Some of you reading this will not believe this but I have really never had any big aspirations in my life besides being a wife and mother. That's the God's honest truth. I know, right? - not a popular thing to say but it's the truth. I look at people who spend their entire lives, or at least a large portion of it, training to do one thing and one thing only & I have to admire that, but it's entirely foreign-to me. I'm always interested in learning new things. A jack-of-all trades & master of none. The only thing that I have ever loved to spend a lot of time on was singing and even that was not for a career but to please God. Now having said that I am going to take you back down memory lane to 1984, I was living as a single mother with two little boys and working in a Rock & Roll club. (shhh, don't tell anybody. I remember praying to God and asking for him to send me the right person to be a father to my boys because I wasn't exactly moving in the right circles to meet the right kind of man but my options were limited. Isn't it incredible that God puts us in situations where we have no choice but to depend on Him for help? I just love that. Anyway, long story even longer (I won't bore you with the details unless you insist) I met Charles. It was an instant connection and we never looked back. Now when we met, he had custody of his two little boys also. They were 3 & 5 years old. Sweet little guys. Charles had gotten custody because he is an awesome father & their mother thought they should be with him because she wanted to focus on her career, (and someone else cough, cough) I think she instantly regretted that decision but by that time it was already too late because I knew the moment that I met him what a catch he was. The only way that I could meet a man like him was for God to fix us up and I was not going to let him go. Mama didn't raise no dummies. We clicked immediately. There is such a thing as love at first sight. Also, God touched my heart. I say two precious little boys that needed a mother and I was only too happy to step in and fill that roll. It seemed like a win-win situation to me.
From the beginning I worked very hard to blend our families. Was it easy? Heck no! Back then there was no internet or anything to help with that but I believed in us and I knew we could do it. There were challenges, jealousies, etc. my son wouldn't let them call me mom. I never demanded that they did that anyway. They had a mother and I didn't want to push issues that weren't important. What someone is called is not important, the relationship is. I tried to understand how their mother could leave them. It was hard but I told myself that she really did the selfless thing by letting their father have them, knowing they would get better care. But as time went on, it was obvious that instead of being grateful to me for trying to raise her children and take good care of them, she was doing everything she could to undermine me. I even tried to understand that. Even if she was already remarried, she viewed me as the person standing in the way of getting her family back. I get that! But that really wasn't my fault. I'm not going to go into all the ugly details right now, but let's just say that there were many years of struggle, pain & hardship. Doing without, stretching our budget, etc. Being a mother is hard enough but being a stepmother is incredibly difficult. I had all the responsibility and she took all the credit and turned everything against me every chance she got. I remember crying in Charles' arms and he would tell me that one day when the boys grew up, they would see the truth and that was the life raft that I clung to. Needless to say, I'm not sure exactly what went wrong but it didn't work out that way. I cannot even tell you the pain that I went through when I realized that she had "won". That's how I thought of it at the time. They were closer to her then they were me. She had "bought' them, Blah, blah, blah. Yadda, yadda, yadda. The self pity was terrible. I honestly didn't know what went wrong. I thought I had done everything right. Like I said in the first paragraph, I always believed that I would be rewarded for my actions, my sacrifices, etc. and she would have to face her consequences. Ha! What a joke. I was devastated. Then I became angry because I thought it was so unfair, and I tried to get even with her. Big mistake. That just made things worse . Remember that old joke, you can build a hundred buildings and not be called a builder but (bleep) one goat and your a goat (bleeper). You get my drift? It just gave her ammunition to use against me. She was able to turn so many people against me, they believed everything that she said about me and I know I shouldn't care what they thought but it's hard not to care about your reputation. The Bible says a good name is something to be valued. Mine was in the toilet. Well, to wrap this up, let me just say I ended up going into therapy to deal with my emotions and try to make sense of everything. it was a big help. My therapist showed me that I wasn't crazy, that I was going through a grieving process and that all I was trying to do and had done was because I was trying to make sense out of what went wrong, and not understanding why things didn't turn out the way I had believed it would. She actually said that I wasn't the one who needed to be in therapy, the other people were. Whew! What a relief!
Now I have arrived at the point I'm trying to make. During the course of all this,I think I might have gone through a period of being PO'd at God. Why did He put me in this position? Why didn't He do something about it? Why did He allow all this to happen?
Well, the truth is, I needed to take responsibility for some bad choices that I made. If I could go back and do some things differently I would. But that's a topic for another day. Also, Like I wrote in a previous blog, He has recently brought some things to light that have opened some people's eyes and I'm so happy about that. My whole problem was that I expected my fairy tale ending, just like in the movies. But you know what? God never promised me that. Charles Stanley always says, "Trust God and leave all the consequences to him." That's what I'm learning to do. The story isn't over yet & God can still make something beautiful come out of this entire stinky mess,and I trust Him to do that.Romans 8: 28 & 29. You know, I still love those boys like they're my own because they are! Born of my heart. I love you guys and thank you for letting me share my heart and bare my soul to you. Please feel free to share anything with me. I will pray for you! I'm attaching some pictures. Please let me know what you think, ok?
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