reboot my ❤

The perfect storm:

In 1993, I was grieving a septuple whammy from life.

•  bam! finding out, through a bizarre series of coincidences  that my closely-related offender was currently abusing my little cousin
• bam! Going with my best friend\mentor to the county police near my home with this gut-wrenching knowledge, finding out that I could only report my own abuse by this family member, as I was witness to that.  I did report that old abuse.
• Bam! shunned in a dramatic series of phone calls by my beloved family, who, to a woman, (including fellow victims and my mom!) chose to side with my favored, golden-boy offender and believe his clever lies that he was not abusing, that I was mentally ill and that I was merely seeking to destroy our family.
• bam! Nothing from my dad or any other male relative. Silence. I don’t think most of my family even knew.  How do you talk about something like that?
• Bam!  Losing my  fledgling marriage to this sordid scandal and to (unrelated?) infidelity
• Bam! Expelled from my Portland area Bible college for moving out of my shared-with-husband home and into a small room that I could afford by myself, then foolishly asking a trusted male professor to pray for me. ( I can see now, how it must have looked.  I was young and innocent.)
• bam! Having moved to another town, went out with a much older coworker, tried alcohol for the first time, woke up in his bed pregnant

Date rape.

I never thought that awful thing could happen in my perfectly planned-bible-thumping-runningfrommyupbringing life.

badly disappointed, I somehow held on to my faith, not sure how.

Ummm…why?
Those were tough times. 💔

I had seen a girlfriend choose abortion after a rape, and I saw how that devastated her.  Empty arms.  Broke her up.

Didn’t want that.

Therefore, I began working with Holt adoption services out of Eugene, Oregon.

I interviewed and selected my adoptive family.

I found a support group and a good counselor in my new city.

I found a nurturing-safe-biblepreaching-holyspiritlead-church and began to heal.  there are churches and there are churches.  You know? I was accepted like I was family.  Weekly counseling with the minister and his wife.  Fasting and prayer with them. The church welcomed me with open arms.

Deliverance began.

Then backlash:

Bam! Lost my job—older male co-worker said I was making it up and he wasn’t the father.  (I did have a boyfriend, so I can see how it might have looked.)

Bam! Lost my apartment.

Bam! Lost my health. Preeclampsia.  Hospitalized.  incredibly high blood pressures, threatened organ failure. Almost died.

🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
Induced. 52 hour labor.

Baby girl.

Love at first sight.
I changed my mind about adoption.  Had a paradigm shift.

I got to bring this beautiful 🎁 home.  I could hardly believe it!

The baby began a healing in my heart.  Everything fell in to place.  My purpose.  My spirituality.  Everything.  Reversing all the yuckiness.  Redeeming it.

My new church family hung in there with me.

Some kind people neighborhood folks took me in for after the baby came– until I could get into state housing.

Other kind people were my friends and helped me get stuff for my baby, visited me. Gave me books.  Helped me learn.

I graduated from counseling.  Met a very, very young man. (Like wetbehindtheears) I asked my pastor to check him out.  Turns out he knew the young man’s pastor.  They had lunch before we did. 🌻 he gave me 👍.

No quick fixes here.   I have continued counseling and prayer ( off and on) for the last quarter-century.
We’ve been married twenty-five years.  Four other children.

Happily ever after right? (Well, mostly, but that’s a different story.)🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻