[ZombieJohn]

And so by degrees he lied to her face, and to mine too, because I wasn't talking, I was just listening to him. Eventually mom said she was tired and she wanted to go to bed, so dad said ok, and she got up from the couch, and he walked out the door of the family room with her.

I lay there for a bit, somewhat stunned, and then as I hadn't moved in 2 hours, and had been tense as a board the entire time, I sat up and stretched. At this moment, mom walked back in, for reasons neither of us can remember. She saw me stretching, and asked me if I'd heard the whole conversation, and I said yes, and she said not to tell dad, and I said no, I wouldn't. So she went back to bed, and I finally fell asleep.

The next morning, mom woke me up and asked me what I thought about the whole conversation, and I said I thought it was the most surreal thing I'd ever heard, and she started crying.

She told me she almost believed him the night before, and that when she woke up again she realised that she'd just had the exact same conversation with him that I remembered her saying she'd had with him 15 times before, and every time she came away almost convinced, but convinced enough not to do anything else. So we realised at that point that we had to go. I started nagging at her that we had to, and by degrees we started working up to some kind of plan. for a day or so maybe, we were rushing back and forth, photocopying papers and hiding them under my mattress, and then there was a day of silence, and then the next morning dad tried to grope my mom in bed(right after this conversation, if you'd believe), and she pushed it off, horrified, so he left for work. Then Mom walked into the room where Mary and Emily and I were sitting, and said we were all leaving. Mary and Emily both took it way better than I thought they would -- it turns out they were just as frightened of dad as we were, even more so in a couple places -- so we all started packing.

The pack was hurried and slightly panicky, because none of us really knew what we were doing and no-one had ever even thought about doing this before three days ago, so nerves were high and tension was rising the longer we were in the house (my dad was in real estate, so he would go out and come back at fairly loose times) but we finally got everything packed, and we were standing in the kitchen, about to go through the door into the garage, when the garage door opened.

The exact second my mom put her handle on the door into the garage, the garage door opened. We panicked, me and my sisters started frantically trying to hide our stuff, and mom started crying again, and opened the door into the garage to explain to my dad why we were all standing here with all our clothes packed, except there was absolutely no-one in the garage. There was no-one outside the garage or near it, or even really in sight. The garage door opened by itself, at the exact moment we were going out.

If any one of the events I related to you before that had not happened, or happened in a slightly different way, we wouldn't have ever left, all these events happened in the space of a few days, and if that wasn't enough to make anyone believe, the garage door opened with no-one around it, and no-one in sight, a feat so improbable by human standards that to even suggest it could have happened by itself, spontaneously, at the second mom touched the doorknob, would be pure denial.

So we left for the shelter, and we got in, even though I wasn't technically allowed because I was too old, and we got support for public housing, even though there was a shortage and mom wasn't eligable. And through the past year after this, we've all been provided for continuously though not abundantly. We have never had a Big Break, but we've always had just enough money to live absolutely comfortably. And I'm starting to change, through a series of similarly incredible events.

I told you how I was trying to change my personality. Well I couldn't, I failed enough times, I know, but a few months after we left, things started happening to me. Things I couldn't control, horrible events somehow always involving only me, and almost never anyone else else, that I couldn't understand or figure out, that would wind me up and up and bring me down and down until something snapped, and I'd fall over in despair, and then suddenly I'd realise what the entire thing meant, and how I was reacting to it, and I'd suddenly understand a huge new part of my personality, and that part would be fixed and brought up to the light.

God is very real, and he moved us out of that house faster and more completely and directly than any amount of legal process could do, and he's been changing me faster and more completely than any psychologist could do, and I know this, because I've seen psychologists before, and they are no-where near as effective as the past few months have been on me. So, God is amazing, and he saved me. Before, I hated everyone and feared everyone. Now I find I love everyone, and am afraid of almost nothing anymore, and it's all through God, very directly, because the Garage Door was only a very small part of it. There's a whole bunch of other things, that have happened a whole bunch of different, yet equally fantastic ways, and they all go from and come to the same principle, the same idea. Jesus.

Whoever reads this, may God be with them.