When my dad (Elmer) was seven, his dad was murdered.  It was the wild west.  Everyone wore a gun.  His dad was a cattleman and had been very wealthy in the late eighteen hundreds.  After he was killed, my dad's mom married again and her new husband absconded with everything.  Leaving her penniless.  Oklahoma wasn't even a state.  The law was an abstract idea.  She got a job as a cook, my dad started working, and they made it--but it was tough.  He was just a kid.

He was the seventh son.  Three were already dead, one (Harvey) was very sick, and the other two were grown and gone.   Oklahoma was dry at the time, and  the two oldest brothers had rigged their dad's car to haul booze in a secret compartment under the car.  They were bootleggers.  Later they got jobs, but for a while, they ran liquor.  Do you have any characters like that in your family?

It is a miracle that my dad turned out to be the man that he was. After a year or two, their mom opened a restaurant and the boys slaughtered hogs, cured and smoked the bacon and hams, cooked, washed dishes, served the food and whatever else needed to be done.

Harvey grew up and became a devout Catholic.  My dad became a saint in the Baptist church.  Both of them were very Godly men.  I have always wondered about the circumstances of the older two sons--raised rich--and the younger two sons who were raised poor.

Matthew 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit: For their's is the kingdom of God."  That doesn't mean you have a weak spirit, it means that you are trodden down by circumstances but still trust God.

Those two brothers are now citizens of the kingdom of God.