My father died when I was fifteen.  His government securities helped me through life from that age to 22.  I attended college but didn’t finish.  Left the comfort of school, got a job, and never felt the same after emotional abuse by a Vietnam veteran that road me long and hard.

I was never the same.  I started to recognize I have been smart but slow all my life.  Not catching on to wordly things but wanting to please my mother and to exemplify the training she gave me.  Thank God for it, it gave me a point of steadiness in that way.  I lived with a broken heart time and again because I felt that I just couldn’t get things right.  Seems like I didn’t have any plans or goals.  I was just a person that tried too hard to grab hold when it was already there.

Chemical imbalances run in my family.  With the discouragement of loving a father that people called a “crazy man”  because he couldn’t handle his liquor and a mother who had to deal with two abusive husbands I was pretty much destined for a life of long suffering.  In spite of my frail attempts to find normalcy, and the beginnings of my own chemical imbalances, I was just about worn ragged.  No one knew because I didn’t know how to reach out.  It has been over 30 years now and I am still finding ways to requite my illness.  Sometimes it gets pretty hairy.  Sometimes it’s a day of magic when I realize I am now my own person.  I’m married now to someone who needs me as much as I need him.  He gives me the strength of companionship.  I’m not alone anymore. 

God knows everything.  He knew my father was one of the finest, most generous men there was.  He just had a problem.  Thank God for understanding employers who admired his work ethic and forgot the rest.  My mother never did remarry and was a strong, dignified lady until the end of her life. 

For me, being 50ish has given me a new world to discover.  I have love, at least I’m sure I love him and just pray about his part.  Thinking negative is a hard habit to break.  I’m looking forward to something new to still my delicate soul.  To be whimsical about the past but leave it there.  To put my future in God’s hands because only he can take a problem and make it into a faithful, gracious situation.

I remember a song from my youth.  I can’t remember if I learned it in church or in school but it beckons “let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me”.  God bless me, bless my family and come back Elaine.