Coming Full Circle…….

I have lately come to realize that my life is coming full circle. I don’t mean that my time has come to an end, on the contrary it is just beginning! How can that be you may wonder, since I am now 70 years old and not getting any younger but still very much alive. Well, let me explain……

When I say my life is coming full circle I am referring to my spiritual life not my physical life. Yes my body is aging and just like everyone else I have my aches and pains every day and sometime stomach issues or dizzy spells and weakness but that is just a part of life….. We don’t stay ‘fresh and new’ forever! Back to what I was saying….

When I was a child, I went to church with my mother and father and Sunday school. I learned about God and Jesus just like many other children. I believed in praying before our meals and when I went to bed. I was confirmed at the age of 9 at St John’s Episcopal Church where I grew up knowing about God but I never really thought about it. After all I was just a kid and when I finally became a big sister I knew God answered prayers. It took him 9 ½ years but he finally answered!! And he kept answering until I had 4 brothers and two sisters..... By the time the last sibling was born I was a teenager in high school. I still went to church every Sunday and still believed in God and Jesus but later on my faith started to waiver.

Even though I had 6 siblings, I felt alone. I did not fit in with their friends and I didn’t have a lot of friends of my own. I didn’t go out with my friends because I was always helping my mother at home and I had one special friend who also had siblings and we spent every moment we could together usually at one another’s house. We were like two peas in a pod. But life has a way of changing things and we started to go our own ways. We tried to keep in touch but as they say life got in the way.

By this time I became pregnant, got married, delivered my son early on in the pregnancy and never got to hold him or say good bye. I was a total wreck mentally and physically. I became pregnant before my six weeks checkup and had to go to bed for most of my pregnancy to keep the baby. I divorced my husband and it was during this time I really did not have many conversations with God. I thought I was being punished for not being a ‘good’ person and that God wasn’t really talking to me…..

I then met a man 3 years later and got pregnant and this time I waited until the last minute before I married him. The justice of the peace didn’t know whether to marry us or have his wife deliver our child! But she waited one month to be born so we were good. It was in this time that I really lost my way. My husband was abusive, mentally and sometimes physically and I did not tell anyone! I felt it was my fault and that I was to blame for all the bad things that were happening. My husband was not only abusive to me but he was a pedophile as well and he had me so lost that when I would ask him why these young girls were at our house he would tell me I was crazy and that they were just ‘friends’. I felt that I couldn’t tell anyone about this and I became estranged from my family. But they never gave up on me…… and when he was finally caught and put in prison I went home.

But by this time I was totally broken….. I was so lost and did not know where to turn or who to talk to…. I tried talking to God but I felt that I wasn’t worth his time and effort. So consequently, I was totally unaware of his presence and protection. He was healing me little by little and I didn’t even know it. He protected my children and me from some very dangerous times and yes there were many hard times and difficult battles in the coming years. But looking back I now know that He was with me every step of the way. Remembering all the times He protected us and provided for us brings floods of tears of gratitude and makes me extremely humble to think He loved me that much.

Then I lost my father to cancer….. He was my rock…. He was my mentor…. And now he was gone. My mother was devastated and in many ways she died that day too….. She became physically ill and then later on she developed dementia. This was an extremely difficult time not only for me but for all our family and I once again lost touch with God. I struggled for many years before I finally felt at peace with mom’s passing.

During the next few years my sister and I and our children moved into different houses and apartments and carried on with our lives as best we could. There were difficult times and once again I was the one in charge and I did my best to keep things afloat….. Then I met a man who reminded me that God loved me and there was nothing I could do to change that. At first I thought he was crazy, but I liked him and we had a lot in common and we developed a wonderful relationship. He always had me say Psalm 118:24 ‘Today is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it’ every morning and I started believing it. This is when I started talking to God again. This is when I started trusting God again. This is when my life started to change.

The more I read the bible and the more I studied it the more I wanted to read and study it. Then I started having ‘conversations’ with God every day. Sometimes first thing in the morning, sometimes in the evening, sometimes multiples times during the day. I found that the more I talked to God the better I felt, even when things were not going as planned. Now I talk to God all day, sometimes when I am cooking or washing dishes, sometimes when I am crocheting, sometimes when I am taking a shower, it doesn’t matter what I am doing, I always find time to talk to God about anything and everything. I know it sounds like I’m some crazy old lady, but so be it. This crazy old lady has found a peace and comfort that cannot be found anywhere else but in the heart.

That is what I am talking about when I say I have come full circle. I have become like a child in that I completely trust God with every aspect of my life without question, without hesitation, without doubt. I know once again that God loves me and there is nothing I can do that will change that!!! And for me that is all I need to know. May God bless you and may your life come full circle.