Picking up where i left off nearly 4 months ago, i will continue my life story with Chapter 3. After 20 years of marriage to a very troubled, alcoholic man i believed that God had released me from my vows to him and we divorced. At the time of the divorce i discovered that he had also been unfaithful to me over the years. At the time i discovered this fact, it really didn't matter any more; my heart was cold toward him. He left and there i was ~ starting over. i was nearly 39 years old with 3 almost grown daughters and a toddler son. My oldest daughter was taking a year off from college to work and was living in another city with my sister's family while she worked as a nanny and my second daughter had just graduated from high school, taken a job in a nearby town and gotten an apartment. My youngest daughter was entering her senior year of high school and my son was 2 1/2 years old. i was scared to death. i had no job skills and had only worked outside the home for 3 years when the girls were much younger. i did not want to put my son in daycare so i decided to become the daycare. i became licensed and took several little ones into my home during the day. It was hectic and crazy at times, but i really enjoyed it. i was able to earn a bit of money and stay home with my son. i was earning "a bit" of money and looking back on that year i have no idea how i paid the bills, bought groceries, etc but i did. God took good care of us as i received no child support or help from my husband in any way. He took his newest girlfriend and left the state and we were not to hear a word from him for many years.
So, to continue Chapter 3, there was a family who lived down the street who had 2 children about the same ages as my 3 girls. The kids had been fast friends but there was no relationship between the parents. After my husband left, the man from down the street spoke to me one day while i was taking my son for a walk in the stroller. He told me that his wife had left him a while ago. That was news to me. He started calling, taking me out for a coke, etc. i knew him ~ or thought i did~ as we had been neighbors for 14 years. i was divorced and he began courting me in earnest. There were a few "quirky" things about him but nothing that raised a big red flag. Frankly, i was so afraid that i could not take care of my family and as he appeared to be a good provider and all around nice guy i accepted when he proposed marriage 6 months later. (Now i know that things happened way too fast ~ i needed more time to process being alone, but fear took over.) Both of us being Christians, we prayed about our situation and i truly sought God's direction in the matter. He said he did too, and i have no reason to doubt him.
Over the next 24 years he and i shared a life and raised my son whom he adopted. We had moved to another state to make a fresh start. In the meantime, the 6 children finished growing up, going to college, marrying, starting a family and presenting us with 11 grandchildren all told. My oldest daughter and her family had moved half of a continent away to a beautiful area of the country and they wanted us to come and move near them. After 3 years of trying to sell our house, it finally happened. We sold our house, packed up all of our worldly good and moved halfway across the country to begin our retirement years.
To be continued...
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Friday, August 1, 2014
Me, starting over...again
This is a blog i never expected to write. One that i never intended or planned to write. i did not plan to start over...again, ever. Sometimes circumstances take us by surprise, don't they? Maybe i shouldn't say "sometimes" but "usually" or "always". At least that's the way it seems to me.
i think of life as being composed of chapters as in a book. My book started at my birth and the first chapter covered the first 18 3/4 years of my life. i am the oldest of 4 children born into a middle-class, middle-America family. In many ways my family was quite dysfunctional but as many people who grow up in dysfunctional families, i didn't realize it until i was grown and other people pointed it out to me. At first i denied it; rejected the idea until i began, slowly, to see the truth of the matter. Now, m-a-n-y years later, i am still finding new truths about my upbringing. It was not awful, or abusive, just. . . dysfunctional. As a teen i became very angry and that anger continued for many years. i honestly didn't know what i was so very angry about but it was directed at my family and almost no one else.
Chapter 2 ~ During this very angry period, just after graduating high school, i met a young man just home from the Viet Nam war where he had been wounded. i thought it would be fun to date such an interesting person for a while, not expecting anything more than a "summer fling". Several months later, we married and over the next 3 years brought into the world 3 beautiful daughters. (A 4th child, a son, came along 14 years later.) Early in this marriage it became apparent that my husband was a raging alcoholic, a fact that did not surface until i was pregnant with our second daughter. The third daughter came along a year later and i peddled as fast as i could to hold the family together, keep them safe and as well fed as i could manage. He was unable to hold a job which made things more difficult. After a few years, at the urging of a neighbor, i attended a little Bible study group where i met the Lord and surrendered myself and my everything to Him. i had really hoped that this would make things better in my life and it did but not in the way i expected. My outer circumstances did not change and in fact in some ways got worse, but my inner being was strengthened and i was comforted and provided for in sometimes supernatural ways. My husband drank more and more heavily during those years although he went to alcohol treatment 3 times and maintained sobriety 3 times for 2 years each time. Each period of sobriety brought renewed hope that he could be delivered from the demons of alcohol. As i said, our son came along when our youngest daughter was 14 years old and with him came especially renewed hope for my husband to finally, once and for all, kick this addiction. He had wanted a son since the beginning of our marriage and he was so happy and proud to have one. He worked so hard. i prayed so hard. We all hoped so hard. It was not to be. When our son was 2 1/2 years old, my husband went back to drinking with a vengeance. i had hung on for as long as i could believing that, as a Christian, divorce was not an option but when he started drinking again, i knew in my heart of hearts that it was over. i believed (and still do believe) that at that time God released me from the vows i had taken 20 years before. Thus ended Chapter 2 of the story of my life.
To be continued...
(i don't know if anyone will read this blog; in fact, i don't care if they do. i am writing it for myself, as a kind of therapy but if anyone does read it, please know and remember that God does not make mistakes. His plan is perfect. His timing is perfect. He does all things well. That is the truth)
i think of life as being composed of chapters as in a book. My book started at my birth and the first chapter covered the first 18 3/4 years of my life. i am the oldest of 4 children born into a middle-class, middle-America family. In many ways my family was quite dysfunctional but as many people who grow up in dysfunctional families, i didn't realize it until i was grown and other people pointed it out to me. At first i denied it; rejected the idea until i began, slowly, to see the truth of the matter. Now, m-a-n-y years later, i am still finding new truths about my upbringing. It was not awful, or abusive, just. . . dysfunctional. As a teen i became very angry and that anger continued for many years. i honestly didn't know what i was so very angry about but it was directed at my family and almost no one else.
Chapter 2 ~ During this very angry period, just after graduating high school, i met a young man just home from the Viet Nam war where he had been wounded. i thought it would be fun to date such an interesting person for a while, not expecting anything more than a "summer fling". Several months later, we married and over the next 3 years brought into the world 3 beautiful daughters. (A 4th child, a son, came along 14 years later.) Early in this marriage it became apparent that my husband was a raging alcoholic, a fact that did not surface until i was pregnant with our second daughter. The third daughter came along a year later and i peddled as fast as i could to hold the family together, keep them safe and as well fed as i could manage. He was unable to hold a job which made things more difficult. After a few years, at the urging of a neighbor, i attended a little Bible study group where i met the Lord and surrendered myself and my everything to Him. i had really hoped that this would make things better in my life and it did but not in the way i expected. My outer circumstances did not change and in fact in some ways got worse, but my inner being was strengthened and i was comforted and provided for in sometimes supernatural ways. My husband drank more and more heavily during those years although he went to alcohol treatment 3 times and maintained sobriety 3 times for 2 years each time. Each period of sobriety brought renewed hope that he could be delivered from the demons of alcohol. As i said, our son came along when our youngest daughter was 14 years old and with him came especially renewed hope for my husband to finally, once and for all, kick this addiction. He had wanted a son since the beginning of our marriage and he was so happy and proud to have one. He worked so hard. i prayed so hard. We all hoped so hard. It was not to be. When our son was 2 1/2 years old, my husband went back to drinking with a vengeance. i had hung on for as long as i could believing that, as a Christian, divorce was not an option but when he started drinking again, i knew in my heart of hearts that it was over. i believed (and still do believe) that at that time God released me from the vows i had taken 20 years before. Thus ended Chapter 2 of the story of my life.
To be continued...
(i don't know if anyone will read this blog; in fact, i don't care if they do. i am writing it for myself, as a kind of therapy but if anyone does read it, please know and remember that God does not make mistakes. His plan is perfect. His timing is perfect. He does all things well. That is the truth)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)