Jilted to Jesus

By Linda Hudson

Will a Kentucky Girl continue down the path of living in poverty in the hills of Appalachia?  How does she find healing for life's tragedies and setbacks?  Does she survive all the rejection and sorrow life throws at her? Is Jesus the answer?  This Kentucky Girl exposes in a complete, raw and honest transparency all the dark horrific events she has had to walk through that shut her down emotionally and left her heart broken and closed off from healing.

This book is designed to help women at any life stage who "settle" for less than they deserve, who are hurt through rejection in all forms and devastating trauma, move past the pain, to remove the shame and condemnation and bust through the walls of hurt and fear.  Chaos may often lead us to a place of transformation.  Take a journey on the path to discover and learn that God is real and wants you to have an abundant life of peace, love and joy.  Learn how you how to go from "rejection" to "redemption"…from  Jilted to JESUS!  Get lit from within!

Discover the 8-Tools to conquering the pain of rejection, parental abandonment, domestic violence, infidelity, drug abuse, alcohol addiction and other life trauma's. 

Learn how to:

• Surrender the Pain that leads to Healing
• Overcome Fears From Your Past
• Enter Into a Place of Sanctuary and Peace
• Live a Transformed Life

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Hudson
• Release date: Jun 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781734456523

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

As I sit here on my back wooded Louisiana patio, and the crisp fall air surrounds me, I am holding my new grandbaby boy, who is perfect.  I can’t help but wonder, what will his future hold?  In pondering his future, tears stream down my face as I reflect on my past.  I remember the doctor placing my beautiful son in my arms twenty-nine years ago... after such a horrific and long journey to get him there. My past is filled with horrible hurt and trauma.  It makes me so appreciate the blessings I have now of a Godly husband, beautiful children and grandchildren, and amazing friends.

Have you ever taken a trip backward to discover there are many events and decisions by other people who will change you and your life forever?  So many lessons learned and wisdom gained?  Being able to walk in freedom now versus then?

I decided to take this journey, and I invite you to go on it with me.  I will walk through the dark and dramatic moments of my past.  I will leave my heart bare and bleeding on the floor, as I expose my most vulnerable moments to you.  I do this in the hope you may see yourself in one of these moments in my story, and it will encourage you to move forward in your path to healing and victory of living in Christ.

As I document my life for you, I will lay a foundation of the people and places in my life.  These people and places have impacted getting me to where I am today.  These people are not perfect, and neither am I, but they are the characters that play significant roles in my story.  I will change their names to protect their privacy, and this account of events will be painted to the best of my recollection.  This story may not be completely accurate as I base it on my human memory, and I ask for grace if I make a mistake.  There are no bad people in my story; only ones like us all who are faced with our flaws and challenges in trying to navigate through all life throws at us.

I have learned much by becoming a mom myself, and by walking out the lessons Jesus taught.  Jesus taught me to forgive if I want to be forgiven, to let go of the pain of rejection from my mother by practicing forgiveness, and having genuine deep compassion and empathy towards others.  I learned all moms are human; they have scars and pains of their own, and these affect how they live and love, or not love healthily. 

Realizing mom's are human has transported me to a place of personal forgiveness for my mother and others, but after many, many years.  I have learned the un-forgiveness we choose to hang on to can slowly creep in and turn to bitterness, and once it sets in our hearts, it is hard to let go of.  I have also learned by allowing myself to come to a place of forgiving has not released the persons who hurt me, but it has allowed me my release of the hurt in my heart!  It has brought me personal healing. 

I have and am still learning to let go and let GOD!

GOD spoke this statement to me back in 2008, What Would Love Do?  The Lord has shown me He wants me to write and tell my testimony of how love came down into my life in the form of a cross and how GOD revealed himself in some miraculous and supernatural ways to me.

Love died for me and love inspired me to document my walk in love, my walk with JESUS!

Let me set a foundation of how I arrived at this point in my life, wondering about the love of GOD. 

God has brought me from REJECTION to REDEMPTION.  My life has been a long road to find the one whom my soul loves and who loves me unconditionally, JESUS!

I was born in London, Kentucky, to a family who believed in hard work and put this mindset first above all things!  Our family molds us into who we are and become; therefore, they are vital characters in my story.  My dad, William H. Parker was a hard worker, loving, and a giver.  He would give you the shirt off his back.  He was a patriot and a man of faith.  He kept the family Bible by his big lounge chair, and I would see him read it often.  My dad’s father died when my dad was two years old.    My dad’s mother, Rose Parker ended up raising the children on her own.  They grew up in a little holler in Eastern Kentucky back in the woods.  My grandmother was a survivor, and I believe this is where I get my fierce independence.  I can’t imagine the things she went through to take care of 5-kids back in the days of the depression. 

My mom, Joyce A. Parker was born on Ledger Fork Road in Egypt, Kentucky. My mom is part Cherokee, and she  is very artistic and loves to paint, quilt, and sew.  She made leather buckskin jackets and moccasins with exquisite beadwork on them.  My mother grew up with an abusive alcoholic father and in a dysfunctional family.  She was always a little disconnected emotionally.  I understand now some things she struggled within her family were her reason for being the way she was.    She did not know how to give or receive love, as it was not given to her often when she was little. 

I discovered much later in life; my parents met at a little ‘holiness’ church in Annville, Kentucky on Route 421 outside of Berea, Kentucky. 

My dad and my mom always raised a garden in our backyard of fresh vegetables.  Gardening was something they learned to do successfully growing up in Kentucky.  Our family meals were comprised of fresh vegetables from the garden, like green beans and ham hock, fresh tomatoes, fried potatoes, and onions.  They were all served up with cornbread NOT made with sugar.  Making cornbread with sugar was a sin to my mother.   My Dad would go hunting, and my mom would serve up a fried rabbit or squirrel stew.  I could never wrap my head around eating any of it, but she would try to trick us as kids and tell us, It tastes like chicken. 

My dad loved to play the banjo while my mom played the acoustic guitar and harmonica.  My mom and dad would play Bluegrass music in our house, or at family reunions.  They loved each other, and it was evident in the end by how my mom would diligently care for my father.

Travel backward with me... My journey starts here.

PART 1 – JILTED BY MAN

CHAPTER ONE

Rejected by a Mother

A wound is hard to heal...but a mom is human

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he first time I recall experiencing REJECTION was when I was three years old.  I was three years old, and my brother was one when our mother—LEFT US.  She left us with our dad, and she moved to Georgia.  Out of respect for her, I won’t share the details of her life in Georgia.  I know she was young and did what she needed to do.  We, women, seek love, affirmation, and validation from the wrong places, and this is why my mom did what she did.  Whatever the reason, grace now has allowed me to be empathetic to the place my mom was emotionally.  This was the first time in my life I experienced rejection.  During this time, My mother left my brother and me with my hard-working Scots-Irish father for a year. I hold a few vague memories during this time, and this is one of them:

As I peer out the big front living room window of my Aunt’s house, I cry big crocodile tears down my freckled little face.  I watch my mother walk down the long driveway and leave me here in a house, NOT my home.  Where is my mommy going?  Why is she leaving me again?  Did I make her leave?  Is it my fault?  Am I not good enough?  My heart hurts deep within me.  Am I not pretty enough?  Am I not smart enough?  Did I misbehave?  Did I do something wrong?  WHY?  WHY is she leaving me?

Mommy, come back,!!! I scream sobbing gut-wrenching sobs!!  After I stop crying, I stand in the window and stare, stare down the driveway after she is long gone.  My mommy came to see me. It had been several months since she left us with our father here in the hills of Kentucky.  I am ALONE, left holding the little oriental black music box my mommy gave me for Christmas. 

Pic 1-Baby Pic.JPG

I HOPED SHE WAS COMING back to stay for good.  I am heartbroken.  She is leaving again! 

WHY is she REJECTING ME, and my love for her?  My brother and father love her too.  Is she running from the HARD??  I cannot process this in my little three-year-old brain.  This is a soul-crushing pain... I feel like it has left me in the pit of hell, I have a hot scorching pain deep in my little girl heart! Will she come back if ever? 

BUT... THEN... AGAIN... a mom IS human.

I remember the story my dad told me about when my mom left us.  He said she forcefully handed my brother back to him, and said, Here you take him, I don’t want him.

This deep heart wound of rejection from his mother affected my brother forever and would later change my brother profoundly, emotionally, and psychologically. 

We were living in a different time then.  Men worked, and the women stayed home and took care of the kids.  My dad met a woman while still in Kentucky.    We moved in with this woman and her two older children.  I remember staying with her briefly, and my dad would go off to work. I don’t remember her name.   Her two older kids would lock my brother and me in a closet. Because of the emotional pain, I experienced during this time, I remember little other than I was always protective of my baby brother.

Rejection from a parent can permanently wound and scar you for life if left unresolved.  The emotional trauma went deep and left me with deep-seated abandonment, insecurity, and trust issues.  I forgave my mother, as I now understand her family tragedies shaped who she was.

My mom called my dad after she’d been gone a year.  She was threatening to kill herself if he didn’t allow her to come back.  After some deep introspection, my father chose to allow her back in his and our lives.   

I have learned we are all human, including mothers, and we can all Run from the hard.  We are all the sum of all of our life’s experiences, and this makes us who we are, scars and all.  I have learned from my dad to practice the lessons Jesus preached, to walk in love by letting go of the past.  I pray we can all practice forgiveness. Let go and let GOD heal all the hurts in our hearts by believing what HE says about us and who we are.

Is it wise to run from the hard?  Is rejection something we will ever get over?  Where does my daddy go from here after his wife has rejected him and then comes back into his life?  How does this family survive an economic depression in the Eastern Hills of Kentucky?  How do we kids survive and move forward with our lives and deep-seated wounds of rejection that has now been planted?  Only GOD knows...

CHAPTER TWO

Running from the Kentucky Bluegrass to Cincinnati-the Nati

A hillbilly trying to fit into the BIG CITY...

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hen my parents reunited, we started living in a small, poverty stricken town called McKee, Kentucky.  I remember attending head start and riding a small yellow school bus to school and having breakfast of scrambled eggs and buttered toast once I arrived.  I have always loved the memory of the smell of that breakfast, mostly the scent of butter I mean come on; everything’s better with butter.  My brother was two years younger than me, and he was a cute little boy with lots of thick brown curly hair and big brown eyes.

How does a family recover from a mom and dad that had separated from each other, and are trying to put together a family again while living in the poorest of towns in Kentucky? 

Well, you move to another town— the big city, so to speak, to start over.  Maybe having a fresh new start is just the thing to heal the wounds of rejection! 

Sometimes running isn’t running to escape the hard circumstances, but running to a better life and financial opportunity is best, and this is just what my daddy did.

I have learned no matter how many times you run that wherever you go, there you are.  You cannot run from the hard. When you run from the pain or hurt, you end up taking all your baggage with you.  No matter where you end up, your pain is always there and is something you will need to allow Jesus to heal, as He is the only one that can do that. 

Moving to a big city does not negate the fact you have a rural cultural heritage!  Until several years ago, I was always trying to hide my Kentucky hillbilly heritage, even from myself by my denial. Instead, I should have been embracing the positive traits of my family lineage.  Trying to fit in and receive affirmation you are good enough from a man will never be where you should receive your value from.  GOD sings over you, and He has created you to be more than enough.  I have learned to pray and receive what my Father in heaven says to me in His presence and through His word, I am His beloved and He is mine, and I genuinely am royalty.  I am HIS DAUGHTER... I am HIS princess.

My mom and dad were never the same after this separation.  I believe back in those days, women had a hard time supporting themselves, and that is why my mom came back. I also think my dad wanted us all to be together as a family so much he took her back for our sake, but a rejection of that nature is hard to heal from. 

I resented being called a hillbilly.  I would resent my heritage and become embarrassed by it because of the name-calling until God brought me full circle to embrace it.  Most of the girls born in Cincinnati; even at my young age, I found to be a little snooty.  Being a strong-willed but awkward kid, I had to learn to adjust to living in the big city and to accept me for me. 

We ended up moving from Kentucky to Cincinnati when I was in the first grade and moved to a place called Norwood that became home.  Norwood, like many towns in Ohio, would come to house Appalachian transplants looking for work.  My daddy moved there to take a position with General Motors.  Norwood became a little Kentucky, as a mass of hillbillies moved here and took up residence.  We went from Norwood and bought a home in Madison Place, a nice middle-class neighborhood. I still remember the home I grew up in at 6903 Merwin Avenue, a two-story, brick cape-cod. 

It was a lovely suburban community where all the neighbors knew each other, and we would all play outside until dusk, and come in when the streets lights came on. This was a time in history where there was still a sense of community and we had bbq cookouts, the neighbors came, and we hung out together. This was a time when one’s mother never worried and wouldn’t check on the kids for hours at a time.  How does a mom just let you roam wild for hours at a time, not knowing where her children are?? Yikes!  

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