Coping

I really don't know how I coped with everything that was happening in my young life. I remember not being home much if I could help it. I would leave in the mornings and go into the woods with my brothers and sister and some of the neighborhood kids. We would spend hours exploring, swinging on grapevines out over the small creek that ran through the woods and just escaping into a different world.

I think that is why I love nature so much, it is comforting to me. I love the quiet of the woods and country fields where all you would hear would be birds singing or the wind rushing through the grass or trees. I think of this as a blessing in my life...the appreciation I have for the beauty and peace of nature. The blessing of being able to enjoy the quiet. I know people now who cannot stand quiet, they have to have the radio on or they have to be busy doing something. Not that those are bad things but they miss out on the insight that can come to you when you are alone in the woods or fields just contemplating your life.

I remember one time when I went out to a cemetery, it's always quiet in a cemetery, that was next door to where we lived. I had been yelled at or put down or something of that sort, can't remember exactly what now, but I was crying and wondering why I was not loved or why my family was the way it was. I was about 10 or 12 yrs old, and I remember it like it was yesterday. I heard a distinct voice say to me...."This is not your real home, someday you will wake up and be with your real Father and Mother". I did not understand what that meant at that time. It wasn't until years later when I was taught that I was a daughter of Heavenly Father who loved me and that someday I could return to live with him that I understood.

I am so grateful for that experience at that time in my life....that voice gave me hope. Hope, to a sad little girl who needed to feel loved, from a loving Father in Heaven. I am also grateful for those early experiences that sent me out into nature to find peace, for I still love nature and seek it's comfort and enjoy it's beauty. Would I have felt this way about nature if my early childhood had been different? I doubt it, so I can in someway be thankful for that chaotic family life I had.