I have been through hell, but as I said I had to realize that I am not the only one that has had painful experiences in my life. I have been raped three times, two times by strangers and once by my ex-husband. I have been abducted, held hostage and raped. I had two brothers that are no longer a part of our family because they have passed on. The irony of it all is that the two brothers that are deceased, had a fight with one another and one brother died as a result of that fight and the brother that lived was brutally murdered years later. I have two brothers that are suffering from mental illness; one suffers from schizophrenia and the other from bi-polar. All of my siblings have been incarcerated at some point in their life and I am the only one thank God that has not. Thank you Jesus! My two brothers that are suffering with mental illness both in my viewpoint suffered from horrible traumas that I believed initially caused their illnesses; one was working a summer job and slipped and an industrial lawn mower cut off his toes. He walked miles after the incident seeking help. The doctors said he was in a very deep state of shock that I believe to this day totally traumatized him. My other brother was working for a roofing company and as he was climbing a ladder to the roof his coworker spilled hot tar down his back.

Then to top everything off, my dad confessed to me that he had sold his soul to Satan in some sort of ritual that required that he included the souls of his children, he proclaimed it was some sort of sacrificial ceremony that he partook in, yes, and I am talking about the Baptist Preacher's son. He said we were all cursed and he apologized with tears streaming down his face as he laid his head in my lap. But, I guess the limb did not fall too far from the tree, you see, the Baptist Preacher's wife my grandmother, my dad's mother, proclaimed she was a bono fide witch. As a child I remember visiting with my grandparents, my grandfather would be in the kitchen window of his project apartment preaching to the people outside of the window and once he would go to bed, not much later my grandmother would come into the living room with this dark black hideous dress and her long red pointed fingernails and dig them into our skin as she would chant some crazy sounding words over us. The next day she was a mild mannered seamstress, sewing away for all of her various clients that would stop by while grandfather was away at work. I dreaded the evenings, but loved the afternoons when I could sit and talk with my grandfather about God or his day at work. As an adult I look back on these experiences and think what a duo! When my grandmother passed many years later and I was the next of kin to handle her affairs, I searched that apartment thoroughly for that dress and I never found it. But in my book I do address spiritual experiences that related to my grandmother after her death.

For the women that are reading this book that may be currently or have in the past experienced physical abuse from their significant other; trust me when I tell you I can relate. But, please hear me, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO STAY IN THOSE RELATIONSHIPS. You can do it; you can leave and have a life without them! I have been beaten with an iron, had speakers thrown on my head and drug down a major street in broad daylight in the middle of the summer with people everywhere as I screamed for help and not one person offered a assistance nor called the police. And I survived, and left that nut! I have been choked until I lay in an apartment hallway unconscious and as I was coming to my senses an individual was stepping right over me not offering one hand of assistance. People in this world have become so cold and callous, they have no love for self let alone any love for their fellow man, child, woman or animal. The reason why I used the term "love" because in the Word of God in the Book of 1 John 4:8; it states that "God is Love". Therefore, if one does not know God they do not know true Love. First, they do not know how to love self let alone love anyone else. In order for me to know how to truly love another person I have to first have love and respect for myself. People that abuse other people generally do not nor should I say, have not experienced true love. Those same individuals would not choke themselves unconscious, they would not punch themselves in the face or in the ribs, and they would not deliberately break their own arm. So, for those of you out there, please do not believe when an individual tells you that they love you and then beat you, or verbally abuse you! I had an individual that I recently had a conversation with, she actually said the following: "I know my husband loves me, even though he STABBED ME THREE TIMES, he was under so much stress, but I know it is true love that he feels for me." I am not making fun of this individual, I only used this as an example to share how some people view true love.

I have even been married to a Christian man that I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. I truly believed the vows we took "until death do us part" I really believed I was going to grow old with this man. But he had another plan and another life he wanted to live with another woman; after 16 years of being with him he decided to have an affair with a younger woman that he fathered a child with in an adulterous act and later divorced me and married her and they both now live in my home town. I tore myself apart, I did everything right, I was the virtuous woman mentioned in Proverbs 31. But that was still not good enough to keep my marriage together.

I have suffered from various ailments; I have had 10 major and minor operations. I have lost countless jobs that I dedicated myself too and worked so very hard to do the best job that I could possibly do to only be laid off.

But through all of the negative experiences that I have endured in this walk of life, I hold fast to Jesus. Because without him I could not have endured the trials, tribulations, heartbreaks, deaths, illnesses and still be in my right mind.

You see, I learned a long time ago that being saved means being a soldier in war. You know a lot of people focus on 2Timothy 2:15: "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." But my suggestion is to ensure you fully understand the following verses from the same chapter of 2Timothy:

2 Timothy 1-4 "Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier."

I place emphasis on being a good soldier once I realized I was in a war, I had to first learn what the weapons of this war entailed. Next, when I over stood the fact that this war was fought unlike the wars we have seen on this earth of present and past times, that it is a spiritual war, I decided to embark upon my spiritual journey of enlightenment.

(to be continued next week) . . .