Become the Person You Want To Be - Erin Baker

All right, hello everyone, so forgive me if I look down at my paper a lot here because it's kind of a hard story sometimes, so I might not want to be making eye contact. Okay, so God comes to us and tells us what to do many times, whether we want to do what He says or not, and I'm sure many of you have felt that way. So when He comes to me, my mind will race with thoughts of what He wants me to do, and then I get no sleep, and I accomplish the task He wants. God must be strong in my life because I literally won't get any sleep. So I don't particularly like to speak in front of a crowd, but I do it when necessary. So this is not exactly a story I like to talk about, but apparently God thinks someone here in chapel needs to hear this story. The story flooded my mind after Dr. Best talked in chapel a while ago. This story was amazing, and I thought, wow, how wonderful would it have been to grow up with a life full of so much goodness. I wish I could say I have the same experience, but I don't. My life is full of good times, bad times, great times, and worst times. So I think God wants us to know it's okay to not have that perfect life. You can still become whatever you want, and whatever your perceived destiny is. All right. So before I get started, I would like to begin with this Bible verse, Isaiah 49, 25, 26, for thus says the Lord, "Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken, and the prey of the tyrant be rescued, for I will contend with you, and I will save your children." Keep points, save your children. So at this point, this story can become traumatizing. If child abuse and neglect are a trigger for you, now is your time to exit. So you know, most children believe that everyone's life is similar, whether they have great a great life or a rough life. If they have great parents or if they are beaten, they think this is normal. If their parents do drugs, they think this is normal. If their suffer is a bag of chips, they think this is normal. They do not know the difference between a normal childhood, a bad childhood, a good childhood, and their own childhood. So now I grew up a bit on the rough side. I mean, doesn't everyone's dad get mad and throw a couch through a patio door? Have you ever had a bunk bed kicked so hard it fell on your head? Hasn't every girl had their dad shoot their prom dress two weeks before prom in the house? Haven't we all been slammed against a wall endangled by our throats? There were also great times. So every Sunday we went three-wheeling in the mountains, we went to the Rubicon, we went to the ocean, we went to Apple Hill, we had fun times, we had so many wonderful experiences. So look at this picture of me, two of my brothers and my closest cousins at the time. My grandma was pretty strong in our life and I was probably the closest to her. So she was really good about taking us out to Apple Hill and doing some fun events with us. We look normal, right? So of these six people, four were or are severely addicted to drugs. One has some major mental health issues and I don't know what else. One spent a lot of time in and out of prison. The others did a lot of jail time and then there's me. I was lucky enough to not make excuses about where I came from and still rise above it. I am not perfect. I have made mistakes and I have failed. But I have learned from those mistakes and grown from them. I recommend rising above from anything negative in your life. No matter where you come from, you can be better. Never say it was how I was raised as an excuse. Become the person you want to be. Look at the lifestyles of other people that you aspire to be. So now with this story comes a backstory. It was 2008. My youngest daughter was born January 21st and my middle brother had his first biological child on March 27th. His girlfriend has a six-year-old boy. My brother and his girlfriend are into some nasty drugs, heroin, meth and who knows what else. I have three kids at home, eight, three and three months old. I stayed home with my kids at this age and ran a daycare at home with 10 additional kids. My state inspection lady happens to be there when I get a phone call from my cousin who is also a drugie guy with, I don't know, four or five kids at this time. We're not close. But growing up, we called him Father Pat. He was the one who made sure we were all fed because he was older. So even drugs didn't stop him from making sure his own kids were always taken care of, fed, never beaten and clean. So Pat says to me, you need to call social services on your brother. This is a big deal coming from a guy who I'm guessing is dealing drugs. So we all know why he's not calling us in. When I ask why he said my brother and his woman are drugged out, doing drug runs and letting their pit bull walk over the baby in the car, he said I think the baby has a broken rib. The baby is five weeks old at this time. So I hang up the phone, ask my state lady and call it in. It took a lot just to get someone from the state of Nebraska to investigate. I didn't have the proof. This is hearsay, right? The cops found cocaine in the baby's crib. The five-week-old baby had been in his car seat so much, his head was kinked permanently to one side and he had a broken rib. My parents ended up with custody of the six-year-old and five-week-old for six months, while the parents were in jail and then rehab and getting the help that they're supposed to be getting. Fast forward, they have another baby the next March. She delivers him in prison after getting busted again. A few years later, baby number four is born. I've only met these kids a few times. You know, I'm the bad guy because I'm the one who turned them in. A few years later, they have a child, number five, a girl. The mom hemorrhaged in labor. My mom, my three daughters, and I drove three hours to go meet the kids and clean. I know how dirty and gross they are, so I bring lice all, rubber gloves, cleaning supplies. Liberty at this age is a germaphob, she's probably ten. So she runs in to see the baby first and she runs out screaming, "Nope, disgusting, I can't do it. How do you people live like that?" So I tell her that's rude, you can't say that. As I walk in, my brother states his wife is not a good housekeeper. The toilet was overflowing with months of feces piled around it. The basement was full of black liquid. The kids had to walk through just to get to their bedrooms. There was dog pee and poop everywhere. Nothing in the house worked. Now fast forward nine months later, I am hosting Easter at my house, which I do quite often. I had just had neck surgery in January that year. This was the beginning of April. My brother's wife is black and blue when they show up. She's got bruises from head to toe. They said something about a transmission following on her. His kids were bruised and filthy. We couldn't tell whether it was bruises or dirt at first. I still did not call it in. Because what is the point when they get their kids back, right? But wait, then there is God. He steps in and says, "You have to do something." Right, ignoring God's loud voice running in my head all day, all night, for a few days. So I finally gave in. I started by calling the kids school. Yes, the school does call this in every day and nothing gets done. I then call the local police who says they cannot do anything else unless there is a home that will take all five kids together. So nothing can be done to help these kids unless somebody is willing to take all five of them. There are a lot of situations in Nebraska like that. So because there are five, nothing can be done. So I did some research at the time and I learned that animals have more rights than children do. And that Nebraska at the time was ranked number four for top child abuse cases. I go to bed that night and God is back again saying, "You have to do this." Or you will be at a baby's funeral or a six-year-old's funeral. So by now my husband knows I am not sleeping. He says, "Just do it. You're going to do it anyways," because that's kind of how I am. So I call the police and I make a plan with the Child Advocacy Center in Grand Island. My job at the time was very supportive so I was able to take off to go get these kids. It is four days after Easter. The kids have the same clothes on. The baby's bottle is full of mold. It is gross. So the kids had been pretty beaten, pretty badly beaten the night before we got them. The baby had shaken baby syndrome. She had been thrown up against the wall. Her, thankfully her retinas weren't torn. If you've never seen shaken baby syndrome, it's a cat eye effect. So like they blink and they have like a gray film on the side and then they have basically like bags underneath their eyes. It's pretty scary. Once I saw this, I now know that the six-year-old had shaken baby syndrome way worse than she would have. So the six-year-old had been slammed that night before we got them into the floor so bad his head was severely swollen. Side of a watermelon. His hair was golden blonde. We now know it's white blonde. Doctors thought possible brain damage from his beatings. I can go into details upon details of the horrors these kids went through, but we don't have that kind of time. I can state that one state lady said it was one of the worst cases she had ever seen. So there's the first group of kids. Sorry I kind of missed this. My parents having custody. Don't do drugs. Okay, so overnight we went from having three kids to having eight kids. Just 15, 13, 10, 7, 7, 6, 3, and 9 months old. These kids did not know how to put underwear or socks on. They didn't even know those things existed. They didn't know how to brush their teeth. They were violent themselves. They hid food and water not knowing when the next time they get a meal was. They were so mentally delayed even the 13-year-old couldn't read. One was blind. One couldn't talk. So taking in five high needs kids is different than five healthy kids. Then dealing with the withdrawals that the kids go through. They get headaches. The baby was in the hospital because she was vomiting white. The three-year-old also was vomiting white film. It was weird. So I can tell you God is good. We had the kids for the first nine months and then they did the reunification process to give them back to the parents and six months later we ended up with them back. So the plea deal that they did meant I couldn't adopt because I was the one who turned them in. So my cousin who was 24 at the time adopted the four youngest kids. And unfortunately the oldest one bounced from foster care to foster care. He was so very violent, very optionally defiant. So it was very rough. At one point I stated my house is the safe zone. There is no violence here and he attacked me. At 13 he was five foot seven 160 pounds of solid muscle because he's been attacked all his life also. So I am sure now he wishes he would have done things differently. But even as teenagers we all have the choice to rise above situations. Life is not fair. It is up to you to do good things, to improve yourself, invest in yourself, invest in God. Be better than what you came from. We don't have to be perfect. We need to fail in order to learn, but we also need to grow from the mistakes in our life. So ten years later if you saw those four younger ones you would never know what they went through. Thankfully the younger two don't remember. They say it takes double their ages to get past these types of situations. So the nine month old was okay at 18 months. The seven year old was okay at 14. The 13 year old won't hit this until he's 26 years old because he lived at longer than the rest of them. The six year old still struggles. His beatings were pretty horrific and left him almost blind. He has a depth perception issue on top of the blindness and a lot of mental health issues he gets help with. The good news is he's smart. He's really into robots and figures out how things move. So he plans on going to college and he is loved. He turned 16 yesterday. He was always told he doesn't belong. His whole family treated him like he was the outsider. So now he does finally belong. So even though this was hard on my entire family we all suffered a little bit. My own kids included with wanting to keep the babies as their siblings. We all fell in love and you become attached. I mean how do you not have babies with you for a couple years and not become attached? So thank you God for using me to help these kids. It was not easy but it was worth it in the end.