Having Wings Like Eagles

                                                                           Prologue

                                                                       Reflections         

     She was very nervous about what she had to do, but the time had come to share her story with old friends that grew up with her.  It was time to let the secret out that very few knew of.  Sitting at the table at the restaurant with the people who she use to know so well made it that much harder to speak of the shame, hurt and heartache she went through for a decade while growing up, and twenty some years of hell dealing with what happened.  

     As her friends were gathering for food and conversation, she thought back to a time of life when her childhood should have been mostly innocent.  She was in bed one night sleeping when her step-father came in.  He was drunk.  She thought he was just going to give her a kiss on the cheek good night, but that's not what he had in mind.  He kissed her and touched her in ways that should have been only for her mother.  She thought to herself, "This isn't right.  What's going on?"  Then she thought, it must be because he's drunk.  "He won't do it again. He wouldn't if he wasn't drinking", she concluded.  She didn't know any better because she was only eleven.

     She realized where she was after reflecting on the past when someone asked her a question at the table.  It startled her, then she composed herself.  She couldn't believe where she came from and where she was now.  God definitely had His hand on her life and everyday she was thankful and amazed.  She went back in her mind again of before all the abuse happened.  How happy she was to have a man that cared for her.  Her mom and dad divorced when she was very little, so she doesn't recollect a lot of that time before the divorce.  She remembered thinking of the motorcycle.  Her step-father had a motorcycle when him and her mom first got married.  She remembered him giving her rides on the back of it to a park of sorts.  She thought that this was neat.  She remembered times of going to his job and watching him work.  She remembered the great times her family had together.

     He was nice to her and never yelled or spanked much, but always cared.  Was she thinking of the same man that later showed his true self?  Even in the midst of the abuse, he seemed to care because she had everything she wanted and needed.  Christmases and birthdays brought many many presents.  To a kid, that was special.  That meant everything to her, when she knew no better.  Confusion set in that first night he touched her.  Was this what love was?  This had never happened before, and she was too young to really know.

     She remembered back in the sixth grade that she had written a note to this girl who had a slight disability.  It was a terrible note that threatened the little girl she wrote the note to.  She would later get into fights and even let a group of kids beat her up at times.  These incidents were the beginning of her destructive behavior.  She was on a downhill spiral that later go way out of control.  She always had a sense of the reality of God, but couldn't relate to Him for the simple fact that a loving God couldn't let little children go through these things.

     By this time everyone was ordering drinks and someone got her attention.  She ordered herself a Dr. Pepper and floated back to a time when life was anything but ordinary.  Ordinary, she thought.  What was ordinary?  Was it like what was on TV, where the family loved each other and nothing bad ever happened?  Or did all kids get hurt in every family?  Maybe, she thought, there was a middle ground.  She dreamed at times that her family was those that were on TV and her fantasy life flourished.  There was one show in particular that she wanted to be a part of.  This family had lots of kids and lots of love.  So she would dream.

     Fantasy was all she had to get by with the day to day struggle of surviving in an enviroment that her step-father had created.  And getting attention was another way she would survive, even if it meant getting attention negatively.  She got to the point where she would only trust the shows on TV, and her maternal grandma.  That was one constant in her life that made sense.  She thought in those days, "At what point did I deserve such an awful situation?"  And "Where do I fit in?"  She in a way knew love from her grandma, but from the man that meant so much to her, that love was twisted.

     She came back to the reality of the year 2012, with all her friends sitting around her.  It was time to give her order to the waitress.  Everyone ordered and they went back to chatting with each other.  She drifted off again.  Times were tough for her, but she had to maintain the facade of having parents or rather a step-father who took good care of her and that was destroying her as well.  She followed those in school that were not good for her and that got her into trouble.  In turn, they would ridicule and bully her, though they were "friends".  She just wanted acceptance and she felt like she wasn't getting the acceptance she deserved, and she wasn't.  She remembered the days when life kept getting harder and harder and she felt worthless to the point of either acting out in bad behavior or trying to get some kind of attention by crying suicide.  

     She remembered the first time she smoked and drank.  She was only twelve in both cases.  She went into an alley and smoked with friends.  She got drunk on New Year's Eve that same year.  She shuttered thinking about those things and wondered how she survived.  She knew it had to be God watching over her and someday calling her to be His.  She reflected and realized that God had a plan for her from the very beginning.  The fact that she was aware of God from the start meant in her eyes that He stepped in everyday to help her along the way.  It was up to her to accept His help.  

     She remembered the first time she wanted to kill herself.  It gave her chills to still think about it.  How if she had, she would be eternally separated from a God that she loved dearly now.  She thought that at the time it was a cry for help, but she could never let people know what was really going on for fear of rejection by friends, as well as family.  The first time she tried, she took several aspirins, not knowing, because of her age, that it would only upset her stomach.  Then she told a friend.