A Child of God in a Broken Home

Love, Protection and Worth

When Carrie was 13, her family moved to Tucson, Arizona, a move that pulled everything apart. Shortly after they arrived, her parents separated. Her father, once so successful, stopped working and stayed home for years. As the youngest of five, Carrie was often alone in the house with him. She remembers the confusion and pain of being harassed by her own father while he was in a drunken haze. Looking back, she wrestled not only with his behavior, but with her mother’s silence. She would later ask herself and her mother, “He was drunk. Why didn’t you stop it? Because you weren’t drunk. What’s your excuse?” Those teenage years, around 13–14, planted deep questions about love, protection, and worth—questions she would wrestle with for decades.

Working Too Young and Growing Up Too Fast

By 14, Carrie was already working, learning that if she didn’t take care of herself, no one else would. But survival came at a cost. At 19, she got pregnant with her first daughter and began “starting that cycle of being with men that were abusive.” Without realizing it, she was repeating the pattern she’d grown up in, trading her own safety and dignity for what felt like love and stability. In the years that followed, Carrie became a mother of three. She married, tried to build a life, and did what so many women do—held everything together while everything around her fell apart. Her husband went to jail, and suddenly, “he was gone, I had no child support, and I raised them on my own.” She made enough to support her children financially, but she “hated that life.” The environment, the bar scene, the people, the late nights—it all felt like a trap. Every time she started to heal, there would be another push, another tackle, another injury, another reminder that she mattered less to others than their control and anger did.

Finding Healing at the Mission

After a month living in her car, Carrie cried out to God for help and began seeing “these wings” in the clouds, feeling as though He was showing her the difference between healing and returning to harm. Walking into Gospel Rescue Mission was terrifying, but she chose to trust that God was leading her somewhere safe. Instead of the shelter she feared, she found a Christ-centered community, caring staff, and a place to heal. Today, Carrie says GRM has given her more than a bed and a shower—it has given her space to breathe, heal, and rediscover that she is, and always has been, a beloved child of God.