by Shirley B.
I believe that hindsight is always twenty - twenty, but even more so that spiritual hindsight is even better than that. As Holy Spirit has walked me back through the pages of my earlier life, so often He's revealed to me the whole picture that was going on around me at that particular time, and why some people and some things were like they were.
Many times I had wondered why the only memories I had of my father were of him holding my sister, usually on his knee, talking to her and towards me, back and forth.
When the memory of my accident came back, I soon realized that he couldn't hold me , it wasn't possible at that time.
Soon after I began to recover, for whatever reason, we moved back to Mississippi. It's strange how a child's mind can remember things. Very shortly after we moved back, things fell apart in our family. My grandfather on my mother's side had become sick and he developed a plan to collect money on his insurance. How? He planned to burn down his farmhouse.
As an adult looking back, I found all this so hard to accept, so as soon as I was able, I returned to Mississippi and this small town, just to put the pieces together, to dig up legal papers and such on all these incidents about my sister and myself. I discovered that big family secrets are only a secret to the rest of the world but not to everyone in the immediate family. My family wore their sins and their secrets like a badge of honor in the family. They never tried to hide them from one another, only from outsiders. So my mother's father and my mother's brother, did the deed. My father came by to pick up the uncle that evening , not knowing what had been done, but when the police tracked my uncle down later on, he was with my father. Witnesses said there were two men and everyone agreed that my father was one of them, even my uncle, my grandfather, and my mother. My father was sentenced to two years in prison. Everything was set into motion.
While my father was in prison, he started divorce proceedings, to get out of this marriage and filed for custody of my sister and I. So we had no place to stay.
It seems like our mother and our grandparents couldn't bear to be around us. They stuck us in a feed shed at the back of the pasture. I remember that winter was very, very cold. You could see daylight between the slats in the wall and the floor was a dirt floor, no electricity or any modern facilities for sure. I don't think they were ashamed of what they had done, it was common knowledge in the family. They just didn't want to be bothered I guess. Over the next year or so, our mother would take us up and drop us off with whoever would keep us for a few weeks at a time. Other times, she'd take us with her and I think those were the worse times.
One of those times she stopped at a motel in a small town, telling us she wanted to rest. Just around the corner was a movie theater, so she gave my sister and I money to go see the movie. When we got there, we realized that she only gave us enough money for tickets but not enough for anything to drink or such so we decided to go back to the motel, since it was close and we had time, and get more money. We walked into the room like most kids of six or seven , throwing open the door and just walking in. Surprise!! There she was in bed with a man and neither one of them had any clothes on. She calmly gets up and walks across the room to get some change and yells at us for being there , to get out of there. So my sister and I slowly and quietly walked back to the movie theater. Soon we were hurt and angry. That man was NOT our father, and as young as we were , we knew it was wrong and we didn't like it.
I remember that the movie was called, " Children of the Damned". I believe it was later remade under a different title, but it was about children who could cause people to do terrible things to others and themselves just by using their mental powers. Hmmmm.... well, it didn't work for my sister and I. It turned out that our mother was selling herself. She was a prostitute . Later, she married the man who was her pimp. There's no nice way to say it , but there it is. He bought a resale shop and they decided to set up housekeeping in the back of the store. This store just happened to be a block away from the corner bar, and he was a heavy drinker who got mean when he got drunk. By this time, of course, the divorce from my father was final, and my mother was already seven or eight months pregnant from this man. This is the man who had held me down and poured beer down my throat, trying to make me drink it. I thought I was going to drown before he stopped, but my mother never stepped in to stop him.
On this particular night, he was at that bar, and he was late for supper. My mother sent me to go fetch him. I walked that long block to that corner bar, planning on just sticking my head in and yelling for him. That's about as close as I was gonna get to this man. When I got there and opened the screen door, because that's all there was , I wanted to scream. Blood was everywhere!, and he was in a fight with someone, rolling around all over the floor. I just turned and ran, but not before he saw me. I ran and ran back to the resale shop and he wasn't far behind me. I barely managed to tell my mother when he barreled in and came at us, cussing and hollering . He was angry about many things but mostly because my mother had called him to come home.
Well, a child's love for her mother dies hard, and when he began beating up our mother, my sister and I couldn't stand it. I was about six and she was about seven or eight. We understood that our mother was going to have a baby. We decided we would try to stop him. Before I knew what was happening, my sister had climbed onto the chair and jumped onto his back and had him by the neck. I did the only thing I knew I could do to help and I lunged for the back of his knees. It was a good decision, though I didn't know it at the time, and down he went, face first. We beat on him as best as our small fists could beat him but of course he threw us both off pretty easily. But he rose up slowly and simply told our mother right then and there, that it was either him or us. One or the other had to go. We thought for sure it would be him. After all, she was safe now, we had just helped her get away from him beating her up again.
The next morning, as we walked with our mother to the bus station, our hearts were very confused and very broken. Our mother was not only sending us away again, but she wasn't even going to go with us or take us to where we were being sent. We were far, far , away from the family. We remembered that much. As we boarded the bus that day, we heard our mother tell the bus driver where we were supposed to get off and she just turned and left. That was it. Neither of us knew that this would be the last time we would see our mother again, except for an appearance in the courtroom a couple of years later.
My sister and I ended up on the farm with our great grandparents on my mother's side. They didn't care for our mother's ways and had never had much to do with her but this was where we stopped on this journey home. We didn't stay long, but long enough to get to know two people, our great grandparents, who came to love my sister and I as we did them in that short period of time. I believe at that time , my sister and I needed to know desperately that there was someone who cared about us, but it was such a short short time that we were there before we would be gone again.
Looking back , this was when we were to become aware only, but not really know who Jesus was. If there was only one thing I could change about this time, it would be that I knew more of Jesus, that I knew more of who was really there to help us . Even though we didn't know much about who Jesus was, I know that He knew who we were and what was happening to us.
I know now, that He was there with us all along, working on our behalf. Romans 8: 28 tells us : " And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." This doesn't say to me that he would make things right in my life so that I wouldn't have to go through these trials, but it tells me that he would take these trials and make something good come out of them. Jesus has surely done this for me. I believe the spiritual battle for my soul began very early in my life and Jesus had already decided, " Satan, you can't have this one. This one's mine", but the fight wasn't over yet.........
Hebrews 13: 5 & 6 tells me:
5.) .......I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
6.) So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.
If only I had known this back then because in the years to come things were not getting any better for my sister and I. To be continued......
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