A different Life

So I lived through being torn apart from both my parents at a very young age.. Honestly I don't remember when I cried about it. I remember nightmares, I remember times where I'd even faint.. Yup, I'd just get light headed and pass out. Maybe it was the shock of all the changes going on in my life. All the questions people asked. Social workers, teachers, therapists.. Wow there were lots of people with so many questions. Sometimes I remember making things up just cause I had so much attention, and figured I should give them something to work with. And their reactions just made me exaggerated the stories that much more. They had no clue when I was lying or honest. I didn't really like them, they asked too many questions.

After I was adopted by a huge amazing family, I remember my new mom getting ready at night, the only reason I remember this is because I'd wake up in the middle of a nightmare. She would come into my room and hold me in her arms and sing. She would sing about angles watching over me, and I'd feel safe enough to go back to bed. I was 7, but still hurting over the loss of my parents.
 When I found out that my last name would change in the adoption, I wanted a new first name. How cool is that!? A 7 year old girl get's to pick a new name! I thought it was great. I thought of Melanie, Jessica, maybe a couple more than that. I guess that was a little much for my new mom to accept, a totally new name she wasn't so keen on. One day she asked what I thought of Lena. I loved it, I had a camp counselor the summer before with the same name! And she was the greatest... We called her bubbles at camp. I don't even know how her real name was Lena, but I thought it was so much better than Ilene. Only cause I was made fun of for being a foster kid while in school, then of course the kids found anything to make fun of once they knew that. So they  chose to  make fun of my name "Hey Ilene! I lean more than you do! Ilene Moore"... Wow I hated them, and suddenly I didn't like Ilene Moore any more either..
 So yes please, Lena Goddard it is!
 It's funny at 7 I knew this was the family I belonged to. How would a 7 year old know that? I really knew this was where I belonged. To be honest I forgot that as I grew up more, and I might even still forget it to this day. But when I look deep in my heart I know this was the family that God planned for me to be raised in all along.
 It was God who held me through the hardest moments of my life. And even if I turn my back on Him (which I tend to do more often than I wish to admit) He still is there reaching His hand for me to hold when I'm ready.

 In my next posts I'll probably be all over the place in my struggles with temptation, with my emotions, awful habits I picked up, and spiritual warfare.. From here there won't really be an order to my story. I'll share what is on my mind that day. Here may be the part that you'll have to leave judgment at the door, and I'm not really sure how much details of my story I can give. For whatever reason I have wanted to write them down for a while now. So I'm just going to do what I can, I'll write what I feel I'm supposed to write.