Normal

When I give people a glimpse into my past, I’m often asked how I turned out so normal. Normal. What is that?

Normal used to be two parent households with two and a half kids and a dog in the yard, living in nice, neat little neighborhoods. Look around you. That’s not normal anymore. Normal is divorce, child abuse, alcoholism, adultery. Normal means broken. Is this what people mean when they tell me that I’ve turned out normal? If normal means broken, I don’t want to be normal. Please let me be abnormal. Let me rise above my circumstances and be an anomaly.

So, who am I really? Am I normal? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve come to like who I am over the past several years. I use to wallow in the misery that was thrust upon me as a child. I embraced the label, “Victim” and allowed myself to walk around, broken. Anyone who would listen would hear just how horrible a hand I was dealt. Woe is me, I had an awful childhood, pity me. One day, a few years ago, I woke up. I realized that I could make a difference in my life and the lives of those around me by refusing to wallow in self pity and sorrow. I refuse to let the past that I can’t change dictate who I am today. I refuse to accept the labels anymore. Instead, I will become the best me I can be and raise my children to love the Lord and themselves.

Today I can hold my head high. I’m a single mom, but I don’t have to embrace the negative connotations that title exudes. I can focus on raising my children in the manner God wants me to, to love Him and look upon Him as their father. My income indicates that I live in poverty, but God is in charge of my provision, not my paycheck. I will not walk around in dirty clothes with my hair not brushed. I won’t bring my children out with dirty faces and unwashed clothes and hair. I will not teach them to hang their heads in shame because they can’t afford the name brands and aren’t enrolled in every dance class and martial arts lesson under the sun. I want my kids to appreciate what they have and be thankful for what God has provided for them. I will teach my children to like themselves for who they are and one day, I pray, they will carry out the plan God has for their lives. My kids won’t be normal, at least, that’s my prayer for them.

I haven’t always had a good attitude about who I am. Before my grand revelation about being the best me I could be and loving myself, I was quite broken and scared. I was suicidal and depressed. I didn’t feel like I could ever amount to anything. I embraced my victim status and let my past dictate my views of the future. It wasn’t until I began to look at myself and see how my past had shaped me but didn’t define me that I could really move forward and grow. God doesn’t want me to be defeated and depressed. I have victory in Him no matter how bad my childhood was. I’m no longer a victim but a victor.

In order to understand how I've come to this place, one must first visit my childhood. In order to understand me, one must know what I’ve been through and how I became the person I am today. So journey with me, if you will, through the days of my childhood, the days that brought me sorrow and pain but also taught me how to survive…