Keep On Keeping On

How many times could you be knocked down in life before you decide not to get up again? Three times? Eight times? Twenty times?

Karin Carruthers, 56, has stopped counting. She and her twin sister were born to an alcoholic mother who worked as a prostitute in Keokuk.

“Our ‘Dad’ was Mom’s pimp, and he drank and beat us, and he broke Mom’s jaw once ’cuz she held back some money,” Karin remembers. When a school nurse discovered the welts from a beating with a razor strap on Karin’s back during a routine kindergarten health screening, Karin and her sister were sent to live with foster parents.

“That should have been better,” Karin says, and it was in some ways. There was food to eat, and they went to church every Sunday, but as the girls grew up, the foster father began to molest them. “Neither of our mothers believed us when we told them, and that really hurt my heart, so I left at 16,” she says.

She hoped for a better, safer life with someone to love her when she married at 18, right after graduation from high school. “I really wanted a baby, but drugs were messing him up, so I couldn’t get pregnant.”

Finally, some time later, “I was 6½ months pregnant, and I tripped and fell down 23 stairs. I made it,” she chokes through her tears, “but my little girl —her name was Karressa Lee—didn’t.” Karin never had children.

Through the years, she worked in grocery stores, a bookbindery, factories, and restaurants; sometimes living alone, sometimes supporting a man. Then, one of those men sold drugs from the apartment she was renting and Karin was evicted. She had been living in homeless camps around Des Moines for about seven years when Joppa met her.

“Joppa people showed up with food and heat when I was living in the camps, and made things bearable,” she says. In December 2011, Joppa assisted her with her move into an apartment. “It was an answered prayer,” she says. “They’re so kind-hearted. I’m not used to that.”

Now Karin faces another possible eviction. “I just can’t think a bout going back to the camps again, but…” she trails off. Then she straightens her shoulders and lifts her chin, “But I’m happy to be alive and glad God gave me the chance to keep on keeping on,” she concludes, “and I’m thankful to Joppa for true friends. God bless Joppa.”