AMAZING STORY
Lizza Lamb: Freedom Through Jesus
By Mia Evans-Saracual
The 700 Club
CBN.com -Lizza Lamb’s rising star in the Latin music world garnered her a Grammy nod in 1998…but behind the glamour, a toxic relationship threatened to destroy her. “He would hit me, and I would hit him,” Lizza recalls. “It was like we were boxers boxing at each other. It was a very intense, very love-hate relationship.”
All through childhood, the love and attention Lizza craved from her father eluded her. “His first love was getting drunk, going to the bars and drinking,” Lizza shares. “So that caused a big emptiness in me as his daughter. Then when he would come home, there would be such chaos. He would throw chairs at my mom, throw the table at her. I would just try to get on top of her and try to protect her.”
But Lizza had no one to protect her the day her uncle lured her to a park and sexually abused her. When Lizza got home, she told her mom everything. “It really, really scarred me deeply as a 12-year-old,” Lizza remembers. “The hard part of all of it was once we started talking about it with the family, my dad decided that he didn’t believe me. He thought I was making it up.”
Lizza escaped those painful memories every time she performed on stage…first in school plays and pageants, then as the lead singer of a local Tejano music band. “I thought this is going to be a way to win my dad over so that he could see I can sing just like him, and also become this big star and take my whole family and just give them a whole different life,” Lizza says. “The only way I’m going to get my career started was if I was involved with someone that had a name and was already established. I was going to use anyone in any way to get what I wanted.”
She saw her chance, when she opened for a popular Latin singer and record producer named Alex Montez. “My first impression of Lizza was like wow!” Alex says. “The voice, the look, I mean she’s got the whole package.”
Alex produced her first demo. Soon after, Lizza landed a record deal and released her first album, Yo Quiero Soñar. “BMG pushed the album and it did really, really well.” Lizza says. “We got gigs, tours, we got on the road and started doing the career. I mean, here you are wanting it so badly, and then boom, it’s right there and everything starts happening so fast!”
Meanwhile, Alex and Lizza’s relationship went from professional to romantic…to volatile.
“He had multiple ladies in his life,” Lizza recalls. “He’s a rock star touring everywhere and so I felt very threatened.”
“I was so messed up,” Alex remembers. “There was already drugs and alcohol going on there. I would see my violence toward her when I hit her as like she provoked me to do it; but there was really something greater, darker working inside me.”
“It ended because I made the decision to leave,” Lizza says. “I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Lizza refocused and went to work on her second album, Destino. She used cocaine to numb her pain over the breakup. “It numbed me not to think about Alex. When I was at the clubs, I would remember being in the bathroom stalls with my hands against the walls and just like ‘What am I doing? How did I get here?’”
One day a couple of old friends invited Lizza out to eat. It was Alex’s brother and sister-in-law. “They were very interested in how I was doing,” Lizza says. “Then he started talking to me about the love of Jesus and it was my day, that was just my moment. He started speaking to me about forgiveness that He has. I said ‘I need that. I was hurt as a child, hurt as a teenager, as an adult and I don’t want to live like this anymore.’ He said ‘Just repeat after me if you want Jesus to be your Lord and Savior.’ And I did! It was amazing because at that moment I prayed and I instantly felt like Jesus’s arms embrace me and just completely received me. Everything changed after that.”
Lizza was determined to leave her old life behind. “One day I was reading the Bible and there was a Scripture that stuck out to me that I couldn’t live a double life,” she says. “So I prayed and asked God to help me.”
Lizza met with the label, and decided to walk away from a 2.5 million dollar record deal. Around the same time, she says Jesus healed her drug addiction, and her broken heart. “I was really able to forgive the men who had hurt me in my life.”
Including Alex. When Lizza learned he had also become a Christian, they slowly built a friendship. Now after 14 years of marriage, they pastor a church in Angelton, Texas. “Now just having the incredible joy of having her as my wife with the blessing of the Lord and her parents and my family, I mean God is amazing,” Alex shares. “I feel complete.”
Lizza says, “He’s a great dad to his kids and a great husband. We were headed for disaster and the Lord stepped in, and only God can do those things. We’re very grateful and very humbled to the Lord.”
The couple recently returned the studio to record a new project: Renew Me (Renuévame) in English and Spanish. Whenever Lizza gets the chance, she shares the love and healing she’s found in Christ through music.“ Freedom completely comes when you say the name of Jesus and receive Him into your life—freedom in every area,” says Lizza. “He is my lifeline. He is my protector. He is the Father that I’ve always wanted.”
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