Gwendolyn Larnette didn’t want to live anymore when she was 17 but through the power of God, she found love again.

Towards the end of her time in high school, Larnette said she was going through dark times in her life and circumstances were preventing her from finding love. With all hope almost lost, Larnette would lay in her bed for days, crying.

She just wanted her life to get better and it did, after having a conversation with God.

“God came to me and he said, ‘Don’t cry, it’s going to be alright, you’re going to graduate, everything is going to be alright, you’re going to be my golden child,” Larnette said.

It was a dark, confusing time for Larnette, literally, as she couldn’t believe her talk with Christ but after that, her life brightened up for the better.

Nicknamed “Golden,” Larnette began to see the positives in her life and lean on faith, as she does every day.

“You need faith,” Larnette said. “Foresaking all I trust Him, that’s what faith means. And I do trust God.”

Later on in her life, Larnette once again was going through difficult times: losing two children, one due to a miscarriage and another — a daughter named Marvelous — to a stillbirth. At the hardest time of her life, Larnette turned to God for help.

“I just prayed and asked God (for help),” Larnette said of losing her first child. “I had a truck and I was thinking of driving that truck off the bridge and it was another time I was trying to go out and I was like, ‘No, I can’t, I just gotta keep going.’”

When Marvelous, named for her father Marivn, died, she told God the pain was too difficult to bear, but once again Christ assured her that everything she’d been through in life had a purpose.

“He said, “I wouldn’t put more on you than you can bear,’” Larnette said. “I just had to keep it moving.”

Though she wasn’t long for this world, Larnette said Marvelous was a blessing for her and her family.

Before she even had her, Larnette would write down potential baby names and she wrote “Marvelous” with a butterfly next to it.

On the day of her birth, everyone in the delivery room, even the nurses, wanted her to name her child “Angel,” but she stuck with her guns and went with Marvelous.

“I had everybody crying,” Larnette said. “Everyone in the unit.”

And just like her past with trying times, Larnette is once again relying on her faith during trying times like theses.

“I tell people Coronavirus can’t touch me, I wear my mask and I pray,” Larnette said. “And the Lord will cover me and protect me.”

Now Larnette said she can’t imagine a life without God, as He has been the single outlier in her life, a presence that has always been by her side, good or bad.

While some, including members of her family, may question if God is real, Larnette knows and believes in her savior.

“I experienced it, I could have died that day,” Larnette said. “My experience with Jesus, He is really real. I know it.”