photo by mythlady

I was born in New Mexico, but my parents divorced when I was  one and a half. My aunt, mom, and I then moved to Texas briefly, and then to Colorado. The three of us did a lot together during my first few years, taking road trips up the West Coast when I was two (I actually remember parts of it!), going camping, and living together for a number of years.

From the beginning my mom and I were pretty inseparable. When I was about four we moved into a townhouse in the city, just the two of us. She would let me go outside and play on the play area with the other kids. Unfortunately, this is the first place where I was abused by a boy only a few years older than me. It took years for me to tell my mom. I thought I would get in trouble. I was such a people pleaser from the start. Mom met my future step-dad when we lived there, and he promptly moved us into his place in the mountains. He immediately stepped into the role of father/disciplinarian. That was very hard for me. None of us being Christians, they lived together for a year and a half before they decided to get married. They held the summer wedding in our back year and picked the minister out of the yellow pages! I inherited two step-sisters who visited every summer and every other Christmas. I was six. That fall my parents decided that they liked the little old minister enough to start visiting his church. They both accepted Christ on the same Sunday, I followed suit a few months later. It was a wonderful little country church, and some of my favorite memories are of times spent there.

I attended the only elementary school in the area which required a long walk to the bus stop. More than once the long walk home included more abuse from a neighbor boy. When I would stand at the end of our driveway begging not to have to go to school, my mom knew something was not right. She started homeschooling me at that point. It still took years for me to tell her what had happened.

My step-dad decided that he wanted to go to (what was then called) Multnomah School of the Bible. By that time my little brother had been born, and so the four of us moved to Oregon. I was nine. We moved from the country where no one ever locked their doors,  to North East Portland. There were bars on all of the windows, multiple locks and deadbolts on the doors, and I wasn’t even allowed in the front yard. There were drive-by shootings in front of our house, and a bar chase that ended in our front yard. We had moved from a place where the sun shone well over 300 days a year to the wet, gray climate here. I was still being homeschooled, but we didn’t have a support group, and I had no friends. I was miserable. We weren’t allowed to watch t.v. for a good part of my growing up, so I developed a love for books. I could escape my bleak reality in a good story.

When I was 12 my mom was pregnant with a little girl who had Trisomy 18, a fatal chromosomal disorder. She lived for 15 minutes after she was born. We were all devastated. It was one of the rare times that I remember seeing Mom cry. Over the next number of years three more siblings were born, I went to 5 different schools, had severe cystic acne, and struggled with my critical and controlling step-dad. I had no self esteem.  I felt like I was never good enough. My biological father always said I was too sensitive, and would make me cry at least once every visit. Insecurity?  I had plenty. Needless to say, I didn’t date much…ok, really, at all. I never would have made it through those times if I didn’t have the support from my mom, and my faith, even though I didn’t understand why God would allow me to go through the things He had.

Things started to turn around for me by my senior year in high school. My face cleared up, I found a love of singing, and had a good group of friends at school as well as church. I was very involved with our youth group, looked forward to summer camp, and made it through a summer visit to New Mexico without crying once! I was accepted at George Fox University, and thought I had fallen in love.

To be continued…