History

Cynthia Becraft Wagner, Founder of Tabitha Ministry

My father left when I was just 2 months old, leaving me with issues of rejection and abandonment. Desperate for love and acceptance, I reached out to all the wrong things to deaden the pain in my soul.

My mother struggled with 5 children as a single mom. Working long hours to provide for our basic needs left no time for her to nurture or wipe away tears. No one was there to protect me from sexual abuse by a close family member. Seeing my mom stressed, I never wanted to be a “bother,” so I kept it a secret and learned to find comfort in books and hide behind a smile.

Feeling unimportant, I made myself important by working harder than anyone and by people pleasing. Looking to others to validate me, I became a co-dependent unwed mom at 15 (placed the baby for adoption), married at 16, divorced, and then married again at 24 .The first marriage gave me three babies before I was 22. The second marriage sent me to the hospital more than once with broken bones and bruises from an abusive, alcoholic husband.

In a dirty, dingy motel room, with my three babies asleep in the next bed, I sat with a bottle of Quaaludes and decided to end my life. At 27 years old, I was hopeless and felt I had nothing to live for, believing my babies would be better off without me. Nothing I had tried ended the relentless pain I felt in my soul; the pain had imprisoned me in a coffin of hopelessness.

As I opened the nightstand drawer to find a pencil to write my goodbye letter, my eyes fell upon a Bible. In the midst of hopelessness, this “book” stood out as a beacon.

Memories came rushing back to me of a little white country church I once attended (my aunt Mozelle had made sure I went). I remembered the night I walked the aisle to accept Jesus. It was the preacher’s message on love that had pulled at my 9-year-old heart .The song Amazing Grace was being sung. I remembered the love, joy, and happiness I felt in my heart that night as I knelt at the altar.

So on this night, the night I was going to take my life, I cried out to God and asked Him to help me. In my weakness, He became my strength.

Long story, but in 1982, God brought a man into my life who believed in me more than I believed in myself. We married in 1983, and in the next few years, I attended college to earn my degree in Pastoral Psychology, became an adjunct Chaplain at Moses Cone Hospital, and in 1997 developed and led a class for women behind bars focusing on the sexually abused. Wounded Heart is still being taught each week. I studied the causes of domestic abuse and addiction. I got MAD for all the children who have not been loved or have been abused. I grew impatient with the “Jesus Blanket” that we Christians use to cover up things that make us uncomfortable.

In 2000, I quit my paying job and incorporated Tabitha Ministry as a healing center for ladies who have been abandoned, rejected,  or abused physically, emotionally or sexually, providing a one-year shelter to tear down their walls of fear and hopelessness and introduce them to the Love of Christ. Since then, hundreds of women have been served and changed, not just for themselves but also for their children.

God has given me a life I never dreamed possible as a little girl. In 2016, I celebrated my 33-year marriage anniversary to the man who allowed me to follow Christ, even without financial compensation. All my children know that Christ is the Rock on which we stand. A few years ago, my son Gary commented, “I know there is a God because I have seen the transformation in my mother’s life.”

As for the little girl I placed for adoption, she is now in my life, and we talk on a regular basis. Yes, everything that was stolen from me has now been restored!