“...I knew that I was about to really be truly in danger.”
“Family life, it was not the best,” Bobbie says. “I grew up with my mom and my brother … she was a single mom with five kids, but only two of them lived with her.”
Bobbie graduated from high school, worked as an adult, and eventually began dating, and then marrying, a man. He was abusive toward her, mentally at first, but then physically as well. One time, he grabbed her “really, really hard,” she remembers. “I lost my breath… I knew that I was about to really be truly in danger.” Bobbie contacted the police and made out a report. She also got a restraining order against her husband. The day it was approved, she says, “I left him.”
“I just kept praying and hoping.”
For the next several months, Bobbie says, “I was pretty much homeless. It was surfing on couches … with family members.” Bobbie recounts that during this time, “I would stay depressed. I wasn’t able to find a job like I wanted, and it was just scary because I hadn’t been in this kind of situation before… I felt I was at my wit’s end … I just felt very much alone, and I couldn’t get up on my feet … I just kept praying and hoping.”
Bobbie’s prayers were answered when she learned about Hope Place, the Mission’s recovery program for women. She heard about its Christian foundation and some of the opportunities it offered. When she first came to the Mission, she was “very frightened, very scared, and I just felt like I was out of place.”
Blessed
As time went by, through the classes and the help she got for her mental health, Bobbie says she was “brought back into reality.” She says she “learned how to say no … to have my own space, to think differently … I learned patience.” Bobbie also got help with some physical issues while at Hope Place, having surgery on her knees and wrist. “Just being around positive people” also played a huge role in her healing process.
Today, Bobbie enjoys restored relationships with her three daughters and ten grandchildren, from whom she’d grown estranged. She treasures her relationship with God. “My relationship with God is very real, very real. I'm honest to Him if I'm not honest with myself,” she says. “I'm really close with Him and I'm blessed. I'm blessed.”
