Why did I not get out?

I was waiting for a miracle. I prayed for help, a way. I suppose in the deepest deepest part of my mind I had this everlasting hope.

choppy waters, rocks aplenty...

But my prayers were not to be answered so easily or too soon. The abuse, the narcissistic behaviour began a long time ago and I suppose another reason for hanging on was the hope that he would mature and change.

But that was not to be even as I carried my first child. I was treated no better or differently. But still I hung on. I am Catholic and as much as I think myself a grade B- quality type of Catholic, deep down my faith mattered , my vows mattered, the sacrament mattered. It would not be right for the kids. So I held on. Was it cowardly?

Imagine having to hold your breathe on your partner's reactions/response to soup that comes out of a familiar can; because that taste too is your responsibility. 90% of the time, nothing is good enough or well done or right ..
I didn't make it worse, I took on the meek role and stayed in the silence which grew longer and longer each time, but I couldn't make it better. Maybe if I kept the peace long enough, he would see?

After the third child, he didn't change for the better, he got more arrogant and his self-esteem did not improve with respect to me, more tyrannical, using the silent treatment permanently on me as his means for punishment and his physical temper emerged more and more frequently.  Sometimes I think he has a brain disease. And still I did not think of getting out. I prayed for wisdom too.

I got the courage to take out the protection order, not for myself but for the kids. When I think back I can't recall what pushed me to take those steps, did I plan did I think it through.... 
Hoping again that he would see (reality) what he had to do (a chance to try to hold this family together) and consequently would shake him and make him realize he needed help and advise for his behavior that was not right; that he would then attempt to salvage us all as a family unit.  But that didn't happen.  I once said that hope can be bad thing,  this is what I meant.

And so I wondered then what was the answer, I got up the courage to take ONE step, was it up to me to take the next and last resort, to break the vows, was that the way ?

But that was not.  In the end, it was he who did it. Why at this time, I can't figure?

But this seems to be that final answer to my problem and repeated prayer.

There are several thoughts that come to mind as I surmise what has passed:
I was meant to have three kids and not stop at one
There is a purpose for their being.
I was meant to take that extra journey of suffering, it made me stronger and to become a different person from the one who started out. My faith is stronger.
I have come to appreciate what normal means in most human natures - my tolerance is that much more for the range of human temperaments as nothing comes remotely close to the evil nature of my ex whom I have had to  survive with all these years.
Perhaps this is where fate is meant to take me.
This is where his guiding spirit led me.  God does not intervene until you give him permission and so he couldn't give me the miracle I asked for.

Sunday Solitude - Free Will & God's Plan.

When I read this passage my thoughts flowed from question to interpretation, .. .. about free will and God's plan, sounds paradoxical but they are intertwined...


Is our destiny planned out? Is anything pre-ordained?
.... I don' t think so. This passage by Jeremiah tells me,  it is not. (Jer 18: 1-10).


God had asked Jeremiah to visit a potter. While there, the vessel that the potter was making came out wrong, and so he began again and shaped it into another vessel. This was a demonstration for Jeremiah , and God said to him,  we are like the clay, and "so you are mine.... Sometimes I announce that I shall uproot, break down... a nation .... but should the nation ... abandon its' wickedness I then change my mind about the disaster....". The reverse is also possible, even if he said that he "would build up a nation", should they displease God,  "I then change my mind about the good which I was intending to confer on it."


This was what struck me - that God changes his mind, because man changes.
While we are part of a master plan, it is a master plan that is always changing. God let's us live with free will to choose which path we will take. Imagine ourselves at the centre of a wheel with many spokes radiating from it.  Each is a different path that we could take by our choices and finish at the end of any one of those (myriads of) paths.   Does God know the outcome?  If God can change his mind, it implies that He does not know our future, neither does he set it. He may not know which path we will take, but I believe he knows what happens down each and every single path (branch or configuration) that is open to us and where each will end, because He knows each of us.

There are teachings and rules to guide us so that we each might choose the right path. But it is our choice to decide how to live.  When we take a wrong path, I believe He attempts to guide and redirect us by means of tragedies and catastrophes, opportunities and by uncontrollable events beyond our own control.

Because we are his (Jer 18:6) 'you are mine', He wants as many of us to be saved. But we have to heed the lessons. His plan for us then, all souls are not created perfect but by living a 'correct' life , we are to become perfect and thus end up in that perfect place at the end of our journey.

Because He knows what goes on in each path and where it ends, and if that path has no branches, it also means that God can take back that life if he sees it will come to no good and there is no hope of change. He can also take a life back when he knows that, that soul is on the right path to light, and that is where it ends, because it is already made perfect.
So for the rest of us still here, there is hope still that we are making our way on that right path and staying on it.

Random thoughts from stories of old England

I have a thing for old English novels, stories, movies revolving around old England especially late 18th and early 19th Century.  There's something fresh and innocent in the way that young ladies and children are characterized, portrayed in the old English countryside and the way conversations are created.  And romance ah, well, they don't make them like they use too. (lol).
I could not appreciate the novels until my late 20s, when the unfolding of the story becomes less compelling than the imagery, beautiful descriptions, the formal and the flowery language.

And sometimes wisdom comes through in the most unexpected moments.
In this book I am currently reading by Isak Dinesan (Karen Blixen) 'The Angelic Avengers' one of the young ladies(Zosine) says this to her friend(Lucan) who claims she has no imagination and therefore would not experience adventure.
"But perhaps that is just the way of the world .. and destiny will lose her interest in those people who are themselves capable of inventing things. She will leave them to have things happen to them within their own imagination. But with you she will take trouble to contrive the most extraordinary events."

It sounds like - take charge of your life or she(Destiny) will do it for you.
Now that is an interesting thought, a scary thought .. what is destiny's definition of 'extraordinary events' I wonder.

Here's another interesting prose about being Loved  .." The beauty of nature, music, poetry and art are all inextricably bound up with the idea of love. The woman who has denied love, she had then dimly guessed, will no longer dare to learn a poem by heart, to listen to a song, to pick the wild flowers of the woods, or the roses of her garden. Now, in pain and ecstasy, she knew for certain that the magic kingdom of beauty, sweetness and poetry in this world is open to the lovers as to its lawful heirs.".....  
If that is true, at least we do come out of it with more.