Now for those of you who don't have a church family I don't know how you survive hard times. Many people called us religious, but we were far from it. My Granny had been raised in the Assembly of God church, and she raised my mom in the Baptist church. It wasn't until my parents decided to adopt that they found a church home in the Nazarene church. Back then they had to be members in a church for a year before they could adopt from the Christian agency. So I was raised a Nazarene, you might wonder what that means, and it is basically a protestant denomination. As I grew in the church I knew learned all the rules and why it was good to be a Nazarene, but my mom taught me that it was about loving Jesus. Jesus became my best friend, and He provided for us. When we needed food, we prayed and it would be on the doorstep within the week. When we needed anything, mom would gather us on the couch and we would pray. Then she would always bring us back together and tell us how God answered those prayers. Whether it was yes or no, she always told us the answer and told us to trust Him.
So now we needed a house to live in, and so we gathered and prayed. It wasn't long before someone in the church told us they had a house that we could live in. They made the rent affordable and we were able to move in. It was smaller and my brother and I had to share a room, but it had a big room that had been built on in the back so that the youth group could still meet at our house every week. We always had teens from the church at our house. They knew that my mom loved them. They would mow our lawns, and look after me and my brother in the evenings. I loved hanging out with the teens at our home. I was in the 2nd grade, I came home after school and my brother and I would do our homework and finish our chores.
Sometimes though, I didn't get to my chores. Our next door neighbors were a senior citizen couple. I would go over their house after school and play cards with them. It was so much fun, that I would let time slip away from me and forget to do my chores. My mom needed desperately to keep control of the house while she was away during the day, so it was a great sin to not get your chores done. One that I would get the belt for on a regular basis. Now my wonderful memory blocks out all of those beatings. I didn't actually even remember they occurred until years later, and I don't like to think of them now. What I do remember is when I would "escape" the beating.
One day I was at my neighbor's home when I looked at the clock and realized how late it was. When I got outside I saw my mom's car in the driveway so I devised my plan. My mom was waiting for me behind the door with belt in hand ready to strike as I walked through it. As dramatically as I could I threw open the door and described how horrible my life was and that I was gonna run away. Well mom went from "mean" mom to the "youth" mom that knew exactly how to handle a situation like this. She followed me into my room, and helped me pack my little red bag. Of course I "cried" all the way through the ordeal, I got on my bike and road down the street with my bag. Then I came back, crying and telling my mom how much I loved her and that I didn't want to leave her. All was forgiven and she made dinner that night!
I did not get beaten as often as my brother, but it did happen when things were not done to her specifications. My mom was a great woman, who was loved by many including me and my brother. But she lived in fear. Fear of losing us, to our father or birth parents. Fear of losing control and us turning on her. Again my memory was a gift, because I only remember the good things. She loved God very much and she did trust Him, but there was much more to the story that we wouldn't find out for several years to come....
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