When I was little, my mind wandered in so many different places. I saw so many different things, things that I look back now and wish I could change. Things that were so painful.

As a child, my parents divorced. My mother had remarried to a man and neither he nor I got along. He took a childhood that I once loved, he took that all away. He took my world and shuffled it into a million pieces. My heart cried in pain. My body ached from crying inside. My world wasn't the same anymore. What I once had was freedom, it then was as if I battling my own self-esteem. He was one that I couldn't even put into words how much he took from me. I still remember days when I cried and wanted to just be loved and treated as I was no different. I wasn't his flesh nor was I his blood, and eventually I was old enough to understand that I wasn't meant to be glued to the hatred, or the strain of trying to find my strength or his true acceptance. Deep down I knew I was stronger than what he had shuffled me to the ground to be. I had a strong point. He just had it smothered.

I was a child. I was one who was just trying to find my light in the darkness that I was barely pushing through. My hands were tied, my heart was tangled. My mother was caught between her husband and her child. She chose to follow her husband. They then had two other children. Those children became known as my brother and my sister. My world had completely changed, once again. I now wasn't just battling for my mother's affection anymore, I was battling between two other children. The love I knew my mother had inside her for me, it was now a constant worry that what little piece I played in that household would ever matter anymore. My step-father made that clear, I was now in battle mode once again.

He and I got along at some point in life, but it was rare. Those days had their minimums, to their nothings. They were compressed, and fake. It wasn't true love or unconditional love. As a child, being the best psychologist that my mind allowed me to be, I knew that this man wasn't my father. He wasn't meant to be the man to raise me. He was not the man that gave me his own flesh and blood, or the one who I inherited his DNA. My step-father took away the one man, that I once called "Daddy" - he took him away. He was cruel, he had money, he knew attorneys, so much more than what my own father could offer at the time. He had the world that ones would only dream of. He flattered my mother with money, he flattered me and a friend a trip to Disney World, he flattered around a yacht, and where we resided on the bay in Florida that backed up against our home. I remember waking up to the sounds of the water hitting the boat and us all rounding up to go deep sea fishing. Sounds nice, right? No. I was living in hell. No other world for that place.

I knew what the truth was. I knew where ever my father was; that he was thinking of me. I knew deep down inside his heart cried just as much as mine was crying. I don't think there was ever a day that went by where I didn't think or wonder about him. Being a little girl, it's a relationship that you crave with your father. It's a bond that we once had. It was broken at the moment, but one day, I knew it would be mended back together. How I was going to get there, I had no idea.

Thankfully, God placed somebody special in my life. Somebody long ago, before she retired from the same company her and my father worked at. God placed us in this same path. I was a teenager at this time. It is all pretty ironic how it all worked out, but it did and that this was all God's work, it was in His plans. I remember sitting on the couch one day at her house speaking to her about my childhood and then my father's name came out of my mouth. Which, then her mouth dropped. She knew my father and knew how I could get in touch with him. I was nervous. I was scared of being accepted because I was unaccepted for so long by the father figure in my life who didn't instill any love or affection towards me. It was all to make my mother happy. I knew that. What I knew that moment, it was my chance to regain my life back; my happiness I once had. I could have my father back.

The last time I had seen my father, I was in kindergarten or first grade. My memory vaguely remembered it at that time, but it was enough time that I knew his life had gone on and mine did, too. Did I think he'd forget me? No, not at all. I had gotten his phone number, they were given mine by people in passing talking. My aunt (my father's sister) had called me first and talked to me, we chatted about how life was since the last time I was taken away from that side of my family. I hung up the phone with her, and then my heart sank for a minute. I knew what the next step was, my life was about to unfold in the palm of my hands.

Then I got up the nerve to call my father. After 10 plus years went on without him, it was go-time. My fingers shook the entire time my fingers touched each number. My step-mother had picked the phone up. I didn't know what to say, but she knew exactly who I was. The phone was then given to my father. I think my heart skipped a few beats here and there in the moment of pause as she handed him the phone. Then, in that moment...it was my father. The father I had searched for so long, just didn't know when the right time would be due to court system rules. I was of age, the choice was in my hands. I took that leap of faith. I held my breath just waiting for a cry of relief of all those years that we missed each other. Years that he didn't see me ride my first big bike, my first boyfriend, or my first year of officially a teenager, years that could never be replaced or refilled.

There it was. The little girl I looked in the mirror and saw every day, those brown eyes that I had inherited from him, it was him. I was speaking to the one man that I knew who could never love me any more or any less than what he did. My heart had a sigh of relief and flooded with all different emotions.

I then sat there and made arrangements to see him after all these years. It wasn't long after I called that I met him. I think the first time that I got to hug my father my heart cried with happy tears. We had found solace in each other. I had my father back. I had my father back! It took a while for me to regain trust and open my heart completely towards him because I was once a step-daughter to a man that took what love and emotions that I could have in me, away. The man I was supposed to have trusted and had reliance in. He took more from me than what he could have ever offered me.

I have now, years later regained my heart back and mended it together piece by piece. Have I gotten over what was done to me as a child? I can't say that I have completely. It just hurts so much knowing my father loved me and wanted to share a childhood with me, as I wanted the same. I now no longer can get that back. It was gone. What I do know now, is that it's relived through my children's eyes; his grandchildren.

Now a daughter, a mother, and a wife...I have learned my strength has bypassed by far anything that I thought I couldn't ever get through in life, but I did. By the grace of God and the people he placed in my life, I did. I knew deep down I had strength to get through the hardest days of my life, and I did. I did it, and the most rewarding thing? My father. With all the hardships and tears I cried looking for him and not knowing when the day would come that I'd see him again, I knew one day, it would happen. I confided myself in God, and I remained faithful that He was working this all out for me, for the better. Never did I doubt Him. Did I question His plans throughout that phase of my life? A lot. Things I didn't understand, but one day He knew that I would understand everything. Here I am.

It's those unanswered prayers. It's those moments of questions. It's those times when being strong is the only option that you had. Today, I look back on all this and realize how strong I was. What I went through as a child has made me a better person, a better mother, and a more appreciative person for the hardships I encountered, because I know how strong I am. I now know I have no boundaries to keep me from going forward in life. Those steep hills that I climbed were to only get me to that mountain on top.

All these things that may have inscribed my past, I knew I couldn't let it chisel my future. I couldn't let it carve who I was going to be; strength that I didn't know I had, I had all along. Inside my heart, it was all there. All along. God was there. Along side my darkness, He was my light.

A simple question, how strong are you? You're probably stronger than you think you are. Don't let the past define you, don't let it live your future for you. You do it how you want. It doesn't matter where you come from or how you get there. The pathways of how you got there are what strengthen you.

You may hug your daddy. I now am able to hug mine tighter.

God places people in your life for a reason, let him finish His plans for you. He's not done.

Be strong. Don't give up, and always keep your faith.

- T