Childhood

"Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it." Proverbs 22:6 (NLT)

I was the oldest of three children. My mother was divorced and raising us with little to no help from my father. Interestingly enough, I can't seem to ever remember him living with us or even the two of them being married. Maybe I was too young to grasp what was going on around me at the time, but my early memories of my father are of him living with his mother, my beloved grandmother Catherine. He lived with her until the day he died.

Before my parents divorced, my sister La'Dawn was born two years after me. One month after I was born, Clarence was born to my aunt Dorothea, my mother's sister. When Clarence was about two or three years old, Dorothea was brutally murdered, and my mother at the age of twenty-three adopted and raised him as her own child and my brother. I never knew any different until we were older and able to understand the dynamics of our family.

My mother worked very hard and always made sure we lived well and that we had every luxury she could afford, despite being a young single parent. We lived in a nice, well-furnished home on the west side of Detroit and our home was always full of toys and nice clothes. There were times I know my mother felt guilty because we didn't have a father in our lives, so she sometimes gave us double everything. She didn't want us to feel as though we were lacking anything by not having a father around. One of my mother's younger brothers wasn't getting along with my grandfather, so he came to live with us and we were all very comfortable together.

Early on, my brother Clarence was getting into mischief and causing my mother lots of grief. He was fighting with kids in the neighborhood, sneaking out of the house, and dragging me along with him. I remember one day we sneaked out of the house and he beat up a little girl. Being a very passive child I didn't want to participate but felt pressured to by my brother. I was very ashamed and felt frightened by the possible repercussions. The little girl's father knew where we lived and came to our house and told my mother what we did. When my mother found out, my brother lied and said we had never left the house. When my mother asked me for the truth, like George Washington I could not tell a lie. When I told my mother the truth, my brother was very angry with me and we were both severely punished. On some level I felt relieved that the truth came and I didn't mind being punished for what we did because I knew we deserved it.

My brother and I were in the same kindergarten class, and he got into so much trouble that he was expelled from kindergarten. My mother was always at our school dealing with issues concerning him, and after a while, she and the principal became friends, began dating, and they eventually got married. From their union, my youngest brother William was conceived. Now, our family was much bigger, including my mother, Clarence, La'Dawn, me and my uncle, my mother's new husband, his son and three daughters, and now my new little brother William. Sometimes I felt like a cast member of the TV show The Brady Bunch, or better yet, the seventies comedy-drama Eight is Enough.

In the beginning, everything seemed fine with our new family. We moved into a much larger home in an upscale Detroit neighborhood. My uncle got married and he and his new wife moved in with us as well. My step-siblings were very creative and talented, so we had a lot of fun learning and growing together, and my stepfather treated me and my siblings like his own children.

By age six, my love for music began to develop, and I started playing the drums. I have to thank my mother for being so patient and allowing me to loudly beat my drums in the house. I don't remember her telling me to stop, not even once. Having a six-year-old making all that noise couldn't have been easy for her, but my mother allowed it and my skills began to grow. My stepbrother could play the piano — his mother was a classically trained pianist — and two of my stepsisters were really great vocalists, so we spent lots of time playing and singing music together. We sang songs by Captain and Tennille, The Sylvers, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, and much more. Those were fun times as we bonded and learned to become a family.

"When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.'"

Mark 10:14

While all of this was going on, we were regularly attending meetings and bible studies at the Kingdom Hall, the worship place of the Jehovah's Witnesses. I was born into a family whose dominant religion on my mother's side was Jehovah's Witnesses. My grandmother and her sisters were introduced to Jehovah's Witnesses as young girls and would pass it down to their children and grandchildren.

I have many fond memories of going to the Kingdom Hall as a child, reading and studying their various books and publications. Both of my mother's sisters were baptized JW's and I attended both of their weddings at the Kingdom Hall. I still have the pictures in a family photo album. I loved going to the Kingdom Hall, and my mother made sure me and my siblings received home Bible studies from the men at our local Kingdom Hall.

During these studies we would read through a Watch Tower Society publication (the corporate and legal name of the Jehovah's Witnesses) and answer the questions that were listed on the bottom of the page. More and more, our lives revolved around the Kingdom Hall and fellowship with other JW's. I was learning and growing very fast in my understanding of the Bible as taught by the JW's, and my love for God was constantly increasing. I was so eager to learn that I would call my grandmother and aunts with loads of bible questions. Soon, my love for JW's would manifest in other areas of my life and it would affect how I viewed and interacted with others.

When I was about seven or eight, I organized a group of neighborhood kids to form our own little club and my mother and stepfather helped me build a clubhouse in our backyard for me and my friends. We were imaginative children who loved riding our bikes, playing all kind of games like hide...