“Eventually I came to realize and learn that I don’t have to live up to God. I don’t have to be perfect for Him because Jesus already lived the perfect life for me and it took me a long time to understand what that grace really meant,” Taralee Morgan explains.
It would take years for Taralee to come to that realization, years that involved secretly cutting herself as a way of coping with intense emotional pain. What started out as curiosity turned into a dangerous habit but God never left her side, whether she felt His presence or not.
“This one night we were in worship and they were saying, ‘If there’s anything left, if there’s anything left that you haven’t completely surrendered to God you have got to do it. He wants your all and nothing less’. And I just started bawling and I said, ’God, I don’t know what to do or how to fix this. I don’t even know where to begin but I know you’re here and I know that you can do it. Maybe I can’t and don’t feel like I can but you can’. And that’s when I let Him have control,” she confesses. “I broke. I broke for Him. For the first time in a really long time I could feel His presence. I felt His love and I felt Him with me.”
Her parents and sister eventually found out. Her dad’s prayers would center on our Father’s ultimate healing because as much as he wanted to, as a dad, Tim could not “fix” Taralee.
“It was inside and outside hurt and I didn’t know what to do and basically there was nothing I could do except to pray. It’s hard to explain, I felt like I couldn’t do it. It didn’t matter what I did. I couldn’t do it. I had to have somebody else do,” Tim Morgan, Taralee’s dad said.
Taralee says, “If they would have told me to just stop, like all my friends who were saying, ’Just stop doing it. Don’t do it, call me when you feel like doing it’. But I couldn’t do it alone. I needed Jesus to do it. I needed Jesus to help me to be able to stop it.”
Taralee is going off to college in the fall. Emotional pain is a part of life but this dark secret has been flooded with light and together, father and daughter pray…as they know God is in complete control of their lives.
“I have to be able to give my all for Him. I have to be able to give this to Him. I have to give my possessions to Him and even my family. You have to be able to love Him that much, that’s what He wants and He loves you that much. It’s just a crazy love that I’m not ever going to be able to fully comprehend,” Taralee explains. “She’s very wise and smart and she’s got God, she’s got God,” Tim concludes.
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