"Psalms 23:4 “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me”
I sat there in my aunt’s basement, laughing at the cartoon I was watching. When suddenly I felt the cold nudge of something metal against my neck. “Nick?” I thought.
I turned around and to my terror, there was the end of a gun in my face. “Uncle Gary, going hunting maybe?” I considered.
As I looked past the end of the gun I saw my father. “Get up, You’re coming with me now.” He said sternly.
As my brother and I got up and walked out of the basement door with the gun to our backs, all the recent memories adding up to this moment came flashing back.
The day Dad got so mad he threw the board game we were playing across the room. The day in the school parking lot Mom told us that the doctors told them my dad was sick in the head. The day he beat my brother for not agreeing with his crazy antics. The night he threw my mother on the ground for the dishes not being clean, that was the night we left the house. Everyday we lived secretly at my Aunt and Uncle’s not allowed to go just past the trees back to our home. Now we finally were, but not in a way I ever could have imagined, being forced.
I had no idea what my dad was capable of doing, he had been doing so much lately that I didn’t think he would. As I walked up the hill through the woods, I heard my mother’s screams, “Nick, Savanah, what do you think you are doing?! Get back here! Oh my God, Roland?”
“You stay away now! You’re not taking my kids from me!” My father shouted back. “Don’t even look at her,” he ordered, “Keep moving!” he shouted as he kicked me in the leg.
Hearing my mother’s screams only made me more afraid. When suddenly I heard a whisper in my ears, “Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, do not fear, for I am with you. My rod and My staff will comfort you.”
As we continued through the woods I began to repeat Psalms 23:4 over and over. As my cousin Cara came running through the woods, I feared he would shoot her. I said again “I will not fear for You are with me.” She convinced him that she should come, to keep us calm. He allowed her to come.
We got in the house and he had us go to our bedrooms, I turned around and saw him, loading more bullets into his gun.
In my room I told Cara the scripture and we then said it together. The phone began to ring but Dad just ignored it. I could hear what the man was saying on the answering machine, he was a negotiator. “Roland, please pick up the phone, we know you are in there.” He said calmly. “Roland, this is the police, we have the house completely surrounded. Please pick up the phone.”
Cara tried several different ideas to get him to let us out of the house, each time he would shout “No! Now leave me alone!”
Every time I would hear him shout it made me want to cry, instead I would say again, “I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”
Finally the thought occurred to Cara that a speaker named Teri Pearson was speaking at the church that night, and the kids should be there. The fact that he had become super religious helped. He let us go!
We ran to the car and then zoomed out the drive. As we drove through the neighborhood I saw that the whole area was swarming with police. Cara pulled over and told an officer that she had the kids. It made me laugh as he leaped with joy. He then directed us where to drive. We drove until I saw my mother. As the car stopped I jumped out and ran into my mom’s arms. I was safe, though I really always had been, because He was with me.
