That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to IT!

(SIDENOTE: I've been talking about telling your story so I thought I'd tell a part of mine - here goes)

Everyone has a story, it is our story and something that many times we never think to tell others. It can be because we don’t think our story is a good or interesting story. Maybe it’s because you think others have a much more moving story. The thing is you just never know how even a small portion of your story can speak to someone and perhaps give them something they need in their lives at the moment. Are you going to hold back because you think yours is not worthy? Here are some good reasons why you should tell your story.

In Christianity, telling your story is important for several reasons:

• Personal Connection: Sharing your story allows you to connect with others on a personal level, fostering a sense of community and belonging. 

• Faith Growth: Your story can serve as a source of inspiration and encouragement, helping others grow in their faith journey. 

• Witnessing to Others: Your testimony can be a powerful witness to others about God's grace and love, demonstrating the transformative power of faith. 

• Learning and Reflection: Telling your story can be a way to learn from your experiences and reflect on your growth as a believer. 

• Encouragement and Hope: Your story can provide hope and encouragement to others facing similar challenges, showing that faith can lead to positive change.  

By sharing your story, you not only share your own journey but also contribute to the broader Christian community by sharing the message of hope and transformation that your story represents. 

My story is one of those that I used to think was underwhelming at best. I just was not sure if telling it would even come close to blessing someone. Over the years though I have come to realize that my story has many parts and even if the whole story doesn’t speak to someone there could be parts that will speak to someone and it’s worth the time and effort to try to bless someone by telling it.

The entire purpose of this blog, my book is to bless someone in need. I want to touch lives, to help lives to make the world a better place than I found it.

MY STORY

As a kid I was what my family called “mischievous” but if you ask me I was just doing what I thought was usual. I had a very vivid imagination and I could entertain myself easily by just imagination things.  There were hard times in my life growing up, my parents divorced when I was pretty young. Honestly that was a trauma but not because they divorced. I was young but I remember they had some awful fights and it occurred to me that they were better off separate than together. This was hard on my sister more so than me but we survived. Mom got remarried then a bit later Dad got remarried. Then the next trauma was trying to deal with blended families.  There are always some adjustments when you blend families. There is always the old “I didn’t want a new Dad / Mom” I know for several of my siblings that was exactly the case so it caused rifts.

Getting in to my teens the biggest issue was us moving so many times. I didn’t always mind, it was a chance to have a “Do Over” but many times we just had to go with the flow on things. You know – zig and zag. Once I got in High School I thought I had a plan. I took the entrance exam to go in the Navy and got all sorts of calls from recruiters but I ended up not going. I should have pursued college but I didn’t. I got jobs.  We lived on the East Coast for 7 very long years, school years were tough because I had a southern drawl and the folks there thought I talked funny – truth be told they did too. Not all of that time was horrible, I did have some fun but I longed to be back in Texas.

After I got out of high school we moved back to Texas. My biggest hurdle was now how to make friends, this bothered me because now that I wasn’t in school how would I find new friends – work?  What to do with myself. I started working. I began doing whatever I wanted. Lots of time spent making poor decisions and getting myself in trouble, just not being smart with my actions, this was not an always thing but more times than not my selfish needs were put first and stayed in the foreftont. I was determined to have a good time. You know, have my cake and eat it too. At 25 I started clubbing, my friends and I went to one specific club every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, literally. It wasn’t all about the drinking, although I admit I did some. I loved to be with friends, have a good time and dance. Oh I loved to dance. I dated often and treated these dates as something fun so nothing was meaningful or long lasting.  It was all about the good time.

I met someone and ended up dating him. I fell in love and decided this was my long term goal. I walked in to this relationship knowing he had been married before – several times – and that he had children. All of that wasn’t important to me, I can’t for the life of me understand why but it wasn’t – you know, Important. I, later,  also found out he was separated and not legally divorced, oh he told me it was long over. I don’t know if he was trying to convince me or himself.  Long story short I ended up getting pregnant with his child. He got custody back of his two middle boys and then I moved in with them.  There is no preparation you can do to be ready to be an instant Mom and be pregnant at the same time. Mind you, he never divorced the wife. So I was living with him and going to have his child. What a mixture and what a mess. All I was thinking was family.

Fast forward a few  years, there is much I could say about those years, I won’t bore you with details even if some are pretty gory - spicy. What I will say Is this. it was challenging at best. We either had high / highs or low / lows. There didn’t seem to be any in between. I justified my staying because I believed he was the great love of my life and I wasn’t going to abandon my family as I knew it. I had grown really close to the boys and by this time my daughter was 2 and I knew about broken families so I did not want that for her.

Unfortunately, it got so bad that every conversation was a fight, I remember at the time in my bathroom there was a mirror directly across from the toilet so when you stand up you were facing it. I used to look down because I was afraid I would see the monster he thought I was. Who thinks that junk about themselves? Who in their right mind lets things get this far and this bad? What possible good was this doing to the kids? What must they think? What am I doing??

Just to pour some gas on that fire, at this time I was not working, so no job. I also did not have any money. One day I decided, this had gone on far too long. It was time for me to remove us (my daughter and I) from this situation.

Be warned, this is the difficult part of my story, the part where it got just as hard as life gets. I didn’t have a suitcase so I put my cloths and my daughters cloths in a trash bag, I threw in a few toys and we started to load up. Here came the big fight, he said “You can go but you are NOT taking her”, as I stood there looking at him, looking at her, she was crying. Of course she was it was a fight, I looked a the boys, they were crying. My heart was splintering in to a million pieces. I was destroying this family, was I selfish. No, I was beat down to the bottom of the pit, I was tired of fighting, tired of trying, tired of loosing, tired of all of it. After a few minutes I mustered up some guts and I said, She’s all I have. Through my tears I could see he was a bit less hard about the whole thing. He handed her over. Relief, I packed us up in the car and headed out. I stopped and called my sister – which was where we were headed, I had no other choice at the time. We got on down the road and my car started overheating. I stopped at a gas station and hosed down the engine, not really knowing what else to do. I kept going.

On my route I was coming to an underpass, this location would become very critical in time. Just about there and I heard a loud pop and then I saw white smoke coming out of the back of the car. I pulled over under that underpass. Now I’m not a mechanic but it seemed pretty bad all that smoke. I sat there a minute thinking about what am I doing. I was crying by now and I looked at my daughter. Looking at her gave me hope but at this point I’m not sure if that was enough. I changed her clothes and diaper so we could begin a long walk to get the rest of the way to my sisters. I could not call because she told me she was going to a college course, she left the key under the mat for me. Plus I had no money, not even a dime to call her or anyone else. As I was getting ready for this walk my mind started racing. Here I am, no money, no job, no home and now no car. Plus I have a 2 year old child to care for. What on earth was I going to do. Life felt as heavy as it could be. It Felt almost suffocating.  

About the time I wiped my tears and got ready to go a truck pulled up behind me. he asked if we were ok, I explained what I saw (white smoke and all) as luck would have it this man was an off duty mechanic. He said it sounded like I “Threw a rod” which in mechanic terms is BAD. It means Dead Car. He happened to have a carphone and offered to let me use it. I thought I’d try – so I called my sister and she was home. She got worried and skipped her class. Told her where we were so she came to the rescue. Thanks to that man for being so kind – like a God send. Sister came to get us and for the next 3 days I tried to figure out what to do. I had an interview for a job, my brother lent me money to pay for a day care and my sister drove me where I needed to go. We – my daughter and I slept on her couch one of us on each end. She bought groceries and we all three squished in to a small one bedroom  efficiency apartment for several months. I kept our trash bag full of cloths in the coat closet.

Honestly, it was cramped but I didn’t mind too much. Of course I felt like a horrible Mom for my daughter having to go through this but I knew she would never remember any of it. As long as she was sheltered and fed she would be ok. That interview I had, I got that job. Again my sister bailed me out by buying me some work clothes. She took me to drop off my daughter at daycare every day, then took me to work then she went to her job and reversed it in the afternoons.  This was not perfect but it was a start. Someday, I pray my sister could know exactly the depth of my gratitude for all she did for us. I just don’t think there are even sufficient words to say how much it meant for her to help us, for her to have been there at the perfect time. I knew she was not the biggest fan of him. A bit after we moved in with her we were talking, she said some tough love things to me. The gist was if I “cried wolf” again and went back to him that she would not help me again. It was too much. I asked if the rest of our family felt the same, she said “pretty much”.

GULP- this was my last chance, from my perspective it came to this – either I choose him or I choose my family. Would love be enough, would things change? Would it be better? We were certainly talking and that included going to counseling, what to do different - better. We talked almost every day for the six months after I left. Eventually my sister and I decided to get a place with two bedrooms to live together, what could it hurt while I was trying to determine what to do. Sometime around that six month mark my daughter wanted to talk to her Grandparents – his Dad & StepMom so I called them for her. What are you going – oh we are babysitting the boys – his boys. I asked, oh is he working all weekend? No – he’s on his honeymoon. WHAT?

Yes, you read that right, his honeymoon. I had no idea and man did that sting. His honeymoon,  I cried for days because I knew, this meant it was done. There was no going back. There was not a chance for anything to move forward with us. I was devastated. It took me a good long time to get past being furious. To add on to that misery there were more times than not when he would call and tell me to get my daughter ready, he was coming to get her. Then he would not show up. I had to deal with my heartbreak and anger over him not showing and that my girl was just gutted over him not coming. She was a kid, a baby, she didn’t understand at all. I left it alone because I knew without me saying anything that someday she would see the big picture.

Fast forward to the summer of my daughters twelve years. We began attending church and this opened my eyes so much to so many things I had never even considered before. I did some large repenting, we both got baptized, we volunteered and got really involved. Remember back when I told you about the underpass I pulled over when the car broke down. Well it turns out that bridge is very close to what came to be our church home. Coincidence? Oh I think NOT. More like a God thing.

It wasn’t easy but we bounced back, I did good at my job, we lived together (my sister and I) until my daughter was in 7^th grade. The years past that things were not always easy. Job loss being a single parent and not having enough money but we made it. We figured it out. Having faith was such a big help. It gave me a foundation that I needed to be able to raise my daughter the right way. It was a foundation for me too, to get out of my own way and let God lead our family. It has not made our lives perfect but boy I will tell you… its been so much better.

My daughter really got immersed in church, she ate it up and so did I.  she wanted that promise and so did i. one of the biggest blessings coming out of our church time is that she met and began dating her future husband at church.

For all the mistakes I’ve made in my life, so many things have been “righted” through her life. She has done so much right. She finished high school, she went to and finished College, she got jobs where her bosses have told her straight up she has a wonderful work ethic. She is now married and has three children. I am beyond proud of her and her family. They are raising my grandchildren in a faith filled environment including church and faith based schooling.

The part of my story and what happened after I found faith is above in so many words. There are also words not above, I could use lots of space here to describe times and feelings and blessings but let me say this one thing. I’ve done plenty in my life – things you read above – living with a married man, having his child out of wedlock is among my biggest issues. I’ve had to explain this to my daughter and pray she forgives me for my wrongs, in doing so but she would not be here unless I did what I did – thankful for her. This is what I know. When I asked Jesus in my life one very large thing happened – I was FORGIVEN. The slate was wiped clean.

It wasn’t because I deserved it, I asked for forgiveness and I got it.  If there is any message in all these words it is this. you can have that forgiveness too. Heard it said this way many years ago… A sin is a sin is a sin – there is no sin too big for the blood of Christ to wash off.

Jesus replied, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times" (or seventy times seven), signifying endless forgiveness (Matthew 18:21-22). 

AMEN