About 5 years ago, my life was altered forever. At the time, I didn't think there was anything worse than being a women of God, who has been left by her husband. I was a fairly new Christian, being saved in 2006, it was only about 4 years into my walk with the Lord. I was in the late stages of reaping a harvest of 30 years of destructive behavior. Yes, God showed me a better way right from the start, but the consequences of my past mistakes haunted me for years into my new life as a believer.
From birth, I was very close to my grandmother. All my earliest memories are of her singing to me, feeding me and loving on me. My mother worked a full time job and my father, well, men didn't really take care of babies then. Grandmas did. My grandmother babysat me every day for 4 years. I don't remember alot of things, but I do remember she made me feel safe.
When I was almost 5, my mother left my father in the middle of the night and went as far across the country and you could possibly travel. From South Florida to Northwest Oregon. I don't remember the day or the feelings I had but I am sure I missed my grandmother.
It wasn't for another 2 years before I saw her again and at that point, I had forgotten her. When I saw her, I only felt fear. I remember shaking on her lap because I wasn't sure who she was. I don't even remember my dad although I know he was there too, my only memory, faded, is of my grandmother and her red hair.
Eventually my mother remarried and I wont go into the story of my life but I will say that ever since I was a little girl in kindergarten, I knew I was different. I would watch the other little girls talk about their daddies and I didn't have one to talk about. When I was in 2nd grade, it was the first time I realized that I didn't have a mom and dad, I had a mom and Don. My stepfathers name.
In the early 80's divorce wasn't as common as it is now and especially not in the small Oregon town we lived in. Everyone grew up together and married their high school sweethearts. Friends stayed friends their whole lives. I had no concept of that, and still don't to this day.
I grew up being different and ashamed my entire life. I wanted a mommy and a daddy. I wanted to have the same last name as they did. I didn't want to stand out. I hated answering questions about my "real" dad. Eventually I started traveling to Florida every summer to see my dad and grandma. I hated leaving my friends and hated being different. This went on my entire life. I grew to cover up my shame with anger and bitterness.
When I was 18, I became pregnant and again at 22. My children were my world. But my children didn't have the life I had always wished I had had. I wasn't able to give them all the things I wanted when I was a child. I didn't know stability so I didn't create it for my boys. Yes I loved them with every part of my soul, but I was not a healthy women. I was scared, alone, ashamed and destructive. I followed the pattern of destructiveness all the way into my early 30's until I met the Lord.
Right off the bat, I was living with a man whom I knew was not right for me, or my children, but at the time, I didn't even know what "right" was. I was so used to being wrong, choosing wrong, living wrong, that this relationship felt dysfunctionally comfortable. Dysfunction was all I knew. And all I knew about this was that it felt the same as everything else.
When I gave my life to the Lord it didn't take me more than 2 or 3 weeks to discover that my lifestyle of living with a man who I was not married to was not the lifestyle I wanted to participate in any longer. I wanted to show my 2 children a better way. So I took it to the church. I was advised to marry. And we did. That very week. It was a disaster.
My heart through the whole marriage was to please God, my mind and my will did not know how to do that. I was stuck a new creation with old habits, as was he. During the 4 years we spent together, I was sure that God would not want us to divorce, that He would restore our lives and create a "happy" marriage. I kdark hole. Crying myself to sleep every night. Begging God to show my spouse who I was, where my heart was. I spent so much time asking God to fix things that I actually God tired of hearing my own pleas.
The last year of my marriage, I knew something was not right. I knew he had found someone else. A part of me was relieved yet another part of me was so ashamed. You see, our life outside the home, was filled with make believe. We were heavily involved in church, in ministry. We led young adults and youth and poured into their lives daily. I knew it was all fake. God knew it. But God also knew that my heart was so burdened and so ready to accept change. But I didn't have a willing partner. And I couldn't do it alone.
When he finally filed for divorce, I made the decision to not participate. I did not feel it was what God had asked me to do. At this point, I had lost what I thought were good friends but turned out not. I had 3 women of God that held my hand and held me up when I couldn't pick myself up off the floor. The shame of making yet another mistake overcame me. It took such a strong hold of me that I lost my way.
After the divorce was final, I was lost. My ministry was taken from me. my children were broken. Destroyed. We had a blended family 2 of my boys and 2 of his. They were brothers and that were ripped away from each other without any say so. My youngest son, just 13 at the time, was devastated. My oldest, getting ready to graduate and go into the service, moved back home with his father.
That left me. No car, no money, no job and a 13 year old son who just lost the 3 people in his life he looked up to and adored the most.
For about a year, I tried to maintain working 60-70 hours a week just to keep up the lifestyle that my children were used to having, to not lose the home we lived in. To give my son some sort of normalcy. But there was no normalcy. Not the normal he was used to. I Finally gave in and agreed to let him go live with his father. When I look back on this decision, I am torn apart by it. I knew that I was the Christian. I knew that I was the parent who would pour God into this child. But I also knew he was now 14 and needed a father. He needed guidance that I couldn't give him. And he needed stability. So I broke. I let him go.
When he left too, I was so angry at God. I felt betrayed by everyone around me. I felt betrayed by God. I had tried so hard to maintain life even though I was dying inside and everything I ever cared about was ripped out of my hands. In a flash, it was all gone and I was alone. It was something I did not ask for, did not create and did not even believe would happen to me, but it did. God allowed it. And today, I thank Him for it.
It was now June 2011 and I pleaded for God to heal me. It was almost 5 years since I gave my life over to the Lord and I was a total disaster. I still believed that God took my life away because I was not meant to be a wife or a mother. I resorted to the idea that God had other plans for someone like me. People like me only dreamed of having unconditional love. We never really get it.
And yet, even through those feelings of unworthiness, I knew that my deepest most intimate and secretive desire was to restore my life to new again. My dreams at night still brought me to the hope of a new love. A love that God creates and guides. I knew for me, it was probably too late but I could not help but let myself feel the desire to be a wife again, and a mother again.
Everything I needed as a little girl to feel secure, was restored through God. He brought me back to my insecurities and filled them with His promises and His love. He made me whole for the first time. God loved me and never left me, even when I was sure He didn't love me and had left me.
He placed himself in the role of my father, as my Father. He took all my shame and showed me how to release it so that I could not only know that I was loved, but accept that love as truth in my life. Once I learned to accept the love that the Lord had for me, I was able to accept the love that someone else would have for me. I was free. The chains were broken and buried.
After my summer of total healing and surrender to the Lord, He rewarded me with a job that did not keep me out until 2 am but actually gave me a normal 8-4 schedule. Thank You Jesus. I can see the light.
In October of 2011, while at said job, it happened. I had been spending several weeks seeking Gods wisdom about where to take my life in this next step. School was starting and my son was not home. I was alone and wasn't sure where God was taking me. I still held onto to that little insecurity of being undeserving of someone else's love. I just could not believe that I would ever be seen as God sees me by any other human being, ever. It would take one strong man to see past my mistakes, and I didn't believe that man even existed.
Until him...... The day we met, I shook his hand and as soon as we touched, God spoke to me and said "This is the one". Now try looking at a total stranger and being told by God that they are "the one". Its surreal. To hear God speak so loudly yet no one else around you heard it, unfortunately not even the guy who He was talking about heard it! Talk about stalker behavior.
But it didn't take long. Not long at all. Ryan was like God's advocate in my life from day one. God showed me restoration through this man. The Lord took the very thing that kept me so broken and feeling so unworthy, and he restored it to new. He placed a man before me that covered me, protected me like God does and loved me like Jesus does.
God took my most secret desire and answered it. I hadn't even asked for it out loud, and He answered me anyway. Imagine. A husband that was hand picked for me by my Father. A marriage union that would display Christ's love for the world right here in my life! Wow. Why me. Why do I deserve that? Why after 37 years of not knowing how to accept love did God hand me a man that was so full of just that?
Because that is God. Not because we deserve it, because we don't, we never will, no matter how hard we try. But we don't have to deserve it, we just have to accept it. And when we do, it is a beautiful picture of the one who took the place for our transgressions just because He loved us.
