My name is Lisa, I was born in a tiny town near Amarillo, Texas.
I grew up in a non-Christian, very abusive home where drugs were heavily used. My mother and father fought on a daily basis. I never saw my parents show affection to each other, and due to my dad’s drug addiction, he couldn’t keep a job. So, we never stayed in one place for an extended period of time.
When it got really rough, we would move in with my grandma on my mother’s side who lived in San Diego until we could get back on our feet. I have five members in my family, and my grandma has six. So, when we would go live with her, it would be 11 of us crammed in a one-bedroom apartment.
Growing up in this environment caused me to be an adult quickly, and it didn’t allow me to have a childhood. I was always in a place of worry and doubt; questioning if we were going to move again, or what we were going to eat the next day. Time passed with the same living condition until I was about 9-10.
We were now back in Amarillo when my mother couldn’t take my father’s physical abuse and drug use any further, she put him in jail, and they divorced. So, we moved back to San Diego to live with my grandma. After moving in with my grandma, she despised my father for having put my mother in such a bad place, so she took it out on me. She would beat me for looking like him and was sure to tell me I would be nothing and no one was going to love me.
Having endured that, I told myself that one day I was going to make something out of myself, and not let my childhood determine my outcome. So, I studied hard in school. I got straight A's and did really well. I was the first person in my family to attend a 4-year university. But my heart was still not in the right place.
I still had a buildup of so much anger and pain. It caused me to be bitter and not care about anything, especially myself. I didn't know how to love, and I always had my guard up to never trust or open up to anyone. I definitely didn’t know God. The little that I knew of God was on Easter/Christmas and other special occasions.
My dad would take us to a Catholic Church. To be honest, those were some of the happiest times of my childhood because my family was in harmony. As I got older, I filled my life with alcohol, drugs, gambling, and partying to suppress my feelings. I just kept getting worse. In my worst state, I met my boyfriend on a party bus, who is my husband now.
We started dating, and he also became my barber and started cutting my hair. He used to shave one side of my head and put designs in it. There was one time where I was waiting to get my hair cut by him, and I saw an old couple in the corner of the barbershop holding hands and laughing. It was so weird to see a couple so happy and in love, because I had never seen that growing up. But, there was just something about them that I couldn’t shake off while Marcos was cutting my hair.
I asked him if he knew those old people in the corner, and he told me they were his parents. I never imagined that they were his parents because they were the opposite of the life he lived. I thought he grew up in a home like mine. He had never spoken to me about his family or background, so when he told me that they were his parents, it didn’t make any sense.
Well, we continued dating on and off until we finally broke up, because we argued and fought so much because of my excessive drinking and partying. Time passed, and we got in contact with each other again and we said, let's just try one more time.
The same week that we got back together, Marcos invited me to his mother’s birthday event. It was on August 13, 2011. I accepted the invitation. That Sunday morning, the day of the event, he called me saying that we would be going to church for his mom’s birthday. He asked me to please wear the longest dress that I had in my closet, the smallest earrings I had, and to cover the side that had my hair shaved. I got furious because he was trying to tell me how to dress and wouldn’t let me be myself. I told myself, I don't want to go anymore. But I couldn't because I am a person of my word, and I had already accepted to go. We fought in the car all the way to church. But that didn’t stop me from going to church because God had a plan and an appointment for me that day.