Keeping Faith and Holding Strength

When I was a child, my home was not a happy home. The household that I grew up in was dominated by an abusive father. For 8 years, he terrorized my siblings and I, and kept it a secret from my mother. He tortured her, too, but with the threats of violence and unspeakable harm, she never spoke out. I will not go into details, to spare you all from tears. One day, while they were driving home from school, my sister told my mom the things my father was doing. My mother was horrified, and put a plan into motion to get us out of that situation. It took a great deal of sneaking around and clandestine phone calls. She was never allowed to have friends or to leave the house without my father being present, so the struggle to get us out without him finding out what was happening and punishing us all however he deamed fit, something that still gives me nightmares, became a solo mission that she endured. My mother was able to find help through TESSA, a domestic violence center in the city where I lived. She never had help from any of her peers, and not even her children knew what was going on, because it was too dangerous. About a month after that car ride that my mother and sister shared, my mother picked my siblings and I up from school. We drove right past our house and downtown. We were all confused, and at best hopeful that there would be ice cream involved, because as 6, 8, and 9 year old kids, there was seldom more important than ice cream. But instead, we went to this house with women all over. They all treated us with amazing amounts of kindness and sat us down to talk about our father. We told them stories that made their faces contort in varying degrees of fear and anger. They let us stay there that night, and my mother called the police and started the paperwork for a restraining order and a divorce. My mother stayed strong through all of this, and to this day that is the most impressive show of strength that I have witnessed. It blows my mind that she was not only able to escape that situation, but also to get her three children out, all undercover and without the support of anyone else. She was not held on a pedestal and celebrated as she should have been, however. My mom was always a very religious person. She was very close to God and frequently went to church to find guidance. Staying true to this, we went to church the following Sunday. After mass and the following social interactions that controlled most of the day, we found a priest for my mother to talk to and find advice for what to do next. I expected the priest to hold her on a pedestal and praise her for saving the three of us and herself. Instead, she was met with scrutiny for breaking apart her family and divorcing her husband. After all, according to the bible, that is wrong. The members of the church soon found out and agreed with the priest. Everywhere my mother went to find peace and guidance from life that involved church, she was shunned and met with judgement and shame. SHe did not let that break her faith, however. She kept praying and asking for guidance. A large part of me believes that this tremendous amount of prayer and faith is what helped us to finally rid ourselves of the evil that had held my house for so long. My mother taught me in that period of my life to keep your faith. Be that your faith that things will get better, your faith in your family, or your faith to a higher power, find somewhere to put your faith and never let it waiver. Let it be a post to tie the horse of your will to. And if you bury that post deep enough, your will will never falter, and it will never fail. She also taught me to keep the strength. Stay strong not only to what you believe but to what you know is right. Do not let anything break your strength. You have the power to change your life and to change the lives of the people around you. If you pay enough attention, you may have the strength to save their lives entirely. My mother was and still is a very strong person. At the moment that I am writing this, my grandfather is being taken off of the ventilator that has been keeping him alive for the last few days. My mother is right there, ensuring that his wishes are being followed, even though she disagrees. She knows that that is what he wants, and that that is what needs to be done. I do not have the strength that she does. I am writing because that is the only way I can prevent myself from breaking entirely. Yet she stays strong. She takes control and ensures that everything is right. She prays often and finds guidance. Then she takes that guidance and passes it on. If there is anything that she has taught me in life, it is that there is always a way to be strong and there is always something to put your faith in. Those are lessons that I am lucky to have learned and are going to be guiding me through the entirety of my life. And I know that one thing I can always put my faith in, one thing that will never fail to be a beacon of strength and will, is my mother. And I put my faith in her every day.