Life Interrupted...

Do I have a story of when 'life happened', completely interrupting my plans, intentions, and expectations?  Boy, do I.  It's a highly personal story and I hesitate to share it.  When I do share, I try to examine my motive for sharing and I won't divulge the story unless I feel strongly prompted to do so.  I want it to inspire someone, offer hope, and not to be burdensome to them.  Two and a half years ago, I was married to my first husband, the man whom I knew since age 19, later married, and with whom I had my two children.  At this particular moment on my life's timeline, I was 40 and my children, 9 and 13, very tender and young ages for them.  My then-husband had mental issues and they had been apparent for quite sometime, though instead of acknowledging them, he'd deny them and proceed as if nothing was wrong.  All the while, his issues ate away at our marriage and at his mind and body.

Thought he loved the Lord, he stopped really living like it except in public.  In public, he was an upstanding individual.  At home, he was nothing like that.  As a wife, I spent years praying and being, well, a good wife despite his shortcomings as a father and husband.  The most painful part of this story was the ending.  Sparing you, the reader, the upsetting details, he had what can only be referred to as a psychotic break.  Stress, physical health issues, and the mental issues that plagued him took their toll and one morning when he should have been out of town, unbeknownst to me he returned while I was taking my children to school.  It's hard for me to say it or write it because it makes it real all over again, but that is part of the healing process.  He brutally sexually assaulted me at gunpoint, telling me he may kill me, then ultimately took his own life, forcing me to witness it.

This tragedy was incredibly traumatic, physically and emotionally painful, and its effects have been longstanding on all three of us.  We were victims of a horror most people could never imagine happening;  it was unthinkable, unspeakable, void of comprehension how such a thing could take place.  We were left with pain and questions;  "why?", "how?", "what now?"  God didn't provide any obvious, definitive answers to our "why?" and "how?" but He did show was "what now."  He brought new friends into our lives, old friends returned, people reached out and gave us much-needed support even just for a short amount of time when we desperately needed it.

He provided in ways we couldn't have imagined or even knew to ask for.  He brought us people to love us, listen to us, to envelope us in support and comfort and made us feel loved and cared for and brought us just what we needed.  Most of all, He gave me strength as a mother to protect and support my children, to comfort them, and carry them through each day the way He was carrying me.  Friends had our collective backs and at one point a dear friend told me we were "well protected" and rumors were being kept at bay.  Our church family essentially packed up what had once been our cherished home and moved us into a rental where we could begin again.

Life was truly interrupted in a fiercely difficult and challenging way.  I was and still am so proud of my children.  They have kept their faith.  It never was shaken even amidst all the pain and questions they had about their father.  They know that their Heavenly Father will never leave them.  Healing is a process, an ongoing one, the stages of which go back and forth over time.  He is good and He is faithful and our lives were interrupted, but God has brought so much good to us since then and provided in ways we couldn't have imagined.  Stay tuned, I'd love to share how!