VL - Issue 42 - January 2022

God
Restores
What
Has
Been
Taken
THE STORY OF SHARON DUTRA
Before I met Christ, my life was
like a desolate place, stripped
bare by a swarm of locusts.
Everything had been devastated
by sin, rebellion, and demonic
forces. But thankfully, God has
restored what those “locusts”
had eaten (Joel 2:25).
For as long as I can remember, my life
was barren. My birth mother left me with
my alcoholic and emotionally distant father
when I was five. I never saw her again.
I believe my father loved me, but he was
unable to show love or provide stability. By
the time I was 17, he had remarried four
times. With each divorce, I was placed in
foster care, only to be pulled out again the
next time he remarried.
The rejection and abandonment of those
formative years damaged me profoundly.
By 13, I felt so worthless and confused that
I hated myself and started using drugs to
dull the pain. At 15, I ran away from home.
Eventually, I was arrested and began a long
trek through the legal system.
My first stop was Eastlake Juvenile Hall
in Central Los Angeles, California. There,
I gained an unwanted understanding of
hatred, racial tension, gangs, and fear. Back
then, the system didn’t separate criminals
according to the severity of their crimes.
The Hall housed murderers, thieves, and
gang members right alongside runaways
like me. It was a rude awakening.
A few months later, I was transferred to
an open-placement girl’s home in East Los
Angeles. “Open placement” means that I
was able to leave the grounds at will; there
were no bars or walls. I transferred buses
at night from West LA to Central LA to East
LA. I was unaware of the potential dangers
I faced as pimps, predators, and gangsters
abounded in those neighborhoods. God
surely had His hand on my life.
As a youth, I was restless and unable to
stay anywhere for long. It didn’t matter
where I ended up—I hated myself, and no
matter where I went, there I was—and the
misery continued. So I just kept running.
After running away from the girl’s home
for the third time, I became a ward of the
court. My father was again divorced and
didn’t want me to live with him, so I was
sent to a closed facility called the Convent
of the Good Shepherd. The convent walls
were 12 feet high, but I managed to escape.
My contempt for and mistrust of authority,
life, and people reached an all-time
high. But instead of being angry at the ones
who had failed me, I internalized those
PHOTO BY ERIC STOLZ
12 Issue 01 / 2022 VICTORIOUSLIVINGMAGAZINE.COM