This story is a very special one to me, and I felt that it was so important to share. It is a very complex story filled with losses throughout Kelly’s life. In order for readers to really absorb every detail, I have decided to break up Kelly’s life story into sections, which will eventually lead up to her present life. Trust me, there IS a happy ending here, but it comes with much loss and heartache. I began sharing her story in Part 1, so if you missed the previous parts of the story, I recommend you go and read them before starting this one. I hope that you will follow through the 7 days so that you can see how her story unfolds and where she is now. Here we go with Part 3 of 7…
Author: Kelly Lynn
After moving to Colorado, my Dad was dating a woman who was a lot older, and she was just mean. She didn’t like kids, nor want them, yet here she was dating a man with two kids – one is 9, and the other is 15. He eventually broke things off with her after my older brother turned to drugs and left home when he was 16 and never came back. He was still in town, but he wouldn’t build a relationship with my Dad, and he made things challenging. In 7th grade, my Dad started dating another woman, which he eventually moved in with. Where was I? I was left home alone, in a trailer with no heat/electricity, no food, and I would have to walk to school in the cold and snow, by myself. And yes, the tales you always hear about people walking uphill in the snow, are true in this case! I spent many nights alone and many weekends alone.
I started hanging out with the wrong crowd of girls, and one day we were all caught shoplifting from a store. We were arrested, and parents were called. My Dad came to get me, and as I am sure you can imagine, he was NOT happy at all. I was going to be disciplined the only way he knew how, which was spanking. Even though I was in 7th grade, getting spanked was not unusual for me. Well as a typical kid, I was trying to “dodge” the metal spoon and he ended up getting my legs. The next day I wore shorts to school and there were marks and bruises on my legs, and that opened a case to be investigated. Being rebellious and a bratty kid, I insisted that I never wanted to go home, that I didn’t want to live with him, and that things were terrible. I’m sure I embellished more than what the actual truth was (to a degree), and it turned sour really quick. I was taken from my Dad, put in foster care at the age of 12, and I never returned home. Bouncing around foster home to foster home and even a group home a couple of times, I saw things that were so heartbreaking. I thought I had it bad at home, but there are so many children out there who truly do have it worse. We should ALWAYS keep that in mind. For 2 years, I was placed with one family, and I later found out that the father had been molesting one of the oldest boys for years. I didn’t find out until I was well into my twenties. We think that foster homes are supposed to be safe havens, but not all of them are.
While I do consider this Loss #3, losing that “home life” with the last person I considered family after the death of my Mom, it did bring some great things into my life. Being in numerous foster care homes, I was introduced to a lot of different things, one being faith and religion. I started attending a few different churches and was introduced to God and the Bible. Although I can look back on it now and realize it only caused more confusion, it helped open that door to allow the faith and Word of God to roll in. I was able to attend a various amount of churches, concerts, and even was able to attend “Acquire the Fire” as an early teen, which was a wonderful experience. But then God became a distant memory as time went on and I finished school.
FindJoy 