The Next Step

I remember one Easter morning my siblings and I got up before our parents. We immediately began looking for the hidden baskets that our parents prepared the night before. We found 4 of them sitting on the kitchen countertop. We knew it was just too easy, but each of us grabbed one and began munching away. My little sister wasn't awake yet, but we didn't care that she wouldn't have a basket; we were just happy to have the candy. When my parents woke up, they asked why we grabbed the baskets without waiting for them to hide them. We told them we found them on the counter and just thought that that was where they hid them (yeah, right). My Mom was especially disappointed in me. Opening the microwave she revealed a basket I made in school the week prior filled with twice the amount of candy as the others. She gave it to my sister. Drat...

Flash forward to today. I realize I've done it again, but this time with a wife instead of a stupid basket of Easter candy. I met my wife when I was in the Navy, reeling from being desperately alone. Then I met my future wife. She was without a home when I met her and her kids had to live with her sister.  She was the first girl that took an interest in me. I'd never kissed a girl before, much less done anything else. Not only had I started dating this girl with 4 children not much younger than I was, I sallied forth after learning she was still married. The guilt of copulating with her was too much for my conscience and I brought her to the courthouse to finalize her divorce and married her the next day. It was selfish of course, but I appeased my feelings of guilt by taking her and the kids in and even buying a house for all of us to live in. 

I was never happy, but I always tried... and failed. Vacations always left me the odd man out and when advice was asked, it was towards her in Tagalog instead of us as a married couple. Over the 10 years of being with her, some deep seating feelings of regret and desperation once again flooded over me as I realized I should never have married her. But I put those thoughts away and accepted the adage that I had made my bed and was obliged to sleep in it. 

Things progressively waxed more tense as our dilapidated house neared the fully renovated stage. Fights over money and hidden credit tested my commitment to "laying in the bed" and when my brother Lars visited me, a chink was found in my armor of solace. After she left me and returned during my brother's stay, I was so backwards and depressed that all I could do was go to work everyday and come home to sit in my shed to drink beer and smoke cigarettes. 

Nearly a year passed and my shed routine had become firmly established. I thought to myself one night sitting in my shed while on my fifth cigarette of the night that I needed to instill confidence in myself and persuade my then family to believe in my leadership. I immediately took control of the helm again and began to finish getting my affairs in order to fix that house completely and help her family to fix theirs as well. 

I remember having a fight with my wife about the room that her son stayed in as he didn't pay rent and only wiled away his time playing computer games in his room like a hermit. He was in the smallest bedroom, but began sleeping in the downstairs master bedroom. I told both of them that due to the heat, I didn't mind him sleeping there for the time being, but that once the house was finished I was going to rent the room out so we could begin paying off the massive amount of credit card debt that I had found out about. 

The next Wednesday her parents called me to let me know that their sewage pump had pooped out and a tree had fallen on their house due to the hurricane force wind. After I got off work at 5:00, I went over to their house, installed the sewage pump, and began chopping limbs off their roof with a chainsaw in the wind and rain. It was nearly 10:00 when I returned home. Both my wife and her son were in the downstairs bedroom having just finished moving all his stuff into it. 

After another fight with her we didn't talk for 3 days. I was about to go and stew in the shed again, when I thought better of it and reviewed the facts. We should have never got together or married. We should have never bought that house. And I should have finished my tenure in the Navy and returned home to Oregon. But, instead of waiting for the Lord's blessing on my life, I grabbed the candy on the countertop. 

I'm thankful for God's grace, as He forgives and restores. A peace is on me now; one that took over 11 years to restore to my soul. I'm still working on forgiving myself for hurting her and her family, but I know that the Lord has. The next step is laid out. Now that the shackles are off, I'm able to walk it.

Lead on Lord. Lead on.