Abuse comes in so in many forms.  The effects manifest in so many ways.

There’s so much to tell, yet I don’t know where to start.  Daily I am compelled to write, but to who I know not.  How to say it or what exactly to say, I know not.  I only know it must be told, because everyone’s life is eventually a lesson for someone else.

Mine is a bit of a macabre fairytale, really.  If I had to tell it as briefly as possible it would go something like this…

There were many settings, some beautiful, some unsavory.  Regardless, each came with an ugly reality.  Mental illness ruled our family, neglect and abuse being the foundation of my childhood and upbringing.  It was all I knew, but in my soul I knew it wasn’t right.    It certainly wasn’t the life I wanted, not for myself, not for the husband and children I wanted in my future.  Soon after my eighteenth birthday and high school graduation I left for a destination across the country and never looked back.

Unfortunately, I was emotionally immature.  It is a common result of being brought up in an environment such as the one to which I was accustomed.  I quickly fell into the trap of a narcissist and his disturbed family.  It took another eighteen years to disentangle myself from the abusive marriage.  Only by then, I also had two children.  The divorce was a nightmare that didn’t end until long after the final court date.

Hopes of ever finding the man of my dreams dwindled to barely an ember.  I believed it would remain just that – only a dream.   Until I met him.  The one.  He had been in my mind and my heart all along.  I called him my archangel because for the first time in my life I felt safe, important, truly loved and happier than I ever thought possible.  But, he too had an ex-wife who had been diagnosed with serious mental disorders, and two children who suffered from her abuse.  Eventually he won full custody of his children and they came to live with us.  We met the challenges of becoming a blended family of six.

So far, this may sound like a common story.   It would be, if not for the violence.  If not for the demi-mob.  If not for the crooked lawyers.  If not for the arson.  If not for the murder.

If not for an Irish pastor and a small New England church.  If not for God, Himself.

Little by little, this blog will tell our story.  Because everyone’s life is a lesson to someone else.