On This Day

1 Cor. 15:2 “By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.”

On This Day

On this day last year my dad passed away. This week has been a culmination of tears and memories leading me down memory lane. Every phone call to my mother this week has been of her rehashing the weeks that led to the final week which led to the day that my dad passed. I sat and listened allowing her to let out her grief so maybe she would find solace.

She tells me over and over again how my brother in Tennessee is still taking it hard and he let’s her know repeatedly how much he misses my father. Then there is the story of my sister who (now has his car) is driving around with a picture of my dad on the dashboard and how she wears the memorial necklace ALL the time.

I haven’t heard from ANY of my siblings since my dad passed. The last call to my brother was last year when he said, as we ended the call, to stay in touch and I did try, but as you can imagine he has his own family and doesn’t really have anything to do with any of his siblings anymore. There comes a time when the letdown is not worth the pain attributed to the lack of communication from siblings.

I can’t handle people saying over and over, “But that is your family; your blood.” I only have one dear friend who told me to just let them go and move on, the pain is not worth it, and he’s right. 

These past thirteen years haven’t been the easiest on me but I feel a peace here I’ve never had in my entire life. I feel loved; possibly for the first time an unconditional love that I only thought existed in fairytales. This time it is real because I feel it in my bones, in every essence of my being!

This week has been a stroll down memory lane. Many of the memories I’ve buried and plan to keep there but some memories good or bad surface like hot springs bubbling in anticipation of an explosion; none of which I’ll let come to fruition because I’m all about healing.

The bitterness inside will have to wait to eat away at me because this peace I feel now will not be ruined by any kind of confrontation and where my family is concerned, a simple chat is always a confrontational debate. 

Everybody grieves differently and while I wake and think about my dad daily, I don’t cry on a daily basis because I know he is at peace and don’t want us carrying on. I have to admit the only regret I have is not seeing him before he died and well, I’ll carry that with me to the grave but I’ve already told my mother that I won’t be coming back for her funeral either, not out of disrespect but out of love. After she leaves this earth, there will be not a thing tying me to that crutch of a place that tried strangling me to death all those years. She said she understands.  

That’ll be just another reason for my family to justifiably disown me and I’m okay with that since I’ve come to terms with my not being able to return. I’m at peace knowing I can move on in life alone but not ALL alone, I do have family here that has embraced me like their own and I have the most loving and understanding Heavenly Father.

So while I grieve on the one-year anniversary for my father’s death, I’m at peace knowing he is at peace and no longer suffering. While my family is back home living with regrets of what did or didn’t happen in their life, my only regret is not seeing my dad alive, one last time. And if I don’t get to see my mother one last time alive, I’ll deal with that regret when it happens. Until then… my poetry is what bound them to me eternally. 

Luke 1:79 (KJV) “To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

MTOC ~ Day Two: Laid To Rest

Job 22:29 “When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person.”

My Testimony of Christ

Okay, where was I? Read yesterday’s post.

My mother and sister had a disagreement this weekend and in dysfunctional familyesque form, my sister told my mother that she died when I was born. Mind you, my sister was three years old when I came along. I was the sixth child to be born and better yet, I was born on my mother’s birthday. I ruined my sister’s life by being born and paid for the anarchy that ensued in the following years.

My sister felt slighted from that day forward. She was no longer daddy’s little princess because this new baby came along with a shining smile and stole all of her limelight. I guess I was THAT cute from birth. That was sarcasm. 

I’m not here to tell my sister’s story. But I will say that when my mother told me what my sister said it hurt; another wound on my skin, another scar to add to the fold. I was angry, enraged, bitter and wanted to go on facebook and announce to the world that my sister was a total piece of …

I stopped, “Dear God help me!” It’s all I could do to calm down. I said yesterday how He took me in and saved me, so in my times of distress that is all I know to do, turn to Him. I sat and prayed and as I did memories came flooding back; memories I would have rather laid to rest but they resurface anytime my sister takes out her sword and stabs me with her jealous needles.

I have a friend who told me once, “You have to put the past behind you and leave your blood family behind. We’re your family now, your spiritual family!” No truer words were ever spoken. My family doesn’t know me anymore, I’m the kid (I was thirty-seven) who left home and left them to pick up the pieces of the family puzzle that I left lying on the floor. 

A twenty-year marriage shattered because I listened to God; not to the family or husband who wanted me bound to their whim. I catered to them and weaved them together so that we formed some form of semblance of a family but when I left, with two-weeks notice, the puzzle burnt in a flame of fire. No one spoke to me, no one reached out to see if their little sister who went almost fifteen-hundred miles away with a total stranger was okay. They were glad to be rid of me finally so they could get the attention they didn’t receive in their lives because of this baby who ruined life for them. 

They were then mad; mad because the family was left in pieces without me. They resented the fact that I was going on with my life, never to see them again. I tried the phone calls, I tried with blistered fingers to stay in touch but the calls became farther and fewer in between. I was now bitter with my family but on a road of healing. 

All of those years I was blind to the way I was treated. Not by my mother and father who yes, treated me with the utmost respect and loved my son and showered him and me in love. My brothers and sister didn’t receive that love. When my father was sick, he’d call my husband in the middle of the night for a ride to the hospital, we jumped. We took my mother food shopping weekly, we took care of her house when she went away, we respected one another and THAT is all that I miss now. I can’t say I miss my siblings because I have a lifetime of resentment built up inside of me of abuse: physically, sexually and mentally. 

Why am I telling you this when some things should remain private? I have to heal and God wants me to release this story to the world. Had I not found God, on my own mind you, had I just stayed in the dysfunctional life I was living and breathing, I would not be a writer, I would not have watched my son graduate high school, I would have never found a family that knows what love truly is.

I was a stone cold alcoholic by the age of sixteen, married at seventeen, and on a road of struggling to survive this thing we call life. At twenty-one, I found myself needing sobriety to continue living. As you can imagine going alone, I had only one resource and that was the very being who had been beside me all of my life guiding me.  

I took on a new role, I became a spiritual light for all who came in contact with me. As you can imagine this newly changed person was even LESS accepted by a dysfunctional family let alone the messed up world. I was illuminated by His Word and carried the torch out into the troubled world wherever I went.

I thanked God daily for my struggles, for my suffering because I knew through every step I was finding a place of healing for ME. God had handed me a flashlight to carry into the darkest of caverns in my life. The batteries never ran out as long as I kept my focus on God and the Light he instilled in me to carry.

The very core of my spirit was strengthened. I was clawing my way through skin and bones to find healing. You might say I was alone; no sugar-daddy to pay my way through the gravel, no medical intervention to drug me up and save me, I had nothing but God. Nothing, no one, just God and me on the journey!

Why did God reach down and save me from the pit I was obviously in; abuse, depression, anxiety, alcoholism and drug addiction? Why did He choose me to be a light to others who might be struggling with their path that is full of darkness? I often ask why but inside I know why. This world is covered in utter darkness and He needs people like me, just as Jesus needed the downtrodden of society to get His message across, God chose me because I am a humble servant giving all Glory to Him!

I have lain my past to rest. To be continued…

Matt. 11:29 “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”