Tag: blended family

I’ve often times wondered why? Why me God? Why is this the path that You chose for me? Why do I have to carry this heartache and burden? I’m certainly not strong enough to carry this weight, so why on earth are You trusting me with it? I’m slowly learning that He had a divine plan and purpose for every ounce of pain that I walked through. Here’s the catch though, He had to trust that I’d be obedient with it. I have gotten off track more times than I can count, but deep down in the depths of my core, I know that my purpose is to shed light on my pain.

The pain of a broken home, the pain of being sexually abused and molested as a child, the pain of divorce, the pain of infertility, the pain of being a blended family, the pain of walking out an adoption plan. Like many of you, I have had my fair share of pain and heartache, some of which was brought on by my own choices. While God doesn’t sit and inflict pain on his children, there are times that He allows us to walk through it. By doing so, He can use it in a way to bring healing to our lives that ultimately allows us to help others. So that is what I am doing, I am sharing my pain in an effort to bring peace to someone’s chaos. Just know my brothers and sisters, that no matter what you are facing in this moment, you are absolutely NOT alone!

Let’s start with the first pain that I endured in my very early stages of life. For one, my mom was a teenage mother and my birth father was not in the picture after I was born. I was adopted at the age of five by the man that she later married. By the time I was in second grade their marriage was ending in a divorce. This is the point where my young mind had to start learning how to deal with the disappointments in life. For the sake of time, I will not go into much depth about any of the following statements. The sole purpose of this blog entry is to give an overall general picture of my life and how I have come to walk in “my purpose”.

After the divorce, I became a witness to the ugliness of what some are capable of. I lived with a step mom who consistently put my mom down and always talked trash about her. I began to feel as if I was not allowed to love my mom openly for fear of being chastised. I remember my heart hurting so bad for my mom because of the things I heard, but felt like I did not have a voice to say anything in her defense. I suffered silently through years of molestation and sexual abuse. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I finally became angry enough to lash out and tell someone what was happening. That is when my glass house began to shatter all around me.

You see, from the outside, everything was perfect. I was a student who excelled academically in the classroom and poured my heart and soul into the ball field. I was polite, well behaved and obedient, I gave my best effort at every challenge placed before me. No one would ever believe the horrible truths that went on behind closed doors or the hurt, pain and anger that I carried on the inside. However, once the cat was out of the bag and the truth was brought to light my world was absolutely turned upside down.

I had to leave the home I was in, I was moved to another city where I knew no one. I had to start my high school year without the friends and classmates that I had been with since preschool. I had to once again put on a smile and push through as if I wasn’t still fighting an internal battle from within. I wanted to crawl into a hole and just scream and cry and never feel anything again. Every dream I ever had as a child seemed to have shattered right before my eyes.

Fast forward to late teenage years where I was still just as broken, looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places and beds. No longer was I the over achieving student, I had not stepped on a ball field in years, and my soul longed to just be loved by someone, anyone. As a matter of fact, I quit school at the end of my eleventh grade year (I did obtain my high school diploma) and set out on my own path of self destruction. I left home at seventeen, was married eight months after I turned eighteen and began life as a married adult.

Needless to say, there was still a void in my life, there was this dull ache in my heart where something was missing. I had always longed to be a mother and I just knew that would make everything in my world better. Unfortunately for me, all that door opened was years of unexpected turmoil and heartache. The word “infertility” became a part of my every day life and my mind as it consumed my thoughts. Three failed marriages later and years of pain, hurt, self destruction, surgeries, fertility procedures and treatments, failed adoption and a miscarriage I had finally had enough.

I was done with the “just going through the motions” of life. I was miserable in a marriage that was strictly based on the physical aspect of sex. During my entire existence, that seemed to be the sum of what any man in my life wanted. While they pledged their undying love to me, it was always contingent on my meeting their sexual desires and needs. Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing at all wrong with a husband and wife enjoying what God created in the form of intimacy. Where I struggled was being able to enjoy it because I was still tormented by my past. I had spent so many years, allowing men to just use me in that way while I was seeking their “love”. What I learned is when things got hard, it wasn’t “me” they loved, it was the physical benefits that came along with marriage. Any time sex was taken out of the equation, there was not a lot of substance left.

In all fairness, it was not entirely their fault. I take responsibility for shouldering my past hurts and pains as if they did not effect me; when in reality it rocked me to my very core. The mind truly is a powerful thing and the same hang ups I struggled with as a kid, I still struggled with as an adult. I still battled self image, self worth, being good enough, being accepted, having confidence in myself and overall just over compensating in some areas where I lacked in other places. I never allowed them in close enough to know just how broken I really was, because I feared if they knew the truth of how broken I was then they would leave. A lot of good that did, huh? Hurt people will always hurt other people and you just can’t have a healthy life long relationship with anyone if you both are not willing to be completely open, honest and transparent.

It was not until after I went through my third divorce that I finally had enough. I was no longer interested in the past continuing to repeat itself. It was during this time that I allowed myself to be completely open, honest, transparent, vulnerable and raw with someone who I had known for years. It was not someone new in my life, but someone who already knew most of my flawed past. I did not have an image to uphold or a good impression to make, I just let myself be me. I allowed the brokenness of my entire soul to be brought to light for the first time in my life. I am not sure why, I just felt safe, I felt like there would be no judgement, just someone to hear my heart. In my hurt of yet another failed marriage I let the ugliness from within come out for the first time to a friend that later became my husband.

For the first time in my life, I felt like someone saw me for me. He saw the good, the bad and the ugly, this time I was not just another means to someone’s sexual pleasure. I was a human being, a broken, flawed, hurting human that had been smiling on the outside yet completely dead on the inside. Can I just say how freeing it was to no longer pretend that I was this strong independent woman. I was finally able to bring it all out to the open and allow the healing process to begin. It has been nine years since that process began, but I have never felt more alive than I do today. I am loved with a pure heart by someone who loves me as Christ loves His church and I can not express strongly enough the importance of your mate loving God first. When we love God first we love others better. I am still a mess on most days, but I am free to fall apart and cry and express my feelings and emotions without judgement or condemnation.

Saying “yes” to this man, however, meant saying yes to a completely different emotional roller coaster. I now had to learn how to navigate the waters of becoming a step mom. Going from years of learning to cope with and navigate an infertility diagnosis, I am now faced with a new challenge in what is called a “childless stepmom”. I read books and devotions, we even joined a Blended Families bible study and I tried my absolute best to get it right. I remembered from my own childhood how hurtful it was to hear my step mom speak so negatively of my mom. Therefore, I knew what kind of step mom I did not want to be.

From the moment my husband let me into his life in the capacity of a significant other, I was always mindful of any conversations dealing with the kids mom. We never spoke negatively of her to them or around them, in fact we did the exact opposite and always encouraged them to be good and mindful of their behavior. Did we have upsets and moments that got a little heated? Absolutely, I am not going to lie and say it was always easy; because it was not and there were times that tempers and emotions got the best of all of us. However, we did make an honest effort and attempt to always be mindful of keeping our adult opinions between us and not in ear shot of little impressionable minds.

So begins my struggle of navigating a blended family while still carrying the hurt of not having my own children. I was still trying to wrap my head around the infertility and the possibility of never having my own children. I had only one Ovary and Fallopian tube, Endometriosis and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Did I mention my husband had a vasectomy after his son was born? So clearly, having children naturally was going to be a literal miracle of God. He brought into our marriage four children from his previous marriage so his heart was full, as far as, having children was concerned. So where does that leave me and my desires of becoming a mother?

But God! It was nothing but God, because God gave him such a beautiful heart for me and my desire to be a mom. He allowed my husband to see my pain and take my burden upon himself to carry along side of me. Together we set off on our own adventure to grow our little family. We looked at several options: vasectomy reversal, frozen embryos, IVF, artificial insemination and adoption. We chose to travel the road of adoption together and spoke to a couple of different agencies. We let our wishes be known to our friends and family. We even met with an expectant birth mom and dad, only to find out later that they chose to keep their baby. We eventually looked at the possibility of becoming a foster home.

As we were being obedient in the natural and doing what was pressed upon our hearts, God was doing a work in the spiritual. We later met a group of people that connected us to someone who would change our lives forever. Today I am the mother of two of the most beautiful souls on the planet. As I look back on the pain, hurt and heart ache, I can see how God has beautifully orchestrated all of that into an amazing masterpiece that I now call my life.

With each of these statements about my life and what I went through I am reminded of how I overcame each one of them. Although, I was never on my own because my Father in heaven always had a plan and a purpose for each of these seasons. He is ever so faithful to His promises to us, even when we are in our own wilderness. God has given me a voice and a platform to speak life into those dead areas of someones life and I plan to keep being obedient and loving on these souls by whatever means necessary.

Turn off the noise of the world and listen to the still small voice of your Father in Heaven. When you focus on what HE says about you then you will begin to see yourself as He does …. Forgiven, Valuable, Loved, Overcomer, Victorious, Worthy but most of all HIS!!!

May your souls be blessed and your hearts lightened at the reality of how much you are loved. Please show your love by commenting, liking, following and sharing =)