It's roughly 5:15pm. Around the table sit six women, all in their upper 40's to mid 50's. Among them, me. The conversations go like the wind, aka "with the flow." Sometimes the laughter can be heard in other parts of the restaurant, and yet sometimes things get awfully quiet and "heavy" as they share some of the hard times they've lived through.
These are women who work hard at making a living; some still have young children at home. They all dreamed of a perfect life (if there is such a thing) where their children and grandchildren would come over to visit while they sat with their spouses on the porch, so they placed themselves in the helper role in their relationships, only to find themselves alone, some still not understanding why their men would choose to leave while they had it all made for them at home with wives who adored them and would do anything and everything to help them be successful and happy. Yes, all these six women have been abandoned by the men who vowed to love and protect them, and instead of now being able to enjoy the cozy, comfortable homes they had always dreamed of, they live paycheck to paycheck and most of their homes are modest apartments they struggle to afford.
The road toward completely leaving one's past in the past is arduous, tortuous and difficult. If you think about it this way, adding up all the years the six of us had been married, one would get 100+ years!! Some of us did not know what being single was, because we had married so young.
We all shared tid-bits of our paths: the happy, blissful years; the child-rearing years; the crazy school years (mostly the guys) and also the disgustingly bitter taste of knowing some of the men had a hard time staying faithful.
The sad part is, when you love so deeply, you also love blindly. No matter what is said or done to you gets quickly shoved into the closet of forgetfulness because you hope that when you wake up the next day 'everything is going to be different.' And it may be - for a time - until something happens and you, again, get to scrape your heart off the floor and cry yourself to sleep because you feel like you amount to a big pile of cow dung. And then, even in your worst pain, you still beg and plead for them not to leave you and you accept every blame that is imparted upon you, as if you drove them into hurting you. Some may think this is pathetic. But as pathetic as it may sound, it is real. And it is painful.
Tonight I got to hear some of the stories and could only nod my head in sympathy and solidarity because some of their stories somewhat resembled my own. We have found one another and it is comforting to know that we are not alone in this road, because we can offer one another encouragement. And it is comforting to know that no matter what was done that scarred our lives so deeply, we have the One who can help us through it: Jesus Christ. And we have faith to draw from to stay the course.
Each day that I wake up, I thank my God who sustains me. I never would have dreamed that one day I would be living so far from all my family, on my own in a place I never thought I would live in some day. Yet, as I look at my life, in spite of all the tears I cried and the loneliness I felt and the abandonment that pierced my being, I am alive and I am well. I am thriving. And I am not alone because God is with me.
