I was born into a dysfunctional situation. If you know me at all, that comes as no surprise. But very few people know exactly how bad things were. I don't have many memories of my childhood, and the ones I have are often not very positive.
I don't remember ever having much self-esteem. I was never as good as others. I'm not sure if that's because I knew my family didn't quite function the way other families did, or because I was always the new kid at school, or maybe it was something else I'm not even aware of. But I just never felt as good as others. I never felt worthy. I was bullied a lot - from grades 7-9, especially. But it continued throughout high school.
And then things at home... ugh! Let's just say that there was a fair amount of physical abuse, and we'll leave it at that for now. I got my first job at 16, and I spent as much time working as possible to keep me out of the house. I know some people would love to repeat their high school years, but there is no amount of money you could pay me to go back and re-live those years. I got out as quickly as possible by getting married and moving halfway across the country.
Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire! Things were never good in that marriage, but I knew that people were saying that it was never going to work, and I desperately wanted to prove them wrong! So I stuck it out for five years. That basically destroyed what little sense of self I had left.
After growing up never feeling a father's love (and there were three of them!) and then marrying a man who I now know is incapable of love and only married me because he thought he could mold me into what he wanted me to be, I was pretty disillusioned. I was seeing a (male) therapist during the divorce who summed up my feelings on men in two words: "Men suck!" That was a very accurate statement.
I remember once saying that I wasn't getting married again until I was 30. I wanted to get myself straightened out before I got into another relationship. But after a couple years I found myself dating again and I re-married at 26. I brought two kids with me into the marriage.
After being raised as a Marine brat I did something I never imagined doing: I married a Marine! It's an entirely different thing being a military brat versus being a military spouse. As a kid I didn't like the constant moving. (I went to 14 schools from Kindergarten through 12th grade! In all fairness, only 10 of those can be blamed on the military, though. That brought me most of the way through 7th grade, when my parents divorced.) As an adult, I hated the fact that the military owned my husband. I felt like the mistress who got what the wife (the government) didn't take first. Oh yeah, and I still hated moving. Fortunately we only did it every three years.
Finally after almost 11 years of marriage my husband and I decided that he should take early retirement. After a lot of stressing about trying to find a new job, we realized that the correct path God wanted us to take was for my husband to return to school and get a Master's degree. We moved so he could attend the University of Utah.
In our 12 years of marriage, we've added to our family. We have four additional kids on earth and one angel baby, our son Hyrum, who we lost at 16 weeks gestation.
A family of 8 can get kind of crazy at times. But that's our life, and over time God is molding me. He's helping me heal from my past and learn a new way to be. He's brought so much healing and growth into my life. I know that He will continue to do so.
And that is the point of this blog, to share the things that God has done for me and taught me. I'm still learning and I have a feeling that there's still a lot more for me to learn. I hope to be able to gracefully make the changes I need to make. I also hope that by sharing the things I've learned and am still learning, that it will bless the lives of others.
My word for 2016 is "transformation". Like the huge transformation a caterpillar has to make to become a butterfly, I hope that my transformation results in something just as beautiful. I hope you'll join me on my journey and find the courage to make your own transformative journey if necessary.
<3,
Brooke
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