“Write YOUR story.” Are the words that were whispered in my ears, in the middle of the night while I was dreaming. I have pondered those whispered words for weeks now. Write MY story? Which part? Why? Who would care? Write MY story? How much of it? “All of it.”

There is so much to my story. I have been told more than once in my life that I am more normal than I had a right to be given all that has happened in my life. I began writing my story 7 years ago. I did write it chronologically and started at the beginning. It was all too much information for this format though, so I have made the biggest part into the focal point for now. What I will be sharing on the tihis 7 part series, is the biggest chunk of my story. (I will share other important, God glorifying parts at another time.)“My Story”, is really God’s story. A story of God’s redemption and healing.

I was a happy kid. I loved people and felt loved in return. According to my MeMe (grandmother), I had the best “hardy har har laugh,” many had ever heard. Such a hardy laugh from a little person astounded friends of hers, family and of course my MeMe.

My mom was my hero. She was Supermom! There was nothing she couldn’t do or handle. She was absolutely my favorite person in the whole world. I had siblings that adored me and a daddy who would dance with me. The songs we danced to are some of my favorites to this day. By dance with me, he held me in his arms, my feet off the ground and he danced with me. When these songs come up on my play list and I feel happy, loved and special.

I cannot tell you the order in which things happened, but my world fell apart and my life was changed forever between the ages of 4 and 5. I will start with the falling apart of my family. My dad, had other children before me and they would spend the summers with us. My mother had one child before me, a boy. When I was little, I had my siblings all around me, loving me and taking care of me. Oh, how I loved my big brother’s and sister.

My dad was an alcoholic with a temper. My Dad had been in a wreck when he was 21, that changed his life forever. He was paralyzed in one arm and walked with a limp. His face had to be totally reconstructed. He had, had a lot to overcome and had chosen alcohol and other women. My mom also had a temper and was not good at letting things go. She had a lot of hurt in her life at the hands and by the words of others. Two wounded people inflicting more wounds on each other. They had many fights in the house, yelling, screaming and throwing things. I witnessed my dad throw a hot bowl of soup at my mom and damage the cabinet behind her. I remember nights of riding around in the car with my mom just to be out of the house and away from him and his temper.

One night, I feel like it was fall or winter because my oldest siblings were not there. My brother ( the one my mom had) was there. My mom had baked chocolate chip cookies. My brother and I had been sick and curled up on couches in the living room trying to get better. Suddenly, or so it seemed to me, suddenly a major fight broke out. There was yelling and screaming. I saw my dad grab my mother by her long brown hair and slam her up against the wall. He was getting ready to lay a major beating on her. Another man was there, I did not know who he was at the time. (Later on, he became my step dad). This man got between my mom and dad and saved my mom from the vicious beating she was about to endure. My dad and this man got into a knock down drag out fight.

My brother and I dodged the grown men and reached our mom in the kitchen. We clung to her as she called 9-1-1. The three of us were crying and scared. The police came, arrested my dad and the other man and told my mom that we had to get out of the house for awhile, for our safety. I watched my mom pack bags for my brother and I. This was the last night my brother lived with my mom and I. We took my brother to his dad’s house, where he lived for the rest of our childhood.

My mother took me to my grandparents house. She asked for a place for both of us to stay for the night. My grand father said I could stay but she couldn’t. That “she had made her bed and had to lay in it.” I bawled because I wanted and needed my mom. I didn’t want her to leave me. With tears streaking her face she left me to stay with her parents, while she slept in her car. How could he turn her away like that? What kind of dad said that to his daughter who was broken and scared and begging for help.

When my dad sobered up and got out of jail, in his anger he drove his car into the house. My mom told him she wanted a divorce and he threatened to kidnap me. He told her that she would never see me again. He knew how this would hurt and scare her because she had so desperately wanted a little girl. Thank God he never followed through with his threats and the court ensured there were supervised visits, so he couldn’t kidnap me.

I remember days and nights of my mom crying and falling apart. One time in particular, I remember her saying, “ I can’t do this, I can’t do this anymore.” She slumped down the counter to the floor where our dining room and living room met. There was a single step down into our living room from there and my little 4 ½ yr old self, put my hand on her shoulder and told her, “It will be alright mommy.” I made some sort of inner vow that day, to never be the reason she cried and to always make her laugh. To make her life better. I was her care taker, well, her emotional caretaker. It was my job to make her feel better and happy.

My mom utilized a trusted woman whom she had known since she was a teenager, to be my baby sitter. She was great. Great to me and to the other girls in her charge. She ran a day care out of her home. Unfortunately, she was married to a mean alcoholic and had a troubled step son that got into a lot of trouble. It was here, more of my life fell apart. I was never the same again. These two were the monster’s of my life story.

The step son, was a very sexually active 15yr old boy. He saw me and at least one other girl as object for him to satiate his sexual urges upon. He most often made it like it was some kind of game. Sometimes the game was, were his captives, kept in his lair. The lair was a bedroom closet. One that had slits in it so you could see out. The game was to sneak past the monster to freedom without waking him up. This would involve opening the closet door, and walking right past him to the bedroom door that would lead to our freedom. If we got caught, we would have his way with us. We never successfully got past the monster.

You may wonder what I could possibly remember about this. I remember the smell, the sight of him wiping me off after he had defiled me and I remember the terms he gave to different positions. How and when did he have opportunity for his games? When the baby sitter would go the the grocery store or run some errand. He would put in charge of us and his little brother.

This teenager’s games, let to me having chronic pain in the private area of my body. No amount of ointments or creams could help soothe the burning pain. I would awaken in the night in such horrible pain, I would be hysterical. The only thing that helped were my cries to Jesus to come and take the pain away. I thanked him again and again until the pain went away and I fell back to sleep.

I am sure my mom suspected someone was doing something to me. I wouldn’t tell her. I don’t know why, I wasn’t afraid of the teenager, but I was scared to death of his mean dad. He was always yelling and fussing about something. One day, I was outside minding my own business, eating the raisins my baby sitter had given me and swinging on the swing set. He came out and started yelling at me. He yelled/ asked, “who do you think you are eating MY food and playing on MY SON’S swing set?” I remember thinking he couldn’t be serious, he knew his wife was my baby sitter and I was there every day. I did not have any answer for him that day, I did not dare talk back to this angry giant of a man. (He was over 6 feet tall.) His words left me with a nearly life long struggle with the belief that I was nobody and I was nothing. I had no right to eat food at other people’s house or use their things. I was no one, I had no rights and I was bad.

The confusing thing for this little girl, was why he was mean to me on the day’s his son did not “play” with me and nice to me on the days that he did. The message I received from that was, he knew when the bad thing happened to me, and was nice to me because I had “let” his son play with me.

One day, apparently I had had enough. My mom brought me to the babysitter’s house as usual and when she pulled to a stop outside, I became hysterical. I cried out, “No, don’t leave me here. His car is here. Mommy don’t leave me, please don’t leave me here!!!” I cried harder than she had ever seen. I was in full blown panic and I was clearly terrified. To my mom’s credit, she did not ask any questions, she didn’t push for understanding and she did NOT force me to go into that house. She simply put the car into drive and never, ever took me back to that house again. She took me home and after that I got to go to a local church daycare. I went there until Kindergarten.