Elizabeth Rios-Sanchez is a senior at Wisconsin Academy.
I thought that if my mom needed help, I could protect her by being close. Looking back now, I know there wasn’t much I could have done against my dad—but it shows just how bad things had gotten.
I remember my mom yelling, and my dad just laughing. My heart was beating fast, and there was this buzzing in my head all night because I was so worried about her. Thankfully, nothing too serious happened that night. I didn’t have to be anyone’s superhero.
That fight was the biggest one I remember, and it’s the night we found out my dad hadn’t stopped drinking—even though he said he had years before. My mom ended up kicking him out. I’m not sure how long he was gone, maybe a couple of months, but I do remember the feeling after he left. It felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. It felt safe again, like finally he couldn’t hurt my mom anymore.
Eventually, my dad came back. Not long after, we moved up north—and that’s when everything started to change. For the first time in my life, my dad stopped hitting my mom. I still don’t fully understand how he changed so quickly, but one thing I do know is that God really worked on him. The change I saw in my dad was nothing short of a miracle.
Even though the physical abuse stopped, my parents still fought a lot. Their arguments were so loud the whole neighborhood could hear. That continued up until around the winter of 2022.
Then, in January 2023, something big happened between them. It put my dad in a position where he had to choose: either treat my mom the way she deserved to be treated or lose her. Since then, I’ve seen my dad make a complete 180 in how he treats my mom—and how he treats us, his children.
He went from being this aggressive, scary father I feared, to a gentle, kind dad that I genuinely enjoy being around.
These past few months, I’ve watched my parents fall more and more in love every single day. And even though it was painful to witness the hurt they caused each other, I would go through it all again if it meant getting to see my dad fall in love with Jesus and truly accept Him into his heart—and, on top of that, fall in love with my mom and treat her the way she always deserved to be treated.
The verse that comes to mind when I think about my dad’s transformation is:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”Ezekiel 36:26 (NIV)
This verse is exactly what happened in my dad’s life. God softened his heart, gave him a new spirit and turned pain into something beautiful.
Elizabeth Rios-Sanchez is a senior at Wisconsin Academy.
