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My Journey Home - Part 6

                     by Shirley B.

 

You never know where life is going to take you next.  After all the knock down , drag out fights, that Mr. and Mrs. A. kept having, including this last one where she intended to kill him, they decided to try and work things out in their marriage.  We were all going to get back in church again, since we had long since stopped going, and Mr. A. was going to sell out his construction and building business to his partner and we were all moving to Colorado when it was all said and done.  Hotchkiss, Colorado, here we come!! 

Before we left for Colorado that year, one Sunday morning my sister took me by the hand and we marched ourselves down to the front of the church when the altar call came.  There we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour.  We didn't know all the details for sure of what it all meant,  only that He promised to save us and help us.  That sounded awful nice to the two of us at that time.  Things moved quickly and soon we were on our way to Colorado to become fruit ranchers.  Mr. A. had bought two ranches with hundreds of acres of apples of all different kinds on them. There were peach trees and pear trees and ten acres of cherries.  To these two little girls, it was like going back to the farm again.  Just that thought alone made us happy.  We were not city kids for sure. It wasn't long before we had a huge garden planted waiting for the harvest.  For a very short while,  everyone seemed to be at peace in our house and Mr. and Mrs. A. tried harder, it seemed, to be kinder to my sister and I.  My sister was 12 and I was 10 right about this time. 

Things were that way for close to a year I guess before everything started to slide back to the old ways again.  Mrs. A. was a hairdresser by trade and often fixed the hair of neighboring ladies of the area that she came to know.   As the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. A. began to erode again,  my sister and I were the most convenient recipients of their rage again .  I can only suppose that these beauty appointments Mrs. A. had , often became gossip sessions,  because it wasn't long before the life history of my sister and I was common knowledge around town. 

Hotchkiss was a small town of about 600 people at that time, so it didn't take much to get the word out.  So my sister and I began to fight more and more in school as the kids teased and picked and made fun of us about the things they learned about us.  We were odd to them anyway.  We talked funny.  "They're from Texas you know,  and they have a funny accent".  "'What accent?!  is what we wanted to know".  Anyway, the cruelty and beatings soon started all over again.  Mr. and Mrs. A. were fighting constantly. 

The summer I was 12, I was determined that I would have new clothes to start school this next year.  So that summer I spent getting up before daylight and going out to the orchard to do whatever needed doing. Sometimes, it was mowing between the trees with a big brush hog mower pulled behind a tractor , or with a blade mower to mow under the trees when they were loaded down with fruit.  I often went up the mountain to the water maze that the farmers and ranchers used to direct the flow of water from melted snow coming down off of the mountain to flow to their farms.  From there you had to walk every foot of the ditches to the ranch with a shovel to clear out rocks and debris that would block the flow of the water.  I loved it.  It was a peaceful time to be able to do these things by myself.  When the sun went down,  I went to the house for supper, or to cook supper if it was my turn and then do my chores there before going to bed and get up the next day and start again.  Mr. A. taught and used me to drive a tractor, pick fruit, thin fruit, irrigate the orchard and garden, and plant fruit trees.  All these different things and more, but I didn't mind.  I liked being out of the house as much as possible and by myself.  Besides, I had a goal I was going for. 

At the end of that summer,  I had about $25 that Mr. A.  had paid me.   It really wasn't much for all that I did that summer,  but it would buy me a couple of new dresses and shoes and socks for school.  Mrs. A. still didn't like spending money on us . So I safely tucked my money into my barbie wallet and put it under my mattress each day.  Finally, the day came to go shop for my clothes and I went to retrieve my money and lo and behold, it was nowhere to be found.  I was in a panic but it didn't take my sister and I long before we realized who was to blame.  By the look on Mrs. A's face when she said,  " You must have left it someplace or lost it".  We knew and Mr. A knew too,  because I never took the wallet out from under the mattress .  He calmly told Mrs. A. that he was the one that was going to take us shopping for school clothes this time and off we went.  He bought each of us, my sister and I, a couple of new dresses and shoes, and brand new bobbie socks.  We hadn't had new bobbie socks in so long and we were overjoyed! 

Things were reaching a fever pitch in the family and tension was always so thick in the air.  A few days later , when we got up in the morning to prepare for the first day of school,  the new bobbie socks were nowhere to be found.  Believe me, my sister and I weren't letting this one go unnoticed.  We were both boiling mad. When Mr. A. came into the house to see what all the fuss was about,  we gave him an earfull and soon he was just as mad as we were.  Mrs. A. denied knowing where the socks were.  So we went to school in our new dresses, but with old socks that were so loose that they slid down into our shoes when we walked .   That afternoon, when we got home from our first day at school and walked into our bedroom,  Mrs. A. calmly walked in and without a word, threw our new packages of bobbie socks onto the bed, all the time smiling at us  and then walked out.  Why?  For the life of me I don't believe I have ever understood it.  It wasn't long after that , when she also walked into my room and tossed my barbie wallet on the bed.  It was empty of course.  But she never said a word.  She knew that we knew but also that there was nothing we could do about it either.

Living in Colorado, the winters were often cold, and we heated the house with a coal furnace that was kept in the basement.  The coal bin had to be shoveled full every morning so that the house would stay warm during the day.  This was the job of my sister and I.  We took turns.  It was hard work to shovel that much coal every morning before school but we were in trouble if we didn't, because Mrs. A. was there during the day and didn't want to be cold.  Also,  when the hot air from the burning coal came through the vents up into the house, it would leave soot at the vent opening.  There was no way to avoid it. 

 One day Mr. and Mrs. A. decided to go out on the town.  I was suppose to clean the kitchen and floors and cook supper, which I did.  But when Mrs. A. came into the kitchen,  she saw soot had collected beneath the vent where the warm air came up from the furnace.  When she asked if I had cleaned the floor of the soot, I said yes.  She flew into a rage, accusing me of lying, showing me the soot, which was very hard to see since it had recently been washed up.  The next thing I remembered, I was on the floor and she was kicking me in my back and ribs, when my sister ran into the room.  My sister was fourteen by now, and growing fast.  She'd had enough as she stepped between me and Mrs. A. and got me up off the floor.  I could hardly breath.  Mrs. A. ordered us both to the bedroom as she retrieved her huge leather belt and buckle.  I was to strip down and wait for her there.  When she came to the room,  my sister stood between her and me and didn't move , despite all the threats from Mrs. A. of what she was going to do to her.  When Mrs. A. began to swing that belt, my sister reached up and stripped it from her hands.  I don't know who was more shocked, my sister and I, or Mrs. A. , but as Mrs. A. turned and left the room, the threat was heavy in the air, and she didn't have to tell us that it wasn't over yet.  When Mr. A. came home later , thinking that all was well and they were going to eat supper and then go out on the town,

the air was heavy with tension.  As we sat at the table across from Mrs. A. , and believe me she was throwing daggers at us with her looks ,   my sister was steaming mad, and me, well, I was having trouble just taking a breath through the pain in my rib.  Mr. A. suddenly started cussing and demanding an explanation of what was going on.  That was the cue for my sister and she let the words fly.  Then  Mr. A. grabbed me and lifted the back of my shirt where he could see the huge black and blue bruises on my back and side  and hauled off and slapped the living daylights out of Mrs. A.  Sis and I ran from the room to our own rooms. 

Things calmed down quickly for some reason.  We never knew why, but they made up enough to go ahead and have their evening on the town.  I don't know what Mrs. A. told Mr. A. that night.  But that night set off a terrible sequence of events.  That night..  Mr. A. went into my sisters' room and raped her.  He left her with the threat that if we told Mrs. A. , she wouldn't believe us anyway , and would take it out on us,  and if we did tell,  the same thing would happen to me, her little sister.  What could we do?  The only thing we knew to do was to circle the wagons , so to speak, and try to never let Mr. A. catch us alone without the other .  He had finally stepped over the line from always snooping and spying on us, to acting out his perversion.  I was twelve,  and my sister was fourteen.  We weren't going to stand still for this much longer.  We had to do something, but what?   So we began to plan for the time we could work and save our money and run away from there.  But things took a strange turn shortly after this incident.  Mr. and Mrs. A. were getting a divorce  and  of all things,  the courts were going to let Mr. A. have custody of my sister and I! 

It was strange,  because there were so many emotions mixed in our relationship with Mr. and Mrs. A.  Both love and hate, if you can imagine that.  But we had been with them longer than anyone else in our lives and I suppose that hope lives eternally in the heart of a child that their parents love them and care for them,  or that someone does somewhere in this world.  It's a very confusing feeling for sure.  One thing that was happening to me , was that I wasn't afraid  as much as I was before.  For me, I could see a time when I wouldn't be at their mercy anymore.  Not Mr. A. or Mrs. A.  I knew it would be a while for sure, but the time was coming.  Until then, somehow, my sister and I were going to survive this and eventually be done with it. 

Understand, these are my words describing my feelings as I look back to that time.  As a child of twelve to thirteen years old , it was more or less summed up in one word.  Hope.  Again, looking back, I believe it was the Lord that gave that to me and to my sister.  In Isaiah 43 verse 2,  The Lord says : "When you go through the sea, I am with you.  When you go through rivers, they will not sweep you away.  When you walk through fire, you will not be burned,  and the flames will not harm you."   My sister and I didn't know about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,  but I know now that Jesus Christ never , never, forgot that we were His kids.  We belonged to Him.  Isaiah 49: 25 tells me that He will contend with those that contend  with me....   There is a day of reckoning coming,  for Christ always keeps his promises.  And amazingly enough,  I am not looking forward to the day that judgement falls .

God has given me the grace and strength to forgive both Mr. and Mrs. A.    The day that He led me to witness to Mr. A.  , which I did after arguing with the Lord about it for a while,  was the day I knew that I had really forgiven him all things he had done against my sister and myself.

That day, Jesus set me free .

 

However,  the divorce became final , and my sister and I were left alone with Mr. A.  How would he react?  Could we protect ourselves from him if we needed to?  .........

To be continued........................

My Journey Home Part 3

Heathens!! That's what our great grandmother called my sister and I, and I don't think she meant it too kindly.  Of course, she could have been referring to the Indian side of our ancestry, but somehow I think she's was talking about the fact that we were just plain wild and undisciplined.  No one had taken the time to give us any guidance concerning our behavior, and we had never been in one place long enough to get any schooling.  My sister went to school for a short time when we were in Texas , during the recovery from my accident. But me?  No, I hadn't gone to school yet, but I was about to and my sister and I were about to learn about the board of education on our behinds. 

Let me describe my great grandmother to you.  She was a small woman who wore the old prairie bonnets, long dresses with long aprons and big pockets, with work boots.  She was as tough as the day was long, but oh how we came to love her!  The farm had no running water, only a well, no electricity or any modern conveniences, and the outhouse was at the back of the pasture.  My great grandmother and great grandfather raised their own garden and their own cows.  They milked, and churned butter, canned their own foods, and did their own sewing. Everything!, and my sister and I thought we had landed in paradise!

 

However, we were about to get a crash course in the rules of the farm.  Great grandmother's main rule was that breakfast was served at the crack of dawn and supper came when the sun went down.  If you missed either one, too bad for you.  The kitchen was closed!  Her next rule was:  " You little heathens stay out of my hen house!"  If we violated that one, which we couldn't resist every once in a while, the consequences from her were bad. 

 

Now my great grandfather, he was another story completely.  Every day would find him in his overalls and boots , going out to do whatever was needed on the farm for that day.  He was an old softie , as gentle as granny was tough.  My sister and I spent that short year or so wandering the backwoods pines of that old farm, picking flowers, and setting trails to the other farms in the area.  We would rise up in the mornings, put on the shorts that granny made from the cloth flour sacks that she saved, and off to the woods we'd go, usually until it began getting dark. If great grandfather was around , he'd stand us underneath the pump in the yard to wash off all the dirt of the forest  and then he'd feed us..If  we came in late, many a time my sister and I sat at that old hand crafted table in the kitchen while he fired up the wood stove and cooked our favorite, slices of fried sweet potato. Life was good for a while.   It was the happiest of times for us. 

 

On the days we knew it was Sunday, at times my sister and I would take the trail through the woods and up the hill to the little old church there and listen to beautiful music coming from inside.  It was there that we learned that old song,:  Do Lord , oh , Do Lord, Do remember me.  This little song was one that my sister and I used many , many, times in the years ahead to lift our spirits when we felt sad and helpless. 

 

We had learned to listen to what the adults around us were saying.  We eavesdropped on all conversations.  It was a habit we had gotten into because we never knew when our circumstances would change and we wouldn't have any warning at all.  So we listened.  We'd hide under the porch outside in the evenings when granny and great grandpa would be rocking and talking about their day and we'd listen.  Granny dipped snuff, and there were times that she'd spit, SPLAT! aiming at the cracks between the boards on the porch floor, and it'd land right in the top of  our head.  We wondered if she knew we were under the porch there.  

 

Sometimes, when all the work was done,  neighbors would come in the evening .  My aunt would bring out her guitar,  someone else the fiddle, another the harmonica and the spoons.., and music would fill the air!!  We didn't really mind the switchings.  We were learning to behave ourselves a little better and even after it was over, we knew that granny loved us anyway.  We were happy . There were times when it was cool and the sun went down, that great grandpa would fire up the fireplace and granny would sit in her rocker there in front of it and my sister and I would help her take down her long, long hair that braided and coiled underneath that old bonnet.  We loved to brush it and watch it lay on the floor at the bottom.  All the years and colors of her life were right there in all that hair as it faded from the jet black of her youth into the grays and white of her old age.  Yes, this was the best of life for my sister and I.

 

However, change was in the air again.

It was towards the end of that year when we learned that our father had been released from prison.  The courts had given him custody of my sister and I, and he had gone back to Texas to get a job and arrange for a house so he could come back to Mississippi and pick up my sister and I.  We were so excited.   It was decided that my sister and I should each have a brand new store bought dress and new shoes for this grand occasion.  I chose a yellow dress with red canvas sailor shoes with red and white stripes on the toes.  Gorgeous!  Great grandma and great grandpa were happy for us but sad also because we would be going.  However, they had never had anything but good to say about our father.  They liked him.  He was a good and kind man with a wonderful sense of humor.  They also knew the circumstances of his imprisonment.

 

The day finally arrived and there was so much anticipation on our part as we waited to see the dad that we loved so much but hadn't seen in over two years.   I think most everyone has experienced a time in their lives when you feel the very air around you change and you just know that something is about to happen.  This was one of those moments.  I felt it and my sister felt it.  So we listened. 

 

We tiptoed to the front room where granny and grandpa were sitting in front of the fireplace and peeked around the doorframe to see, part of us hoping it was just that our dad had arrived.  Then we heard granny ask grandpa,  " How are we gonna tells them girls that their daddy's not coming?"  "How are we gonna tell them that he's dead?" 

 

At that point, my sister and I just lost it.  We screamed and cried and ran into the room,  not caring that they knew we had been eavesdropping .  Through their own tears they told us how our father had been on his way to Mississippi with his friend to pick us up and an 18 wheeler had veered into their lane .  Our father was dead.  That July summer I turned seven,  later in September my sister turned nine  and  that October,  our father died.  Instead of wearing our new dresses to a celebration, we wore them to our father's funeral.  We were numb , I guess is about the best way to describe it.  We were cried empty.  As my sister and I stood before our daddy's coffin, I remember thinking and asking my sister how they got daddy into that little box.  He was too tall to fit in there.  I just knew it.  He looked so peaceful in sleep but that wonderful smile we both knew, was not there . 

 

In our happiness on the farm, I think we had let our guard down some and when this blow came,  we weren't ready for it.   We didn't have much time to get ourselves ready for the fight that was about to come.  I believe in my heart that's why God kept my sister and I together through all these things.  We could eventually lift each other up  some way.  Do Lord , oh Do Lord, do remember me..............

 

ISAIAH 43: 2  tells me:

When thou passest through the waters, I WILL BE with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.

 

What a blessing it would have been to understand this Word then, because that's how we felt .

We felt overwhelmed.  The Lord has showed me now, that He was with us even then.  My God is Sovereign.  He was not caught by surprise as my sister and I were.

 

PSALM 10:14

You have seen it; yes, you have taken note of trouble and grief and placed them under your control.  The victim entrusts himself to you.  You alone have been the helper of orphans.

 

We were sure going to need that help in the months and years yet to come.

To be continued.........

by Shirley B.

 

My Journey Home - Part 2

 by Shirley B.

                                                        

I believe that hindsight is always twenty - twenty, but even more so that spiritual hindsight is even better than that.  As Holy Spirit has walked me back through the pages of my earlier life, so often He's revealed to me the whole picture that was going on around me at that particular time, and why some people and some things were like they were. 

Many times I had wondered why the only memories I had of my father were of him holding my sister, usually on his knee, talking to her and towards me, back and forth. 

When the memory of my accident came back,  I soon realized that he couldn't hold me , it wasn't possible at that time. 

Soon after I began to recover, for whatever reason, we moved back to Mississippi.  It's strange how a child's mind can remember things.  Very shortly after we moved back, things fell apart in our family.  My grandfather on my mother's side had become sick and he developed a plan to collect money on his insurance.  How? He planned to burn down his farmhouse.

As an adult looking back, I found all this so hard to accept, so as soon as I was able, I returned to Mississippi and this small town, just to put the pieces together, to dig up legal papers and such on all these incidents about my sister and myself.  I discovered that big family secrets are only a secret to the rest of the world but not to everyone in the immediate family.  My family wore their sins and their secrets like a badge of honor in the family.  They never tried to hide them from one another, only from outsiders.  So my mother's father and my mother's brother, did the deed.  My father came by to pick up the uncle that evening , not knowing what had been done,  but when the police tracked my uncle down later on,  he was with my father.  Witnesses said there were two men  and everyone agreed that my father was one of them,  even my uncle, my grandfather, and my mother.  My father was sentenced to two years in prison.  Everything was set into motion.

While my father was in  prison, he started divorce proceedings, to get out of this marriage and  filed for custody of my sister and I.   So we had no place to stay. 

 

It seems like our mother and our grandparents couldn't bear to be around us.  They stuck us in a feed shed at the back of the pasture.  I remember that winter was very, very cold.  You could see daylight between the slats in the wall and the floor was a dirt floor, no electricity or any modern facilities for sure.  I don't think they were ashamed of what they had done, it was common knowledge in the family.  They just didn't want to be bothered I guess.  Over the next year or so,  our mother would take us up and drop us off with whoever would keep us for a few weeks at a time.  Other times, she'd take us with her and I think those were the worse times. 

 

One of those times she stopped at a motel in a small town,  telling us she wanted to rest.  Just around the corner was a movie theater, so she gave my sister and I money to go see the movie.  When we got there, we realized that she only gave us enough money for tickets but not enough for anything to drink or such so we decided to go back to the motel, since it was close and we had time, and get more money.  We walked into the room like most kids of six or seven , throwing open the door and just walking in.  Surprise!!  There she was in bed with a man and neither one of them had any clothes on.  She calmly gets up and walks across the room to get some change and yells at us for being there , to get out of there.  So my sister and I slowly and quietly walked back to the movie theater. Soon we were hurt and angry.  That man was NOT our father, and as young as we were , we knew it was wrong and we didn't like it.

I remember that the movie was called, " Children of the Damned".  I believe it was later remade under a different title, but it was about children who could cause people to do terrible things to others and themselves just by using their mental powers.  Hmmmm.... well, it didn't work for my sister and I.  It turned out that our mother was selling herself.  She was a prostitute .  Later, she married the man who was her pimp.  There's no nice way to say it , but there it is.  He bought a resale shop and  they decided to set up housekeeping in the back of the store.  This store just happened to be a block away from the corner bar, and he was a heavy drinker who got mean when he got drunk.  By this time, of course, the divorce from my father was final, and  my mother was already seven or eight months pregnant from this man.  This is the man who had held me down and poured beer down my throat, trying to make me drink it.  I thought I was going to drown before he stopped, but my mother never stepped in to stop him. 

On this particular night, he was at that bar, and he was late for supper.  My mother sent me to go fetch him.  I walked that long block to that corner bar, planning on just sticking my head in and yelling for him.  That's about as close as I was gonna get to this man.  When I got there and opened the screen door, because that's all there was ,  I wanted to scream. Blood was everywhere!, and he was in a fight with someone, rolling around all over the floor.  I just turned and ran, but not before he saw me.  I ran and ran back to the resale shop and he wasn't far behind me.  I barely managed to tell my mother when he barreled in and came at us, cussing and hollering .  He was angry about many things but mostly because my mother had called him to come home.

Well, a child's love for her mother dies hard, and when he began beating up our mother, my sister and I couldn't stand it.  I was about six and she was about seven or eight.  We understood that our mother was going to have a baby.  We decided we would try to stop him.  Before I knew what was happening, my sister had climbed onto the chair and jumped onto his back and had him by the neck.  I did the only thing I knew I could do to help and I lunged for the back of his knees.  It was a good decision, though I didn't know it at the time, and down he went, face first.  We beat on him as best as our small fists could beat him but of course he threw us both off pretty easily.  But he rose up slowly and simply told our mother right then and there,  that it was either him or us.  One or the other had to go.  We thought for sure it would be him.  After all, she was safe now, we had just helped her get away from him beating her up again. 

The next morning, as we walked with our mother to the bus station, our hearts were very confused and very broken.  Our mother was not only sending us away again, but she wasn't even going to go with us or take us to where we were being sent.  We were far, far , away from the family.  We remembered that much.  As we boarded the bus that day, we heard our mother tell the bus driver where we were supposed to get off and she just turned and left.  That was it. Neither of us knew that this would be the last time we would see our mother again, except for an appearance in the courtroom a couple of years later. 

 

My sister and I ended up on the farm with our great grandparents on my mother's side.  They didn't care for our mother's ways and had never had much to do with her but this was where we stopped on this journey home.  We didn't stay long,  but long enough to get to know two people, our great grandparents,  who came to love my sister and I as we did them in that short period of time.  I believe at that time , my sister and I needed to know desperately that there was someone who cared about us, but it was such a short short time that we were there before we would be gone again. 

Looking back ,  this was when we were to become aware only, but not really know who Jesus was.  If there was only one thing I could change about this time, it would be that I knew more of Jesus, that I knew more of who was really there to help us .  Even though we didn't know much about who Jesus was, I know that He knew who we were and what was happening to us. 

I know now, that He was there with us all along, working on our behalf.  Romans 8: 28 tells us : " And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."  This doesn't say to me that he would make things right in my life so that I wouldn't have to go through these trials, but it tells me that he would take these trials and make something good come out of them. Jesus has surely done this for me.  I believe the spiritual battle for my soul began very early in my life and Jesus had already decided, " Satan, you can't have this one.  This one's mine",  but the fight wasn't over yet.........

 

Hebrews 13:  5 & 6  tells me:

5.) .......I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. 

6.)  So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.

 

If only I had known this back then because in the years to come things were not getting any better for my sister and I.  To be continued......

My Journey Home

Part  One

                  by Shirley B.

 

This testimony has been a long time coming for me and a very long journey.  When I prayed and asked the Lord to show me how to begin, He impressed on me to start at the beginning, just like He did and tell it all.  I can't put my story under one heading.  Yes, there was abuse, both physical and emotional .  Yes, there were three divorces I went through in the families I lived in.  I suppose being dysfunctional would cover most of it, but not all.  My father was from Texas, the youngest of 13 children, mostly men, who joined the Air Force in the 1940's and went off to war, leaving him to care for my sick grandmother. My grandmother shortly died and he quickly decided to enlist also. One of his older brothers had met someone in Mississippi on leave and had married her. This brother introduced my father to my mother, who lived in Mississippi and they married.  Too quickly.  This set off a real Hatfields and McCoys saga in our family .  My father's family considered my mother to be white trash , from a poor family who lived in poverty in the backwoods of Mississippi, who used her looks to trap our father into marriage. 

I was three, almost four years old, the time we were living in Freeport, Texas.  I had a sister who was two years older than I was and I can't tell this story without including her in it.  We were in it all together, her and I.  At that time, we lived on the upper floor of a two story apartment.  I can remember that the outside staircase was very steep. 

On this particular day, my mother was washing clothes and in those days, they would boil starch and dip the shirts in them before hanging them.  She had filled a huge galvanized tub with the last of the boiling starch and left it at the very bottom of the staircase.  I came out the balcony door to the first step and down I went.  Down two flights of stairs into that tub of scalding starch. 

My  next conscious memory was waking up in the hospital.  I could see my reflection in the stainless steel and mirror like equipment around my bed, and people gathered about me.  I was strapped up and wrapped like a mummy.  I could only see openings for my eyes and mouth and a small space where my nose was. 

My uncle had brought a basket of fruit that he was holding. I remember it had a lot of oranges, my favorite, and my last thought was,  " How am I going to eat those oranges?" 

This was the last thought I  ever remembered about this accident. God was so merciful to me in that I never have remembered the pain and suffering of the next year of my life.  I had many broken bones and burns and scars. Oh, I was aware that I had  this accident, but I never remembered the actual fall until almost 25 years later. 

 

This was the beginning of the end for an already troubled marriage.  I was to learn later , from my mother's sister, that on that day,  my mother could only stand there and scream til my father came running from the other side of the house to see what had happened.  He was the one who reached down into that scalding tub of starch to pull me out.  I was burning  and I was drowning and I was broken but my mother couldn't force herself to reach in for me. 

No one could understand it. It was a lot to forgive and I'm sure the recovery period over the next year didn't help matters .  I had to be treated very carefully.  Wrapped and unwrapped and cleaned ,careful of the burns and the broken collarbone and others things.  It's like looking back at something that happened to someone else. 

I recovered.  I still have some scars, but little by little, as I grew, they have become smaller and faded.  However, the beginning of a great trial for my sister and I had just begun,  and  our mother began to show a side of herself that we would not have believed was possible for a mother.  If there had been forgiveness and understanding on the part of both my father and mother, maybe  a lot of pain and suffering would have been avoided.  

God tells us to  put up with each other, and forgive each other . Colossians 3:13.    

God is always faithful to His Word, and forgiveness is something He commands us to do.  I believe in my heart, that if there had been this forgiveness between my mother and father,  God would have helped them make things right . 

Jeremiah 29:11 tells me that God knows the plans that He has for me, plans for good and not for evil.  However, there was no forgiveness  between my parents  for this incident and more that was to come, and there was no wisdom concerning the things of God.  Twenty five years later, when I saw my mother's sister again, she was shocked to see that I had no visible scars.  God healed me .  Where others thought there would be ugly scars,  He left none.  Isn't that just like God,  to make the wisdom of man seem foolish?  I wish that the story ended here, but it didn't and the page of life turned.

To be continued................

 

Isaiah 53 : 5

 

He was wounded for our rebellious acts,

He was crushed for our sins,

He was punished so that we could have peace,

and we received healing from his wounds.

Thank you for your help!

I've got to tell you what happened this morning…  About a month and a half ago I mailed out invitations to my team's RMA meeting at my house.  I went down stairs to put them in the mail and didn't have 3 stamps.  I asked the ladies at the mailbox if they had any I could buy.  Busy and preoccupied with their own work they said no hastily.  One lady came from behind the divider, almost annoyed and gave me the stamps and when I tried to pay her she refused and went back to work.  The three envelopes that I put her stamps on were women in need.

I've been meaning to thank the lady in a special way but just hadn't got to it.  This morning I saw her and decided just to tell her that it was her stamps that touched the life of a woman who was being abused by her husband and another lady who has been looking for a good church home and she touched another who is on the outside looking in.  It was at that moment that a smile came to her face…a big smile and she said that means so much to me.  I told her that it was just a small thing that she did that allowed these other women to receive a ray of hope that they so desperately needed.  She was so excited and hugged me about 3 times.  She said I know…I've been there.

Boom…it was the door I needed to talk about the RMA Blog.  I told her about and went down the different categories.  She told me she was a breast cancer survivor.  She was so overwhelmed.  Just picture in your mind…this lady bending over with her hand on her chest saying…that means so much to me…Wow!  Wow!

RMA blog writers you are an encouragement to so many!  Thank you for sharing your honest life stories with others.