Be faithful always and He shall never let you down nor leave you alone. No matter how big or how small the pond of problems may be in your life, God will always be right there beside you whether you believe or not. My mother, Peggy, was a fairly skinny girl when she was younger. She had long light brown hair that was so thick you could barely see her back and her big, happy, light brown eyes. Throughout my mother's life, she approached multiple horrifying situations that would scare the average person, but not my mom, she wasn’t so called “the average person” because she always had a jumpy, courageous, outgoing, and resilient personality even after the horrifying events.

Born in Chicago Illinois, my mom was one of nine kids in her family, and in my opinion she was the bravest out of them all. Her family was so big that my grandparents could not afford it with having only one job so because of that, their parents were not always around to pay attention and watch their kids. One beautiful, but also very noisy day in the city of Chicago, my mom was with one of her sisters, Carol, and one of Carol’s good friends. Carol and her friend are a few years older than my mom and they were babysitting my mom. As usual, my grandparents were out at work and the three girls had nothing to do so they decided to walk to Linkin Park Zoo. On the way my mom noticed a strange man behind them. “Carol, there is a man following us” my mom explained, but Carol was too busy talking to her friend and having a good time to pay attention to her annoying little sister. When the three girls arrived at the zoo, my mom mentioned that she had to go to the bathroom so it was decided, that was their first stop. Carol walked into the bathroom followed by the two girls, but an uninvited guest following behind them as well. They heard the big metal door shut and a short of clicking noise so the girls turned and looked in the direction of the door to see the man who was following them a few blocks back locking the bathroom door. The strange man, with bad and inappropriate intentions traveling through his mind, started to approach the three girls. He grabbed Carol and started to undress her so the three girls screamed so loud the whole city could hear them. A man walking past the zoo bathrooms heard the three girls screaming for help and managed to break into the bathroom. When the strange man took off, everything ended up okay, and the three girls headed home. When my mom told me this story she said, “I believed in Him, and he saved us all”. A few years earlier when my mom was about five years old, she was heading home from school in the city and experienced a heart stopping event. In the city there were no busses at the time so kids had to either get dropped off and picked up at school or they simply walked. With my grandparents being at work they couldn’t take my mom and her siblings to school so they took a train as close as they could get to the school and walked the rest of the way. One afternoon when school got out, my mom, her sister Carol, and their sister Nancy were on their way home. My mom, being a careless and foolish five year old was unusually hyper and obnoxious followed Carol and Nancy onto the train, just before the doors had closed jumped right back out. Puzzled looks began to appear on Carol and Nancy’s faces while my mom just smiled and waved as the train left the station. My mother did what she was always told to do when she got separated from the adults. She took a seat and waited until the older girls made their way back to the train station by catching the next train. Fortunately nothing bad happen, and my mom was once again okay. She said to me “He was with me at the zoo, and He was with me at the train station, He has never let anything bad happen to me, and He never will.”

In my mom’s young adulthood, she was an extremely strong girl. When she was approaching her teen years she attended a Catholic school in Chicago. My mom told me that when she went to school all of the teachers were nuns and if you didn’t listen or do what you were told they would hit your knuckles with a wooden ruler. She also told me that at the end of the week all her friends had bruises on their hands from getting hit with the rulers. When my mom was about eleven years old she and some of her siblings moved back to Winnipeg, Canada, where my family originates from, and went to a public school. My mom told me that because her siblings were so much older than her she had to go to school alone. When she went to her first day she was scared out of her mind and said “I dreaded going to school everyday because of the kids.” I asked her “Why? What happened?” she told me that when she walked to school the Native American kids would chase her and threaten to beat her up. When she walked home after school the kids would follow her home and beat her up because her dad was white which made her half white. She had nobody by her side to stick up for her because all of her siblings went to a different school for older kids.

In my mom’s adulthood she stumbled across some heartbreaking events. When my mom was fourteen years old she moved back to Chicago and went to Catholic schools again. She was happy because she got to go to school with her friends, and she didn’t get bullied anymore. She met my dad in grade school through friends, and when she moved to Canada they lost touch. My mom met a man named Kevin, they got married and she had her first child, my half brother, Daniel. Years later she and Kevin were unhappy together and got a divorce. When my mom was single three years later she met back up with my dad and they were really close friends. They realized they liked each other so they decided to get married together. My mom was five months pregnant with my sister, Hilary, that was her second child. Then eleven years later my mom found out she had ovarian cancer and the doctors told her that if she wanted to have anymore kids she’d better do it now or never. That’s when she had her third and her last child, me. Two years later my mom and my dad decided that they weren’t happy and she got another divorce. A few years after their divorce my mom met a man named Greg and they got married. They lived together in Round Lake with me and my sister Hilary. Then in 2014 my mom’s job got eliminated so she came up with the idea she wanted to move to Hartsville Tennessee which was a huge change for our whole family. Moving to a farm in basically the middle of nowhere was hard for all of us because the change was so extreme. When we were upset and missing our friends and family she always had a big grin on her face and staying positive saying “don’t worry guys, wells see them soon.”

My mom is my role model. She is a butterfly, one big beautiful butterfly. She is a butterfly because although she is just a small insect the world she is brave, adventurous, and strong. “Be faithful always and He shall never let you down nor leave you alone. No matter how big or how small the pond of problems may be in your life, God will always be right there beside you whether you believe or not.” that’s what she always says.