Up out of Egypt is the autobiography of Helen Marsh: Helen was born into a family where her siblings were much older than she was and she grew up feeling like the little kid that didn’t fit into the family and just didn’t count. She felt inferior, unloved and worthless. Right from the beginning of school life she tried to impress her friends hoping friendship with her peers would give her the significance, love and acceptance that she didn’t experience at home. She didn’t do well academically, and her insecure nature again caused her to feel like a misfit. At 10 years old the family moved from the country to the city causing more insecurity. All she wanted was to feel loved, accepted by her peers and have fun. She found a way to popularity with the boys but the fun she was searching for literally left her “holding the baby”.
Helen’s story tells of how she searched for love in all the wrong places, and in that search she didn’t find the love she was looking for but found heartbreak, emotional pain and grief. By the time she was 14, she became sick and when hospitalised it was discovered that she not only suffered from glandular fever, but she was also pregnant. To cover her wrong she lied, telling her parents she had been raped. The police were called in and one lie led to another. Finally the truth of her promiscuous life came out . . .
Up until the 1970‘s it was was a disgrace to be pregnant outside of marriage and the pregnant girl was considered a “bad girl”. The popular TV series “Love Child” depicts this scenario well. The girl was either forced to marry the father of the baby or forced to live out her days of pregnancy in a home for unmarried mother’s where arrangement for the baby’s adoption would be made. The law at that time stated that once a baby was relinquished by the birth mother to adoption there would be no contact for mother and baby ever again.
Helen was sent to a home for unmarried mothers and the baby was adopted out. What pain and grief she suffered having to give up her first born. Sadly, Helen didn’t learn from her hard lesson. Her story moves on. The deep desire to be loved found her once again in the same circumstances - this time to a young man of 19 who she loved and wanted to marry. She was 15 years old. Her parents finally relented and gave their permission and just after her 16th birthday she and Wally were married. The marriage was turbulent in the early years, but it developed into a loving relationship which has lasted till now, 56 years on.
The reader will discover how that came about, and how Helen found emotional and spiritual peace in her life. The story includes information of the changes to the adoption laws in the 1980‘s, and the search for a baby’s birth mother, the reconciliation of mother and daughter after 29 years apart and the journey that it entailed. It wasn’t a happy ever after story but the two knew without a doubt they were meant to be mother and daughter together and so with patience, forgiveness, understanding and counselling they now have a loving relationship. The end of the story reveals how Helen had one more trial to face, a trial which is every mother’s worst nightmare. It will declare that the strength and faith Helen gained throughout her life’s journey would once again carry her though this one too.
