While I wait on all of your stories to come pouring in, I’ll just go ahead and tell one of my own.

I was born in the Spring of 1972 to a beaming, yet not so young mother, who had just endured a miscarriage and a very proud father. What seemed like a family destined for greatness soon turned into a home crushed by alcoholism.

My father was a tall, handsome, and gifted man. Much like one of the characters in my book, I Am Rahab: A Novel, he enjoyed his liquor to the point where his liquor enjoyed him more. His gluttonous habit ravished him.

A few years had passed after my birth, and my mother had another miscarriage before giving birth to my little ‘bother’.

My father was also a dreamer, much like myself. His ambitions led the handsome well-kept family to South Carolina where he opened a nightclub, Club Dynomite. As his drinking increased with the pleasures and pressures of running a club, my mother’s lack of patience and motherly spirit led her to move back up north to reclaim her position as a New York Telephone Operator. The couple split but soon rekindled their relationship with the closing of Club Dynomite, and the dreams of having a true southern home.

Throughout the years –up until their break up– the couple battled with alcohol abuse. Out of fear for the family and my father’s safety, my mother called down south for his family to come and rescue him from the streets of New York City. My father left our home when I was in fourth grade. The worst year of my life.

I tell this story to ask, what happens to children growing up under alcoholic parents? I know for me, my childhood, though rich with various experiences and filled with things that my mother bought us to shield us from the pain, was full of fear for my father. I was a daddy’s girl. I loved this man as much as I love myself now. He was not only tall, handsome and gifted…but funny, kind and giving. He loved his ‘Pud’ (short for puddin’) right back. When you saw daddy you saw me right by his side or in the background watching his back, as my older brother ‘Smirnoff’ (daddy’s drink of choice) took precedence over me. The fear that I was feeling came from worry. I worried about my father’s safety and capability under the influence. He would often stumble the sidewalks making his way back home or fall asleep on long train rides. I remember once he fell in a lake at Central Park clowning around with us. LOL! I can laugh at it, now.

Growing up without a father at first made me angry. I hated my mother and blamed her for sending him away. How would daddy make it without me watching over him? Keeping up to date with his whereabouts was expensive. My brother and I spent half of the summer with him at my grandmother’s house and when we were back home, hours on long-distance phone calls. But my father was consumed with drinking. He spent our time together inebriated, hungover, or lying to us –making up elaborate dreams and promises– to fill in empty spaces of lost time and self-esteem. Once I was old enough to understand what was really happening to him, my anger and hate (towards my mother) turned into disappointment (towards my father).

I can honestly say I spent many years trying to find a man to fill his place, but it was more than that. I went through some loose and dangerously self-inflicting periods in my life where I too indulged in the nightlife and in alcohol. For me, the experience, like a bandage, covered the issue. It only hurt when pulled off. It only hurt when I was forced to truly look at myself. Outside of my parents, there was ME. There was the son that I had. The marriage that I lost. The pain that I was feeling. The questions that I had.

My father died in 1995 and with his death, I grew angry again. I was mad at daddy for wasting his life and giving up on us. What about me? Loving him the way I did…I couldn’t stay mad long. Anger turned into worry again. What would become of daddy’s soul? Was it a sin to waste your life as he did? Is alcoholism a form of suicide? Would he go to heaven? Would I see him again?

Thank the Lord for Jesus Christ. After the horror of 9/11, I started a relationship with Christ that not only filled my empty spaces but answered some of the questions that I had about my father. I can say proudly and passionately that I heard the voice of the Lord tell me in prayer, that my father was with Him. Y’all don’t know how that thing worried me so. God knows. I am still a daddy’s girl. I know now that I am the child of a King –we all are– including my father. Abba Father is always by our side, and He watches all of our backs.

Under extraordinary circumstances, we all respond differently. My story could be like some others, or completely different…but what I do know is that the God that I serve is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the God that provided manna from heaven for the Hebrews on their way to the promised land, and the same God that provided an escape for the harlot Rahab, (to be restored and, receive the true love she desired) He is the same God that redeems, covers and loves us. I know this because I am Rahab too.