I can't say how old I was for sure. I was always told I was two when we were taken from our mom. So, I will say my memories start when I was two or slightly younger. Now maybe these aren't what you would call a giant, and maybe you don't think it would really be negative and you may be right, but to me it is the first giant. Well, let's say it is a brand new baby giant, one that is going to grow over the course of my life. This is where he was conceived and took root deep within me.

  I recall being in a house, more just a room, with a metal roof that was loud when it rained. It sounded like each drop was some hard object trying to force it's way inside instead of a mere drop of water. I remember it well and I love rain. It could have been the boxcar my sister told me that we had lived in once. I can't say for sure, but the room was very much like a boxcar and I don't remember it having any other room. I was there with other kids, but I didn't remember who they were or how many boys or girls were there or anything much about them. My memory holds not even one face for any of them; they were just there with me. I only remember small “clips” of a few things from that time, so I can't offer much about it.

I know we mixed dry oatmeal with sugar and cocoa and ate it dry, bunny now I make one of my family's favorite cookies out of those ingredients.

I had a little toy iron that I heated on the stove to iron my baby doll's dress that I had laid on my toy ironing board. I have a faint scar on my arm from the hot iron burning my skin. I remember that day. I know, I am thing the same thing....what is a two year old doing heating an iron on a stove?! I like to think that I was highly advanced and a rather neat child for two. And, take note that I was already “cooking”. Notice also that there was no adult, none that I can remember. No one stopped me from using that stove or held me when I got burned. There was no smell of a hot dinner cooking. No words of comfort or hands holding me; at least not in my memories of those days. I do however, remember one time a lady with pale skin that was dotted with an abundance of freckles sat next to me and cut spaghetti into tiny pieces and feed it to me.

When I was in the third grade I had an intense love for the series of books titled, “The Boxcar Children”. Those books captivated me. When I was older Vicki told me we had lived in a boxcar once. I was sure that somehow deep inside I had felt an unconscious connection with the kids in the story. I even wondered if the author had known us kids and maybe parts of her books were about us.

Then there is the vision of walking along a curb with a group of children and I was sure we were going to school. While growing up, I was always told that there was no way that I could be remembering an actual event because I was too young to go to school at the time. While I understood the logic, I knew I remembered walking to school and I was convinced it was with my sister and brothers. I knew that there was no one with me to just tell me things that had happened and then have my mind think I remembered then. I remembered and I knew it. I could still see and smell the green grass that the curb lined. I remembered trying to balance on the concrete curb without falling as we walked and I remembered falling often. There were a few kids walking , though I don't remember exactly who or how many. I know Vicki was with me, she was always there. She was my big sister, she was only four years older than me and from what little I can remember she was more of a mom than my mom. Years later, Vicki would confirm to me that we were walking to school. She said she took us all with her, every day. She said that she had even taken our two week old baby brother and would lay him on the floor under her desk. According to her, when the school asked questions about why she brought him, or all of us for that matter, our mom would pack us up and we would move. Again I like to think I was highly advanced to go to school at two. I don't remember the schools though, only the walk to or from it.

I also vaguely remember a woman holding me or more accurately me clinging to her. I remember red hair and freckle, but no real face. Again, years later Vicki explained my mental photograph; she told me it was our mom. She said our mom took us swimming in a lake. I guess she had a strange way of teaching kids to swim. Her plan was to go out into the lake, throw the kid in the water and then tell them to swim back. No wonder I held on, terror filled my little body, fearing that I would be thrown in next. I don't know if I ever was, I can't remember. But I don't have a fear of water, so maybe I was an awesome swimmer at two. The only other memory I have that includes her is one of me wearing nothing but thin training pants on a warm day and I was eating a wedge of raw cabbage. Evidently I wasn't as highly advanced in the potty training area, because I had wet my pants. She was so mad and she spanked me severely for being wet. I remember her freckled arm swinging as she spanked me. Then she was gone. I know most people who have freckles hate them, but I wonder if my memories of her swayed my negative opinion of them.

We sat for hours waiting and waiting for her at some office somewhere, probably in Kewanee, Illinois. There we sat and ate sucker one after another while waiting longer and longer. She never showed up; not once that I can recall. Yeah, I know, I hear you, “what's so bad about that?” Nothing really, right?...but look again. Where is the mom that is suppose to be taking care of her two year old? Where is the dad that comes home after a long day at work to be greeted by squeals of joy from his children? Where are the hugs, the bedtime stories, the dinner, the bath time fun? Don't bother looking, it isn't there. Doesn't seem like a very big giant does it? But it was the first and it would grow. It was the one that taught me that you have to take care of yourself; no one else will be there for you. It was the first one to tell me she didn't love me or she would be there. And my mind....the one that shreds everything looking for meaning, it started thinking....it started twisting thought to try to make some sense of it. So right there at two, the world of my mind began telling me lies that I took to heart. It said I wasn't loved and me....well, I blames me and I believed what that little giant began telling me, even without knowing it was speaking. 

This is one of the few pictures I have of me as a baby.  It was dated June 1959

This is all but one of the six of us children.  I am in the center of the three children that are sitting.  My brother Jeff is standing on the left and Vicki is standing next to him.  I do not know the other two girls standing there.  Greg is on my right and Gary is to the left of me.  Kevin was not in the picture.

This is the short version of my story, that a few people have already read.  After this I will start posting my story in more detail.

“No one will ever love you.”  Those are the words that I heard repeatedly from the age of about ten until, well….last week.  No wait, ‘til just now.  I can still hear her plain as day; as if she stood right here in front of me now.  It’s the voice of my mom; my adoptive mom.  Cold, direct and to the point and I believed her.  And why shouldn't I have.  It seemed a reasonable truth. Step back a few years to where I started my life.  There I was a seven pound, six once baby girl.  Karen Eileen Swearingen.  Child number six for Norman and Mary Swearingen, four boys and two girls.  I remember very little about Mary and Norman; I don’t think he saw me but once until I was grown.  When I was two Mary lost custody of us.  She liked to drink and keep the company of about any guy available.  I guess that was more important than us, her kids.  She actually had several more kids, but just randomly gave them away.  I was told she named some of them the same name because she knew she wouldn't keep them.  On his death bed, Norman bragged of fathering over forty kids.  My sister and I went together into foster care while the boys went there separately.  We went to live on a dairy farm.  This quite possibly was the only positive part of my first seven years of life.  It was days filled with Beanie and Cecil cartoons, fluffy kittens and cups of warm milk fresh from the cow.  And oh how I loved the barn; the smell of the hay and cows; it was my happy place.  I never knew why, but a car drove up one day and took us away.  Off we went to a new foster home.  We were scared but together.  What we found was a whole new world filled with hunger, beatings and constant fear.  This was where I learned not to cry.  I’d just bite my lip.  I wouldn't show him he hurt me.  My lip would be bloody, but I showed him.  He didn't hurt me, right?  Sometimes even now when I am upset…I still bite my lip, but it doesn't stop the tears anymore.  We crawled on our bellies in the bean field behind the house to sneak beans.  There we would stretch out flat so as not to be seen while we hurriedly ate a few beans before sneaking back out.  One day we took their chicken bones out of the garbage and ate them only to be caught and beat for stealing.  Occasionally to this day, I find myself still holding food in my mouth until it is soggy like we did back then.  We did that so we wouldn't get a belt or electrical cord stinging across our bodies for crunching our food.  There were the beatings for good grades and awards I’d earned at school.  And I never understood why they thought it was fun to stick me with pins or let their son use me as a target to throw rocks at.  And there were the sickening sounds behind his bedroom door followed by his belt flying in an angry rage when I knocked wanting my sister out of there.  Somehow my sister knew a few bible verses that she would repeat.  She said they helped her feel better.  I just thought she had gone totally nuts.  Then one day a car drove up again, only this time they took me away and I was alone, lone and scared.  Off I went to Bethany Home; an orphanage; a home for unwanted children.  So see, yeah, her words seemed reasonable. But wait, we aren't to her quite yet.  I stood wearing the only set of clothes I had, clutching a couple of small empty Beanie and Cecil suitcases and a thread bare monkey with chewed up hands and feet.  I was an underweight, petite girl with a mess of tangled hair, crooked teeth and sick.  Always sick.  So there I stood alone and scared, but there were no belts, no cords and they had ice cream and I even got to have some and well, they talked to me, like I was a person.  He was just out of seminary and waiting for a church position.  She was so nice, waiting for their own child to be born.  I stayed with them most of the time because I was sick.  They were different, they smiled and laughed.  I didn't know it then, but I saw Jesus in them.  I didn't know what it was, but I felt it through them.  Shortly after I got there Jim and Shirley Otis took me home with them and adopted me.  They saw my chopped hair, crooked teeth and how I was sick a lot but they still took me home and gave me their name.  I became Karen Elizabeth Otis and I had a family.  Seven years old and I got my own real family.  I had a dad and mom, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins…I had it all.  My dad was an industrial engineer and the president of a large company, my mom was a stay at home mom.  I saw Jesus in my dad and we loved each other instantly.  I worshiped the ground he walked on.  I put him on a pedestal that he never fell off of.  To this day, I can envision the way his face would light up when I walked into the room.  But, I was so scared God would take him from me.  I pleaded with God everyday not to let him die.  Just in case God didn't come through, I shoveled snow as it fell and raked leaves and mowed grass so he didn't have to.  I didn't want him to have a heart attack and leave me alone again.  I went everywhere I could with him.  Weekends and holidays, I went to work with him.  On weekends for a long time I would fly with him in his plane.  The sailboat scared me, but on Sunday’s I went with him anyway, just in case.  I guess I figured if he went I was going with him.  I even went to church with him.  Not cause I liked God, but because I didn't want my dad to go alone.  I would sit there in church and wonder why God hated me.  What did a two year old do that caused her mom to leave her?  What did I do wrong to have to leave the farm?  Why did those other people hate me so much that they beat me and more importantly why did God let them?  I didn't get it.  But I went to be with my dad and somewhere in my mind I wondered why God brought me to my adoptive home?  How did I get so lucky?  After all, God never seemed to care about me before.  My dad taught me a lot.  He was and is my hero.  God didn't take him from me.  Not until he was old and tired and in need rest, I didn't like it, but I let him go.  My mom on the other hand was different, she was bitter, angry and mean.  She was sick.  She would look at me and tell me it was my fault she got sick.  That she wasn't sick until they adopted me, that I caused it.  Then she would look at me and say if she would have known what I would be like she never would have adopted me.  She would tell me no one will ever love you, that I didn't deserve to be loved.  Deep inside I knew she was right.  After all, wasn't that why my biological mom left me, why the people at the farm got rid of me, why the others beat me and why God let them all do it?  I knew they didn't love me and I knew God didn't either.  I never did settle things with my mom; she was too filled with bitterness for everyone and everything.  I don’t feel guilty anymore either.  I do however, still hear her words.  All I wanted was to be loved and love back.  As I grew older I tried to prove her wrong or maybe I was trying to prove her right.  I tried a few drugs and drank a little, slept with a couple guys.  I used people like they had always used me.  But I knew I was empty inside.  The guys I chose to be with were not nice.  Later, I learned that abused children often look for abusive relationships because it is what they know.  It was wrong, but there was a comfort in the pain and it was what I knew.  Today, I still sometimes find myself sometimes dating a person who doesn't respect me and treat me kind and I still try to earn the never achievable approval.  Only now I see it and stop it.   I was on a road of self-destruction.  That is what I believed I deserved and I would hurt myself before I would let someone else.  I stumbled through one abusive relationship after another and failed marriages.  Somewhere there I met a Sue.  Sue was different.  Sue was well mannered, had a beautiful home in a very prestigious neighborhood and she talked to me.  She was kind to me.  I looked at her and I saw something in her face.  Something I had only seen a couple of times before, but never knew what it was.  But I wanted that.  Because of her friendship I accepted Christ and my life started to change.  But I still didn't let go of the God that I thought hated me.  Every bad thing that happened….. I blamed God.  I also forgot to thank him for the blessings I did have; like my seven children; after being told I would never have kids.  I got a better over the years.  I studied the bible and prayed and taught Sunday school, but I still thought God hated me.  I knew he loved people and forgave people, but I didn't believe it included me.  It took about 26 years; after accepting Christ; of study, church, Christian music, people and the rock bottom pit of my life to get me to the point that I could accept God’s love for me.  It took someone who loved me.  He would come up to me and ask me to just to put my arms around him and hold him.  His hands would cradle my face and he would tell me I was beautiful and to him I was.  He promised me one night as we walked together that he would never leave me.  I knew he meant it.  He honestly loved me.  Twelve hours later, he left me.  He died in a car accident on his way to work.  I didn't think I could breathe when I heard, I didn't want to breathe.  I wanted to die right then and there.  I even thought of ways I could die.  I walked through life, but I knew I was really dead.  I shut myself in my own little bubble of anger and shut everyone out.  I kept God in that bubble though, not for comfort or relationship but cause I had had enough and I wanted to take it out on Him.  Then one day, I tried to walk the path my friend and I use to walk and I let go.  I cried out loud and while tears ran down my face I screamed at God.  I cussed at him.  I told him he needed to pull his head out of his backside and think about what he was doing for once.  Only I wasn't quite that nice about it.  Something happened that day though.  I started to let go of the anger and let God back in.  He forgave me and I let him and I started to heal.  Now, I don’t suggest cussing God out, mind you.  Frankly, I didn't care if he struck me dead with a lightning bolt at that point and maybe I was hoping he would.  But he didn't and I am so grateful.  Right after that a friend gave me a copy of the book “The Shack” to read and that was the final turning point.  It helped me to see a God of love not some mean angry God.  I read it and reread it.  It said that God not only knew I would fail and how many times I would fail, but He still loved me.  He wanted I relationship with me.  And for once I believed.  It still took time, but God worked in me.  He is still working in me.  I have had a hard few months with the end of a unhealthy relationship, the loss of a job I loved, unemployment denials, a severe latex allergy reaction that caused me to miss a month of work and I still suffer from it, things breaking in my house, I wash dishes in my bathtub because I have no water in my kitchen, cupboards growing low on food, disconnect notices for power and water, no money for a car payment and soon the house.  Is there stress, you bet, I am human.  But, not once have I blamed God or thought it was because he hates me.  Now we have constant communication through the day.  If I feel overwhelmed, I talk to my God and he hears and sends me scripture to comfort me and friends to encourage me.  When I lay down at night alone, wishing I had someone who loved me again, to be there with me, I talk to him and ask him to hold me and he does.  If I lose it all, I still have him.  If I never have a husband to love and love me again, he will be there loving me.  I trust that he knows what I need and what the desires of my heart are for love and I trust he will provide.  Did you hear that…I trust!  Because he loves me, I am called to love people.  Not just the ones I like, but everyone.  The ones that bruised me, that walked out on me, that bloodied my lip or body, lied about me…the list goes on.  I am called to forgive, to extend the same gift of grace that God gives me.  Not because I deserve it.  I don’t.  I am the worst of sinners.  I’m the one that wove his crown of thorns with my lies, deceit and hatred.  I’m the one with the mallet angrily driving the nails in his wrist.  I stood at his cross mocking his words, mocking him.  And still he hung there for me.  And he hangs there for you.  And he loves us, enough to die for us.   Well, I had no choice in how my life started, but I have a choice on how it will end.  And so do you.  I choose to live and one day die in a relationship with Christ.  I choose to love even when I don’t see it, even when I don’t feel it in return, because I have it in Christ.  You too can choose a life with boundaries, but not walls.  A life that will still have failures, but forgiveness and love and all you have to do, just like I did…. is accept it.   

One day I started having these tiny little annoying thoughts that God wanted me to talk and tell my story. I pretty much tried to ignore it. It kept creeping up and I tried in vain to keep it cornered in a quiet little space in my mind.  Yeah, I know, those of you that know me I’m sure are sitting there thinking “a quiet corner in her mind---whatever.”  That just might have been part of the problem, cause it didn't stay where I kept trying to put it.  That annoying little gnat of a thought kept showing up around every corner; every twist and crevice of my mind.  I couldn't quiet it no matter what I did.  But then I thought “how arrogant of me to think that!”  I can’t even get my own life in order and yet I think, more accurately He thinks, I can talk to others about how I see it--give them advice.  That is crazy!  As crazy as when my close friend told me years ago that she had this vision of me speaking somewhere and she was singing.  Not me!  I just live from one screw up to the next.  And then I get this idea God wants me to speak to people.  What makes Him think I have even one good piece of advice for someone else?  It’s crazy I tell myself again--insanely crazy.  But then it hits me; he wants to use me as an example of what not to do and well; then I would have lots to tell.  It would be like “how many days do you want me to talk?”  From the time I was small, even before I had really heard anything about God; I felt He had a plan for me.  I figured He had to since I was the only one out of six kids that was adopted into a real family.  I just felt there was more to it then just luck.  The problem was I wasn't sure why and didn't know what I was suppose to do.  For years I worried I never would figure it out and that God would be angry with me for it and send me to hell for eternity.  Even after accepting Christ I struggled with the idea of missing my purpose and truthfully still do at times.  The difference though is that now I have a relationship with Christ that takes away the fear of Hell.  That relationship, not fear, motivates me to seek God’s will, strive to live a life of integrity and gives me the desire to serve Him.  All those things in the past that I tried to hide because of embarrassment, shame and fear of rejection actually are tools God uses to equip me to love others that, like me, have been cast aside by society.  I always said that God would have to dump a load of bricks on me to get my attention.  I didn't realize the wisdom in that statement nor did I think that God really would do that to me; more than once.  I discovered the hard way(imagine that) that it’s impossible to move those bricks from underneath them.  The only way is to let them be removed from the top.  I just couldn't do it myself.  Until I was willing to let God have control I stayed buried under the shame and fear.  I finally realized I couldn't do it alone.  All those years of thinking I could do everything on my own; all those messes I couldn't undo now lay holding me down; but God forgave and helped me move those bricks.  He showed me through His word that even people we consider disciples and prophets, the Marys, Noahs, Elijahs and Davids; guess what; they sinned.  They were prostitutes, murders, thieves and yet they were people Jesus loved and even considered dear close friends.  One was even referred to as a man after God’s own heart.  That man’s list of failures was staggering, yet he is most often looked at by people as a godly righteous man.  And that is when I realized that’s me too.  I am just like them; filthy and covered in sin.  We messed up over and over again.  But I could be like them---forgiven.  And I can accept His forgiveness and then like Mary and David and Jonah, I can be used by God.  It wasn't instant. It took a lifetime, a lifetime of sin to produce the debris it leaves behind.  Some will be forgotten by society and some will haunt me the rest of my life.  But it won’t burden me down.  God’s grace is sufficient.  I have been washed clean.  It will be a journey of obedience that will take the rest of my life.  There will still be many failures, but not like before as long as I stay close to Him.  I have my Jesus walking with me and I can call out to my daddy when life gets scary.   The journey will not be complete until I am finally home for eternity.   But, God’s forgiveness and grace allows me to start to tell the story of my journey, talk about the past, and frees me to live the rest of my life for Him. 

  This is my very slow journey, or maybe the story of my wrestling with God for years over doing something I feel He wants me to do and my finding every reason I can, not to do it.  I feel like a child finding reason after reason for not obeying a parent.
  My life isn't one of those picture perfect ones and I am not a writer or grammar guru and, well, it scares me to put "me" out there pretty much stripped naked, with nothing to cover my failures.  My life is more like several lives woven into one; a mixture of my failures and the failures of others, but scattered throughout those there are blessings in abundance.  
  I have tried for years to just sit down and write my story from beginning to end, but can't seem to get through it that way.  As I write the past, I feel like I miss the now and so I have decided that it is best to write it the way I originally started...as more of a journal, a mixture of the past and life as it happens now.  It probably isn't the correct way, but I am not a writer and I can't seem to do it the other way.  This is my history, my journey and maybe something will speak to you on your journey.  The one thing I hope you feel and accept is God's redeeming love.