When I was just about to have a baby my mom invited us to come live with her. We had the baby and things didn’t work out. We were on our own after that. We had nowhere else to go. I slept in the car one night with my newborn baby. That was one of those “God, why me” moments. By the time my youngest was two or three months old we went to a homeless shelter. There are things you’re used to doing as a parent, like getting up and preparing a bottle in the middle of the night for your baby. I wasn’t allowed to do that at the shelter. My whole world came crashing down.
One of the requirements at the shelter was going to a therapist once a week. She really opened my eyes to not be angry and not blame God for things that happened. I had a terrible anger issue. My attitude was that it was always someone else's fault I was here, or if that person had not have done that I wouldn’t be here. Changing all that is what bought me closer to God. For example, if you were looking at me you had a problem. My immediate thought would be, “What are you looking at way over there?” The Therapist said, in response to that, “Maybe they think you’re pretty. Maybe they think you have awesome children.
One day we were at the Health Department and this lady was just looking at me. The old me was whispering, “This woman is looking at me.” She came up to me later and said, “I’ve been watching you, and you’re a great mom.” I was, like, “Really?” All this time people may have been thinking things like, “I like her shirt.”, but my thought would have been, “Oh, she has a problem.”
In about a month I was, like, “Hey.” I got into the routine of waking up when you’re supposed to. I was getting everything cleaned up and I was happy about it. I was, like, “This is weird. This is really weird.” The therapist only came on Wednesdays. I got so excited about Wednesdays.
I feel like I have a better relationship with everyone. I wasn't really talking to my dad before then, and my mom, she is one of the “reasons” why I was in the homeless shelter, to begin with. She’s one of my best friends today. Even though the Therapist didn’t approach me with words like, “You need to be closer to Jesus” it definitely became that way.
Discussions