What’s a hard lesson in life I am grateful I had the opportunity to learn?

I’ve learned that I am a survivor.

Growing up in foster care, abused and unloved, I couldn’t imagine surviving childhood. (I attempted suicide for the first time when I was 9 yrs old) Becoming a Christian at age 16 changed my life. By the time I reached age 17 and joined the Marines, I had a glimmer of hope. I married at 18, moved from Los Angeles to the absolutely foreign landscape of the American rural MidWest at 19 and raised a family in a home that was an hour from the closest mall, was heated with a woodstove and had a party line telephone. It was a struggle but I had real joy for the first time in my life. Then, one day the unthinkable, the unimagineable happened…my firstborn child, my 14 yr old son, the delight of my life, went on a sleepover at his best friends house in June of 1999. I kissed him goodbye at 3:30pm; at 5:30pm I received the phone call that rocked my world. He was dead. He had drowned while visiting his best friends grandparents house. A diver had to be called in to recover his body. I was devastated. I asked the Lord, that first night…”Lord, I never had a mother…couldn’t I have kept the boy?” I was hospitalized for severe depression two yrs later. I struggled for years to find my footing again, I was diagnosed at age 48 with bi-polar, PTSD and anxiety and put on medication that finally stabilized my many chaotic feelings.

I say all this to say, each time I’ve faced a challenge in life and I’ve felt I couldn’t go on…God in his mercy has provided a way. I live now in the light of his grace, enjoying retirement with my wonderful husband of 38+ yrs; my surviving children love and appreciate me and I have four beautiful grandchildren. Life is NOT easy. Life has NO guarantees. But Life is beautiful, rich and precious.

My memories are difficult, but I’ve also learned to let go of the hurt and embrace the here and now, with gratitude.