After graduating from High School, I moved from my parents home to an apartment, working 3 jobs to support myself through college. It was a difficult time, but once I set out to accomplish this goal of ‘doing it on my own’, I wasn’t about to admit defeat, or ask for help. The motto ‘no one is going to it for you’ from my mom was seared in my brain. Many days I went from job to college, to job, home, sleep, college, job, sleep…days drifted to years, and soon my time in college was over. I graduated in 1982 continuing to work 3 jobs. One of my jobs was at an Insurance company. Back when I was 5, living in that rental house, the people across the street allowed my sisters and I to fish from their dock. After we moved to the house my mother built, they continued to allow us to fish, and as we got older, my sister started babysitting for them, then myself. They had 2 sweet girls, and I loved working for them. As I got older, the husband invited me to work ‘in the real world’ and come to his office to work as the receptionist. I still think that he created that job, as they didn’t have much ‘walk in’ business, but just the same, it afforded me being with other people, and taught me some office skills. And it was there, in that office, with those people, that I intersected with my future husband.
The business in which I worked, was a family business, so family worked there. It was ‘the boss’, who was the man who allowed us to fish from his dock, his sister and her husband working as underwriters. They were a lovely family, and to me, in many ways, they treated me like family. Frequently, the son of the sister would call, and as the receptionist, I would speak to him, then pass the call along to his mother. Living 4 hours away from each other, it was only by an unfortunate death in my family that we met on Thanksgiving Day 1982. Due to this death, I had no place to go for the holiday, and the ‘ office family’ invited me to dinner, which is where our lives collided. Just 10 days after meeting Rich, I broke up with my ‘boyfriend’, as I could see, that wasn’t going to work out, as I definitely had feelings for someone else. Not knowing ‘where’ those feelings would go, I just knew, that I could not stay in the relationship. My boyfriend was totally blind-sided, but I too had been blind-sided by the ‘connection Rich and I clearly had at our first meeting. Christmas came, and the office family invited me over to celebrate the holiday with them, after my own family festivities. It was great to see Rich again, talking for hours about our lives and how our paths crossed. From us living across the street from his aunt and uncle, fishing off the dock, then later babysitting their children (his cousins), the death in my family, that connection with that family, all those events eventually brought us to that point in time. Reflecting on this today, and though God never wants bad things to happen to us, He does use situations for His purpose; I see how my father leaving us, and mom making the decisions she made, took me on a journey down a path that molded me in to the person I was evolving into; and brought me to where I am today; that if any of those events had not occurred, life would have been on a different path.
After these couple of meetings, Rich and I could both see we were destined to be together. Meeting for the first time in November of 82’, we married just after I graduated in 1983. The first years of marriage were a time for fun and games, nothing overly serious, though I was working in the field of social work, where that in itself, is serious and taxing on a person mentally. Being able to juggle the stress of hearing about life’s difficulties for others, was something that would be a real benefit to me, in the situations that I would face later. That, and remembering my mom’s motto, ‘ya just gotta put one foot in front of the other, and keep doing the right thing…no one is going to do it for you.’, would be something I clung to. Life can be overwhelming, little did I know what the future held, and how each incident in my life would be a page or chapter in my life book.
Lesson learned: you can not stay where you are and answer the call of God…you must move, physically, mentally, especially spiritually, God’s path will take you to place you least expect.