In Retrospect - OH How He BLESSES Me SO

I just had to shout since I was feeling so very blessed this morning and nearly every morning, too.  And don’t think that I have always been in a nice apartment in a partially gated community.  NO WAY! 

I was just sharing with my hubby about one of my first places.  It was on East Kibby Street in Lima, Ohio.  I think I was 20 years old so it would’ve been 1980.  I think we paid $105. per month.  This was 2 rooms plus a bathroom with no yard at all.  It sat about a foot from the sidewalk.  There was a small living room and a bedroom/kitchen combined.  The bathroom was a toilet and sink (no shower or tub).  We sat on the drain board of the sink (one of those old white porcelain ones) and used the sprayer to take a bath.  My mom found me another place to live after my live-in boyfriend (Keith) beat me up and went to jail. 

I remembered waiting to move with my boxes open under the fluorescent light the lined the ceiling to keep the cock roaches from getting into them.  I had nightmares due to the rats scratching in the walls (someone saw one outside their entrance and it was the size of a cat). 

There is more to share about this time in my life.  This part of my life in my memories are nightmares that I truly would not even want to think about if Jesus had not set me free from such bondage as my old memories so that the sting is now gone.  Hallelujah!

This first part I must share due to the psychological/emotional significance that Jesus later showed me.  Keith was drunk and I may have been too or at least high on some other substance to include possibly even inhalants.  He started beating on me and we ended up in the bathroom with me behind the toilet (in this little space that I could never fit in now).  He was kicking me in the head with his steel-toed boots.  When I got free I ran about 2 blocks away, found a phone, and called the police.  The police took him away even though I stupidly did not want him to leave me alone in that place at the time. 

I was asked if there were any witnesses when he went to court.  I asked the upstairs neighbors who had been home at the time and they told me that they did not want to get involved.  This is when I decided that I wasn’t worth it.  I was in the midst of a life of ruin and this just added to it.  Even though I’d grown up in church and was saved in 1973 (yet no one told me where to go from there), I was a total people pleaser.  I was an acceptance addict besides being addicted to any intoxicant I could get my hands on.  I let these neighbors, these sad drunken neighbors, tell me that I was not worth it (in their own words).  And, I did not leave Keith for 2 more years of brutal beatings and absolute nightmares. 

This is just one example of the kind of memories that Jesus healed me from.  To be honest, as a person with a heart, they do still make me shutter but I’d think they would make anyone shutter. 

In these 37 years, Jesus has brought me a long, long way.  I lived another 8 years in similar squalor before I finally fell, giving Jesus my life.

I hope to get another book finished and published that will be called “A Mosaic of Me”.  I intend on always sharing more about the goodness of God and how He delivered me from years upon years of messes.  If you or someone you know can be helped by this, please leave a comment below.  I have started this book 2-3 times and need to get back to it and finish it.  Comments will encourage me to do so.  Please follow my blog, too.  If you’d rather follow by e-mail there is a place for that, also.  Please see my links below.  God bless you and may you find even more peace than I have through Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior! 

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