Several years ago, our family was struggling bitterly with my husband’s alcohol abuse and his resultant failing health. For 17 years we had been living happily in his childhood home and had had two children, when his mental and physical health began to deteriorate. Our lives were disrupted further when my husband and his brother decided to tear the house down and build a spec home to sell on the same property. When the project began, my father warmly invited all four of us to move in with him in a neighboring town. My husband tried to join us at my dad’s, but by this time my husband’s medical needs were so great and his drinking was so out of control that he was no longer able to live with us. His absence was so sad for our once very happy, fun, and active household. We were fortunate that, at this point, he was able to live with his parents (an hour and a half away) and be near the doctors who were treating him. I was working part time at a local retail store, where I had established a career years before we had children. Although I earned a low income for a family of four, we were grateful for job security. However, we couldn’t afford to purchase or even rent an apartment in the area.
Each day I awoke early and went out for a jog or walk around my dad’s beautiful neighborhood. Often I saw children playing in the yard or families enjoying each other’s company or working together, and my heart ached. My husband and I had been very happy. We had been friends since high school, had children after ten years of a solid marriage, and had loved our 25 years of life together. But after my husband was unable to sell his retail store, he was diagnosed with depression, which seemed to trigger some of his other difficulties. The mesmeric habit of comparing our discouraging outlook with the display of thriving families all around led me to wonder, “What did we sow to reap such havoc?”
Thanks to a constant study of the Bible, I’ve always come around to the conviction that “with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). It became my daily practice to tirelessly reject fears and doubts about our family’s future, and to seriously consider the significance of God as the true Father and Mother of us all. I learned that happiness and peace come by understanding that God, divine Love, provides all that we need; we don’t find true and permanent happiness by “getting” things or even achieving worthy goals. God’s love replaces any fear of life as being mortal and subject to chance, poverty, illness, bad choices, mistakes, and random logistics.
