Christianity Wrap-Up Part II - Dawn's Story [the caretaker]

This is Dawn’s Story.

I’m the oldest of 6 kids and all of those kids are either half siblings or adopted. Obviously, I came from a fractured home, and in my case, it was fractured more than one time.

My mom was an alcoholic and a drug addict. I was born in Houston and when I was about two years old, my mom, who was pregnant at the time with my little sister, left her home under the cover of night, took me and moved with a Marine to California. She had my little sister, then eventually my little brother, and I remember from the time I was about five years old being surrounded by people who were doing drugs, drinking, a lot of sex. I remember seeing my mom on drugs and drunk. I was molested more than one time when I was a kid, just being around all the sexual promiscuity, the drugs, and the alcohol abuse.

Being the oldest child, at five I started taking care of not only myself, but my siblings and sometimes my mom too. I learned at a very early age to take care of people, and to be nurturing of other people. I also learned at that age that my feelings didn’t matter, and so I learned to mash them all down. Although I was the sounding board for my younger brother and sister, and I was the one they came to when they were hurt, I didn’t have anyone to go to with my hurt, and so I just ignored it.

My first experience with organized religion was when we moved to California and the Jehovah’s Witnesses reached out to us. We were a mess, and they sort of swooped in and were very kind to my mom and to us, taking care of us, and trying to help us. That had such an impact on my mom that I think to this day, she would say that she is Jehovah’s Witness.

My step-father was in the Marines, and what I took away from that relationship was a very “Sir, yes, Sir!” mentality with relation to how I saw God. I saw him more as a distant unemotional father who barked orders and expected instant obedience. I didn’t see that he was a loving Father at all because I thought “ok, if you’re such a loving father, then why did these things happen to me and my brother and sister growing up? We were just kids and shouldn’t have been exposed to those kinds of things.” And so I blamed him in one part, and in another way, I just took care of everyone else ((and did a far better job than I felt God was doing)).

I lived in California with my mom, my sister, and my brother until I was almost 10 years old. Just before I turned ten, my mother had a complete mental breakdown. The State of California came in and took custody of us three kids. My younger sister was 6 and my brother was 5. The State had to track down our fathers because my mother was incapable of caring for us. At the time, my siblings’ father was in Vietnam fighting with the Marines during the Vietnam War, so it took a little while to find him and get my brother and sister moved to his custody, but my dad was very easy to find and he came immediately to pick me up.

Overnight, I was removed from what I felt like was my “normal” family. My dad picked me up in California and moved me in with his family. He had remarried and had a five year old daughter, and they lived in Mississippi. My dad was immediately granted full custody of me and in a moment, my life changed completely – I went from taking care of my brother and my sister and my mom to living with a dad and a step-mother and a new sister, and I felt like my arms had been cut off because my other life was all I knew, and I didn’t know what to do with this new situation. My identity at that young age was all wrapped up in what I could do for other people and how I could take care of them. Thankfully, I had a younger sister at my dad’s house – his daughter with my step-mother – and she was my saving grace in some respects because I had at least one person to take care of immediately and to focus on.

Although the obvious abuse was gone, in many ways I went right from one dysfunctional family to another when I moved in with my dad at ten. Because my step-mother had undiagnosed and unmedicated Bipolar Disorder, many times life at home was like being on a roller coaster and I played the buffer between my step-mom and the kids, trying to parent the younger kids. The older I got, the more I struggled with resentment because I had to be the adult in the family, and all the adults just seemed to disappear when there was absolute chaos in the house.

My dad went to a Lutheran church and so when I came to live with him, I started attending that church in Mississippi. I really enjoyed Sunday School and things like that, and when I was ten or eleven, I went to a youth lock-in for the first time and heard the story about Jesus and how he gave his life for us on the cross. There was an invitation given for anyone who wanted to accept Christ as their Savior and I was one of the first ones who responded going down to the front to do that… But I had no clue what I was doing at all. What I understood was that Jesus was a great guy and he was treated unfairly to the point where it cost him his life. I felt like what I was doing was standing up for Jesus and trying to protect him in some way, like I had stood up for my younger siblings and protected them.

From the age of ten, when I moved to be with my dad, I was fortunate to grow up in a Christian home. Regardless of the dysfunction and the stuff that a lot of families go through, there were a lot of wonderful and awesome things that came out of it too. It put me on the path where God met me.

At the end of fifth grade, we moved to Texas and we started going to the church that I grew up in, Shady Grove Church, where we became very involved in church and kids programs. When I was fifteen, for the first time I really understood what it meant that Jesus gave his life for me. I realized for the first time the personal significance Jesus not only died on a cross for the world, but he died on a cross for ME. For MY sins. And so when I was 15, I truly gave my life to Christ, and knew from that point on that what I wanted to do with my life was to love him and serve him in whatever way I could.

I went to a Christian school from sixth grade through high school, graduating a year early with every intention to attend Oral Roberts University the fall of my seventeenth year. However, through a series of events and people, God-ordered serendipity sent me another direction, and I decided to spend a year going to Youth with a Mission (YWAM), a youth discipleship and missions organization based out of Lindale, Texas. At the time, it just seemed like a pit stop, but now I realize it was really destiny. I was going on straight path toward my goal and suddenly I made a hard right and it changed my life from that moment on.

The first thing it changed was my relationship with God. Up until that point, I had never understood or related to God as a father, but through a long process at YWAM where they taught us about the “father heart” of God, I began to understand God’s heart toward me, and relate to him differently than ever before. Not living with my dad until I was ten and living in the dysfunction that I grew up in, it had jaded the way I saw God.

But what I came to understand for myself is that MY choices affected not only me, but the people around me. Other’s choices, including my mom’s and dad’s, had the same affect. I could hurt other people and that wasn’t God’s fault. I could be hurt by the people I loved and that wasn’t God’s fault either. So the healing began in my heart at YWAM.

Don’t get me wrong, I was still angry. I was angry that God had allowed those things to happen to me. I was angry that YWAM wanted me to relate to God as a father. But I was beginning to understand this whole complicated relationship with God boiled down to two things: grace and love.

After YWAM, I never ended up going to college. I went on the road for a year with Musicians for Missions, then I joined the road crew of a Christian band called Harvest, and I spent eight years as their “Girl Friday”, living out of a suitcase and travelling the world. Even though we were touring the world and never in one place for very long, we would return to places time and again, and it was during this time that I really fell in love with discipleship – that is, with helping people grow in their relationship with God, and empowering others to become closer to God through his Word and relationship.

Going through the childhood that I did, and through the experiences that followed, I can look back now and see the work that God was doing then and the reasons why. Although I couldn’t see it then, I can see today his plan and purpose for the things I went through. It seems so obvious now that God’s hand was always with me. My childhood spent caring for others in my life was a stepping stone in a natural progression toward the work I have today: I developed a passion for caring for people, and loving people. I had been hurt, so I understood hurting angry people. I had not had an ideal life, but I had a strong sense of God’s love and compassion. I believe that all of it worked together to prepare me for this life that I have now, as a pastor, and, in some ways, I’m not surprised that God has called me to be a pastor, because ever since the very beginning, even under very difficult circumstances, God has been working all of those things together for his purposes.

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Dawn is the pastor of Whosoever Dallas. Check out their website and service times as well as activities they have going on by going to http://www.whosoeverdallas.org/ .

There is so much more to Dawn's story, hopefully I will be able to share *the rest of the story* on my wrap up at the end of the Journey.