Saturday, March 8, 2008

Finding Peace

*Sarah* was sitting on the stairs just off the kitchen talking to her boyfriend on the phone. The stairs led to the upstairs bedrooms where she and her sister and two brothers slept...boys in one room, girls in the other. There was a door at the bottom of the stairs and she had it closed so she could at least have a little privacy. Privacy was hard to come by in small duplex with six people living in it.
Sarah had just started dating. At age 17 she figured she'd waited long enough and was very happy to have a boyfriend. Before that she had a few in school type boyfriends but having a real life one now was a dream come true. Her boyfriend *Mark* came from a well to do family on the other side of town. He was good looking, attentive and popular....everything a young girl would want in a boyfriend. Sarah spent a lot of time going out with him and spent a lot of time at his house as well.
If she was at his house it meant she did not have to go home. On the outside it looked like they were the perfect little family. But behind closed doors there was yelling, fighting screaming and abuse. Having a boyfriend was an escape. An escape from the world as she knew it. Mark lived in a quiet peaceful home where everyone was respectful of each other and she never once heard anyone raise their voices to each other.
So on this night when Sarah was talking on the phone to her boyfriend her stepfather came home. She did not know if he was drunk or not but as soon as he came home he started in with the yelling. He was raving about waiting for a phone call that had something to do with work. In those days there was no call waiting so calls had to be kept short. Sarah just wanted to talk to her boyfriend and did not want to get off the phone. Her stepfather pulled her off the stairs and she fell into the refrigerator that was at the bottom. She cracked her head on it and immediately a huge bump started forming.
The next day when she went to school she told her friends that she walked into a door. She partly covered the bruise with her hair and some makeup but it was still noticable. She just went on with life, pretending things were normal when inside the pain she had was unbearable. A couple of years later she escaped from this life when she married for all the wrong reasons. It took her many years to find any peace in her life and that only happened when she let God into her life. God had always been there waiting for her to open her eyes and open her heart.

*Names are changed to protect the not so innocent.
Blessings

3 comments:

  1. I think I know this girl! I think I've written emails to her... yes?

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  2. Whose that girl...Lisa? do you know her...

    Nice story Barb as usual

    Angel

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