a personal sharing

I was a child of the 50’s.  My parents were farmers.  They taught by example, and gave me an enduring demonstration of honesty, hard work and commitment to “the golden rule”.  I took on my mother’s Christian faith at an early age, and it has shaped and enriched my life. 

In 1975 I married a man who professed Christianity, but over the ensuing years, this façade fell away to reveal a manupulative and emotionally cruel man, and, in 1992, he left, leaving me to care and provide for our 3 children, without support from him in any way.  I went out to work and took out a mortgage to pay him his share of our home.   Thus began some very dark and difficult years, hallmarked by unrelenting hard work, lone responsibility and very frugal living.

I was working full time and I was alone.  I was breadwinner, home-maker, mother and father. During these years, there was the emotional turmoil of trying to come to terms with my divorce; there was the strain of coping with my increasingly hostile ex-husband and his troubled relationship with our children;  there was the death of my father;  there was much upheaval and persecution at work at one stage;  .  There seemed to be no part of my life which was happy or easy.   I felt marooned in a sea of undeserved dishonour and unrelenting difficulty. This continued year after year.

My life was like a little boat.  My children were precious cargo.  And I was rowing through a dark and terrible storm.  All around the waves crashed;  the lightning terrified us;  the thunder muddled my senses.  Still I rowed.  Eventually, my children grew into happy, strong, caring adults.  In 1996 I moved to another place and finally, there were mornings of sunshine and evenings of peace. .

My son, the oldest child, became a cabinet-maker, then embarked on a very difficult learning curve and became a policeman.  One daughter became a midwife and the other, an Occupational Therapist. 

My children and I become a very close family;  a closeness forged by commitment and hardship.   It was the delight and joy of my life, to see them together. They were the best thing I had from my dreadful marriage.

Then, in November 2006, my son was killed in a work accident in Sydney.  He was 27. I have no words to express the crushing grief of such news.   Yet even in those early moments, there was peace;  there was God saying “it’s OK, he’s safe with me.  

For long years after my divorce, it felt like there was a wasteland of broken ground inside me;  there had been such betrayal, such conflict;  so much call on all my resources;  so much unfulfilled hope;  so much disappointment;  so many oft-repeated prayers which seemed to remain unanswered.  God took a long time to heal this brokenness.  But He did.  I had to be healed all over again after my son died.  I am still walking that shadowed path really. God is still with me, and He is good.  But I want to tell you the other strategies I learned as well.