Category Archives: God’s faithfulness

Leaving Abuse: A Journey Into The Great Unknown

walking awayThe sun had barely crested the horizon that morning, when I awoke in my daughter’s bed.  Turning over, I realized that, during the night, my neck and shoulders had turned to stone.  I rose slowly and began to massage my neck to release some of the tension and became immediately overwhelmed with an emotional exhaustion too intense for words.  The night’s horror returned to revisit in full force.

Fortunately, none of our four kids were at home – three had spent the night at their grandparents’ house, and one was at a slumber party.  The timing could not have been better, as the evening’s events encompassed a full range of terror and tears that ended without resolution long after midnight.  I had confronted my husband about the relationship he was obviously pursuing with another woman, and he raged at me for having the audacity to eavesdrop on the late-night telephone conversation I overheard him having with her from our bedroom.

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The Most Painful Confession: Coming Clean With God – and Myself

arms wide openIt has been said that man is the only creature who runs faster when he is lost.

Sure enough, that was me – trying to survive in an abusive marriage, striving and praying and trying – running ever faster but always headed in the wrong direction.  At long last I found myself backed into a windowless corner where decades of denial had finally run their course.  It was then that I had to offer up my most painful of all confessions.

You see, up until that moment, I had held to my story, the one I had fabricated about my marital destiny, the one that ultimately led to the nightmare from which my children and I now needed to be rescued.  The original account affectionately chronicled how and where my husband and I first met, the way he doggedly pursued me and how our courtship and marriage unfolded.  Surely I had presented an image where it seemed that God had brought us together.

But so many years later I found myself virtually suffocating under a wave of conviction so overwhelming, it felt as though my heart might explode.

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Love Gifts from the Hand of God (The Jackrabbit Story)

Even from a young age I have enjoyed the simple wonders of nature. In elementary school I learned to identify many of the local songbirds, the scrub jays and red-tailed hawks that could be observed in our neighborhood on a daily basis. I gleaned a special joy from an occasional sighting of deer, raccoons and squirrels that might be spotted in nearby fields yet to be cleared.

 But for some reason jackrabbits have always held a special place in my heart. Perhaps because of their elusive nature, it felt like no small reward when I would catch a glimpse of one dashing swiftly and almost silently through the tall summer wildflowers. And since those days, those creatures have come to mean much more. So with this as background, I share this odd little story.

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