Domestic violence--the bloodied eyes, the broken bones, and the shattered dreams. This was the life of victim Angela Chapman Larson. Debby White brings us this dramatic tale.

"Your heart just beats like it’s going to come out of your chest when you hear his footsteps and you hear the rustle of him coming into the room. It is terrifying," says Angela.

Angela Chapman was dying a slow death, the pain of her battered body only eclipsed by the pain of utter despair. She reasoned she had made her bed; now she had to lie in it.

"I thought he was very charming and he was eleven years older than me and he also had two homes and his own business. At the age I was at and how much my life was in turmoil, I wanted something that was comfortable and security," she says.

Angela had never known security. Her parents divorced when she was five and her stepfather moved the family eighteen times before Angela's 18^th birthday.

Then a brutal rape by the brother of a friend turned Angela's growing insecurity into self-hatred.

"It was very traumatic and I felt very stupid and vulnerable. I felt dirty and ugly…and ultimately, pregnant," says Angela.

Angela’s parents forced her to have an abortion. Maybe all that trauma explains why Angela hastily married the first man who professed to love her.

But it wasn’t long before Angela knew she was in big trouble. Her fine upstanding Texas husband was a wife-beater.

"I would lay down in the floor and I would cry and curl up in a little ball and just start praying, and I would ask God, 'Why? Why are you letting this happen to me?' "

But her husband's distemper interrupted Angela's pleas for help. "He would walk over and put his foot on my back and he would say, 'Stop it, stop praying. Stop it!' And he would just yell and curse," Angela recalls.

"I would sleep with my arm up around my face upon the pillow just in case he came home in a bad mood and wanted to put a pillow across my face or something."

Falling prey to her husband's violent behavior, Angela often blamed herself. "I felt if I was a little smarter, if I wouldn’t say stupid things, if I looked a little prettier, he wouldn’t want to hit me or bruise me, because you don’t do that to something you consider precious," she says. "Sometimes I felt like I deserved it because I was a failure and I let him down. There were times that he would tell me that he loved me and when he was kind. That made the bad times even more confusing and lonely."

Angela felt she couldn’t share her tragic secret with anyone.

"You wear turtle necks or long sleeve shirts, and if there is a hole in the wall, you put a picture over it; and if there is a big hole in the wall, you move furniture," she says.

Angela’s one hope, ironically, was her husband’s mother.

She was as kind as her son was abusive. Although she did not know Angela's secret hell, she knew that Angela needed a Savior.

"She was discipling me, and trying to bring me into a relationship with God, and trying to teach me about love, " says Angela.

But Angela thought all hope was lost when her mother-in- law suddenly died.

"So when I lost her, I thought, 'I can’t go through this anymore,' and at her funeral I just looked up at the picture of Jesus and I said, 'You have got to give me something to get through this. I can’t do it on my own. I can’t do it anymore.' And at that moment, I thought my hair blew back. It was just awesome! I had had electricity from head to foot. I was warm and cold at the same time! After that, I had a hunger for the Word. I couldn’t read the Bible enough."

Angela had finally met the One who could save her.

"I would take a kite, go out in the field and fly my kite. I would feel the wind tug on it and I would feel like I was dancing with God," she says.

As Angela drew closer to the Lord, He began to speak to her words of healing and hope. One day, Angela says, God told her to begin to sing--a gift long buried under layers of pain.

Too many wounds are full of venom…

"When my husband would leave for work, I would get out the music, I would get out my tapes and with every song that I sang, I received more joy. I felt like, 'Maybe God can use me after all. I am worth something, ' " she says.

"I went from two and a half octaves to five, and that’s not normal. But somehow God took my obedience and multiplied it."

Before long, a music promoter heard a tape of Angela's incredible voice. She was whisked to Nashville, and a recording contract was soon in the works.

Even more amazing, Angela's husband Steve did not resist her good fortune. He thought it was great, a contract for multi-millions of dollars. Wow! And he said, "Okay, let’s go for it."

"But as time went on, I think he felt control slipping away from him," Angela says. "He would throw things. I just knew at that moment, I couldn't go on anymore and I called my step dad." Angela told him, "I can’t do this anymore, I have got to find a way to get out, and I am afraid that I am going to die. I am afraid for my children."

Then Angela called her new agent and told her that she was leaving her husband. The agent said, "No, no! The Christian community cannot tolerate something like this! If you leave, you lose your contract."

Despite that threat, Angela left her abusive husband because she knew that no recording contract was worth her life. But during their separation, something unforeseen happened.

Her husband went to church and showed signs of turning his life around. Angela even agreed to see him again. But it wasn’t to be. Shortly thereafter, he committed suicide.

"People called me a murderer and told me that it was my fault," says Angela. "Keep in mind that I didn’t tell all the people in town what had gone on all those years. All they saw was that I had left. I had all the burdens put on me suddenly plus his death."

"But it’s God’s mercy and God’s grace and God’s strength that helped me handle all of it. It helped me handle the $150,000 debt that he had left us," continues Angela.

Angela Chapman endured brutal assaults. She endured the death of her dream to sing, then the death of her husband. And she faced the cold, accusing stares of those who blamed her. But Angela Chapman is a survivor. And she says, there is only one reason--God.

"His grace is sufficient, and His blood will cover every little spot that may have been on me. His joy can overcome any pain I may have felt. His mercies are new everyday and I don’t have to beg for it, and I don’t have to borrow mercies from someone else because He doesn’t have enough."

Along the way, Angela found another love …and a new marriage --this time to a man who knows the real meaning of love.

"I didn’t know that a husband could look me in the face and say, 'You are so precious, and I love you so much,' " she says.

"Now she can look and see that God loves her and that I love her, people around love her, and that she is important," says husband Jeff. "She has a call on her life."

That’s why you’ll now find Angela and Jeffrey along with their blended family traveling the world to sing God’s praises.

"Wherever we are going, wherever He may lead, one thing is for certain: With the Savior, we are free. If He can do that for me, He can do that for anybody, because I lost everything and yet I gained so much more," she says.