trapped in harmful situations, bring protection and intervention. For those in recovery, bring patience, strength, and hope. Wash away shame that does not belong to them. Restore what was taken. Heal what was broken. Remind them that no past is too heavy for Your grace, and no life is beyond redemption. In Christ's we believe.

With hope & love,

Melissa, birthday girl