I started out young in life going to church because I had to. My parents both went every Sunday and they took me with. So every Sunday I would go to church and then Sunday school. When I started to get older I also had Wednesday nights added to the routine. This class was fun, and I found it to be more of a social gathering then a church service.

My dad was a very heavy drinker and as I got older he seemed to become more violent with me. Being the young kid I was I thought this was all normal, so at the time this was not a big deal to me. The pain went away and life went on again until the next time I made a mistake. Don’t get me wrong I am not complaining about this, it is just how life was.

As I got older my parents stopped making me go to church. I then found myself longing to go. At the time I thought it was only because it was a safe place for me to be and got me away from that life for a few hours at time. Now looking back at this I think there was more to it than just an escape, but it served its purpose at that time.

When I was in 8th grade I finally sat down with my mom and explained to her that I was planning on running away and living on the streets until I could come up with enough money to get a place to live and hopefully make it through life. I told her if I did she would probably never see me again. She was taken back and in a state of shock for some time. She spent some time of her life on the streets and new that it was a hard life and one I should not be doing at that young age.

Well now the excitement was growing and I felt like I could explode at any moment. The feeling of a kid in a candy store who can have whatever he wanted did not even compare to the feeling that was stirring inside of me. I repeated these steps four or five times and there it was, I put the Bible down, ran over to my mother and said "Can we go to church in the morning, I need to talk to my youth pastor about what just happened." So there it was, I had a plan, a mission, and I was determined to see this through. It did not occur to me that I really had no idea what it was that I had to do or say. I didn’t even know what was going to happen when I told my youth pastor; I just know that I had to do it. Do you remember when you were little and the night before Christmas you could barely sleep because of the excitement of the presents to come in the morning? That is how I felt that night, I was so excited, didn’t know what I was excited for, but there was no doubt in my heart that the next day something amazing was going to happen.

We started talking and I explained to her what was going on at home with my dad and why I must do it. I told her the only way I would stay is if we moved out and left my dad behind. She agreed and it was settled that we would figure out how to move out. We talked a lot that day. Needless to say we also did a lot of crying. She worked to jobs and was in a state of depression so she really had no idea of the abuse that was taking place in our home. I explained a lot of the times to her and she was great. She cried, listened, and didn’t disbelieve me once. She knew from the tone I used that I was not making this up and she had to do something to help me out. Thank you MOM!! This was my first sign that there was a god who loved me and was watching over me. I remember from one of my Sunday school classes that the bible said god will not let you go through more than you can handle. I figured I was at the end of what I could handle and this was his way of protecting me, at least which is how I look at it now, then I just wanted to not hurt anymore.

Now it sounds strange going to church all the time and learning verses out of the bible for years but at this point in my life I still did not know God or have a personal relationship with him. To me it was just words in a book. The only thing I knew was that when I was there I felt safe and at peace with life.

For my mom and me to be able to leave and for her to be able to get help with getting a new place for us to live she had to go into a shelter. Well all shelters that I know about are for woman. The fact that I was already over 13 I was not allowed to stay there for the comfort of the other women who lived there. We had a family that went to our church that was nice enough to open there house to me. I went and lived with them while I waited for my mom to be able to leave the shelter and get us a place to live. I know see this was yet another time that God was watching over me and I just took it as someone being nice to me.

That Easter weekend, one of my mom’s friends was leaving town and said that we could use their house as a place to get together and celebrate Easter. This was a great gift for the two of us. If her friends would not have made us this offer we would have spent Easter alone. I felt a warm happiness inside me knowing that I would get to spend time with my mom again. We had a great weekend together and I also received a wonderful surprise that I never expected.

On Saturday evening I was starting to get bored. This seems bad because I should have been happy to just spend time with my mother, but I was a young teenager and started to get bored and restless. I started to walk around the house aimlessly in search of something. I really didn’t know what I was looking for but I knew I had to find it. At some point I found a bible in my hand and felt that I just had to read it. Then came the next dilemma, what do I read, where do I start? The Bible is a big book and I had no idea what I was even looking for. I felt like a kid who was trying to figure out how to spell a word and all anyone would tell them is look it up in the dictionary.

So there I was, about thirteen and without any direction of what to do next, so I did the best thing I could come up with, I closed my eyes, fanned through the pages with my thumb, and pointed. Now at the moment this seemed like a bad idea, like looking for a needle in a haystack. When I opened my eyes my finger was on the beginning of a verse. Now for the life of me I cannot remember what verse that was or the rest to come but I don’t think that is the important part. The important part was this "I was moved!" I read the verse, closed my eyes and repeated my last actions. When I opened my eyes my finger was once again at the beginning of a verse, the amazing and exciting thing was it seemed to go along with the last verse I did this with.