Rejection Is Not My Name

By Regeneis Winters

All of us have experienced some form of rejection and many of us simply sweep it under the rug and pretend it is unimportant. Regeneis Winters knows how important it is to deal with the pain that stems from rejection right away. She herself went through moments of rejection in her life and by God's grace, she was able to prevail and learn from the experience. Now you, too, can do the same!

When Winters wrote REJECTION IS NOT MY NAME, she realized that she still had some deep-seated pain inside her. More importantly, she knew that she needed to be delivered from this hurt before she could move on to the next chapter in her life. In her book, she shares inspiration and insights on how she was able to overcome the things that held her back from living a life of joy and true healing. Honest, deeply moving and filled with hope, REJECTION IS NOT MY NAMEis both a true story of Winters' journey of redemption and finding lasting peace and a triumphant testament of the power of love and forgiveness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483647883

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Copyright © 2013 by Regeneis Winters.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 06/18/2013

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CONTENTS

Introduction

In The Beginning

We Didn’t See It Coming

Life After Death

I dedicate this book to my Almighty Father in heaven, the one that has protected me and kept me through it all. I give you all the glory and pray that you are pleased. When God told me eight years ago to get a pen and paper and start writing, I did it without question. Then he told me to put it in a book. I said, What? I did not want everybody to know what I had gone through in life. I did not want people judging me and looking at me in a different way. I did not want to relive this pain. But God spoke softly to me and said, This is not your story to tell. I am the author and the finisher. I allowed you to go through this so that the Son of Man may be glorified in it. I am sorry that it took me so long to do what God asked me to do: delayed obedience is still disobedience. I have decided to do what God wants me to do, regardless of what people may think or say about me. As long as God will lead me, I will follow.

I would also like to dedicate this book to the one person that listened to God when he told her I had some children in foster care and I needed her to go and save their lives. Even though you are not here to read this, you are in heaven with God, Earner Jenkins, AKA Doll Carter; we miss you. If it had not been for her hearing the voice of God and obeying him, I would not be the person that I am today. She taught me so much about life, and even though she is not with us now, I still can hear her voice, guiding me along the way. I would like to thank my husband, Michael D. Winters Sr., for encouraging me to move forward with this and be led by the Holy Ghost. I thank you for your love, patience, kindness, and endurance. I know that there were many times that you could have just walked away from me, but you stood right there and took the hurt and pain that no one would have ever taken. I know that you were sent from God; thank you for weathering the storm.

I would like to thank my friend that coached me through writing this book, Catherine D. Herron (Not your journey but your destiny). If it weren’t for you motivating me to do the work that God has instructed me to do, this would have been just another untold story. Last but not least, I would like to thank all the spiritual leaders in our life that has prayed for us through many hardships and circumstances.

So as you read this book, I pray that my story will touch you, inspire you, lift you up, and encourage you. Please know that, whatever you are going through, God is there. He promises to never leave us or forsake us, and he has proven just that in my life, time and time again.

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INTRODUCTION

In writing this book, I realized that I still had some hurt in me that I needed to be delivered from before I can move on to the next chapter in my life. I thought that this was going to be a piece of cake, but it ended up bringing me more pain than I could ever imagine.

All over the world, people deal with rejection and just brush it off and hide it under the rug as if it were not important. But how many of you know that if you put enough trash under a rug, eventually you will have to sweep it up and put it in the trash can? I said that to say this: Deal with your issues of rejection. It is not going away. All it’s doing is piling up and piling up until, eventually, you will end up hurting someone. I have learned from my experience that rejected people reject other people!

IN THE BEGINNING

On the day I was born, I could just imagine the look on Jesus’s face. Then again, I could see the tears in his eyes. Just like when Jesus was about to be offered up as the savior of the world, I know that God didn’t want to give his only begotten son, but there was no other alternative. When Jesus saw what I would have to go through in life, I know that it didn’t bring him joy, but the plan that he had for my life has to be fulfilled. So let me start by saying that as I write this, I am being led by the Holy Spirit. I am praying that God will bring all things back to my remembrance.

I have a brother that is one year older than I am. We were always together. My mom never took care of us; as a matter of fact, I can’t even remember her ever being around. She would take me and Eddie to this park and would leave us there all day. Can you imagine being left alone at the age of four and my brother was five years old? Some of my memory is blank; maybe I blocked it out, or maybe I was just too young to remember. This was a routine for her. As dark approached, there was this one police officer who would make his rounds every night around the same time, and he noticed that we were there every night. The first night he found out who our parents were, he took us home, so after going there from that point on, he knew what he had to do. We were scared, lonely, and hungry.

We lived in different places—sometimes with my grandmother who is my mother’s mom and sometimes with my father’s parents. But the majority of the time, my brother and I would be walking up and down the street, basically raising ourselves. I can remember, Eddie and I would always hold hands regardless of where we went; we were determined to not let anything separate us. We will always be together; my grandmother would often tell us not to hold hands because people would think that we were boyfriend and girlfriend. But we didn’t care because one thing was for sure: we knew that we could count on each other. My mom’s family was unstable, but God had a plan; he said that he would be a mother to the motherless and a father to the fatherless, and he was. God took care of us; with me being a female, there should have been a constant watch on me. Eddie always made sure that he knew where I was at all times. We were always outside, playing on the tracks, and sometimes we would go to our friends’ house, which was across the street, next door to the church. We ate at their house a lot; their mom made sure when were at her house that we were well taken care of.

One day, Eddie and I were playing outside, and a pit bull began to chase us. He was ahead, and the dog almost caught me. As we approached my grandmother’s house, we jumped an iron fence that had spikes on it. Eddie jumped the fence first, and then, as I jumped, the right side of my waist got caught on the fence. I was screaming and hollering; I thought at that point I was going to die. Eddie was so scared; my mom, grandmother, and everybody ran outside. They ended up rushing me to the hospital. I was sent home with several stitches on my side.

You are probably asking the question, was there anything wrong with my mom? Was she on drugs or something? From my understanding, my mom had a nervous breakdown. So we were basically living with an unstable person. I don’t blame or hate my mother; she had a condition, and she was sick. My grandmother was an alcoholic, and she never really paid any attention to us. She had men coming in and out of her home, and no supervision was given to us. We spent a lot of time on Nelson Street, at my aunt’s boyfriend’s café. The times that we were with my father’s parents, we really enjoyed them. But they were older and really could not take care of us. I can remember my mom getting her own place. She decided to cook while we were sleeping and left the apartment while the food was still cooking. When Eddie and I woke up, we were choking; smoke had filled the place, and we could not see our way out. All of a sudden, we saw the door being kicked down; the men who were picking up the garbage saw the smoke. They had no clue that we were in there, but they took a chance and kicked the door down and rescued us. Praise God; we were not harmed, but my mom was nowhere to be found. The police was notified, and nothing really happened. I guess at that point, Department of Human Services was building a case against my mom but really didn’t have much to go on. We were placed back into my grandmother’s home and basically stayed there with her.

My mom had a third child, Tarus. Tarus was, I believe, the age of three when my mom tried to throw her over a bridge in the river. There was a fisherman there that stopped her; that was the breaking point. We were all taken into DHS custody and temporarily placed into the Salvation Army until they could find a home for us. Tarus was immediately placed in a home, but Eddie and I stayed in the Salvation Army for two years before they were able to find someone that was willing to take two children.

We were both so young; staying in a place that we had never been before was so scary. I was so afraid; I can remember not eating for days, and I got really sick. As I look back on this, I ask God why he would allow us to go through this. I can remember lying on the bed at the Salvation Army and just staring at the walls, wondering where my mom was, where my family was. Why would no one come and get us? Did they not love us? The feeling of rejection had just kicked in. After the first year had passed, I knew right then that we were not going back. At night I would cry myself to sleep, feeling rejected, feeling scared, feeling shattered, with my heart broken into pieces. I realized that it was time for me to get myself together because that was where we were going to be until a home was found for us. I can remember seeing a lady and her daughter walking into the building to donate their time. I looked at her daughter and wished I were her with a loving mom to spend time with me and treat me like I was her own. I didn’t want toys; I didn’t want anything that a child would normally want. All I wanted was for me and my brother to have a loving home with loving parents. After being in the Salvation Army for two years, they found us a home. There was a lady from Hollandale who had raised over thirteen children of her own. They were all grown, and she had dedicated the rest of her life to raising foster children.

It was summer of 1981; our caseworker came and told us that they had located a home for us. I started crying because I was so happy. I looked at my brother, and we both were crying. As we approached our new home in Hollandale, I saw the fear in my brother’s eyes. I took his hand and told him that it was going to be okay and that I would always look after him. Until this day, I have kept that promise. I could see the love as we got out of the car. She introduced herself and began to embrace us. Just like with the Salvation Army, I felt a little afraid because I was once again in an unfamiliar place, but I remembered telling my brother that it was going to okay, so I couldn’t let him see me in fear. I began to talk to our new mom to get acquainted with her, and she asked us if we wanted to eat or go outside and play. We wanted to go and play because, for the first time in our lives, we could be kids. We no longer had to wonder where our next meal was going to come from, we no longer had to sleep in fear, and God had answered our prayer! Her children accepted us like we were part of their family; they never introduced us as their foster sister or foster brother. They would refer to us as their sister or their brother.

Hollandale was a very small town, so everyone knew one another. They knew that all her children were grown and that she was basically being a blessing to someone who really needed her, like us. So we began to fit into society and fit into her family. She enrolled us in school; she took us to church. She began to instill in us values, she began to talk to us about our role as being children, and I finally had the mom that I always wanted. I finally had someone to take care of me and not the other way around. I finally had someone that can love me the way I wanted to be loved. She taught me survival skills; she taught me to always go out and get what I wanted and to never depend on anyone. I watched her as she would get dressed; she was such a fancy and sophisticated lady. People respected her, people honored her, people marveled at her. I can remember saying that I always wanted to be like her.

I had no communication with my birth mom or family. DHS had cut all communication off until their situation or circumstances in the home changed. We didn’t want to go back. A DHS worker was assigned to us, and they visited monthly to make sure that everything in the home was going fine. Before we went there, Doll had already adopted one young lady, Gloria, and later on, maybe about two or three years later after we came, she began to get other foster children. Her home began to fill quickly;