keptpublishing

TW: Domestic Violence

It’s taken me a little longer to share this next post. I wrote, I erased, and I wrote again.

It’s hard… vulnerability and sharing things no one knew.

That church on the hill was the founding place for my relationships with some of the most important people in my life. So much of what and who shaped me came from that little white building and the experiences and relationships formed there.

Over the years, if there was one place I wanted to be, it was at church. Not because I understood everything that was happening there, but because it felt different from everything else.

The early days, when Mom would sing and we’d lay under the pews, were the golden moments. Mom would eventually marry Steve, and we’d continue attending Victory Tabernacle.

When I think back on my childhood, there isn’t one clear storyline. I piece together fragments of memories from here and there. Houses. Schools. Core memories. Moments that stand out, surrounded by long stretches of things I can’t fully piece together.

The years go by in a blur, from around six to eight or nine, and then twelve. Unfortunately, that’s what happens with trauma, as I’ve learned through therapy.

That church and the people in it helped build me. But I don’t think they truly knew what was happening outside those walls. If they did, that’s a rough pill to swallow. But, I won’t linger there.

You see, as I mentioned before, there was life beyond the walls of the church. And in the earlier years especially, it was not so good. There were plenty of Sundays when we would experience such a happy service— moves of God— church dinners— fun times— but when we got home, it felt like the devil would meet us at the doorway.

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There were times when life felt almost steady. We had food. We had clothes. My stepdad worked hard for a long time, and in those seasons, things didn’t feel heavy. We weren’t well off, but we weren’t without.

I didn’t necessarily feel neglected. I didn’t walk around thinking something was wrong. Sure, our cabinets may have looked different from other families’, and I may not have had the newest gadgets or name-brand clothing, but we were clothed and had something in our bellies.

But even in those “better” moments, there was always something underneath the surface. Something that could shift without warning.

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I don’t know when the fights started, but Mom and Steve fought a lot. Yelling. Throwing and breaking things. Slamming doors. Hitting each other.

We moved a lot — more houses than I can remember. The backdrops to the fights differ through the many houses we lived in but the premise is the same. Yelling… cursing.. broken dishes… pushing… hitting… mom calling her mom—one night in particular, I’d remembered learning to dial 911 in school, so I did. My mom took the phone, told them it was an accident, and hung up.

Even that didn’t feel as alarming then as it does now when I say it out loud. It wasn’t constant. And because of that, it became something I adjusted to rather than questioned.

There wasn’t a moment when everything suddenly changed. It was gradual. A slow shaping of what I believed relationships looked like… what love looked like… what was acceptable and what wasn’t. And without realizing it, I was learning to live in the middle of chaos—without ever calling it that.

As a kid, I just thought this was normal life. I don’t believe I ever told a soul. Talking to my best friend not long ago, she had never known I experienced anything like this.. even after 20 years of friendship.

Over the years, the fights grew more intense and frequent. Broken glass. Hitting each other. Getting out of the car and walking down the street late at night. Over and over again.

But, even in the chaos of life, the church was there for us. In one house, the church family helped as we cleaned it up to move into. Multiple people came and helped clean the home and even brought some food. In that place, I saw community and family.

In that same home, my stepdad would come home late one night, drunk, and a fight would ensue. This one was more intense than the others, and as he was going after mom, I tried to fight him away from her. That night, he’d push me into a dresser, call me an expletive, and as we attempted to leave, he’d pull a gun.

The memory fades there, in slow motion. My sister, who I’d try to guard from the chaos, would be in the corner by the wooden stove, holding an angel statue and praying. I don’t know what happened next… but I know we left and went to a family member’s house for a little while.

So…

How can I look back on that and find Jesus there?

Though I don’t remember what happened next, I do know there was a bullet in the wall of the home. That bullet in the wall didn’t hit one of us.

Though there are more stories, I’ll spoil a part and say that Steve would eventually get sober and become one of the greatest people in my life many years later.

Is there hurt that I had to work through about Mom staying with a man who would hurt us? Yes. And I will get there eventually.

But right now, we’re surface-leveling on being Kept.

And that, my friends… I was.

Some may ask, why does God allow bad things to happen? I don’t think God wants bad things for His children. I think He takes the sin and evil in this world and uses it to His advantage.

I went through what I went through and came out as a strong—sometimes feeling broken—woman who knows that God is real. A woman who believes He can use these things and use her story to help others, when she gets out of her own way and insecurities.

Because even behind closed doors, I was never alone.

Being kept doesn’t mean being protected from every painful thing. It doesn’t mean we never walk through darkness. It means the darkness doesn’t get the final word.

The little girl everyone thought was fine… wasn’t. But she had someone watching out for her through the chaos that life was… over and over again she would face hard things but God would use those hard things for His good..

I cannot tell you why some things happened the way they did. But I can tell you that the little girl sitting in the middle of that chaos had a story that wasn’t finished. If you’re reading this and find yourself in hard moments.. or maybe you’ve experienced hard moments already and wonder where God is or was.. keep looking. You’ll find Him in the air in your lungs and purpose still available. He’s not done.

Next week I’ll continue sharing the journey of finding Jesus in hard moments..