“Bricks thrown through the window. People calling ‘nigger’ after you down the street.” As an afterthought Sam, 41, adds “It was quite harsh.”

Sam’s great-grandmother was the first white woman in Hull to marry a black man. The racism she experienced continued down the generations.

But that was not the only reason Sam grew up with a sense of rejection.

“I was three when my father left. I remember him coming home in his army suit; then I remember him leaving in his army suit. We never saw him again.”

Sam’s mum re-married, but Sam felt left out. “I was hot-headed and seemed to be the brunt of many arguments. I started living in my own little world.”

Sam empathised with other isolated children. At school she met an ‘elected mute’ – a young girl who’d decided never to speak.

“I sat with her, just chatting, giving her space to be herself. Suddenly she spoke to me! She hadn’t spoken to anyone in years! Next day she didn’t stop talking.

“She took me home to meet her family and I felt loved and appreciated. I’d never experienced that kind of family warmth before – our’s was all over the place, with Mum and my step-dad working all the time, making money from their businesses. That little time of warm closeness made my loneliness feel even worse.”

Then, when Sam was twelve, the biggest blow came. “My school picked me to train as a potential Olympic runner, but because there was no support a home I had to drop out. That really made rebellion kick in! I started smoking ‘Ganja’”. At 14 Sam got pregnant with her daughter, Gemma.

Several difficult years followed. Sam met a man who seemed to offer the stability she longed for. They moved in together and had a baby. But then a series of nightmares struck.

“Someone spiked my spliff on my 18th birthday. I stayed in hospital until the drug worked out of my system. Coming home, I found my man in bed with my sister.”

Bad enough – but worse was to come. “Not long after this,” recalls Sam, “I lost my son in a cot death.”

At this tragic time, feeling betrayed and heartbroken, Sam decided to “have a break from it all.” A friend had given her an inspiring Jesus Army magazine and in 1984 she arranged a visit a Jesus Army community house near Rugby.

“When I was younger I’d been taken to hear a famous Christian preacher. I ‘gave my heart to Jesus’ like he told me to, but got disillusioned when I found church boring.

“But I remember saying to God: “If You want me to be a Christian and follow You 100 per cent, then You have to find me a church with something real for me to hold onto. Now I felt I’d found the church God had chosen for me! I could see the lifestyle. I caught the vision and was baptised.”

The perfect point for a “happy-ever-after” ending – but it wasn’t quite like that. “I did well until my 30s,” says Sam. “Then, feeling I could be ‘missing out’, I moved on.”

It was years later, unsatisfied again, that Sam had a new experience of God which led her back to the church. “Now I’ve found an even deeper commitment to God,” she declares. “I can see God’s ‘engineering’ in my life. It’s not been a waste of time: the bad times, the good times have all been part of God’s good plan to get me where I am today.

“At last, I feel at peace – I’ve found my home.”

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