Searching for Love: Finding Grace

By Lisa Bradford

As a little five-year-old girl, I stood in a courtroom watching my mother choose a man over her three little girls. The decision my mother made that day started me down a road filled with pain, rejection, and abuse, causing me to wonder if love really existed. After being in several foster homes and experiencing more physical and sexual abuse, I became even more confused on what love was and if I would ever experience it. As I grew into a teenager, I thought I found true love in the arms of an older man. However, that relationship started a domino effect of bad relationships falling one by one, until all hope of finding love had faded away. The next eighteen years I would walk through a series of events that would challenge and push me to search for the one thing that could break the chains of my past. After years of looking, my search led me to finding grace, the only thing powerful enough to erase my past and set me free.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098020477

Book preview

Chapter 1

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast, and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!

—Isaiah 49:15–16

Iwant my mommy! I want to go home! Those were my thoughts as I sat in a room waiting for someone they called the judge. My little world was spinning out of control, and I couldn’t comprehend what it all meant. As I sat there a man came and asked us to stand while another man with a long black dress walked in. Could this be the man they called the judge? As I sat there beside my two sisters, Diane and Judy, and a tall slender man, my mom was across the room sitting at another table. All I wanted to do was run to my mommy, but they wouldn’t let me leave my seat.

Why can’t I sit with my mommy? I asked the man sitting with me.

Suddenly the man they called Your Honor started talking to my mom. He said, Today you have a choice. You can have your three girls, or you can have your husband, but you cannot have both. Whom do you choose?

I looked over at my mom thinking, She will surely take me. As I sat there looking at her, my little mind was racing. What would she say?

My mom stood and looked over at me and then back to my stepdad and said, Your Honor, I choose my husband. You can have my girls.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My mom was giving me to the man in the black dress, and I didn’t even know him. How could this be happening? I started crying out, I want my mommy! I want my mommy! A police officer reached down and picked me up and said, It’s okay. I’ve got you. The officer’s words were the only good feeling I can remember from that dark day.

As my sisters and I were taken from that building and loaded into a police car, fear fell over me like a big, thick blanket. I was only five years old and had experienced fear many times in my short life. I knew what it was like to be beaten and put out into the cold while my parents partied; however, this time was different. There was another emotion I was feeling. That day I experienced my first battle with rejection, and the wound it would leave in my heart would scar me for many years to come.

First, my sisters and I were sent to an orphanage in Wytheville, Virginia, called a group home. As I walked into the building, there were people standing to take us to what we would call our new home. We walked into a large room that had beds lining the walls. They showed us the beds that were free and said, Pick a bed. The two things I can remember about this home were that I hated it and it was there that I met a little boy who became my first boyfriend. One day he asked me if I wanted to run away with him, and even though I had no clue what that meant, I said yes. He said we needed to take food, so he stole some peanut butter and crackers, and off we went. We walked for what seemed to be a long time and came to a little shack that was just at the bottom of the home’s long driveway. We sat down at the shack and started to eat our peanut butter and crackers, thinking we were getting strength for our journey. Then the house parent came by and said, You have to come back with me. This would be the first of many running away experiences for me.

It wasn’t long before my middle sister, Judy, and I were placed into a new home. Our caseworker said this one would be different because we were going to be a part of a family. This was all new to me, and I couldn’t understand why they were taking us away from our oldest sister, Diane. She had become my new mom and the only security I had left. I remember coming into the home, and my first thought was that I had walked into heaven. There were toys everywhere, and even a pool was set up outside just for our arrival. My sister and I didn’t know how to act because we were not used to someone giving us toys and being nice to us. However, as I settled into what seemed to be the perfect home, things began to change and it wasn’t long before what seemed to be heaven became a nightmare as I became the target of my foster father’s sexual pleasures.

I was taken away from my real mom because my stepfather had physically abused me several times. One of those times led to my being hospitalized for several weeks at two and half years old. I knew what it was to be scared of physical abuse, but what I endured in the home of my new foster parents was a different kind of abuse. I didn’t know how to handle these feelings. My new foster father began asking me to take showers with him and to touch him in places I shouldn’t. I knew this behavior couldn’t be right because it made me feel so dirty when it happened; however, he always had a way of making me feel like this was normal behavior for little girls.

I was only six years old. I was supposed to be with my mommy and daddy, the two people in the world who should love and protect me. I wanted to run and play with friends and have a normal life. Why was this bad stuff happening? What was I doing wrong to make it happen? I had no answers for my questions, just a mountain of guilt and shame that seemed to rise higher and higher. As a little six -year-old girl, I had already experienced fear and abuse on so many levels, and I wondered, Is this how every little girl lives? You may ask where was my foster mom and why did she let this go on? My foster mom at the time was locked in her own world of sorrow, drowning her problems away with alcohol.

Judy decided that she wanted to leave this home and called our caseworker to come and get her. My caseworker Suzi was an awesome woman. She cared for me and my sisters as if we were her own children. When Judy called her, she came that day without delay and picked her up. I wanted to go so bad, but out of fear and threats that I had received from my foster father, I stayed. When Suzi came, she looked at me and asked, Do you want to go too? I looked at my foster father, and the only thing that came out was no, so she handed me a card with her name and number on it just in case I ever change my mind.

One morning, waking up really early before the sun came up, I got the courage to tiptoe into the living room to call Suzi without waking my foster parents up.

It was amazing how quickly Suzi got there. She lived a few hours away, but it seemed like just a few minutes, and she was knocking on the door. I remember my foster parents opening the door and Suzi coming in. The shock that was on their faces! However, I wasn’t going to let fear keep me there this time, so when Suzi asked if I was ready to go, I said yes without hesitation! My foster parents looked at me and said, That’s fine, but everything we bought you stays here. I didn’t care; I just wanted to get away from them and that home. I walked away with just the clothes on my back, not knowing where I was going.

On the drive to my next home, Suzi tried to talk to me and find out why I wanted to leave. She asked me, Did something happen? Did someone hurt you? I don’t know why I didn’t tell her what had happened. Maybe it was the guilt or shame, but I kept my silence. I believe she knew that something had happened, but she never pressed any further. She took me to my next foster home, a place where I would be reunited with Diane and Judy. This would be the third place since I had left my mom, but at least I was with my sisters and I had a little piece of my security back! This foster family was very different yet similar too. They were an older couple; and I believe now, looking back, we were there to help them work their land. I remember getting up at sunrise and working out in the field carrying rocks and not coming in until sundown. I was there for a few years with my two sisters and experienced a lot of hard work and some very harsh discipline.

I had never had parents to train me to eat the things children hate like broccoli, peas, liver, and tomatoes on dry biscuits. I would sit there and look at these foods; and to be very honest, I would think it was the nastiest food on this earth, especially tomatoes on dry biscuits. Oh, let’s not forget the liver! Whoever came up with eating the liver of a cow should have been severely disciplined. Well, that’s just my opinion! I didn’t want to eat these things; so the first disciplinary action from my foster mother, besides the many whippings with the switches, was that I had to take the food that I didn’t eat for breakfast, lunch, and supper and put it in a blender. My foster mother would look at me and say, If you don’t eat it now, you’ll eat it later. Well, I guess it doesn’t take much imagination to know what happened next. She would force feed me the concoction! After months of this repetitive discipline and her leaving the food out all day, I found myself at the doctor’s office with a bad case of worms, which led to a series of shots being administered in my stomach.

A few months later, my sisters and I were separated again. Diane went to stay with a foster family out in the country, and Judy went to stay with the present foster mom’s daughter in another town. We had heard that some medical issues were keeping this foster mom from keeping us all together. Once we were all separated I found myself alone, and that was when my nightmare started again. This would be my second time of facing sexual abuse, and I didn’t know how to handle the conflicting feelings that were raging on the inside of me. On one hand the abuse made me feel dirty, but on the other hand, I thought this behavior was normal, and what every little girl was supposed to do.

I remember my foster mother getting up early in the morning to go get her hair fixed and leaving me alone at the house with my foster dad. Oh, the feeling of anguish that filled my heart because I knew by the time her car cleared the driveway, my foster father would require me to come out to the barn for our early morning session. I was so mixed up inside, and I felt like I had the world sitting on my shoulders and no way to shake it off. Abuse like this can really mess up a young child inside because they know by their feelings that it is wrong but somehow the abuser can turn it around and make them feel that this is what they want and what they were created for.

After a few months of living in this home alone I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t handle how I felt every time my foster father would sexually abuse me. So I sat up one night and planned my escape. I decided I would walk to the bus stop and hide behind some bushes and wait for the school bus to pass by, and then I would run with everything in me to get far away from that house and family. I remember walking across a bridge when a patrol car pulled up beside of me, and for some reason I wasn’t scared. I believe, looking back now, it was because of the police officer who picked me up in the courtroom when I was five years old, telling me, "It’s going to be all right. I’ve got you." Those words meant everything to me because they gave me my first feelings of security!

The police officer asked me, Where are you going, little girl? I didn’t know what to say to him. My mind was racing. I wasn’t really thinking about where I was going. I was just thinking about getting as far away from that home as I possibly could. I was searching for a place where there would be no more pain, no more rejection, and no more sexual abuse. I didn’t care what I had to do to find it. The police officer stepped out of his car and walked toward me, and he asked me if my name was Lisa. At that moment a thousand things ran through my mind. I didn’t want to go back to that home, so I lied and said no. Well, he knew I was lying and told me to get in his patrol car, and off to the police department we went.

My memories of the police department are good. I remember a man who must have been the sergeant or lieutenant coming in and sitting down with me and saying, Okay, what’s going on and why did you run away? I told him if he made me go back, I would just run again. I believe he knew the real reason I ran away because he assured me that I wouldn’t ever have to go back there again and that he would call my caseworker. Suzi came and picked me up that day, and she told me she was trying to work out another home placement, but while she was working on it, I would have to stay at the juvenile detention center for three days.

I didn’t know what a juvenile detention center was, so I didn’t know what to expect. Well, it was as close as any child could get to jail. I went in, and they put me in a cell that had just a bed and toilet in the room and said, You can come out three times a day for one hour, and if you are good, you can have a special time in the evening of two hours. I begged Suzi not to leave me, but she said, I have no choice. I have nowhere to leave you until I find out about this other foster home. That period was the longest three days of my life!

I was just a little nine-year-old girl, and all I wanted was for someone to love me. My heart was especially thirsty for the love of a father. My mother had rejected me, and the only attention I had received was from a man, even though it was bad attention. These events