Personal Narrative-Feminist Christian Girl Life

I have grown up in a Christian home but it wasn't until my junior year of high school when I was at Hume Lake with my youth group that I dedicated my life to being a disciple for Christ. That following summer I went on my first mission trip to Haiti to serve at an orphanage and shortly after returning home I decided to get baptized. My faith was put to the test when my family decided to move from Santa Barbara to Pennsylvania during my senior year. My dad moved there six months early while my mom, my brother and I stayed back and lived in my best friends small guest house so we could finish the school year. My world was completely flipped and nothing was going the way I planned but I knew that I could trust in God in whatever situation he put

I only spent two nights with my first foster parent. She was genuinely sweet and helped me cope with the fact that this was only temporary. After a few days we went to visit my mother at rehab. We held each other tight and cried our sorrows away. Spilling all the sorry’s and I love you’s while we had the chance. Everything turned for the worse when we were driving back to my foster parent’s house. In a matter of seconds the front of the car was engulfed in flames. She was calling out to me to help her unbuckle her seatbelt, it was jammed. I escaped the car and started yelling until the neighbors scooped me up. I never heard from her again. I was released back into foster care. This time I was even more anxious to be put into a new family. I had no mother to turn to, and no one to help

I grew up in the Christian faith, where at a young age I probably accepted Christ, but it wasn’t until my twelfth birthday when I decided to rededicate my life to Him after a friend wrote in a birthday card, “Remember what Jesus was doing when He was twelve?”

I remember on my first day of preschool, my mom told me, “Abby, don’t tell your teachers about your family.” Sitting in my car seat, at the age of 4, I was starting to become overwhelmed with confusion. This confusion bubbled up inside me for years. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask my moms, but I did not have the courage or the strength to ask. Then I grew up. My perspective on the world changed, and I realized that my parents were seen as a calamity to society. That was my perspective though. I wondered what my mom’s was. How did she grow up in a world that only saw her as a flaw in the system? So I asked. Beth Shaffer’s perspective on her past, the present, and the future is an astonishing story.

I walked away feeling like I was a complete failure and that I didn’t deserve to go on. On the way home my mother tried to talk to me, but, I put on my headphones and cried silently. Once we were home my father asked how it went. The tears that were in my eyes and they became more evident as my shoulders and chest were shaking and trembling. The only sound in the room was the sound of me crying and wailing. I started crumbling and falling to the ground and my mother and father rushed to my side. They held me until the tears came to a stop and a little bit afterwards

I am not a repressed housewife. I am not a sweet dormouse that fears making waves. I am a millennial, and I am loud. I am a person who believes in America, and its policy of justice for all. Feminism is a huge aspect of our society. It's hard to scroll through social media without seeing a post about infringement on women's rights. I've never considered myself to be a feminist, and I still don't. However, one incident changed the way that I looked at the world, and how safe I felt within it. This incident showed me who I want to be in the world. My mom and I had just stopped at a Hardee's not too far from my small hometown. We were returning from a college tour downstate, and were starving by the time we reached Manistique. We could smell

I vividly remember that chilly night in March as I walked out of Fifer, the building my father now calls home, for the first time. I had goosebumps, but they were not from the cold I felt hit my skin. Instead, they were from the sickness in my stomach. As I got in the car, I began to cry and had to stop myself from running back inside. My entire world had turned upside-down. How could I go home without my father? How could I leave him in a nursing home, a place where he was too young and mentally fit to be confined? I had to fight the feeling that he didn’t belong. I had to remind myself of why he chose to be there, and I hated it.

Decisions are something we face constantly every day, whether its choosing what to say, which way to go, or even what your gonna eat. We all make decisions some can be hard and so simple.

Little did I know Social Services had already taken my siblings. I was the last one to leave, I saw my mother crying. I can only assume she was crying because she was losing all of her children. She walked over to me and told me “Don’t ever forget that I love you, and will always love you.” Ten to fifteen minutes later a Social Services worker had arrived to take me to my foster bed. A foster bed is just the temporary home before my actual foster home. Two weeks later I was taken to the Social Services building where I was going to meet my foster parents. To my surprise both of my older sisters were there. I was told that we were all going to be with the same foster

In 2012 my father, who is one of my mentors in trying hard and putting so much effort in school, left my house. I had started therapy and continue therapy to this day. It was pretty hard on our family, myself included. We would play waiting games and wondered if he would ever come back. During this time I was starting the first of my harming. This would be taking a razor to my arms and would cut myself. Not only was I wondering if my dad would ever come and live with us and we can

In my junior year of high school, I started dating a girl with whom I would get into a serious relationship with. We grew close and shared our deepest secrets, and I genuinely loved this girl. However, this relationship shattered when I found our she had cheated on me by sleeping with my best friend. I was in a dark place after the event. I retracted myself from society and locked myself in my room only to come out for food. I became cold and saw the world as a cruel joke placed upon its inhabitants. I believed everyone had a side of evil, and that I could trust no one. However, I spent a week of that summer in a program called Marianist LIFE. The program preached to its participants to build Christian communities. There I met kindhearted people

I reluctantly accepted my fate and stayed and made an attempt to rehabilitate myself. 9 months later I was released and I attempted to reintroduce myself to society. Unfortunately I relapsed and my behavior went back to what it was and my outburst became more violent due to the onset of puberty. I was taken back to children’s hospital and the arduous yearlong process began again for my parents. However while I was at children’s I had an awakening of sorts. One of the doctors sat me down in a room and he sat across from me. With a stern look on his face he told me that I would not be able to live with my parents if there was not a change. And continued to say that without this change my parents would put me into foster care; unbeknownst to me this part was a lie. For my 9 year old mind this statement shocked me to the core. After our conversation I sat in my room just thinking about my choices. I knew I had issues and I needed to change. I realized this was my last chance and if I failed I would have no home to go back to so that night I made the conscience decision to do absolutely everything I could to help

Due to economic circumstances and my father's alcohol abuse, my family suffered from family problems and emotional pain. My father would come home drunk and argue with my mother about our economic circumstances. I was too young to understand what was occurring between my parents and I grew up believing that this was the typical family. I remember a specific occasion when my dad came home and he said that he was tired of us. He left my mom with my three siblings and I without money and anywhere to go. This situation terrified me and caused me to focus in school to forget about my personal problems. I could not understand how my father could leave us and not care for us. We then lived in someone's garage because we could not afford a home. Throughout

Before going to Mishawaka Marian, my local Catholic high school, church and God seemed more like a chore than anything. But through those four years, I know that by going through Marian I’ve gained a much deeper knowledge of Christ and how to see him working in my life daily. I’ve had several deep and personal encounters with God and it is through those encounters that I was brought closer to Him and the Christian faith. The most important event that solidified my faith happened first semester of my junior year, when my family got a call from our local hospital saying my grandma was struck by a car and on her way to the emergency room. My whole family’s life was turned upside down by one phone call and things are forever different because of it. Several broken ribs, a broken hip, a major concussion, endless doctors’ appointments and hospital visits later, my grandma was finally back home. We slowly and thankfully began to put the event behind us, but the effect it left on my family will never be able to be put away. Throughout this seemingly endless incident, I learned how important family truly is. I learned great responsibility, how to give and receive help, and not to take a single thing for granted because it could all be gone in just one second. I also felt myself grow nearer to God through this stressful and tragic experience. When you feel like you are alone and have no one to turn to, turn to God. Through Him I am courageously finding my path because I know and trust that God will never leave my side. Through all of these life experiences and memories along the way, I’ve learned so much about myself, how the world works, how God works in my life and where I can begin to see myself fitting into it. It is important to realize that it is through the bad times that we learn the most and

Trusting men with my heart was no longer an alternative. Installed inside me was the dread of deserting. At the point when possible good examples were available or when father and child occasions would come up I would discover a reason not to run with good examples. That was one of my got to self-preservation instruments that I utilize not to give individuals a chance to draw near to me. On the off chance that they attempted; I would blame them for by one means or another selling out me with no proof of disloyalty. My self-protection instruments were to push individuals away and not confide in them with my heart. This one time, I sat on the back patio with my mom, it was a dazzling invigorating night, and a portion of the area children was getting fireflies as they lit up the night sky. I revealed to her how I felt about my father relinquishing us however above all how he forsook my two more younger siblings and I. I disclose to her that I felt that my dad was dismissing his obligations as a father and how much I thought that he was a quitter. I went on my tirade for no less than 45 minutes not knowing how much hurt and disdain I had developed for him within me; I was a ticking time bomb just waiting to implode. My mom just tunes in to me and enable me to continue venting until I was crying and asking God what did we do. What exacerbated