Arc 1 - First Five: Chapter 3

The days kept passing by and the home environment only grew more grim. There were instances of her father becoming more verbally abusive and her mother becoming more desperate. Still, she would hold dear the days when the house was quiet, or her mom and dad would laugh and act lovingly. Although these days still existed, in the eyes of a young girl, the negative accounts were starting to look like the natural pattern of life in marriage and in a family. It was developing the fabric of WooAnna’s life on what an apparent “healthy” family looked like, and her little heart was taking notes. If her life did not look this way, down the road, then something was obviously wrong.

What actually was healthy in the family was diminishing more and more. The struggles with money, the verbal abuse, the inconsistencies within the structure of love were becoming her reality. The exposure to aggressive behaviors and hearing family members say its normal, while fear and anxiety were driving the course of her days - something was not okay. So where was the help she needed to clear it all up? Her bitterness with God was still there. The negative emotions prohibited her from sharing it with any adult in the school system and sharing it with friends could have made her an outcast. She was determined to hold it inside.

This began breeding more intrusive thoughts and worries but she was not going to tell anyone about them. She would walk through the motions and continue to experience internal monologues of insecurity, shame, guilt, and pride. A five-year old dealing with this amount of life is something many do not know about. But it was WooAnna’s reality, even if she did not fully understand the complexities of what was happening inside of her. This pain and deep suffering would become her anchor and fuel into the next five years, to ten years old, of more extreme heartache and grief.

Her pride (Proverbs 16:18) would soon grow more.