As a child growing up in poverty, she felt like an outsider even in her own home. “I overheard my mom one time telling my oldest sister, ‘I don’t want you talking to Adelina too much because she’s gonna corrupt your mind,’” Sanchez recalled. “I was always left out.”
Those words settled deep into her heart. As a teenager, she dreamed of finishing school and escaping poverty. “I wanted to graduate and do something for myself,” she said.
Instead, she became pregnant and her mother insisted she marry. “I didn’t know nothing about taking care of my baby,” she said.
Her husband was a hard drinker and the marriage became abusive. During one violent incident, she said her husband struck her in the head with a brick, requiring eight stitches. “He almost killed me,” she said.
That was the night she called her mother and came home to San Antonio. But returning to San Antonio did not bring healing. The feeling of isolation followed her into adulthood. “My sisters still wouldn’t talk to me,” Sanchez said. “I have eight sisters and three brothers, and they all treat me the same.”
She managed to raise two sons, but the hardships continued to mount. In 2020, one of her sons died suddenly from a heart attack at age 43. Her other son had just finished serving fifteen years in prison, was released this August, and was soon arrested again.
In her grief and isolation, she felt her heart turning back toward God. She started attending Robbie White’s Bible study class where she learned about forgiveness and faith. She began volunteering in the thrift store, and she kept coming to worship. Still, social connections remain difficult for her and she hesitates to call the people around her friends. “I have just acquaintances,” she said.
She has been through so much loss—her oldest son gone, her youngest son cycling in and out of jail, and loneliness waiting for her at home. Her days now revolve around the gym, the thrift store, and church. After a lifetime of rejection, violence, and loss, she keeps coming. She keeps trying. “I’m trying to reach out,” she said, “I've been through a lot.”
I told her, “You are very welcome here… Jesus died for you.”
Adelina accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and was recently baptized at Baptist Temple. In a life marked by rejection and hardship, Adelina has found a place where she is seen—not as a burden, not as an outsider, but as someone God loves, someone worth saving, someone whose story does not end in pain. She is still walking through grief, still learning community, still discovering hope. But she is not walking alone anymore.
