"OUT OF THE DARKNESS" POST 6

Twenty years is a long time to be away from dating.  It's like starting completely over.  The only difference is, you are more nervous than you've ever been in your life.  My new guy was alot different than the man I had been married to.  After two years of being single, I had gotten to the lonely stage. My new boyfriend and I dated for six months and then he asked me to marry him.  I was longing to be in another committed relationship. I said yes and we married in October of 1999.  For several years we got along alright but this relationship was also lacking the deep love my heart hungered for.  Was it so unrealistic to believe that true love could exist?   It was not very long at all that we were married and the two of us became a family of three overnight.  My stepdaughter and her mother had a huge fight and she ended up living in the house with us.  She was a fifteen year old who assumed she would rule the way things would be.  This girl was very head strong and had been given her way entirely too much.  Because my husband had missed out on alot of time with her, I found out fairly quickly that I was not my new husband's priority.  Because he had this fear of losing her again, the relationship between he and his daughter came first.  Every time  I would try to speak up  for myself, I was always told that I was trying to start an argument and I would be shut down.  I cannot tell you how much this broke my heart. I just wanted to explain the way this made me feel.   It's hard for a wife to be happy if she is disrespected.  It only served to remind me of the life I had lived thus far.  In order to keep peace in our family, I just started pushing my feelings aside. I started internalizing all of it.  By this time. I would hold everything in to the point I would explode with anger when it got to be too much.  This did not help matters at all.  I felt forced into a corner on some decisions I  never would have agreed with.  All the while feeling so much anger.  I became very numb.  One thing I can say is my husband attended church faithfully and it was because of him that I even gave an effort to attending as well.  During this time, I managed to walk to the altar and  had convinced myself that I was saved and born again.  I can honestly say that when I got baptized, I just got wet...that's all.  I realized then that most people who attended church, myself included, were just going through the motions of believing all was well with their soul.  There were very few true, close relationships with God to be found within those walls. People did not seem to change, people just did what was expected of them.

Our family was just like yours...

We went through good times and we went through bad times.  Life is like a rollercoaster you know.   We managed to get through ten years of marriage and still together.  That was a miracle.