I was a Runaway By Gwen Shaw
Furtively, I finished packing, listening for steps outside my bedroom door. I was 17 years old, tall, slim, blue-eyed and had long blonde hair. Boys passing me on the street would call out to me, “Hi, Blondie!” I liked that.
When I knew no one was around, I dropped my suitcase out the window, then hid it in a ditch on our farm in the Niagara Falls peninsula, near St. Catharine’s, Ontario, Canada.
The next day I crept out of the house and headed for my suitcase. It was a warm afternoon in early fall, 1941. For a moment I wanted to look back. Would I ever see my parents and two younger brothers again? But, for the thousandth time, I deliberately hardened my heart.
It must have been the thousandth time, for I began to rebel against God when I was only seven. I remember the incident. I was sitting in the schoolhouse playing “Little Raindrops” on the organ. Through the open door a playmate called with an ugly lilt, “Why don’t you play a hymn?”
I knew what she meant. My religious parents were so strict, we couldn’t do many things that others did. I hated being different! So with energy far beyond my meager life span, I vowed right then, “I’m not going to follow God! My parents can force me, but in my heart I’ll go my own way”’
With a secret scorn, I listened to family prayers. In church I closed my heart. By the time I was a teenager, everyone said, “That little Bergman girl is a hard one.” And I was proud of it! Layer upon layer, I built up a hard shell around my heart.
