Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)
One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
I should be dead right now. When I was three-years-old my brother and sister were pushing me on a swing when my cries to stop pushing me higher didn’t get them to stop, they continued until I jumped off the swing and flew toward the wire fence, catching my wrist and slicing it like a thanksgiving day turkey. I have the stitches to prove it. I should be dead but I lived.
You’d think that by doing all the drugs I did as a child LSD, PCP, the enormous amount of marijuana, and not to mention my overdose on alcohol would have killed me, but here I am, alive to tell about it. People like me should be dead but here’s the thing, I think God had a plan. I know many of you don’t believe in God, you don’t believe in something greater than yourself and you know why? Because you’re selfish, you think of you. I didn’t mean that to be judgmental, I meant it as an observance on MY healing.
I was not one consumed with myself, I put others before me. Sure I was a bad kid but I always thought of the other people before I thought of healing myself. I turned to God because I had heard he was a great healer and after the loss of my firstborn child (at sixteen) to stillbirth, The Holy Spirit consumed me and helped me during my grief and stayed with me to this day.
When you care for other people, which means you love, you can’t have love in you without God being in you because God IS love. Some people see it that way while others just see love as an emotion. Many religions and spiritual faiths revolve around love. Love is the center and the God of their faith, period.
As dysfunctional as my upbringing was, I never knew what Meth was or heroine, and I NEVER stuck a needle in my arm; in some form, that was my saving grace. At twenty-one years old as I started down the path of change, I watched many ‘friends’ die by making the wrong choice in life. Whether it was by an overdose, a shooting, jail, or trying to reform, death was surrounding me but yet I was alive and breaking free. I didn’t see it as scientific, I know it wasn’t ‘luck’, I never believed in coincidence, the one thing that was left was GOD. God saved me and HE guided me.
My twenty-year marriage wasn’t ALL that bad as I seem to paint it, we had some pretty good years and the birth of a living son. It was toward the end when we started growing apart instead of growing together. I saw a future in writing. I was witnessing my growth and seeing the impact that God was having on my life. I saw my growth and healing and my ex didn’t want to grow and change for the better, he just wanted to control and obsess.
So I wound up in Texas after giving up all of my earthly possessions. My husband gave me two weeks to get out of ‘his’ house. I took my son and saw a brighter future for him than the Baltimore streets would have ever allowed.
I had met a stranger online and for ten months we got to know one another on a spiritual level. He wasn’t a George Clooney prince coming to save me, he was more of a John Cusack silent knight in shining armor coming to my emotional rescue. My husband knew he had lost the battle to control me so he let me go and feigned defeat.
The night before I left, Steven and I went to my sister’s for dinner and to say our goodbyes to the kids. No one showed up except my mother. My sister and I left on bitter terms because I had sat a rock on her precious oak table. I told her my Rock was the reason I had the strength to follow on a path that will lead me away. To this day, I still have the rock, the physical one AND the Spiritual Rock!
Alone in Texas, I had to redefine myself; learn to love this stranger on what was now a physical level. It didn’t happen immediately and we had to grow to be better people and as a team WE chose God and the church (or did God choose us?) My son, Steven and I all grew together to become one family, united. Again, it was not luck, not science, no coincidence involved, it was something greater and more spiritual that drove us.
Six growing years in Texas for me when we found a fork in the road called blindness. We had to move to Nebraska and surround ourselves with his family who could empower us to get through a very troubled time. His family is one that had God in their lives instilled early on by grandparents. The light of their ancestry shone round about us as we embarked on this journey. On April 26th, my deceased daughter Astri’s birthday, we sailed (or I drove) off to the safe haven of the Midwest.
Strength washed over us, the Church was our anchor and his family was the boat that drifted us into a safe harbor. Miraculously his sight was restored two and a half years later, prayers were answered and as we anchored ourselves to the shore, six years after we arrived in Nebraska we were united in marriage surrounded by my son and his mother.
The mysteries of God is there for everyone to behold but again we live in a world where everyone but a few are consumed with themselves; what they can get out of the world, what the world owes them and who is to blame for nothing happening the way they planned. The Mysteries of God are unraveling before me, and the only way for me to relay the story is to fulfill my purpose and my dream and that is to WRITE.
God Bless you ALL!
Ecc. 3:1 “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:”
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