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 Member » vlooi » Me and My Family
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I''''ll get the hang of this soon, I think - I keep forgetting to press the SAVE button!! This will be my third attempt at putting in something about my family. This will probably turn out to be as much my story as anything else, so watch this space... I am 52 and my family consists of my husband of nearly 25 years, our three children - 23, 21 and 16 (going on 60). I suppose I can hardly call the older two "children" , but then, they are boys.... We are just a regular normal family - whatever normal is supposed to be. I married my husband in South Africa, (I am South African) where we met and returned to the UK soon after as his father was terminally ill at the time with lung cancer. We have, as all families, had a varied journey so far. Some very good times and some definitely not so good times, but with the grace of God, we have managed to weather every storm that has come our way and I believe we are stronger for it. Perhaps a little wiser too, but for some things, this has come too late. I''''ll tell you a little about myself, because I do believe that there will be some people that I could perhaps help or console because of what I have gone through. Keeping it brief, I was brought up in a strict farming community in South Africa. My parents got divorced when I was three. I have very little recollection of our times together except for times when my dad threw a plate of food as well as a cup of coffee at my mother. I can still clearly see the coffee lines running down the wall. My mother remarried very soon to a man she had only met 7 days prior to the wedding! Talk about fast!! This wasn''''t a good thing. She ended up becoming an alcoholic and she assisted him in his attemps at sexual molestation. Firstly of my sister who was 8 years older then me when she was no longer around. She managed to escape by deliberately getting herself pregnant at the age of 15 (in South Africa in 1963, this was a VERY BIG deal). I managed to escape my telling my sister, who then arranged for me to be taken from my mother''''s custody to that of my father - a man that I had only seen once in the 7 years since their divorce. I was heartbroken to be removed from my mother inspite of what was happening, you see, I still loved her. My father was at that time married to his 3rd wife who already had her own family and had very little interest in raising another child. My dad did not know me and more often than not made it quite clear that he really didn''''t want me either. The threat during a quarrel was usually that he was going to send me to an orphanage as my mother clearly was incapable of looking after me and he didn''''t want me. I was 10 when this move took place. In the next few years I rarely had a tidier wardrobe than at that time. Every time we had an argument, he would make me pack my bags. Furiously I would rush to pack everything, only to have to unpack again a few hours later, when his temper cooled down again. I remember a period of about 2 months that he ignored me completely because I had been "cheeky". If he could have walked through me, he would have. His 3rd wife died and he later remarried a lady who was at that time my English teacher at school. I found it quite difficult, but eventually grew to love her and her 2 daughters. She has come to mean more to me than my own mother ever has, and it truly saddens me to say that she has now been diagnosed as having Alzheimers. With her on my side, life improved and I finally left school and went to university and into nursing. Nothing abnormal happened over the next few years. I made contact with my mother again and tried to have a normal relationship with her, but this proved to be very difficult. She had by now divorced her alcoholic husband having had 3 children by him and married a man 18 years her junior. She struggled with her alcoholism for the rest of her life. Even though she became a Christian, this was not enough, I believe, for her to forgive herself for what she had done to her two daughters and there was probably blessed relief in her forgetting through the use of drink. My sister and I were also a stark and living reminder of what she had allowed and because of this, we were not always welcome. Even when she was dying and I flew to South Africa to see her one last time, she asked me who had forced me to go and see her. When she died, I was very angry with her - not for dying, but for depriving me of the mother she could have been, as well as depriving my children of a grandmother who loved them. When I was 28 I met and married this lovely Yorkshireman - the best thing I ever did. He is good and kind and loving and accepts me completely, wharts and all, complete with all the baggage that I bring. God is good. It could all have gone so terribly wrong, because being fast, clearly runs in my genes - he proposed after we had only had 6 dates over a period of 7 weeks, and we were married 6 weeks later! It was hard to leave my country, family and friends behind, but I was looking forward to a new life. Life went on and we had the 2 boys. Feeling restless we planned on moving to Australia, as we both would prefer the climate and way of life. What actually happened was that on a family visit to South Africa, my husband got offered a job there and we ended up moving there in 1989. This was when we became Christians and life took on a whole new dimension. I did not say it became easier because it surely didn''''t. Soon after, we ended up fostering my half sister''''s 4 children (oldest aged 7, youngest 9 months) The boys where then 6 and 4 and I was pregnant at the time with our daughter. All I can say about this time is, is that having 6 children, all under the age of 8 and being pregnant, is definitely not recommended!! The boys found it terribly difficult to have to suddenly share everything 6 ways! Gladly this did not last very long. I couldn''''t have coped!! When our daughter was a 1 year old, I was attacked and raped in our house by a man who was doing some work for us. Again, God is good, because He intervened in ways that only few people will truly understand. If anybody would like to know more, I will discuss this in more detail. Suffice it to say, this was one of the low points in our life together, but we came out of it stronger. One of God''''s interventions was the fact that my husband was offered his old job back in the UK (unsolicited!) and we accepted and returned to the UK in February 1992. We stuggled financially because the job only lasted 3 weeks before they called the receivers in! We stuggled for a long time and learned about accepting gifts from others and living on practically nothing, but still loving each other and God. We have gone through a lot of turbulance with the children, but I will leave that till another time. |
My children
- N, male
24 years old
- L, male
22 years old
- C, female
17 years old
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