Oh, goodness. Where do I begin? I have learned over the years that every Christian has a different testimony. Some are very positive and uplifting, while others are not so much so. I happen to fall into the latter portion of that description.
I was born on January 29, 1986 in Marietta, Georgia to Joan (pronounced Jo-Anne) and James Hill, III. My father named me Heather and my mother gave me her middle name, Lynn. I have two older brothers, Greg and Marcus, who were from a previous marriage of my mother's. Fourteen months later, my sister was born. My mother raised the 4 of us by herself, to the best of her ability. If you're wondering why I ended that sentence in that manner, it's because my mother was and still is, an alcoholic. She didn't have a very positive upbringing considering that my grandfather was an alcoholic who molested my mother at a young age (and myself, once, years later). He had threatened my grandmother many times with the empty promise of killing her and all the children. Once able, she left before he was able to put the plan into action. With that rocky foundation embedded in my mother's memory, she carried with her, a sense of void and emptiness that she filled with alcohol and company at a very young age. Needless to say, she was the most beautiful and youngest of all her siblings, but was also the black sheep as well.
Ever since I was a little girl, there were no hot meals on the table waiting, no bedtime stories, and sometimes, not even a mother at home when she should have been. My brothers were our babysitter and if not them, a friend of the family would watch us while my mother spent her nights at bars or out with some random stranger. Sadly, she had the audacity to bring those strangers home to where her children were.
With my mother's alcoholism, came the abuse. Flashback to the 90's and you will find that parents and the law was more lenient to allow children to run the streets than they are now. If mom wasn't home, we would take off with friends and just walk the neighborhoods to each other's houses. (Going back to the place of residence, I only stayed in Georgia a couple of months after birth, but we all eventually settled in Xenia, Ohio where I grew up. My sister and I came to Tennessee in 1999.) Walking the city streets of Ohio was nothing short of "ganster-like" compared to this East Tennessee region where I now reside. Rap music was the only music I had ever heard or been around and even the dress among peers and friends were considered "thuggish."
I can't remember exactly when my mother first starting abusing us or me for that matter, but I do remember the times when she did. Another thing I couldn't understand was why me? My little sister never got hit once. Was it because I was the oldest girl? The quiet one? One reason, I believe, was because I always took the blame so she wouldn't get in trouble. In one instance, she beat me with a Bible so hard that I actually talked to a counselor at school about it. I remember one person coming to the house and talking to my mother about it and after she gave me one of her infamous eye glares, I never told on her again. Another instance involved a backhand to the face that I didn't see coming. I remember seeing black dots and holding my left eye as she was driving down the road still yelling at me convincing herself that I had lied to her about a friend of mine. Another instance involved being drug across our living room floor by the head of the hair. Besides the physical abuse, faithfully remained the verbal and emotional abuse. Time and time again, there was a flow of discouraging words and fowl language that trickled from her mouth.To this day, she still slurs her words from sun up to sun down. Her liver is shot and she can barely eat because her body rejects anything that isn't alcohol. I'd say she weighs around 80-85 lbs now.
My worth as a young child was slowly deteriorating. I had cried for a father who chose the life of needles over me (he is now deceased. I found him dead in his home a couple of years ago after his heart finally gave out over the years of drug abuse. He had been dead for at least a week. He was another victim of childhood abuse). I had hoped and dreamed of having a normal life. I wanted an involved mother who stayed at home with us, took care of us, attended school events, so forth and so on. The other side of me pitied her because she was, for many reasons, a single mother. She wasn't your typical mother on the job either. My mother was a roofer. She would climb ladders with the rest of the men and work just as hard. She was always the only female you would see up there busting away and having lunch and beers with the rest of them. That atmosphere is what she loved and what she was good at it. From time to time, she would occasionally clean homes when in the mood and all that time spent working didn't seem to affect our cabinets. I can remember being so hungry that we would make ourselves sugar bread. All this involved was just bread, when available, and sprinkled sugar on top. Another "meal" we got used to eating was raw potatoes. Yes, you read right, raw potatoes. My brothers would help peel the skin off and if they weren't around, we would just grab one and eat the peel and all without the knowledge of washing it off first. On a good day, Mom would bring home a pack of Pepsi. When my brother Greg got a job at Long John Silver's, he would try his hardest to bring home some extra food for us to eat. On other days, there was no food, but she made sure she bought herself some cigarettes, beer, and lottery tickets. I remember envying my friends and their families and begging my mom to let me spend the night with them to which she was obliged to allow so she didn't have to put up with me.
With my mother being an alcoholic, she had been hospitalized for awhile to try and see if she could be "cured." It lasted a couple of weeks and she quickly relapsed after she left out from under supervision. One condition was that she was told to enter AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) after her ordeal (Unfortunately, in those days, AA was used as a place to find someone to hook up with or relapse with). While other kids were at sports events, church, restaurants, etc., my sister and I spent our free time with our mother at her meetings. Having not been raised in church, my sister and I first learned The Lord's Prayer at her meetings. Before every meeting, they would repeat The Lord's Prayer in unison and then go around saying "Hi, my name is _____ and I am an alcoholic. I have been sober for ___ days." Looking back, I see how God planted that first seed in my heart: reciting The Lord's Prayer in an AA meeting. That was the first seed.
The second seed was planted during another AA meeting of my mother's. I don't know if they do this today, but years ago, in Ohio, the meeting place changed from time to time. This time, it was in a big, beautiful church with stained glass windows and green pews. It had an upstairs and downstairs that was filled with little classrooms. To keep us quiet, my mom would let us go downstairs by ourselves to roam the rooms and play with the toys. I remember how happy I felt being there. I knew it was a church, but I didn't know any Bible stories or anything really about God or why Church existed. One day, I grabbed a piece of chalk, walked over to the green board and wrote my address on it, hoping someone would find me and take me there on a regular basis. To this day, I don't know how I knew my address, but I do know, that God was there with me, watching me. A couple of days later, people pulled up in a car and asked my mom if they could take us to church after seeing what I wrote and she let us.
We were slowly led to a church called "Grace Community Church" in Xenia where many of my friends had gone. At this time, I was young and because my mother saw it as a break, she never came with us. There, I had learned some but my attentions were elsewhere because of my youth and excitement of being there with friends. I still didn't understand anything about God or salvation. Some time later, my mother hit a breaking point, mentally. She had always been physical with the boys and one day decided that she couldn't raise them anymore. Their paternal grandparents came to retrieve them one day and all I can remember was seeing my big brothers get into a car and driving off, not realizing that that was the end of our childhood together. I remember my eldest brother, Greg, coming back one time by himself to take my sister and I out to eat because he knew that we would always be hungry as long as we were still with our mother. While scarfing down the food he bought for us out in town, I remember seeing the look of sadness on his face, the look of helplessness. I knew he wished he could do more, but there was nothing he could do for us at that time because he lived far away and had a new life and we were still suffering the consequences of our mother's disease.
No sooner had she kicked them out, that my sister and I found ourselves taking one black trash bag each, filled with a couple of stuffed toys and clothes, and driving on the interstate towards my Aunt's house in Wilmington. I had just started my 8th grade year when she dropped us off. I liked the school, but the home situation had been a little rough on my Aunt and Uncle. I learned later that my mother had given her sister no warning of our coming and that, tied in with their own circumstances, we found ourselves traveling again with my mother. However, this time, we were headed to Tennessee to my paternal grandparent's home in Tellico Plains. I think I vaguely remember my mother crying as she drove down the interstate, but not enough to make me feel sad. So, as we pull into my grandmother's driveway, we hop out with what was left of our childhood in one black trash bag and ran to greet a smiling grandmother. Her warm hugs and kisses always made us feel wanted. My mother pulled off after giving us a final goodbye and my grandmother brought us in to tell us that we were there to live from now on. The news baffled me and confused me, but on the other hand, it made me feel happy because I felt loved there.
As soon as we settled in, I walked into my new 8th grade classroom at the Junior High in the middle of the year. The atmosphere of students was extremely different from the "thuggish" surroundings I had been used to while in Ohio. Everyone was more friendly, more conservative, and just plain normal to me. After school, I always looked forward to coming home to grandma and grandpa's. My grandpa worked all the time and was also very busy with our church, First Baptist. My grandmother worked two jobs up until she realized that sticking with one would be better for my sister and I if we ever needed her to run to us while at the school. Every night, she cooked hot meals and we always sat at the table and waited until grandpa finished blessing the food. My grandpa was big on basketball because he used to be captain of his basketball team (and of his football team) when he was in school, so we decided to put our time into playing Jr Pro basketball while attending school. They came to every game and cheered us on and it felt good knowing that they were watching (considering that my sister was a lot better! lol). Because of my grandpa's relationship with Christ and devotion to the Church, we were there every single time the doors opened.
My sister and I joined the youth group and I received what I consider, my final seed that blossomed. All those years spent feeling alone, abused, helpless, hungry, thirsty, etc., were now filled with a fullness that gave my heart a leap like nothing else. Suddenly, a void had been filled. I accepted Christ at the end of my 8th grade year, lying in my bed, crying my eyes out. Since then, I had been on a high like no other. Through high school, I served as VP of a Christian club called "Teens for Christ", officer of the FCA, and won the precious award from the Sweetwater Baptist Association for a grant. During my youth, I had spent time on mission trips to St. Simmon's Island, GA., trip to St. Petersburg, FL. with the church, and even went to the country of Panama to do door-to-door evangelism to the the residents while we spent nights showing "The Passion of the Christ" in the streets for all who wanted to see it.
All that happened to me during my childhood was God conditioning me for better things. He was slowly leading me to the cross and even though I don't understand why I had to take the path I did, the one He gave me, I do know this: He was there the whole time. When I sit and think about it, I envision Him standing right there behind a little blonde-haired girl, who was too scared to look up or even speak, just watching everything that was happening. It feels as if He was there every single time there was a blow or a derogatory remark thrown my way. He was there surrounding me with His presence and what I imagine to have been my own guardian angel to watch over me. Not once did He allow my mother's physical blows to cause a deadly blow. Not once did He allow her to push me to the point of turning out to want to be like her. Having known me or just meeting me, this may all come as a surprise considering the life I live now in Christ and believe me, I have left a lot out that is considered inappropriate or just too Rated R for your thoughts that involved my mother and her "acts" that no child should have seen or been exposed to, but know this: Our past DOES NOT define us. We don't have to use our past as an excuse for how we live now. I have experienced things (that I left out) that no child should ever have to experience. If your testimony and/or childhood was rough starting out, know that God is waiting, waiting for you. You aren't the only one who has seen the face of evil manifested. You aren't the only one who has struggled in life at the expense of others. There is a Hope and Hope has a name. He is Yahweh.
Please pray for my mother and her condition. Thank you.
