The Route of Escape: The First of Three

The Route of Escape is a modernday "Pilgrim's Progress" of an event that happened one day in the life of an unsuspecting Christian woman. This event sent her reeling head long down dimly lit back roads of her past while taking to task the spiritual endurance required for her bright future in ministry. To gain supernatural strength to overcome every barrier casually, yet strategically strewn along her way required certain gifts, several acts of God, and more than not, a route of escape. Come! Let her words guide you along her way. She will tell you in truth, for this is her life.

Not much occurred in the summer of '64 unless one had eyes to see and ears to hear. The gift of patience allowed my folks to wait nine whole months for the anticipated miracle of a blessed event. In the intense month where the emeralds of May faint and fade to the wilted green of peridot, God staged my entrance. On the day when God told my mother that it was "time", I was birthed. It was the cusp day of a transition month when Jim Sr. and Shirley Ann would take full responsibility as well as opportunity of being parents inevitably a third, yet not, final time. However, it was how the inevitable would present itself that caused the nail biting and eventually hair (or hell) raising experience. Prior to the month when Indians' heated revenge rampages and scalps summer of its foliage, -leaving in its wake a trail of blood-red, burnt-orange, and flame-yellow heaps for rakes to herd into massive burial mounds that ignite swiftly and burn brightly in the warm autumn nights- I entered the world in my full regalia of nothingness. In other words, I was born butt-naked in the month of August. With that knowledge, life would be forevermore radically extraordinary. My name is Jacquelyn A. Berry, yet those closest to me call me Jacque  More than not my parents called me by my full name for they were often fully infuriated with my vest for life (and getting into trouble). I was reared in a safe haven of do's anddon'ts. I learned about God, and was told that He somehow always knew about me. I was taught that God was to be feared, and like Santa Claus, He knew what I was thinking as well as doing. Because Santa only came around the month of December seeking every good girl and boy, I spent the end of November and all of December reminding my parents just how good I could be. They in turn reminded me that what they could not see everyday, God could. Therefore, any antics missed by them were always caught by "the-Man-upstairs". (My parents always motioned upward noting Godwas "the Man", and I should fea