God Has a Hold on Me

My name is Christine A. Snyder James, and I was originally born in Monrovia, Liberia. I grew up in an extremely large African Christian family. My dad was a lieutenant colonel in the Liberian army, and my mother is a seamstress as well as a home economics teacher. My parents were married for twenty-nine years and had eleven children; I am the tenth child. Growing up wasn't easy because my family did not have very much money, but my parents always had food on the table for all of us. After my dad died, my mother became a single parent responsible for feeding twelve mouths. Although she did not have a strong educational background and earned a single-parent salary, she put all eleven of her children through the best schools and made a safe home for us. I've never known such a self-reliant person as my mother. Her courage throughout the years and her love for her family was sufficient to sustain us all. It is because of her will to survive and to see that all her children were brought up properly that I am here today.