One Year

This is something that has been weighing on my heart a lot lately. It is a part of my testimony that I have chosen to keep private from nearly everyone I know for the past year because I was afraid it would change how they see me as a person. I don't like to be pitied or felt sorry for, so I waited. However, I have come to realize that by sharing this, I may be able to help others. At my church recently, it was said, "if you have a burden in your heart to share news, then go." This is my way of going. 

Last year around this time, I had an incredible experience with a customer at my job with Dutch Bros. Coffee which I had started just months before this happened. You can read about that here. 

One year ago today, my greatest fear became a reality. 

It was an event that I knew would happen eventually, and as much as I tried to discount my expectations as simple anxiety, the life that we had been living for the seven years preceding was proof enough that my greatest fear would become real at some point, and until recently, I haven’t felt comfortable discussing it publicly.

My greatest fear was that the security in my life would crumble - violently. There never actually was any real security to begin with, but the illusion I had of it being there was better than what could have been at the time. My greatest fear was that I would be the last remnant of stability in my family (me being pretty unstable myself), and that something horrible would happen to my mom or brothers.

 For years, my mom had been too sick to work; my step father was too mentally ill to work. We had money, but we were always on a precipice of uncertainty.

Our home was essentially a hospital: Since my last years in high school, my mom’s health had been so unpredictable that it was more surprising that she hadn’t gone to the hospital by the time the month ended. My step father was mentally unhinged and increasingly physically and emotionally abusive and manipulative towards all of us. If anything happened, I was the one who had a reliable income and the physical and mental capacity to take care of everyone else.

We went through periods of financial insecurity in which I was the only person in the house with an income to support the seven of us.

There were days I would drive my brothers around town after school for hours because it was too dangerous to bring them home.

Every night I went to bed, listening to the sounds from the room above or on the other side of mine, waiting for the inevitable shouting, the sound of someone falling.

When I was finally able to move out, my anxiety came with me. I tried to convince my parents that moving so far was a terrible idea. I couldn’t handle the thought of my mom and brothers two hours away. I had been the person there to take my brothers somewhere safe when home wasn’t. Without me, where would they go? Every time I visited, I left with an uneasy feeling which ate into my core.
Finally, it happened: at a middle-school football game, our step father became so uncontrollable that he began to threaten other people - including children. He went home to try to find weapons, but was stopped only after being shot.

And I was two hours away, unable to be the safe place for my brothers to run to.

For all of my talk about trusting in God throughout all of the various incidents, horrors, and scares we had been through before, I sure wasn’t trusting when it came to this. In fact, in the past, I only began to trust Him after something happened. I had allowed myself to sink into a mindset in which I was expecting the worst to happen, and it wasn’t healthy in any way, especially not for my spiritual health and relationship with God. While it was true that in my lowest moments, He provided me with strength when I had absolutely none left of my own, there was a point in my life that I didn’t know how to have a relationship with God without existing in a state of complete fear and sorrow.

It’s incredible to witness what passes in the span of a year. It’s all the more incredible to see the impact of a year’s worth of growth on your perspective of an event.

One year ago today, what I thought was my greatest fear turned into my family’s greatest blessing - freedom.

Part 2: