My Abbreviated Story

I was born in Toronto to a Catholic family. I am the second of four children. My mom was born in Canada with Austrian and some kind of U.k. ancestry. My dad came directly from Liverpool England. He was born in 1930, so spent much of his childhood in bomb shelters and exploring the debris of the bombed homes around him. My parents were not affectionate, with us or each other. I didn't get hugs or I love yous. I don't blame them though, I understand that they didn't know how, or didn't understand that I needed it.
I had a pretty good childhood. We never had much money, but my mom made sure we had plenty of opportunities. I had piano lessons, ballet lessons, I was a brownie and later when my sister expressed an interest in horses, we both got lessons and later our own ponies, none of which we could really afford.
My parents would occasionally fight. We would all be sent to our rooms where we would have what my sister called "kid's meetings". It helped us feel less insecure.
When I was 10 we moved to a farm in Dufferin County. My parents assured us that we would go to the Catholic school in Orangeville where we new some people that moved to this area before us. Bussing wouldn't allow it however and we were forced to go to a public school.
I was very shy and didn't make friends, very easily.
There weren't many catholic kids in this school, they were pretty much white protestant farmers, or descendants of white protestant farmers. Very different from what I was used to. Everyone knew everyone for generations. Even my mom, who is quite a "joiner" and makes friends pretty easily, found it difficult to fit in.
I'm sure each of us has our own ideas of what happened next. My mom and dad fought more, we had way more "kid's meetings" that started involving what we'd do if our parent's divorced and what we could do to make things better. My mom started to get depressed. Eventually she was hospitalized, we went to see her in the psych ward. My sister turned into our mother. We all tried to do all the things that would make my mom happy and bring her home, but it didn't work. She came home for awhile but continued to be depressed, she started seeing psychiatrists regularly. During this time my sister went to a camp with Campus Life, Kiaros. She came home acting weird. She loved Jesus and told me all the time, it was annoying.
My sister went to a youth group with her friend from school and of course the weekly campus life meetings, which she loved. I went to a Youth for Christ event, I forget what it was about, but I remember when I first heard that Jesus really loved me and wanted to forgive my sins and what he suffered to do that. They asked for anyone that wanted to take that step to come to the front and I really wanted to. I leaned toward my sister and asked if she wanted to go up there. She sneered at me and said "no". I later understood why, she was annoyed that I thought she wasn't already a christian, when, of course, she was.
It became increasingly difficult to live at home with my mom. She maintained that it was our fault and brought in children's aid workers to try and fix me and my brother, we were smoking and skipping class and not doing much around the house. The threat that was always presented was "you can be kicked out, do you want that?" Well, actually, yes I did.
Eventually, it happened. Not too long after my 16th birthday. My mom told me not to come home. So, I didn't. I had a friend who had already offered to take me in. She was a self proclaimed satan worshipper. That sounded great to me, no rules, no moral boundaries, I was free! But I couldn't find her anywhere. She wasn't at school.
My sister found someone that would take me in, Nikki. I didn't want to stay with her though. I went to her house once. Her mom talked about Jesus all the time. They were weird. But I had to sleep somewhere.
Nikki was 16, like me. She smoked, she drank, she skipped school, she had no respect for authority (except God, she would stop dead in the hall when the Lord's prayer was recited at school) she was loud and she swore, perfect! She became my best friend, we were inseparable.
Nikki told me she was pregnant. I thought that was great. Ever since I heard about what the baby experienced during an abortion I was completely against them and I looked at every pregnancy as a miracle.
It was required, that we go to church on Sunday. We went to Bethel Bible Chapel in the morning and the Pentecostal church at night. I'd never seen anything like it. They were crazy charismatic people, I was uncomfortable.
Nikki often spoke of her cool older brother, Sanford. He came home to visit one weekend and moved home the next. He claims he loved me the moment he saw me and has maintained that story ever since. I never met anyone like him before, he listened to me, and wanted to be my friend, not just a boyfriend. I looked around at the teenagers making out in the halls at school and wondered if they knew that they could have something this real.
This time proved to be a crossroads for the 3 of us. Nikki, with her impending motherhood, leaned on Jesus more and more. Sanford struggled with our relationship knowing that he couldn't stay with me if I wasn't a christian and I was surrounded by all this love and acceptance, but in the center of a very dysfunctional family, that knew, for sure, that there was a Jesus who forgives sins and changes lives. I wasn't even sure that there was a God anymore, but I started looking at these wonderful people as not so weird.
One day, Sanford and I sat at the kitchen table, he wasn't feeling well. He was having another asthma attack and was gathering his energy to go to the hospital. So, I thought I'd give praying a shot. I asked God, quietly, to myself, if He was really there, to heal Sanford and let him breathe. I told Him that if He did, I would know for sure that He existed.
An unbelievable thing happened, that has never happened since. Sanford lifted his head off the table and looked puzzled. He said "I can breathe...that's never happened before". I was amazed! There really is a God! He does exist and He answers prayers and performs miracles! It's really true!
I've had a lot of ups and downs since that day, and a period of time that I questioned again if there was a God, but He keeps pointing me back to that day, and I know for sure that He exists, He has nothing more to prove to me.