Finding Belonging in Christ: The Story of Tiffany Martin
- Sydney Watts
- Jul 17
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 18
Testimonial Interview with current transitional participant, Tiffany Martin
Belonging is something that every human craves. A place to call home. A people to call your family. True connection to run to when things get tough.
However, where you find your sense of belonging can change the course of your life. Whether that is in the things of this world or in Christ.
This characterizes Tiffany's story: from finding temporary belonging in the broken, conditional attachments of this world to discovering everlasting, unconditional belonging in the family of Christ.
Tiffany was born into a toxic family environment. Substances wreaked havoc on her parents lives and disrupted any sort of normality that could be achieved in their relationship.
As a teenage girl, she desperately hoped for the love that she gave her parents to be reciprocated, but because of the deep, strong roots of their addiction, it was always conditional on what she could give them in return.
Therefore, she went scouring the most enticing paths that the world could offer to find some sense of belonging that filled the void that the lack of parental acceptance left in her life.
This led to getting into multiple toxic, abusive relationships with men who based their love on a give-and-take attachment that would never survive the hardships this world can offer. Eventually, children were born into this mix, which further complicated their relationship and led to exceptionally more violence and contempt. While she knew that this couldn't be the end all be all for her life and what she wanted for her children, it took everything for her to make the push to leave.
Despite the abuse, she still found belonging because it was all that she knew.
During this time, Tiffany became heavily involved in gang activity, partly as a result of her own prevailing addictions, but also because of the nature of how gangs operate: as a family that always has one another's back. This is what truly appealed to Tiffany. She felt that this association would finally grant her the belonging and care she had been diligently searching for since a child.
While on the surface it felt like she finally found what she was longing for, it was essentially temporary.
Ultimately, her addiction and gang association resulted in three periods of incarceration, severed relationships with her children and other family, and a spiritual battle that would finally change her definition of belonging forever.
Coming into her first period of incarceration, she describes that she knew of God, but never truly tried to integrate Him into her life. Church hurt dwelled in her heart from the times that she tried to open up to the church about struggles in her family life. She never felt that they were willing to come to her side. So, when a few older ladies came to visit the county jail where she spent her first sentence, she was reluctant to see them as individuals who would also have her back. To her surprise, these ladies showed her what it was like to feel the love of God again. This restored her image of God that was once broken by her prior life and disheartening church experiences.
Therefore, when she entered the world again after her first sentence, she looked to God as her help and stayed sober for a year and a half, while making an effort to go to church and experience a true relationship with Christ.
However, with no one to truly disciple her along her new path, she quickly fell back into old habits when the hardships of her old life began to rise to the surface again. It was nearly impossible for her to tread through the swarming waters of her past habits and toxic familial relationships without a godly community to be willing to tread with her.
Once again, she was back in prison and was confused as to how she kept continuing to fall even though she wanted the exact opposite for her life. In this confusion and hardship, she turned to God for the answers and for closure.
During her second period of incarceration, she read the Bible cover to cover ten times.
Diligently searching for answers form the divine creator, she cultivated a relationship with Christ along the way, which allowed her to persevere through this second sentence.
Nonetheless, when she was released and returned home, she still did not have a godly community to come beside her and help her from sinking back into the addictions of her old life. She became entrenched in addiction once again, but this time it was different. She knew it wasn't what God had for her. She knew her belonging was found elsewhere and that this would not be her identity and future. She knew this for herself and she preached it to the people in the streets who were lost and deeply entrenched in addiction alongside her.
While the strongholds of addiction may have consumed her body, it did not have a hold on her heart, as it was with God.
So, when she returned to prison for the third time, she used that as an opportunity to jump all in with God. She got involved with JUMPSTART on the inside and completed the inside program along with the leadership program.
She describes, "It was a God thing that I was able to get into the program, but I knew that this is where God wanted me from the beginning.".
To truly and radically change her life, she applied for the transitional program. Tiffany knew that if she went back home, she would end up in the swarming waters of her addiction and therefore back in prison. She knew it was time to finally let someone help her.
"I knew if I wanted to be successful and make a change in my life, then I finally had to let somebody help me."
This is when she finally embodied the fulfilling belonging she had been searching for her entire life. She embraced her identity in Christ and was all the more strengthened by the community of like-minded believers that she found through JUMPSTART.
She describes how much of a blessing it is to be surrounded by individuals who have a desire to talk about God as much as she does; who are wholeheartedly focused on God and restoring their life. It has all the more strengthened her faith, motivation, and desires. She no longer has the desire to run back to addiction or old habits. She now has accountability through friendship and belonging through Christ and pure community.
This is the mission of Jumpstart: to show individuals that their belonging isn't found in the temporary, conditional things of this world, but through the transformative, unconditional love of Christ that can be made all the more fulfilling through community.
Watch the full testimonial video below as Tiffany Martin shares about finding belonging her in Christ: