
Oh goodness, where to begin! Well before this even can begin… let me just say Our GOD is sooooo good! Regardless what choices we make, regardless where we are at, regardless at every single moment of every single day… We Are Not Alone! In the scary, in the good, in the happy, and in the sorrow- Our God is waiting for us at all these events. He wants all of us. Not just the best of us, he wants YOUR weakest moments, he wants the moments You fear you may never come out of, he wants you to NEVER BE ASHAMED and to know Regardless of YOUR situation YOU Are A Child of God and HE WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU!
This blog is going to get very transparent with a current situation, lesson, battle!
Let’s start at the beginning of October, first and Foremost this past year was HARD, not just a normal life is rough kinda hard… it was GOD DROPPED ME TO MY KNEES HARD SOOOOO MANY TIMES!
In October I was approached by someone I semi-knew and asked how I would feel about a roommate! I was not all about this life, I was pretty unsteady in my house as it was. This person kept asking if they could move in with me, they needed help sobering up! Being the person I was- instantly if you ask for help, I have always been the one to jump to help if I can! I know what it is like to need help to be sober. I know how hard it is to give up the battle with alcohol and drugs. I know what it is like to just need someone SOBER to be my accountability! I never in my entire life, want someone to ever have to feel alone if I can avoid it! Truth be told I also figured going to school wise I was missing work, so the extra $ couldn’t hurt! So mid October when I decided to allow him to move in… I NEVER DREAMED WHAT WAS TO COME!
Sooo over the 6 months before life was hard on the level of changing my habits, changing my life, and surrendering myself completely to GOD! I had changed so many things, I had cut so many habits, and I had completely 360 from where I once was! I was on Fire for Christ! He was my center, he was my everything… < still is just giving you back story>. Right before all this occured in nov-dec, I started a new medicine 💊 that was helping me my migraines but what most of the world didn’t know was… this new medicine made me extremely suicidal, unsteady, anxious. So moving someone in regardless the reason was beneficial for me as well because it would help keep me accountable with my mental health!
In this chapter of my life, I’m not perfect..please don’t think I am! I made many mistakes. I let worldly possessions have meaning, I let my guard down, and I let myself stumble! What started this chapter was simply, Having the opportunity to help get someone sober. It was a humbling opportunity and I was excited to take on the chance. I had some gut feelings about it because I knew before he moved in -he had demons inside him that he battled, I knew he cared for me in a very passionate way, and I knew this was going to be a hard struggle but all I could do was hope that even if I made a slight of a difference in his life… then maybe there was a chance he could change!
Mid October went pretty smoothly! We never really saw each other, I left my house at 430am, and didn’t get home till 5 pm or later… he worked 11-8/9 pm and by the time he got home, I was in bed.
After 3 weeks of him living in the spare bedroom upstairs, my world slowly got turned upside down in one evening! On a Thursday night, I was at my son’s basketball game doing the books. My phone started continuously going off, I had to wait till after the game to figure out what was going on. After the game was over I finally got to call and see what was up. It was the boss of the man who lived in my house. He called and told me that my roommate was extremely and uncontrollably drunk at work and had been violent with him as he was trying to get him to leave the building. He had been yelling, screaming, and scaring customers away… and so by finding this out I knew I was going to be walking into chaos when I got home. < this event was so bad, the business literally ended up being shut down for remodeling so homeboy could sober up and they Yes, they did remodel as well.>
I was sooo angry about that phone call, my anxiety was full force! as I was driving home, I was talking to one of my friends and I was a mess. Mean Violent drunks and I don’t mix. I have experienced too many bad situations that have caused me to live in survival mode since I was just a little girl.
As I got home my front door was left open, it was pitch black inside… I was terrified. It was like walking into a horror movie. The next thing I knew someone touched my back and I instantly turned around and punched 👊 full force. The new meds in my system brought out an inner hulk inside me. I fight for control after the rape of 2019. I fight for comfort in my house since that night 3.5 years prior. I fight safety and security…. and this drunk man touched me and I instantly went into fight/flight mode and the survival mode was full force. As he yelled in anger I held my own. I didn’t tolerate him putting his hands on me, I was strong enough to handle it. I was a mess, I was a full-blown mess but I stood on my own and was so freaking proud of myself for doing just that. When he moved in there were rules… rules set up for everyone’s safety. No drinking, no random visitors, all good healthy boundaries. After this night happened I told him he needed to move, he begged me to stay…it wouldn’t happen again. He wanted to better himself for him and me and the lies came running in…. here’s where I fed into it all … I blamed my meds, I blamed myself… maybe if I wasn’t on these stupid pills this wouldn’t have happened. I never got so angry that I physically hurt someone… maybe if I just understood where he was coming from… it’ll all work out. Maybe I was just holding against him what every other drunk has done. He won me over when he said go ahead and walk away, I’m used to it… at that moment in time, I just felt like nope I’ve got to help! I’ve been that person people just gave up on or walked away from and I wasn’t about to be that person for anyone else. So I gave him another chance!
For the next 6 weeks off and on I could tell he was drinking… if I called him out a fight broke out and so I just pushed myself into work, school, and church so I didn’t have time to be at home to deal with him. I was avoiding my own house and walking on egg shells to keep the peace because it was almost Christmas time and for once I was going to give my children a Christmas I thought they really deserved. At this point I was keeping him around for the rent $ and just avoiding him at all cost other wise. I’d intentionally take ty pm at 430pm so I’d be asleep before he’d get home. The week before Christmas was when life really through curve balls my way….
Christmas has been my favorite holiday for so long! I normally put up my tree the day after Halloween and enjoy the Christmas magic for a solid 2 months… this year was the first year without mom for Christmas… it was affecting me and the kids…. this year was my first year without Tece Chrismas card and text… my heart was hurting and I was in a very fragile place mentally. I was bound to make this Christmas perfect and instead this Christmas Changed Everything For Me! THIS CHRISTMAS BROKE ME … mentally, physically, and spiritually ✨️ 🙏! This Christmas also taught me how much I was like David, and how my roommate was going to quickly turn into my Goliath!
The week before Christmas began solid… my roommate had shared with me prior that no one had ever bought him a Christmas gift, he never really celebrated the holiday… so the beginning of the week I went and purchased him a blue kuerig, and a few other things. I wanted him to see what it was like to be cared for, to be a part of a family, and too feel loved. Maybe it would open his eyes to his sobriety. The Wednesday before Christmas I gave him his gifts and he was thrilled. Life was good. I was okay with being home. He seemed to be better.
Until it wasn’t. Thrus/ Friday we had a big ice 🧊 storm… we were both stuck in the house. Thrusday night we had a disagreement and i just went to bed… That Friday morning his boss closed the Wurst place down… he immediately started drinking at 9am. He continued to drink all day long and pick fight after fight all day long. He got so drunk he spilled liquor all over his room in front of my son. By that evening I knew I needed to get the kids out of the house. I knew it wasn’t going to get better. I just kept begging him to go sleep it off. So i dropped the kids off at dad’s and told them I’d see them at noon on Christmas eve. My oldest knew what was going on and I told him it would all be okay!
What I didn’t know was how okay, it wasn’t going to be! I thought I was strong enough to handle what potentially could come my way and there was no way I was giving up control of my house or leaving knowing all the kid’s Christmas was under the tree! So I selfishly and stupidly stayed! I knew I had knocked this man out once when he got drunk and mean and worse case I’d do it again. So I just stayed in my room and waited for the storm to pass. One of my friends and I were talking on the phone… I always talk on speaker phone when I’m doing things around the house… it is just easier… well what I didn’t know was Mathew <roommate> would hear the voice of another man on the phone and go ballistic! I was literally just talking to a friend and it caused a massive outroar. As soon as I got off the phone Mat went crazy. Started telling and screaming that I constantly date losers and how I needed to realize what was in front of me and date a real man <aiming at him> in this process he was spitting, yelling, moving hands, and completely freaking out. I just kept telling him to get out of my room and leave me alone. He had done enough damage just leave me be. The next thing I knew he took his monster energy drink <that he liked to put fireball in> and chucked it across my front room then went to the other room. I was so mad, I had just cleaned everything up for christmas.. so I grabbed towels and squatted over to try to clean up the mess. He was still yelling and screaming and had come back into the front room
I truly believe it is purely by the Grace of God in that very moment that I am still alive and well. While squared cleaning up, I felt a gust if air by my right side that I moved to look behind me and there was a hammer 🔨 coming directly at me.
I truly can not tell you I would be here today if it weren’t for God, For my personal training where I learned how to handle myself, and had lost the weight I had because 6 months prior I would not have been able to physically fight back. I wouldn’t have been able mentally to tolerate fighting back. I would have just let it happen. But when I saw that hammer I went straight into survival mode. I fought for that hammer, I took the bruises and I didn’t care I just kept fighting to get it away from him. We fought from the front room by my bedroom door to the front door where I tried to shove him outside to be able to lock him out. I wasn’t winning. It was not pretty. It was a mess. My soul was not okay! I finally punched him in stomach and got the hammer away! I proceeded to barcade myself in my room and just kept yelling at him to go sleep it off. He tried to pull stunts all night. I didn’t sleep much, but I did sleep next to the hammer

I then texted one of my friends before I went to sleep to let them know to check in and make sure I was okay if they didn’t hear from me. They asked me to call the police, I said it wasn’t happening. I wasn’t going to let this ruin my kid’s Christmas. So after a couple of hours of sleep, I got up and started trying to get dressed before the kids came home because I knew I had to hide the bruises and get myself together. My tremor was back and I was struggling with my anxiety because although he was sleeping it off at this point I didn’t know what was going to happen next. The kids came home a little earlier than planned and Wesley saw what a mess I was then he saw the bruises on my arm. He instantly questioned and I told him I was fine, and I’d handle it after Christmas was over. I told him we had to keep it as normal as possible because lil bit was struggling this year too! Mat finally came downstairs and “remembered nothing of what happened” or so he said. When I showed him the bruises he left on me he cried and promised he’d never do it again. He promised he would go to his room that Saturday morning and not come back downstairs until Monday morning so that I could have Christmas with my babies without all the issues.
So I did what I do best… I forgave him and pretended everything was fine. I told him it was okay. I told him just leave us be and we would talk Monday. The rest of Christmas eve went decent. I went to Christmas eve service and it hit my soul but I was too ashamed to tell anyone what happened, I was embarrassed, I was so mad at myself. How could I be so weak? I weight train 5 days a week, I was in the best shape I’d ever been in and I let a man beat on me! I let another alcoholic man violently come at me after promising it would never happen again. So I pretended to be just fine and didn’t clue a single human into what happened other than David.

I’m sure some of you look at this picture of Peanut Brittle and are like… WHAT IS THE WORLD IS THAT ALL ABOUT… This gift saved my life! Had this gift not been given to me, there’s a good chance I would have ended up beaten, or dead in reality!
You see Christmas morning we were sitting at church, during the sermon my hand tremor was going.. I started crying… David was trying to comfort me and after the sermon I went to see Shelby. Oh that girl.. let me just tell you this… that girl knows me like the back of her own hand, she knows when I’m not good and when I’m unsteady! She handed me a gift that was wrapped, I had no intentions of telling her or anyone what happened “just kept saying o myself I’m not going to ruin anyone’s Christmas, I’ll deal with it later”! Then I unwrapped her gift and it was the peanut Brittle.
The meaning behind the peanut brittle- my momma, aunt C,and grandpa McQueen baked Christmas candies every year growing up< hence where I get it from> every year they would try to make peanut Brittle and failed and normally ended in a fight. This year Victoria and I took on the challenge of seeing if we could make it since no one else in the family ever did good at it.. and we accomplished it first try! This was a big thing for us… Shelby gave me this gift to prove to me all the generational curses I was breaking, how I was proving I was better, how I was finally taking control of my life. I opened it and instantly started crying… I told her I didn’t want to be like my mom and I needed to tell her something. She stole me away to an office in the church where I showed her the bruises, she instantly said ” we don’t do this, this is not okay” we cried and hugged and I promised her Monday I would handle it but I needed to make sure my kids had a good Christmas first. She didn’t necessarily like my anwser but she respected it. She checked in frequently.
Monday morning I was planning my escape out of the house. Mat was supposed to work and the pipes were frozen so he ended up staying home. Shelby convinced me I needed to get out of the house! That’s when Shelby, Lori, and Colton made the arrangements for me to stay elsewhere until we could get this all taken care of and it was safe for me to go home. Leaving my house behind was hard, and leaving my children with other people was even harder, knowing how angry he was going to be when this went down really weighed on me. My heart was broken, my soul was crushed, and I was once again terrified to breathe! That Monday night was hard. After Shelby and Curtis got me squared away, one of my girlfriends came to sit with me so I wouldn’t be alone until late at night when I finally could attempt to sleep.

Tuesday rolled around… I wasn’t okay! We were going to the courthouse and filing for an Order of Protection. I’d never done this. I hadn’t been in that courthouse since 2009. My tremor was barely staying calm. Goodness gracious I was blessed with Shelby in my life because I saw that Paperwork and froze. All I could do was cry. She took it and started filling it out, I hated having to do it but knowing what was coming if I didn’t… I couldn’t risk it. Thank God the judge granted the OP without any problems and we just had to wait for the sheriff’s office to remove him from my house. I didn’t press charges because I was scared, and I hate that because unfortunately, he will do it again, as I had found out 6 months prior he had done it to another woman who also had an order of protection against him now.
I can tell you this much, as mad as I was at myself for not pursuing charges… I was so proud of myself because I finally loved myself enough to say “Enough is Enough” I don’t have to live this way, I don’t deserve this, this is not how God wants me to live. I’ve never fought back, I just accept what happened and assumed I deserved it. This time even though I was terrified I was blessed and equipped by God with his mighty family that they wrapped those arms around me and kept me safe until I could stand on my own 2 feet! Standing up for myself was monumental for me, and actually believing I was Worth it … is more progress than I’ve ever seen in myself! I’ve slowed men to dictate my life for over 25 years and for the first time… I was in control!

Was it hard absolutely, even looking at the pictures of my bruises was hard. I slept with the hammer every night for over a month. It took new locks, weapons hidden all over my house and keeping my Christmas tree lit for 47 days after Christmas was over to feel safe again in my own home. 48 days ago I left my house to get away from my Goliath and as of last night, I finally took down my Christmas tree! Anyone who knows me knows that bad boy goes down on Christmas day after the kids are done unwrapping because my OCD says Nope… this year I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to take it down .. he stole my favorite holiday… he stole my joy. And the idea of taking it down broke me. I cried at the thought. Finally yesterday I decided it’s time to take complete control of my life back and to let God be bigger than the boogeyman!

Now I get to continue to rebuild, remind, and let God continue to show his light through Me! If you are living a life of abused behavior, walking on eggshells just praying it will get better… stop and think to yourself… Is this God’s plan for you? I know we all hope it gets better, but the reality is… 9/10 it won’t. I was bounded by my power of second chances and that hammer could have been my last chance! Don’t be afraid to tell your people what’s really going on in your life. Your mess is your message and if you share it maybe someone else living the same way can realize how quickly their lives can change if they don’t ask for help now! God doesn’t bring harm, but he will help you withstand every single piece of it! He surrounded with me guard rails and kept me safe! My own stubbornness could have ended my life. Stop worrying about judgement and let’s just keep each other grounded and safe in God’s Everlasting Love ❤️
