“I believe God will use Karen’s story mightily to transform broken lives and to help the rest of us realize how truly blessed we are not to have suffered as Karen did.”
- Carole Lewis
First Place 4 Health National Director

“What a touching triumph over a difficult childhood. Karen’s raw and honest voice immediately draws us into her life. What a tribute to her inner strength to acknowledge her past and use it as a tool to help others who have also been victims of childhood abuse and neglect.”
- Ruthanne Mefford
Director, Child Advocates of Fort Bend

It begins with Karen’s reality: Bad as home was, I always wanted to go back there, ‘cause I belonged! “Home” is an isolated Appalachian barn where poverty, neglect, and abuse go unseen until the children (twelve) reach school age.

At age five and deathly ill from parasites, Karen watches from the welfare agents’ back seat as her hysterical mom’s image gets smaller while the car speeds away. Terrified, yet determined, she remembers their route; she will get back home. Orphanage memories are horrific, but she thanks God for tricycles and popsicles (her first). Gossip has it the town prostitutes ratted on the family’s health. Moving from hating these women to seeing how God uses them to protect the kids is the beginning of Karen’s faith.

Running from welfare, moving constantly, Karen knows she’s the dirtiest, poorest kid in school. Scenarios change, but chaotic, frightening themes of fear, hunger, abuse and peer ridicule repeat. Then, at age sixteen, Karen senses hope when she marries Terry and prepares her first home, a $4000 trailer, for their child. Could this be stability?

If only! Hard work, little pay, parenting and marriage stresses become overwhelming. Acts of ministry from Karen’s home church sustain her until a new devastating challenge surfaces: providing for her children, extended family, and husband, Terry, who now has a life-threatening illness. Can she manage this trial? Can she preserve?

That day was one of the single most painful days of my life ever!   Two stranger men in fine pressed suits came a bangin on our door.  I must have stayed home from school cause of them worms livin inside all us kids.  So there was my mama home with four small children ages ‘bout five years and under.  Sudden like these men was demandin to come in the door.  They forced my poor little mama to just let them in.  They told her that they had legal papers and rights to take all her children.  She was just devastated; she started cryin, beggin and pleadin.   All us children started screamin, too.  The men, they just scooped us up and fought our mama off as she clawed at them and begged them to leave us alone.   They took us and quick-like started stuffin us in their big black shiny car.  All the while my mama kept yellin', swearin, and beggin’ them to go away.  She was hangin' onto their polyester suits and  clawin at their backs all the while they was shovin us into that car’s hugh fake leather covered seats.  I still remember how they felt, how they smelt and how they stuck to our bare, skinny legs.
       Seems like forever, but they finally got every body in, so quick-like they slammed and locked the doors, and the car started pullin away.   It’s real clear for me: I was lookin' with my nose pressed up to that passenger window toward my mama.  It was bein hard to see ‘cause the dust was blowin as the tires spun.    All of us were so scared and near hysterical, and we saw our mama just layin' in the dirt road, poundin the gravel, clawin down into the dirt for rocks to throw at the car. She kept screamin as loud as she could.  Ignorin her, the men just kept drivin.   There was Ray and James in the front seat, ‘cause they was babies.   Then there was Missy and me in the back.   I was sure, I really knew, we just had to pay attention ‘cause we had to remember how to get back home.   We had no idea where we was goin and why this was happenin.