Brandon Sanders blamed himself for what happened to his parents: for his mother’s death and his father’s imprisonment.
This is the story of how God mends his broken heart and saves him after he tried to take his own life.
Brandon Sanders’ Testimony
Brandon remembered being close to his father while he was growing up. He was someone he looked up to.
“I loved my dad very much. I can remember my dad putting me in his lap, letting me drive the car, and steering the car as he was driving,” he said.
But there was one thing he didn’t like about him: being physically abusive to his mother. There were many instances where he witnessed his father physically harming his mother.
Brandon said, “I remember being behind the couch with my sisters as my dad was beating my mom. I can remember thinking, will it stop?”
It did stop, but at the cost of his mother’s life.
His Mother’s Death And Father’s Imprisonment
Brandon didn’t tell anyone what happened to cause the turmoil. Not until he went to therapy. That was when he revealed why he and his sisters ended up in foster care.
READ: FROM BEING A HOMELESS GANGSTER TO KNOWING JESUS
He recalled, “My mother and father were getting a divorce. My mother had went on a date with a man, and I was with her. And my dad the next day, he had been working out of town. He asked me what my mother was doing. I told him, and not long after that, my mom pulled up with my baby sister in her hands, and my dad met her in the driveway, and that’s when he started hitting her.”
The Turning Point
“He is on top of her just beating her. I do remember a faint memory of being in this shelter, and I remember someone telling us, ‘Your mother is dead.’ The newspapers reported that he killed her because of what I told him. That is when my anger toward my dad really started to generate,” Brandon painfully recalled.
That was the start of Brandon’s rebellion.
After months of counseling, Brandon was back to the streets, where he spent the next 16 years in a drug-induced daze, stealing to support his habit. He said, “When you are by yourself, you think about your life and your worth. I thought about suicide a lot. That life is just not worth living.”
Redemption After His Mother’s Death And Father’s Imprisonment
Tired of living that life, he turned his anger on God. But instead of reciprocating it, he felt His embrace.
“I remember all of a sudden, I’m starting to say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ Crying like a baby on the bathroom floor in a drug hotel. And I started begging God to save me, and I heard the Lord say to me, ‘Now you are ready.’ I felt like somebody wrapped their arms around me and just held me. I fell asleep on the floor,” he said.
When Brandon woke up the next morning, he felt peaceful. “I opened the door and heard the birds for the first time in probably 15 years. I said, ‘Lord, I don’t know what to do or where to go, but I will follow you the rest of the days of my life if you lead me.’”
Brandon said, “I was just this broken boy who needed a father, and that is what I was asking God to be. No preacher, no altar call, just me and God. A broken man with a broken life and a broken heart crying out, ‘Please save me, be my father, help me,’ and He did.”
Header image: Brandon Sanders [The 700 Club]. YouTube, 13 August 2023, https://youtu.be/OaBq4RxHx2E
