For as long as I can remember, my family has always been involved in the church. Throughout my life, I have participated in Daisies, Awanas, Vacation Bible School, Youth Group, and I even began volunteering in the children’s ministry at my church during the Saturday night services. The Lord has always been an integral part of my life, thus solidifying my need to make sure that I found a Christian community to plug myself into upon entering college.

I grew up in Kenosha, WI, and it has always just been my mom, my sisters, and me. Whenever I would meet and have “getting-to-know-you” conversations with other Christians and non-believers, I would always mention how it has just been my mom and my sisters and how much they mean to me. This, more times than not, led to the question, “Can I ask you about your father?” I never was comfortable discussing the situation with my father, so I would just brush it off by saying that there was not much to say about him because he did not live with me. In high school, I was never a fully open book. Even my closest friends knew very little about me, and when they would ask questions about my father, I would immediately change the subject. It was like a never-ending game of dodgeball. For me, talking about my father with anyone who wasn’t my mom was a very difficult process. I figured if I shoved that part of me into the depths of my soul it would just go away, and that is what I did for a long time in my life.

I went to Fall Getaway for the first time last year, and hearing all the brave women share what was on their heart really touched me. It made me do some soul searching, and I realized how much anger I have towards my father. A few weeks after Fall Getaway, I decided to open up for the first time to someone other than my mom. I began to tell two of my closest friends about my father.

My father has only seen me 3 times: when I was born, when I was 6 months old, and again when I was 8 years old. When I was 8, my younger sister and I went to visit our father in Texas. At the time, I was very excited to visit him because he wasn’t in my life at all, and I was super excited to have that father-daughter relationship that every girl I had met had with their dads. However, this trip changed my heart and made me not like my father at all. He would constantly hit me for no reason, take my sister and I to see movies that were inappropriate, which resulted in him calling us disrespectful when I told him we were not allowed to watch them, and would even hit and yell at my sister and me when we would say our nightly prayers before bed because “We shouldn’t be talking when we are supposed to be asleep.” When I look back on those times, it is hard for me to understand why he acted this way towards us because he was very well known in Texas for his gospel radio station, so it seemed as if Christ should have been the center of his life.

Psalm 68:5 says, “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.” This verse really resonates with me. My mother always did an amazing job with my sisters and I to make sure there was always a smile on our face, so it was never really an issue for me that my father wasn’t around. The opposite can be said about my father. He never provided for my sister and me, whether it be through paying child support, saying happy birthday to us, or even checking in to see how we were doing. However, I find rest in knowing that God has continuously provided for me in ways that my earthly father has not. One way that God has worked in my life is through allowing me to attend this university fully funded. Although I had smaller universities trying to recruit me to play basketball and that would have resulted in me having no student loans, I knew that God had a different plan for me. I did not want to play basketball in college. I wanted to focus solely on academics as my ultimate goal is medical school. Therefore, as I was applying for schools, I knew that I would need to take out loans because my mom would not be able to contribute a lot towards my college tuition since she still had three other children to take care of. Although I was hoping my high school grades would somehow financially assist me, faith was all I had at this point. God answered all of my prayers and performed a huge miracle in my life. I received enough scholarships to cover all of my tuition and then some. I am so grateful that He made a way for me to come to Madison because it has truly allowed me to find the most amazing group of Christians who have truly helped me work towards moving past my anger and ultimately forgiving my father just as the Lord, my Father, has forgiven me.