By Daniel Corado –
Without any thoughts or wishes toward suicide, Gabby Fontes found herself bombarded with the idea of driving her car off the road, especially when she was driving at night.
“Satan would throw thoughts in my mine all the time to end my life,” Gabby says on her YouTube channel ItsGabby. “It came out of nowhere. I had no desire to end my life. I generally was happy. I just had this void in me.”
Gabby is a Brazilian American raised in Texas who loved music but was confused by everybody else’s obsession with going to college and pursuing a career.
“I grew up knowing nothing about God. I felt like I was the only one questioning what we are doing. What is my purpose? Deep down, I just wanted to know the truth. Do I need a passion? Does everyone get to have a passion? It was the time to apply for college and everyone was busy applying for college, but I couldn’t get with the program.”
She began experiencing bouts of sadness. Her view of Christianity was it was simply a set of rules, or morality. A lot of her sadness was a response to Taylor Swift’s persona, she says.
To cope with anxieties, she binged junk food.
She attended a local college, but “I was so depressed. I couldn’t figure out the point of life,” she says. “I was at my lowest.”
Her first brush with God came one night during a dream. “I look up and see God. For the first time, I see something outside of myself. I see God coming on the clouds. There were these violins playing in my ear. God started to speak. Something he said gave me life. The music wasn’t around me, it was inside of me.”
For two minutes after waking up, she could still hear the music. “It was so real,” she says.
A friend invited her to a Christian college group. She liked the music and took copious notes from the messages. God entered her radar, but, she says, she wasn’t ready to become a Christian.
She transferred to a college in New York, got caught up in worldly pursuits, and her awareness of God subsided. “When you’re in New York City and you’re young and don’t have guard rails in place, you will fall prey to it,” she says.
She continued to struggle with sadness. In response, she started clubbing and drinking, thinking “enjoying life” was the purpose of life.
“The world is just a train leading to Hell,” she says. “I never had fun.”
She explored success literature and entrepreneurship and New Age “manifestation.”
After Covid hit, she returned to Texas. In a powerful dream, God warned her to repent and turn away from ungodly influences.
She was close to accepting Jesus, when a guy called her she had met on a dating app earlier. “It’s almost like this guy was sent by the devil,” she says. He told her God was not real. “I got derailed.”
Darkness infiltrated her mind and the depression returned.
She would do vlogs of music and silly things. As a joke one day, she says, “I’m going to pray.” She folded her hands and acted the part.
Suddenly, her “play” became real. “I felt the Holy Spirit,” she explains. “I felt my hands heavy with heat. I freaked out.”
When she broke up with her boyfriend, she was numb. She reverted to suicidal thoughts.
In August 2022, Gabby was in her room and the presence of God fell on her. Prompted by the Spirit, she turned on worship music (which she normally didn’t like). Then she paused the music, and a waking vision entered her mind.
“It was a movie playing in front of my eyes of who Jesus is, what he did for me, why he did it, and what that means for me,” she recalls. “He made me understand the whole point of life. The truth that I was seeking my entire life was revealed. As this movie was playing, every part of my being was in alignment finally.
“I felt so whole. I felt like this glue of wholeness was putting me back together.”
Gabby put her faith in Jesus from that moment and never looked back. “He’s everything I wanted to know in my entire life,” she says.
She rush-ordered a Bible.
“So now I’m obsessed with the Word. It’s so healing,” she says. “I am just in love with God. I am
literally telling all my friends about it. I kind of looked like a weirdo.”
“I have been so lied to and so deceived by the world and so manipulated, manipulated everywhere in every area, that I’m finally receiving truth and it feels so healing and it feels like food to me.”
In response to God’s leading, she moved back to Dallas and was baptized in 2023.
To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here.
About this writer: Daniel Corado studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy near West Los Angeles.
