He turned my woe into WOAH!

I mean it when I tell you the joy I have today is the product of God being ever so present in my life. While reading some parts of my story you might begin to think “HOW was ‘God ever so present’ in this girls life?!” …. Just wait, you’ll see. The bigger the trauma, the bigger the testimony. Trust me.

I want to turn this section of my website (OUR website — it belongs to both God and myself) into my life story. I plan to tell it all…in 20 blog posts (which is the most it allows me LOL ) Because I have so much to say, I may have to omit some details and sometimes be quite brief with what I’m telling you. I’ll try to be smart about it and leave that for the particular topics in my life that are extremely hard for me to talk about or really difficult for me to recount. I feel like some details need to remain hidden for the sake of my sanity AND for the sake of your reading experience. Try not to expect too much when it comes to grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation while reading these blog posts — remember who’s writing this lol!

So, I’m 33 years old and in the prime of my life. Some people don’t realize when they’re “in the good old days” until the good old days are over…that’s not the case for me. I realize I’m in those days right now, and that can be a double edged sword. All at once you feel blessed to be hyper aware of this stage of life because you can enjoy it and soak it all in — but on the other hand you feel a sort of panic throughout the entire season, because everything has an end and your slowly watching the end of what you know to be the prime of your life slowly approach. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s better to know or not.

Being the adult I am now, I often look back at my early childhood and cry for myself (your girl can throw a pity party LEEEEMMEEEE TELL YOUUU). And i hate it lol.

As a parent, it’s hard for me to understand the decisions the adults around me made. I forgive them, I forgave them a long time ago, but boy do I struggle to forget.

My parents were very young when they had me and their relationship, from what I know, was pretty toxic. While their story isn’t mine to tell, I can tell you the parts of their story that directly affected me…because that’s a huge part of my own story. Please, try not to judge them. It hurts my heart when I tell my story on the channel and then I have to read mean comments about my parents. I know those comments come from a good place, I know you’re hurt for me because you love me….but please try to remember that I love THEM. That’s my mom and dad I have to read those comments about. I’ve never wished anything but the best for them. I’m a product of my own life experiences, and they are the product of theirs. I can’t be mad at them for not having their life together in their late teens and early twenties….HAVE Y’ALL HEARD MY STORY?! I don’t have a single stone to throw, your girls pockets are EMPTYYYYY. Thankfully, I learned from their mistakes and even throughout all my mess in my early 20s I didn’t leave my kids. I’ve always been all about my children. They are the apple of my eye. But who knows what could’ve happened if I hadn’t lived through and learned from the mistakes they made. In a really weird and confusing way, I’m glad they left me. Because they didn’t keep me, I know what it feels like to be abandoned and that in turn makes me never want to abandon anybody. I wouldn’t wish that sort of pain on my worst enemy (I don’t have a worst enemy but if I did I wouldn’t wish that on them lol)

I say it all the time…hurt people hurt people. They were my first examples of that. My parents were the first hurt people to hurt me. So I found that saying to be true at a very young age.

My nanny always says I came straight from the hospital to her house and I believe it lol. I have very few childhood memories, but the memories I do have mostly revolve around nanny…and my papaw of course. He was my favorite person on the planet and the only male other than Shane that I could completely trust with my whole heart. When he died my life went even further down hill. It was honestly a nightmare and I wish my brain would’ve done me a favor then and blacked all of THAT out LOL where’s the amnesia when you need it?! One time I was told by one of my many childhood therapists that my brain did me a favor and blacked out most of the bad memories. Apparently, it missed a whole whacked out season of my life lol because I remember EVERYTHING from that time.

Let’s start from the beginning, because I can already tell that my (lovely) brain (that blacks out only when its convenient for it apparently lol) is wanting to get ahead of itself and skip around. I’m going to start from the beginning and try to get as much as I can into chronological order.

Like I said, I was born to really young parents. If I’m not mistaken, my mom was only 19 when she had me. I don’t make excuses for her because of her age though because well… I had Colton when I was 19 and things went a lot differently for me as a “teen-ish mom”. But I do make excuses for her because of her upbringing. People tell me not to make up excuses for her…but they don’t know the — h e double hockey sticks —she went through growing up. If our trauma is rated on a scale of 1-100…mine would be an 82, hers would be a million. Hands down. I said I “make up excuses for her”, but I should’ve worded that differently. It’s not that I make up excuses necessarily, it’s more so that I understand. I get it.

I remember seeing my mom off and on as a child. I feel like it was almost a pattern…sort of in and out of my life. I remember her coming to the door one time and she had dyed her hair blonde. It had been so long since I saw her that I didn’t recognize her and for some reason I was absolutely petrified of her. That night, I had a really hard time sleeping. Even as a small child my heart was conflicted. That was my mom, my heart knew that I loved her..but my brain didn’t know if she loved me. And that scared me for some reason.

I lived with nanny, but my dad lived with nanny, too. So I saw my dad way more than I saw my mom. Not because he made more of an effort to see me, but because we lived under the same roof and he had no choice but to see me lol. My dad fought his own demons much like my mom. He fought addiction my whole childhood. It was nothing new for my nanny to be dragging my half conscious dad across the driveway while me and my brother were at the bottom of the hill making mud pies or driving the lawn mower in circles til the tires were bald lol. Nanny went through so much with both my mom and my dad. I honestly don’t know how at her age she had the energy to go through all of that AND take care of my brother and I. I’m telling you…nanny’s a rockstar.

My dad would try his best to get clean and my mom would try her best to consistently come around and see us more often, but both of them failed over and over again. I think my dad really wanted to get clean, but he was so deep into the addiction that it probably felt like he was trying to climb his way out of a hole full of peanut butter . And I think my mom really wanted to have a relationship with us, but because we weren’t around her often and we weren’t comfortable being around her..I think she felt like she was fighting a losing battle. I can’t imagine how it would feel for your kids to be scared of you and not want to be around you. Plus, my mom recounts that time in our lives a lot differently than nanny does. Their versions of the stories clash so bad. So I really can only believe what I saw and what I felt as a child. The rest of it I learned a long time ago to just let it go. I came to the conclusion that nanny had her truth, mom had her truth, and I had mine.

Eventually, my dad got married to a really nice lady. I really loved her, and so did my brother. When dad married her he moved out of nanny’s house and my brother went with him. I’m not sure if he chose my brother to live with him or if my brother chose to live with him. I just know it went completely against the custody agreement, but they did it anyway lol. Little me was convinced that dad picked him to live with him. if I’m being honest with you…at 33 I still think that.

When my brother and my dad moved out, all that was left was me, nanny, and papaw. My nanny’s mom and dad (my mamaw and papaw2) lived right next to us on a hill that was named after them. I loved my mamaw and papaw2. Some of my best memories have them in them! Shane loved my papaw2 and still talks about him all the time. They were good people…especially my papaw2. We lived on land belonging to all of my papaw2s (nanny’s dad) family. So I was surrounded by cousins, aunts, uncles and other distant relatives. Sounds like a good time, right?

Nope.

Before I was out of elementary school, I was running from men. I wasn’t safe from relatives. I wasn’t safe from strangers. It didn’t matter to me if they had the same bloodline as me…I still was not safe. It seemed almost as if every man I came in contact with (minus my papaws) wanted to take something from me. It was something an 8 year old, 9 year old, and 10 year old should never have to give. They stole my peace, but worse, they stole my innocence. I would always watch out for myself. I would always make sure I wasn’t in a room alone with somebody. I would always stand or sit at least 3 feet away from anybody. I did not do hugs. I did not wear dresses. I did not ride in cars with people. I did not go outside by myself. I guarded myself as best as I could. It wasn’t enough, though.

Things might’ve been different if I had’ve told somebody. But the only people I had to trust were nanny and papaw. Papaws health had started to rapidly decline. Nanny was his caregiver and a pastor. I didn’t want to disrupt the little peace we had so I continued to look out for myself. I continued to watch my own back.

As I got older and became a preteen, somehow running FROM men turned into running TO men. I wish I knew why. To this day, that logic doesn’t make sense to me. I searched for attention all of the time. I would take it from anybody who would give it to me. I would be up all hours of the night in AOL chat rooms talking with grown men. I had one friend at that time and she introduced me to the chat rooms. We thought it was funny, but looking back I realize how dangerous it was. We were playing with fire.

Because nanny was so preoccupied with papaw, I basically did whatever I wanted to. I was up all hours of the night, my grades were awful, I was talking to grown men on the internet. I was giving my address to people all over the web. I was talking to people on my little Nokia phone (after 9PM of course, because back then there was no such thing as unlimited texting and calling) you either waited til 9 to talk on the phone or your phone bill was out the roof lol.

I found ways to keep myself occupied and none of those ways were good. I had this thing where I was a magnet for troubled people. I think it’s because, ironically, those were the only people who accepted me. They say “you are the company you keep” and that became true for me. I went from hanging out with the troubled kids to becoming a troubled kid myself.

During all of this I went to church every Wednesday and Sunday. I was raised in a little white Pentecostal church that my nanny pastored. I didn’t listen a lot, but I watched EVERYTHING. I never liked church people. I was around them all the time. I saw how they acted and heard what they said. There were very few times that I “saw Jesus” in any of those people. It turned me off from church entirely, and I come to LOATHE going.

Even though I “didn’t like church people” per se, there were a select few that I grew up around and I really came to love those. They had been church members for years and years. They had held me as a BABY, so when I said I didn’t like church people just know those few individuals were excluded from that lol. Don’t get me wrong, they still did everything the other church members did…but 12 year old me had a soft spot for them because I grew up around them.

I told you that there was nobody I could trust myself to be around and that was even true at CHURCH. I have faint memories from the time I was probably 3 or 4..they’re very faint, but I can remember the hands, and I can remember the smell. I didn’t remember who it was until I was older and they had left the church, but once I remembered.. it wrecked my world. I was alone with that person a lot as a baby…as a toddler…and as a small child. I don’t even want to think about situations that might’ve happened that I just don’t remember. What I remembered was enough, I didn’t pry my brain on that one. My brain felt broken after that anyway.

If I were to list all of the times I have been abused, exploited, and violated we would be here all day and night. Just know, it continued through my whole life up until I met Shane. Sunday school teachers, deacons, cousins, family, family friends…it was anybody and everybody and it went on for so many years. Shane always tells me he feels like the devil had a target on me for that kind of thing or something, cause it followed me wherever I went. It was like a shadow. A really dark shadow. And if you had told me it could get worse, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Oh, but it did.

This is not a “WOE is me” story. I slayed my dragons a long time ago. I’ve forgiven and I’ve let go.

But I have never, not for a second, forgotten. except the moments my brain forgot entirely of course lol

I don’t want pity. Goodness gracious, pleaseeeeeee don’t pity me. There’s nothing I hate more than that. But every part of my testimony is important, and all of this leads somewhere. And at the end you’ll be like “WOAH”.