By Bonnie Brock
I sometimes get asked why the "Jesus Jeep" (as so many people lovingly call it), "what made you decide to build a Jeep dedicated to God?" It's a very long story, one that I couldn't publicly talk about for many, many years. Some things are better off buried in the past, or so I thought. I wasn't able to tell this story to anyone for 27 years. I kept it buried inside like a ticking time bomb. It affected my relationships with everyone around me even though I didn't see that at the time. Once I was able to tell this story to my husband/best friend, it felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. Now I can tell this story in hope of helping others with similar horrible experiences.

For starters, I was the product of a rape. One that I did not know about until the age of 17. But let's back up to age 15. I used to babysit for the next door neighbor growing up, and the neighbors 30 year old brother would visit as if looking for him. I told him they went out for the evening, and he would stay anyway chit chatting and hanging out. This happened numerous times, and then one day it escalated into molestation. He forced me not to tell by threatening my family, and so my faith in God started to fade. "If Jesus loved me, why was this happening to me? Why did God allow this to happen?" These questions ran over and over again in my mind.

Now lets jump back to the night that my mother told me about her rape. This devastated me. As my mother told me the story of the man in the ski mask with a knife hiding in the back seat of her car, I could feel what little remaining faith I had in God sucked out of me. Sure I went to Sunday School as a child, and I grew up singing "Yes Jesus Loves Me", but all that was changing. I thought to myself, "why did God let such a horrific and violent thing happen to my mother?" Hearing about my mother's rape, combined with what I went through with the molestation, I started to hate myself. I figured that looking at me was a constant reminder to my mother of that awful night she had to endure. I started referring to myself as a spawn of Satan.

At age 17, I decided I needed a change of scenery, so I enlisted in the Marine Corps and figured I could take some of my frustration out there. I spent many years feeling empty and lost even though I had put the thoughts of my childhood so far deep in my memory banks that I thought I had overcome it. I was looking to fill that emptiness, and I started going back to church. When I became comfortable enough with the Pastor, I told him about my mother's rape and how it made me feel like I was the spawn of pure evil. That's when he told me that Satan couldn't take the credit for me, that we are all knitted in our mothers' womb's by God, and God alone. He also said, that only God knows the purpose He had for me, but He must have had one if He decided to create me out of such an awful act. These words struck me straight to the heart, and I felt a peace come over me that I cannot explain.

I decided that I was going to start living my life for God, and to show Satan that he had no power over me any longer. When I prayed that sinner's prayer, and committed my life to Christ, I literally felt something change in me. Unless you've experienced this, I cannot explain the sense of peace and power that comes with knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I decided to put "Believe" across the windshield of my Jeep. One day in a parking lot, a pedestrian yelled out to me, "Believe in what?" It was at that moment that I decided that no one would have to ask what Believe meant any more, and so the Jeep has transformed into what it is today, and I sure pray that God is glorified each and every time someone sees it.
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