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)
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