When my father, who was supposed to be my protector, walked out of my life and left me to be raised  by a man who did not have my heart, without realizing it, I began my journey to independence. There were unspeakable  things happening to me as a child that no one knew about. Things that no child should ever have to experience. These things were being done by adults who were left in charge over me. People who should have been trustworthy. People who must have gone through horrible things as a child to make them do the things they did. I will never understand the mindset of someone who deliberately hurts an innocent child. Nevertheless I feel sure that God brings justice to those individuals.

In case you are wondering, there were people in my life who loved me very much and would have done everything in their power to save me from the hell I lived in if they only knew what was happening. But they didn’t. I didn’t know how to tell them. In fact I was threatened with death if I ever told anyone. I am just thankful I survived it. When we moved to Georgia we moved away from the evilness that consumed our daily lives but we still lived with the abuse from my step father. No wonder I had trouble with relationships, right? The first time there was conflict I cowered in the corner with fear. I didn’t know how to resolve it, I didn’t know how to communicate, I was afraid to express my feelings because it was never allowed. In fact to this day I hate conflict. I will face it head on when it is necessary but I do not go looking for it.

I went through very extensive counseling after my second divorce because I just needed to break the cycle. I needed to find peace, I needed to learn to be confident in who I was. I needed to learn to use my voice, to stand up for myself. I am doing ok with that. I do still avoid conflict if possible. Just because I don’t like to argue. I feel like it is wasted energy. I have done enough of it in my lifetime that I would like to avoid it all together. I don’t understand when people say (after seeing two people have a knock down drag out fight) ” boy if me and my wife argued like that, we would still be married”. Does fighting make your relationship stronger? I did not find that to be true. Especially when people fight dirty. People say things in anger that can’t be taken back and their words do damage that can’t be fixed. How does that make your bond stronger? How does that make you love that person more? Am I missing something here? I have always said, no matter how much you think you know someone, no matter how much you love them, no matter how long you have lived with them, you never really know what goes on in another persons head. So how do you truly trust people? Do you ever truly trust people? For me, it has been very, very difficult.

There have been very few people in my life who have not disappointed me. People in positions that warranted trust, abused their authority in ways you can’t even imagine. Relatives, friends, bosses, boyfriends, husbands even pastors. Well I should say one pastor in particular. All of these people had one thing in common – they were charmers. They pull you in with their compliments and try to gain your trust, all the time knowing they have an agenda. To use you, to break you, to get what they want from you and then move on to the next victim. Sorry if I sound cynical but this is the ugly truth of my life. Some of them are gone and never to be heard from again and I wouldn’t know them if I ran into them on the street but they left a lasting mark on my journey.

After each act of betrayal I became stronger and stronger because I survived. I found strength in moving on. I am not sure why I kept putting myself out there, I guess I just kept searching for unconditional love. The Bible talks about it, so I knew it had to exist somewhere. I wanted that “I adore you, you are the most important thing in my life” kind of love. Oh, I had people tell me that, but then their actions said a totally different thing. AHHHHHHH there it is. The problem is I was looking for it from PEOPLE. What I didn’t realize is, God loves me unconditionally, He adores me, He thinks I am the most important thing in His life. That is the most important relationship, the most important love. It was there all along I just had to find it. My strength came from Him, my ability to move on came from Him. He told me that I could trust again but I had to trust Him first. He used all of the betrayal and the pain to bring me to Him. You see I even had a hard time trusting God because, well, look what happened to me. How could I trust Him. I had to do some pretty deep soul-searching to really get to a place where I realized that what happened to me as a child was beyond my control. But when I became an adult I kept making bad choices that kept putting me in positions of betrayal because I did not speak up for myself. In my subconscious I did not think I was worthy of respect and love. In my head I was trying to demand it.

I have learned so many lessons through God’s pruning process of my life, but I think one of the most important ones is learning to trust. How can you go through life without people you trust? Sometimes you can’t over think things. Sometimes you have to just jump in with both feet and TRUST that God will be with you throught it all. He has been for me.