Forgiveness

Good morning everyone. I hope that your morning is going great. Mine is! I finished an inch-thick set of papers for the registration of the grandkids. It took me about an hour and a half to complete. They are off on their second day of school. All three seem excited about the school year now. I hope that we can keep that enthusiasm going throughout the year.

I wanted to share a little of my story with you. This has been on my heart to share. Just to keep things straight, Wesley is my third husband. The part that I wanted to share with you is about my second marriage. I won’t mention his name because it isn’t important to this story. I met him when I was 23. My daughter was 2. It was kind of a whirlwind relationship (looking back). We met and got married in 6 months’ time. Part of the rush was because we knew that my mom wasn’t predicted live very long. She passed 12 days before we married.  As you can imagine, my emotions and life were upside down. He was my rock. He helped me through it.

It was awesome with all the butterflies in my belly. I got pregnant shortly after getting married. He worked construction and things were very tight. He told me that I didn’t have to worry about working. I was sick for most of my pregnancy. Of course, I quit drinking, he however didn’t. As a matter of fact, his drinking got worse and he started staying out later and later. One night I had called the hospitals and police department because it was 3 in the morning. My car wasn’t working, and we didn’t have the money to fix it. When he came home (I was 8 months pregnant) I was waiting up on him. This is when it happened. I don’t need to go into details, you know how this goes. It was the most horrible thing that I had experienced in my lifetime up until then.

I moved to my dad’s house the next day. I didn’t want to call the cops because I was going to be having his child in a little over a month. My dad was awesome through this. He helped me out with any and everything that I needed. I remember thinking that this couldn’t have happened because he loved me. It wasn’t like all of the stories that I had heard because I was raised in a home where I had never even heard my parents argue. On the day that my son was born, I called him to let him know and I allowed him to be a part of the birth. I felt it was his right because after all it was his son too. After I went home, he would come visit. He “promised that it would never happen again.” So I went back home. Things were really good again. I should have seen the signs because they were there. The staying out with friends drinking started happening more frequent. And then it would happen again. The beatings got worse every time. I kept telling myself that it wasn’t happening. I slowly became ashamed of myself for not being stronger. Every time I left and every time I went back, my self-worth got even lower.

Again, I won’t go into every time that it happened because this would be a novel! But it happened about every 7-10 months and then there would be a “honeymoon” phase for a while and he would slow down on drinking. I was married to him for 9 years. There are things that I still don’t understand. I did leave several times but always went back. Why? I felt like I needed someone to love me. But it wasn’t love. I also pressed charges several times. But back then, there wasn’t a lot done for domestic violence. I remember sitting in the living room and seeing his truck turn down our driveway (about a mile long) and my stomach getting so upset at the sight because I never know what kind of mood he was in. I also recall thinking a lot that I couldn’t take care of my kids by myself, I could take the beatings as long as my kids had food, clothing, and shelter. But I couldn’t take wondering if I would be able to do these things for them.

My children saw all of this and were actually the ones to call the cops a couple of times. I know that I should have left long before I did. You may be wondering what actually made me leave for good, well, the day that my son got in-between us and told my husband “you’re not going to hit my mommy anymore”. This is when I knew that I had to leave. What I was doing was hurting my children more that it was hurting me.

There isn’t much more that I can share at this time other than don’t believe the old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This is one of the biggest lies! Bruises heal quiet nicely but the bruises that words make is something that you will always carry.  It’s weird, having no self-esteem didn’t happen overnight. It came on very slowly over time. The angry and ugly words started to sink in and at some point, I started to believe them. The other thing that I want to share about this experience is that I hated him for long after we split us. One day, I was fishing with my son and it dawned on me that my hatred of him wasn’t affecting him at all. The hatred that I carried inside me was destroying ME!

I know that God helped me through this situation because I knew that I couldn’t have done it on my own. And once I found forgiveness, it felt like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I don’t regret my marriage, I have a son that I love with all my heart! If I hadn’t been married to him, I would have never had my son!

I hope that you have a wonderful day and thank you for letting me share with you.