October 29, 2007
Campus Life, September/October 2007
I Hated Everyone
How God’s love changed Flyleaf’s Lacey Mosely.
By Todd Hertz
I had nothing:
Flyleaf lead singer Lacey Mosely started doing drugs at 13. It was her escape from life. “Home was a war zone and I dealt a lot with low self-esteem and depression,” Lacey says. “All that carried over into my relationships. I hated everyone.”
By 16, Lacey was constantly fighting—verbally and physically—with her mom. Their fights got so violent that Lacey chose to go live with her grandparents. But moving away didn’t make her any happier. “I lost my primary connection to drugs,” she says. “I lost the guy I’d dated for three years. And I lost my brothers and sisters. I had nothing.
I didn’t know why I was waking up every day.”
One Wednesday after school, she decided to kill herself. “But when I came home from school, my grandma knew something was wrong,” Lacey says. “She told me I needed to go to church that night. To get her to stop yelling, I said I’d go.”
Unconditional love:
After the service, Lacey bolted for the door. “But this man grabbed me by the arm and said, ‘The Lord wanted me to speak to you,’” she says. When he asked if he could pray for her, she nodded.
“As I closed my eyes, I felt peace for the first time in my life,” she said.
“I felt God’s love. I saw how horrible I was. Yet, I felt embraced by God as if he was saying, ‘I love you just like you are. I love you with all your past, all your mistakes, your anger toward me.’ He didn’t want me to give anything up. He just wanted me to believe that he loves me.
“When I realized God loved me despite how horrible I was, I thought, Who am I to hate anyone if God loves me despite all my stuff? My hatred for others melted immediately. God’s love was the thing that hit me the hardest. I felt forgiven.”
Read the rest of this great article.
