In The Beginning

I have a pretty normal life now. I have a good job. I am attending college at night. I go to church on Sunday. I feel very blessed and happy about where my life is going. What it took to get me here is not so pretty. "Normal" is not something that comes easily to my family. I guess the best way to tell the story is to get right into it.

I am the third child out of seven. I have two older brothers, one younger, and three younger sisters. Myself and my older brothers are products of my mother's first marriage. My mother married my bio father at 16. Right after I was born she left him, and soon began dating someone else. My dad. My real dad as far as I am concerned. They soon married and along came the rest of the children.

We were always poor. I don't remember knowing it when I was small but looking back I can see it. We moved around a lot. I am not really sure why, but I do know that I went to a number of schools. Aside from moving around a great deal I was also painfully shy and timid. (Those who know me now surely think this is a lie)

The Fire

One of the moves we made landed us in a house out the country that I loved. We lived on the side of a mountain, I think in Tennessee. There was so much for a young tom girl to get into. There were woods out behind our house and stream farther out into the woods. I remember this as being a happy time for us. When Halloween arrived, we lived too far out to go trick or treating, so my dad made the house scary and hid all over the house jumping out and scaring us.
We all thought this was great.

During this time we attended church on a regular basis. One Sunday, we went to a stranger's house after church. My siblings and I were left there for what seemed a long while. When my parents finally came back to get us, were told that there had been a fire. The house burned down to the ground while we were at church. I remember knowing that this was a big deal, however I was only seven and did not realize how serious this was for our family. I can't imagine what my parents must have been feeling. Everything they had in world was gone. All the baby pictures, all of our clothes and furniture, everything was lost.

I don't want this blog to get too long. Stay tuned for further details :)