I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

The house of my childhood was not a home; it was a theater of echoes. The walls held the vibrations of shouting matches, the slamming of heavy doors, and the jagged silence that followed, which was often worse than the noise. As a little girl, I spent my days standing in the periphery of my parents' lives, holding out my accomplishments like offerings, hoping for a crumb of validation.

Look at this drawing I made. Look at how well I did on my test. Just look at me.

But the eyes I needed to see me were always turned inward, locked in their own storms of resentment and rage. No one ever came to save me. I lived in a house built of dark corners and twisting passages of despair, navigating hallways where I had to learn to be my own guardian, my own hero, and my own comforter.

I thought that by growing up, the haunting would stop. But life, in its strange, relentless cruelty, threw more tests my way. I became a woman, and the girl who needed protection became a mother who had to provide it. At forty-four, as I look in the mirror, I see the lines of a woman who has lived a thousand lives in one. The hardest truth I carry is the weight of seven children, only two of whom I have been able to raise. The grief of those losses and separations is a hole in my heart that kept me bleeding for years.

I spent decades playing the role of the woman who "gets back up." I would fall, the dust of failure and heartbreak settling in my lungs, and I would brush myself off. I did it over and over again, until my hands were calloused and my spirit was frayed. I was tired of being my own savior.

Then, in the quiet, desperate middle of a broken night, the rescue finally came. It didn't arrive in the form of a person—not a parent, not a partner, not a friend. It arrived as a Presence.

I opened the Bible, and for the first time, I didn't see ink on a page; I saw a lifeline. I discovered that I had a Father who had been watching the whole time. In the scriptures, I found the promises of a Dad who didn't fight, didn't ignore me, and didn't leave. He stepped into the corners of my despair and turned on the light.

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

The words were not just ink—they were a vow.

I realized that Jesus had been the one picking me up every time I fell, even when I didn't know it was His hand on my shoulder, even when I thought I was standing on my own strength. He didn't belittle the woman I had become. He didn't judge the mistakes of my past or the gaps in my story. He looked at me with a love that didn't demand perfection—it only demanded that I come home.

Today, at forty-four, I am a different woman. I have let go of the ghost of the girl waiting for her parents to say "I’m proud of you." I have found a deeper, more permanent embrace. I have found my peace, and His name is Jesus.

I am no longer the girl who had to save herself. I am the woman who was rescued by the King of Kings. I have decided that I will never go back to the darkness. I will walk in this light, I will teach my children the beauty of this grace, and I will pray, with every breath, that my family finds the same shelter I have found.

Thank you, Jesus, for finding me in the rubble. Thank you for being the Dad I never had. I am safe now. And for the rest of my days, I am forever Yours.