Gabby Heusser - In His Footsteps

CHAPTER 3
WOVEN IN WONDER

I REMEMBER THE DAY I had a breakthrough. I was pregnant with my daughter, Emily, and was laying my older daughter down for a nap so we could both get some much needed rest. Actually, looking back now I can see that God was preparing my heart for the season of difficulty with my feet. He was preparing to radically change my life. Sarah was about two years old at the time. I had her in my lap next to her bed and told her that God made her, and she was so good! As I left her room, it hit meI did not truly know this for myself. I was telling my daughter something that I did not believe about me.

God has a way of wanting truth in our inward parts (Ps. 51:6) and will do whatever He can to have His truth run all through our lives. My Father began to lead me to read Psalm 139 and the beautiful words He has spoken to me. I am convinced that God in all His wisdom knew there would be broken people who desperately needed to hear the words of this beautiful Psalm. These words are life to me and are now written on my heart forever! God began to speak about the beauty and glory He made me with through Psalm 139:1315.

For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mothers womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

I have to share about the journey that God and I have been on to get to the place of victory and overcoming my past. Breaking free from fear, shame, and all the other things that God has brought me freedom from will make sense only as I share some of where I have walked in this life. Only when you see the depth of the darkness of where someone has walked can you truly see how awesome God is to bring us into such light and freedom!

The lies that for years would become my truth came to me when I was conceived and continued to be re-enforced in me at a very young age. The lies that I believed for so many years took root when I was conceived and continued to be reinforced in me beginning at a very young age. Reading that He formed me while I was in my mothers womb really spoke to me. They caught my attention. You see, my Father knew there were some very valid reasons for me having trouble believing His words to me. I was born to a poor mother in California. Sacramento, to be exact. The day Gabrielle Nicole LaFaye entered this world was September 5, 1978. My birth certificate bears the name of my mother and the name of a French man whom I would never know. All I know of him is what my birth mother told my adoptive momthat he was not a good man and she never wanted me to find him. This is how life began for me.

Other than my mothers short-term relationships with friends and a few family friends, my mother and I lived alone for years in a small apartment in Long Beach, California. There was a short time when I was one or one and a half that we lived in Hawaii. Most of my early memories are from living in Southern California, though.

My mother was pretty, loving, caring, and fun. I remember her picking me up from preschool or kindergarten and us walking home together. We lived in the ghetto, and I remember walking with her through the neighborhood and by the neighborhood market owned by Chinese people where we would get those little ice cream sundaes in the plastic cups with the little wooden spoons. Gosh, how I still love those! We would walk home, and I would sit down and eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watch Sesame Street and Mister Rogers Neighborhood. I loved playing out in front of our apartment complex on roller skates and flying kites in the southern California breeze. Looking way high up at my kite surrounded by blue skies are some of my earliest and happiest memories. Playing with the neighborhood kids on bikes and with Barbie cars filled my days. Those are a few of the happy memories I have from being a little girl.

I remember looking at my mother and thinking she was beautiful. What child doesnt? As I grow and change as a woman, I am looking more and more like her. I get to see glimpses of her when I look in the mirror. Even though I have not seen her in almost twenty years, I have pictures to remind me what she looks like. I get to see different characteristics of hers in my girls also. One thing I remember about her is that she had the fastest growing nails and hair. My girls and I are the same way. We need a haircut about every two to three weeks or we start looking crazy! My daughter has the fastest growing and most beautiful nails of any seven year old I know! Those things make me think of my mother. They remind me of her.

I have a brother also, who I have never met. I am told he is much older than me. It is kind of weird to have family out there that you never have known. I have tried to find some of my family on the Internet, but without any success.

Unfortunately, I didn't grow up in the most ideal circumstances. One of my earliest memories of my mother is when she came in one day to our apartment and pinning me to the floor and excitedly yelling, We just won the lottery. We just won the lottery! It seemed bizarre, even as a young girl.

If we won the lottery, it certainly was not much, because we were poor. We often did not have money for what we needed, including food. There were many times I was at home alone without food in the house. I am not sure what she was doing. I remember her coming back to the house with others at times. She always seemed to come home at night.

Now that I look back, I feel compassion for her. To have a daughter and not to be able to take care of yourself, much less her, would be very sad and frightening. I now wonder if she had anywhere to turn for help or if she even knew there was a way out. This went on for the first six years or my life.

During the time of living with my birth mother, I also was in and out of foster homes. When things were rough, I went to the foster home. During better times, I went back home. None of the foster homes were abusive. I do vividly remember looking out of the window and crying and asking when my mom would be coming back. Oh, I remember wanting to be with my mother, even though the conditions weren't ideal. She was my mother after all. I cannot even imagine my girls longing for their mother like that. The thought makes me want to cry. If you have little ones, go and give them a big ol hug! I do remember that one foster family fed me peanut butter and jelly a lot! Other than that I do not have many memories of my time in foster care.

There was one family in the apartment complex that my mother and I lived in that I believe was sent by God to help take care of me and look out for me. I never lived with them, but they had a daughter a few years older than me. We were best friends. I would play at her house often. She had more and nicer things to play with than me! We played house and Barbies and had tea parties. We did all the fun things that little princesses should be doing! Her family would feed me food and let me stay for hours. They also let me go places with them. Those were happy times, when I could escape the pain at home and know that someone was taking care of me.

The day eventually arrived that would be the last with my birth mother. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Our apartment had two stories, and the stairs were made of those tiny gray pebbles. The manager had an apartment that was upstairs and overlooked ours. I remember looking up and seeing a police man coming from his apartment. As I looked at him, time seemed to stand still. My life seemed to stand still. It was like I knew what was going on, even though I was only five or six. We had been here before. The police removed me before and put me into foster care. This time was different. That was the last day I lived with her.