and a child she became

By Sheila Lavala

My story may belong to me, I understand the names and places of each part but the experience of it belongs to many. To many. From domestic violence to alcoholism, from molestation to verbal abuse, from neglect to abandonment. These are the experiences many of us share. I hope my story inspires you to come out of the shame to walk and live in your victory. Be brave and courageous to love who you are designed to be. 

Take my hand and let me walk you through my life so you can live yours, abundantly loved by the Father. Adored and cherished as His child. 

Let us walk together to become the child we’re meant to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sheila Lavala
• Release date: Nov 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386744610

Book preview

and a child

  she became

Sheila B. Lavala

and a child she became – Sheila B. Lavala – Copyright 2017

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1545289310

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition 2017

Cover Design by Bethany Bortz

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®(NASB),

Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,

1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation 

Used by permission. www.Lockman.org.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

thanks...

Aspecial thanks to my family for loving me along the way in this incredible journey called life. To my dear friends who see the best in me and cheer me on.

Thank you for keeping me connected to my dream.

To the community where I live, especially the local library. Thank you for a peaceful place, that allowed me to sit for hours to write with creativity in a safe place.

To my editor, my spouse and friend, Robert Lavala, who took the roughest of drafts and saw potential in my thoughts. Thanks for taking the pressure of grammar off my mind and for expressing my thoughts in a wonderful way. You pointed me in the direction I needed to go and were willing to see me through to the end.

Cover by Bethany Bortz, Bachelor in Science in Art  bethanybortz.artspan.com

Thank you for your creativity and friendship.

To my Heavenly Father for giving me inspiration. Without His love, this would never have been accomplished.

I thank My Daddy in Heaven, my Papa who has gifted me and called those gifts out for others to enjoy and who has blessed me with loving people along the way to offer help with contests, publishers, editing, and belief in what I am doing.

Table of Contents

who she was

simplicity of a child

dares to dream

imagination of a child

a father’s love

forgiveness

trust me

lives in the moment

freedom

introduction...

As I prepare these words on paper for your eyes to read, I think of you.  A small child, hurting, scared, alone in the darkness.  My story includes each child that has experienced an abusive home growing up.  

I may have been the one to put my story on paper to share with others, but my story represents each boy and girl who has had to learn as an adult what love, safety and family means.

My story may belong to me, I understand the names and places of each part but the experience of it belongs to many. To many.  From domestic violence to alcoholism, from molestation to verbal abuse, from neglect to abandonment.  These are the experiences many of us share.  I hope my story inspires you to come out of the shame to take courage to walk and live in your victory. Be brave and courageous to love who you are designed to be.  

Take my hand and let me walk you through my life so you can live yours, abundantly loved by the Father.  Adored and cherished as His child.  

Let us walk together to become the children we’re meant to be.

Chapter 1

who she was

Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself and spreading out the earth all alone.

Isaiah 44:24

Iam the youngest of eight children. I was cute and fair-skinned with curly red-blond hair that lay upon my head like a brilliant crown of glory. My freckles were something that people noticed right away and could be a point of derision by other kids. If you are someone they have chosen to pick on, anything that is different or sticks out, like freckles and red hair, makes you a target.

I have never understood why differences cause others to be mean-spirited towards you. Maybe they have fears and phobias of things they either have not seen before or do not know.

And children can be the worst and cruelest of all when it comes to shunning another or making fun of them because of the way they look, dress, talk, or what family they came from. I would fall into this outcome, and it would turn out to be the case for me as I grew up. It would not only come from kids but also adults. My teachers in school would have had my brothers in their classrooms and thereby the label, from their misdeeds, would fall onto my already sagging shoulders. The weight of bearing another's moniker is something that no one should have to bear.

My birth followed the premature death of two siblings who lost their lives in the womb. The pain in my mother's heart saturated her being and as she was pregnant with me, those negative emotions penetrated the safe place. Babies can feel, they can know. Of course, the knowing is raw feeling and not intelligence or IQ.

You can be in a situation and not know anything about it, but you can sense and feel that something is wrong. It is the same for a child preparing to enter this life.

The feelings and emotions, the sounds of the mother and her surroundings all play a part in the well-being of the yet-to-be-born child. Everything that may have been in the two unborn children before me would not be known.

My mother would always carry the pain of the loss. This pain would seep out, and I would understand that there were others that didn't make it, others that should be alive and are not. Did I internalize the anger and sadness my mother felt and deep down believe it was somehow my fault? I know now that this type of misguided association is wrong, but at the time did this effect my wellbeing?

I was small for my age and soft-spoken for the most part. Whenever I would voice my opinions, they were not received by my family.  My opinions, when I found the courage to speak them, seemed to come from a little kid and had no value. After all, I always looked much younger than I was and that only made it easier for adults and others who were older to ignore me or ridicule what I had to offer.

Feeling disrespected all the time discouraged me and I learned at an early age what I had to offer was of no value. My opinions were to be kept to myself or else end up tossed out like an unread newspaper.

It didn't take me long to realize that whenever I added my ideas into the mix, they were looked down on from both siblings and parents alike. Of course, everything I had to say didn't meet the same end, but for the most part, I was constantly made to feel like I didn't matter.

We are all products of how our parents raised us. Then, we tend to act out those characteristics with our children. My parents were not immune to this cycle of generational patterns that the Bible labels as generational