What God has Joined

In the beginning she was my mother-in-law, a feisty women who did not take “no” for an answer. She and her husband raised seven boys.

I watch her flow in and out of sleep.

I did not just lose a husband in the divorce, I lost a family.

When the two become one, the oneness is more than the marriage bed,  and children, it is extended family.

And what God joined together, can it ever really become asunder?

I look at my children, the one-ness still exists.

God in His wisdom and mercy allows divorce but from the beginning it was never to be this way. Marriage is a refection of our one-ness with God. We are the bride.

Yet in this fallen world it does exist, and the pain and sorrow causes us to struggle at times with the love of the Bridegroom.

I would scream, “How could you let this happen? I am your child!”

He held me…and I cried… years ago.

I touch her hand, so soft, and smile-remembering.

I remember her waking me at two a.m. to go shrimping. We threw out the Jim Dandy dog food as bait. “They like this stuff”, she would say.

She taught me to cast the net, and cast the net, and cast the net, until a half-dollar shape was formed on my release.

As the sun rose we pickup the bucket full of shrimp, a few crabs and fish, returning to the house. They would be used in the gumbo the next day. She teaches me to make the gumbo; it takes two days to make gumbo.

Several years ago, God in his mercy and love, has restored the friendship. The father of my children and I talk about our children and grandchildren.

My husband is called their friend…only God could do such a thing…only God.

She was my mother-in-law, she is my friend, and I am so grateful.

Originally posted on Diane W Bailey.

String of Pearls is a book I have written from a deep dark pit, trying to search and find the God in my life, when all I could see were tears and failures.
http://dianewbailey.com/447-2/