My younger sister, Abigail, then only three, had torn off two pages of my favorite book, an illustrated book of fairy tales with glossy, gold-trimmed pages and a beautiful, hard cover that I had gotten for my fifth birthday. I got mad at her, of course, making her cry, but when my Mom and Dad learned about it, they reprimanded me, telling me that it was not right for me to make my little sister cry before carrying her out of the room, stroking her hair and whispering words of assurance and affection to her so that I felt as if our roles had been reversed – Abigail being the faultless and me the villain. Just after that, Bethany, my older sister, came down the stairs and figuring out what happened, or thinking she had, marched towards me and told me that God wasn’t going to listen to any of my prayers because I was being a bad girl. That made me so angry that I just went up to my room, stuffed my favorite clothes and toys into my pink backpack and left the house, tiptoeing across the living room and passing by the back door so no one would try to stop me.
