Searching for Hope ~ My Story
Sometimes things get so hard in life that we just can't figure a way to keep our heads above water. We remember the old saying, "The Lord will never give us more than we can bear," but how much exactly are we supposed to be able to endure? I would like to share my story with you, for I truly believe we are stronger than we give ourselves credit for.
Back in 1963, my mother, a young woman of 17, fell in love and became pregnant with me, her second child. The romance was short-lived, and soon the lovers parted ways, leaving me in my troubled mother's care. My mother came from a highly dysfunctional family, so she had no real experience in raising a healthy child. Feeling very alone and afraid, she married the first man who came along (actually, the last in a line of young men who were climbing through her bedroom window, taking turns with her sexually).
Her new husband was already in a lot of trouble with the authorities, so soon the three of us had to flee to another state in the middle of the night; through the course of time, there were lots of middle-of-the-night escapes. When I was 4, my mother had been into prostitution for 2-3 years already. She thought she was doing this to herself in order to feed the family, but as times changed and damaged her heart, she begin to blame me. She became pregnant two more times. With three girls to raise, she needed even more money, so she began allowing men to use me sexually.
As bad as this seems, things only got worse. Every day in my life involved alcohol, drugs, sexual abuse, bank robbery, and there was never a stable home for more than a week or two. The police were, of course, on the constant look out for my mother and stepfather, so they changed their identities constantly. When I started school, I didn't even know what my last name was. One night when I was 6 years old, the family was leaving a neighborhood bar when a man whistled at my mother. My stepfather pulled out a large knife and cut the man's head off. To this day, I still have nightmares of the incident. Another time, later on, there was a knife fight, and I sat in the back seat of a car, fleeing the police, trying to hold a man's internal organs inside of him. Violence was an every day part of life. My stepfather eventually got put into prison, escaped several times, went on bank robbing sprees, murdered people, and horribly abused drugs. My mother tried to keep us hidden, but we were always terrified.
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