My Parents and God, I Choose You!

As I look back over now 52 years of life, I can’t help but be grateful, despite the hell on earth I went through trying to grow up.

I lived a life maybe not so many will understand, except for later when I made some bad choices. I grew up partly in the foster child system.  My most formative years were in a small town which I have a love/hate for. There are many terrible memories in the small town.

I will never forget Pastor Gene, Margie, Cindy, and many others. First foremost from my school Mrs. Wiley, the woman who believed me when no one else would.

I would be removed from a foster home and placed into a short-term group home. Then I was finally placed in a long-term group home.

It is here, I really learned I had no family to speak of that I knew.

Later, I would meet my mom, the lunch lady at my last year in grade school. She would not be my mom right away there were some years in between.

I really need to back up and share more about that small town and God.

I met God early on in life and I had so many conversations, regardless of the thing they called being saved. I didn’t meet God face to face, but I met Him through the experience of life: childhood laughter, tears, healing, and some horrifying things a child should never face.

I was no angel that’s for sure. Rambunctious and rebellious are two words that come to mind. Still, I believe God chose me.

I had been to the bluffs, I considered life and death. Even at a young age I considered the consequences of both possibilities.

I was in bluffs where I was usually happiest. Not this day though. It was getting dark soon I knew I had to get home, that is if I wasn’t going to jump to my death from the bluffs, on to the new highway below.

Things were that grave. But no one knew, besides me and one other person what really was going on at home.

It was 1978, my life would never be the same one fateful day. The day no one believed a little boy of 11 years old. It was the day after my visit to my favorite place, the bluffs.

I first talked to my best friend in 5^th grade. I asked what he knew as I told him details of what was going on at home. He didn’t know much, he just knew I better tell someone.

I knew if I went in the school and told someone my life would change forever and it did but not until July 5th,1978. The day my social worker came to get me and all my things. I learned what were not my things and eventually would accept I would never be going back to what I knew as home.

There would be more to this story before I ever met the lunch lady.

This will be continued. Thank for reading!