“One evening we walked out onto the front porch with a fresh cup of hot coffee in hand. Night had fallen, and there was a slight chill in the air as we settled into our chairs. Sipping our coffee in comfortable silence, my mind drifted back into the past. I had never known love like Scott and I shared and did not know this kind of love even existed. My first husband, the father of my children, had loved me as I had loved him, and he was a good father and provider, but our relationship was completely different. The lack of emotional intimacy between us spread into other areas of our marriage and after 17 years led him to seek affection/love elsewhere. He moved out in 1995, and the divorce was finalized in January of 1996. The years that followed were hellish. I lost everything that mattered to my heart. A part of me died when the dust finally settled and I was completely alone. I functioned on auto-pilot. The pain morphed into numbness as life turned into bleak emptiness and extra work to make ends meet. A friend had suggested I needed to find someone to help me raise my children, but I had no interest in meeting anyone or dating. I paid my own way, working overtime, weekends, and holidays to cover living expenses, food, and basic needs, and I had sold the extra furniture and many things I had wanted to keep in order to live.

I had prayed when the father of my children left the home, but had no faith in my own prayers, and hoped against hope that maybe God would help me. I had not earned God’s favor and doubted I would receive much help. I had felt insignificant in life from early childhood and had accepted that rejection as God’s view of me. I was just another one of those throwaway kids who would never amount to anything. “Those poor girls don’t stand a chance,” I overheard someone say at a family gathering when I was a child, and I never forgot those words. The people at church treated me just like my family. I understood the church to be God’s house and the people who attended to be God’s people. In my young mind, if they rejected me, then God rejected me. I did not fit in with my family or the church people. I had never fit in anywhere and was constantly aware that I was different. That perception had crippled me with fear and insecurity the majority of my life. I had loved hearing the Bible stories about Jesus and singing all the songs we learned in Sunday School in childhood. My father had dropped my sister and me off at Sunday School and picked us up during the years we lived with him, and once we started living with Aunt Lucy we rode the church bus to a local Baptist church every Sunday morning. I wanted to believe that Jesus loved all the children of the world, but I did not have parents like everyone else. Life was not normal while I was growing up. Something was wrong with me because God did not love me as much as other children who did have parents and families. Now in my late 40s, God had brought a man into my life whose love far exceeded all my hopes and dreams. I was blessed to have a man I loved, respected, trusted, and desired deeply.

Scott took my hand, and we walked off the porch into the yard under the night sky. All the past hurt, anger, disappointment, betrayal, and resignation washed over me as I stood hand in hand with this wonderful man. I did not understand why God had chosen to bless us so amazingly. Perhaps we had gone through enough heartache in our lives to earn some love and joy. Happiness and gratitude filled my heart as I gazed up at the stars.”

– shared from the chapter, “The Land of Goshen”.