Growing up

I’ve known about Jesus pretty much my entire life. I‘ve went to church for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t just something that I did, it was the way that I lived, it was my whole life. My papa was the preacher at the church we went to, and my uncle was also a preacher at a church I went to vbs at. Not only that, but my Mom, Aunt, and Grandma were in a southern gospel band.

So that being said, a large majority of my life consisted of church events and gospel singings. My family raised me to know about Jesus and his love for me, but I didn’t grow up a perfect christian kid. (No such thing exists.)

Family

I had a very flawed family, as most of us do. Both of my parents had been divorced twice, and my relationship with my dad wasn’t the best. He wasn’t a bad guy by any means, we just never bonded. Like him, my mom‘s boyfriends came and they went, so I learned early on not to get too attached.

There were only two men in my life who never seemed to hurt or leave me. Those men were Papa, and Uncle Shannon. But I soon came to realize even they wouldn’t be here forever...

When I talk about my family I’m not just talking about the people I live with. I’m talking about the whole inner circle of my family. I’m talking about my Mom, my Sister, Gram and Papa, my Aunt Misty, my Uncle Shannon, and my cousins Nikole and Devin. It was just the 9 of us most of my life, but our family continued to grow. Mom got married to Josh, Aunt Misty adopted Lahni, Nikole got married to Evan, and then they had a baby. But just because there were more of us, didn’t mean we got further apart.

We were the kind of family who went on vacations every year, and had cookouts every weekend while we played cards. We were the kind of family that all had sleepovers together. (yea believe it or not those do exist.) We were kinda just a weird reality TV shows, except it was actually my life.

My childhood wasn‘t perfect by any means. In fact, there are parts too screwed up for me to even talk about. But the one good thing in my life, the one thing I could always count on to seem good in the midst of all the bad, was my family.

My family wasn’t perfect either, they were very VERY far from it. (No offense family...lol) But they were a family and at the end of the day I knew that they were there for me, and that was all I could’ve asked for.m

-tori💛