White Butterflies: A New Life In Christ
By Khadra Clayborn

When I was a young girl, about 4 years old, my mother and father divorced. My mother left my father to begin a life with his best friend. I don’t remember having any memories of my mother and father being together. Soon after my mother married my stepfather, they began building their own family by having my sister. My brother and I were pushed into the background as extra luggage stuffed in a closet as my mother began her new life. My sister received all the love and affection that my brother and I longed for. My father had been transferred to London, KY, about 300 miles from us. We only got to see him about twice a year which was hard for us since we were both very close to him. He was always a great father. My brother started spending a lot of time with my stepfather and seemed to be getting along pretty well. Then one day, my brother started begging my mother to go live with our Dad. Mom said she didn’t understand because my brother and stepfather had been spending so much time together, she thought they had a good father/son relationship. But, my brother was 13, and I was around 8 when he moved to Dad’s. It broke my heart that mom wouldn’t let me go with him. When I was about 8 years old, I was sitting on the couch doing homework when I had to get up and go to the restroom. When I got back, I picked up my books and accidentally sat down on the sharp end of my pencil. Mom doctored it and said everything would be fine. The next day, my mother left for a while and left me home alone with my stepfather. He asked me if he could see where I had sat on the pencil; he wanted to make sure it looked okay. After I showed it to him he started talking to me about sexual things and revealed himself to me. He told me we had to keep it a secret because other people might not understand. I pleased him in ways that my mother couldn’t and that he really needed me. I was special to him. I had been so hungry for love and affection, and he made me feel so important that I did whatever he wanted. This was the beginning of a 2 or 3 year molestation time for me. As if these events were not enough, I also had a grandfather who was inappropriate with me when he hugged me.

After the abuse from my stepfather stopped, it took me a while to realize it was wrong. My mother and father walked around the house nude in front of my sister and I all the time. As I got older, I realized this was not normal and it was not normal for a grown man to be naked around children. One day, I wrote my mother a letter and told her what my stepfather had done. She didn’t believe me. Rejection. She said I was making it up because I was trying to get to go live with my father. So, she sent me to live with my Dad at the age of 14. When I moved there, my father had just married his third wife. She didn’t like me from the beginning but didn’t have a problem with my brother since he was already there when they met. She had two sons of her own and didn’t want another female in the family. I made her feel very threatened. So, about a month after going to live with them, I was sent back to live with my mother and stepfather again. Rejection. Amazingly, my stepfather still walked around the house unclothed.

About a year or so later, I was at school when someone announced over the intercom that a social worker was at school that day, and if anyone had anything they needed to talk about, they could come down to the office and talk to him. So, I went. I didn’t really know what a social worker was. I thought they were like a counselor, you tell them your problems, and they say something that makes everything better. He promised me before I talked to him that he would not tell anyone anything I told him. Well, he lied. When I got home from school, my mother was standing out on the porch with her arms crossed looking at me as I walked up the street to the house with a look of total hatred on her face. She told me that they had made my stepfather leave, but I was going to be the one to leave. If I left, my stepfather could go back home. So, she packed some of my things and took me to her best friend’s house.

For the next couple of weeks, I had to meet with a counselor. In the afternoons after school, I got off the bus at my grandmothers. She, and my aunt who lived next door to her, would tell me how horrible of a person I was for making up these lies about my stepfather. Then my mother would pick me up after work and take me to her friend’s house where they would tell me how horrible I was. After a few weeks, mom told me that the counselor and social worker knew that I had lied. They had my stepfather take a lie detector test and he passed it, so, they moved me back home. They treated me as a child with a behavioral problem. I was put on a contract by the social worker that I had to live by. I was threatened that if I caused any problems, I could be sent to a girl’s home or hospital in some other state that was for chronic liars. So, I lived at home which was more like prison. From this point on, I was the loneliest person I think anyone could ever be. I had no one. None of my family believed me, except maybe my father who lived 300 miles away, but I am not sure if he did or not, we never talked about it. So, I lived in a world with no family, no Christmases, no Thanksgivings. I was not allowed to be included and was an outcast in my own family. Rejection.

In August 1991, I was a passenger in a car wreck, with my best friend driving. I was pronounced dead when the ambulance arrived, they resuscitated me, this occurred twice more at the hospital, and then was in a coma for four days. I had 3 places of hemorrhage in my head causing my head to swell three times its normal size so badly that my dad didn’t even recognize me. The doctors told my family they didn’t think I would live, but if I did, I might be a vegetable. But, God had other plans.

The girl in the wreck with me was my best friend. We both had lived with very distant relationships with our mothers. We both yearned for that love and found that emotional need met in our lesbian relationship at the age of 15. My mother knew of our relationship. She didn’t care because she and my stepfather let another woman into their relationship. After I healed from the wreck, life at home was just as miserable. The only time I was happy was the time I spent with my girlfriend. Shortly after I was all healed up, I ran away. When my mom didn’t know where I was, she knew that my girlfriend would and sent a message to me. My mother told her if I didn’t come home before 24 hours were up, they were sending me to a girl’s home. So, I went home. Shortly after that, when I was 16, mom let me move into an apartment with my girlfriend. For the next two years, I went to high school during the day and worked at night so that my partner and I could afford our apartment.

For the next twelve years, I lived a homosexual lifestyle. When one relationship would end, I would find another one. The end of May 2002, I was living with a woman in Ohio when my mother started talking to me on the Internet. She asked me if I had told the truth all those years before. I told her yes, and if she didn’t believe me, she could ask my brother. I had just found out a few years before that my stepfather molested my brother before me. My mother was pretty upset. My stepfather had died a few years before of a heart attack, and my mother was finally ready to know the truth. She told me how sorry she was. She said that she tried not to believe either of us, because she couldn’t deal with the hurt. I needed that to happen. I needed my mother to learn the truth so that she would know I wasn’t a bad person. I wanted my family back. Shortly after this conversation, I realized that I was really unhappy with the life I was living, and I left the woman in Ohio to move back to Kentucky. I stayed with my dad’s sister for a while who introduced me to a Christian counselor that she knew. I wanted to heal from my hurts. She introduced me to a woman who had gotten saved and God had helped her to come out of the homosexual lifestyle. I met with her, but I had a really hard time believing a “gay person” could change. She invited me to a prayer meeting one night. I didn’t know what to do. I sat in the back of the church and just looked up at the rafters and started talking to God. I said, “God, if you are listening….I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know what is right and what is wrong. But if you want me to change, you are going to have to do it because I can’t.” I started crying. As I was praying, I saw a beautiful, huge, white butterfly flying in and out of the rafters. It just took my breath. I told the other ladies at the prayer group what I saw, but they didn’t see it. They said they thought God was giving me a sign. When I got to my aunt’s, she had a book about spiritual meanings of things. In the book, it said a butterfly means A New Life In Christ! Acceptance. When I heard that, I knew God was talking to me. I had seen the butterfly right after telling him if he wanted me to change, he would have to change me. I got so excited. So, I let God change me. I moved into my own apartment and quit hanging out with all my old friends. I went to church every time the doors were open. For the next month, I read the bible and everything I could get my hands on about God.

About a month after getting saved, I was looking through some pictures and came across a picture of an ex-girlfriend and me. When I saw it, I felt queasy. I knew right then that God had healed me. I threw all the pictures of all my exes away. I have spent the last couple of years just really getting closer to God and being healed more and more all the time. About a year ago, I started having attractions for men. Back in January, I prayed for the Lord to send me a husband. That I was ready. I met my husband two weeks later. We knew it was God from the beginning. Shortly after meeting him, I went to a seminar close to his home where CrossOver was holding a session. When I went, I knew God had placed me there. God had told me about a year earlier that He was going to use me to help others come out of the lifestyle and hurts He had brought me out of. Now, He was ready to begin the rest of my healing so he could use me. I started going to Crossover for counseling, and have just received healing by leaps and bounds. God taught me how to take the Band-Aid off that was covering up my wounds for them to heal from the inside out. That is exactly what CrossOver has helped me do. I got married back in July, and today, God is using me just as He told me He would.