Paint My World Purple: Color Changes As Healing Progresses

By Mary Reese-Paul

If you have ever suffered in silence from abuse and domestic violence, Paint My World Purple will speak volumes to your spirit. After years of suffering, Mary Reese-Paul gained the courage to pack up her toddler son and leave the man she had married as a young teen. Having the courage and inner strength to walk away from an abusive marr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purposely Created Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781945558436

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PAINT MY WORLD PURPLE

Published by Purposely Created Publishing Group™

Copyright © 2017 Mary Reese-Paul

All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-945558-42-9

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This Book Is Dedicated To

Elizabeth Holland (my godmother), who gained her wings May 9, 2016.

God allowed you to sow a seed into me and watch me grow. Thank you for teaching me the word and always telling me how much God loves me. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t want to pick up the phone and call you. As long as God allows me to, I will continue to do what you loved to do, and that’s to tell people how much God loves them and remind them that I love them too. I know you’re watching over me, Mom. Your harvest is still growing.

*

I want to share a special note to my sister Natalie. On November 2, 2016, God chose to bring you back home to Him. Never in a million years did I imagine that all the times that I picked up the phone to talk to you about writing this book, did I think that you wouldn’t get the opportunity to read everything that your little sister wrote about you. You told me how proud of me you were that I was able to turn all that I’ve endured into a source of strength and use it to help others. All I have now are memories, but I will cherish every one of them. I know that you are going to do just as you have always done, and that’s watch over all of us. I love and miss you so much.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

About the Author

Acknowledgments

I have to give all thanks to my Heavenly Father for never leaving my side. For every tear, every rainy day, and every storm I had to go through, I thought that you had forgotten about me, but I know that you used everything that was trying to turn me against you for my good. You created me, and I stand tall speaking my testimony today, proudly calling you my Daddy.

To two of the most important people in my life outside of God, my life partner and my son, thank you. To my life partner, you have always been the medicine that has kept me stable. You’ve always been the number one thing I needed no matter what, and that was a friend. You always said that everything was going to be okay, and you were right. To my son, you saved me. You allowed for me to see what unconditional love truly is and feels like from the moment I placed you in my arms. I’m proud of you and of the man you are becoming. I’ve always been a true believer that God places everyone in your life for a reason, and C. J. Childress, you are truly heaven sent. You saw something in me that was just a mere image stored in the back of my head, and you helped bring it to life. There aren’t enough words to truly tell you how grateful and thankful I am for you. Continue to shine bright like a diamond, sharing all your gifts with the world, because we need it.

Along my journey, I have met some incredible people, but it was one lady named Anisah Bailey who never let me give up on myself. You spoke life into me, and you continued to tell me how much my son loved me and needed me. Our bond is like no other, and we have a friendship that can never be replaced. Thank you, and know I love you always.

To my oldest sister, my role model, my counselor—I don’t care what time or how many times I call or need you, you’re always there, never passing judgment on me. Thank you for being the best big sister I could ever ask for. To all my family and friends who lent an ear or shoulder during this process, I thank you. It wasn’t easy, but I stopped questioning God a long time ago. When He tells me to do something, I obey, and by doing so, I’m living a world full of peace now.

Introduction

Have you ever felt like you started a race toward living fully, but every time you got within arm’s reach of the finish line, you stumbled and failed? That race was symbolic. It represented all of the things in your life that you thought you had overcome, mastered, and fixed—even the tough stuff that you had buried deep down. And although you stumbled, you still felt you had triumphed.

But then, during your next race, you started questioning everything about yourself, all the way down to your mere existence. You have all these why me? questions:

Why am I not pretty?

Why doesn’t God bless me like He does everyone else?

Why don’t I have any friends?

Why doesn’t my significant other love me?

Why did God take my loved one away from me?

Why has God forgotten me?

You start to question your worth. You wonder if everything that you are encountering and have been through in life is your fault. You start asking yourself if you deserve everything that’s happening to you.

You even start to question God and His purpose for you.

The obstacles that we face day in and day out throughout our lives have a way to sometimes make us feel small, useless, worthless, and invisible. We tend to feel like we are drowning, trying to gasp for air, just wanting someone—anyone— to jump in and rescue us.

That was me, in the middle of the ocean, all alone, drowning, gasping for air, wishing, hoping, and praying that someone would come and rescue me. Each time, as the water current took me under, it was like certain chapters in my life that I struggled with were being washed away. It was as if I was going back through the baptism process all over again, and God was cleansing me.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Mark 16:16 NIV

Chapter 1

Damn, Mary, what are you doing? How are you going to explain this to him?

A million thoughts were running through my head. I had snuck out that night while he was asleep. I had packed my car with our clothes and a little TV. I put as little in the car as needed to safely get away.

He was expecting us all to get up early that morning and get on the road to take his kids back to their mother’s from their summer vacation with us. I had it all planned out in my head—how I was going to make my break out of this hellhole that I had dug for myself.

Before loading my car up, I laid on the couch in the living room, my stomach in knots. I looked up at the ceiling, asking myself, how in the hell did you get here, Mary? Where did I go wrong? When did it really all start? How did something that I had envisioned since I was a little girl turn out to be one of my worst nightmares?

It was time for him to start loading his car up, but I picked our son up and placed him in his car seat in my car and fastened him in.

He was grabbing the kids’ suitcases from inside the house to load them in the trunk of his car and saw me walking to my car to get in. There was dead silence when he came back outside. We just looked at each other as I got in my car and drove off, looking out of the rear view mirror at him.

My little king and I rode for miles and miles. My heart never seemed to stop beating fast. I wondered if I had forgotten anything that I needed. I second-guessed if I really had enough strength to walk away.

Breathe, Mary. Just breathe. Take a deep breath. You can do this, I repeated to myself a few times.

Despite being unsure about how I was going to survive on my own, my foot kept pressing the gas to take me further and further from my nightmare. My little king was sitting in the back seat with nothing but innocence in his eyes. He didn’t have a clue what was going on. He was only three years old.

His mother had just snatched him from his number one friend. His hero. His dad.

I thought about when I was younger, sitting in my parent’s living room watching Ricki Lake. Seeing all the women in abusive relationships with their boyfriends and husbands.

Some of the women weren’t even allowed to speak unless their husband or boyfriend told them that they could talk.

I would yell at the TV and say that couldn’t be me, and that wouldn’t be me. If one thing was for sure, I knew that I wasn’t going to allow any man to put his hands on me. It was all too familiar. Growing up, when my parents found themselves angry at one another, domestic violence was typically the answer to solve it.

Once, my mother came to my apartment when I was nineteen. The sun had hardly peaked out fully yet. Deshawn had just left for work to do his physical training (PT) that morning. It was a misty day outside due to the rain that had come the night prior. I heard a knock on the front door, and when I opened it, my mother was standing there with tears in her eyes. I was half asleep, and I thought that my eyes were deceiving me, but they weren’t.

My mother was standing there, blood dripping from her head.

She came into the apartment, and I took her into my bedroom where I grabbed a face cloth and peroxide to clean her up. As I was cleaning her up, I asked her what had happened. She said that my father had busted a bottle over her head while she was asleep. She said that he must have been drunk and high. She had stayed out late the night before playing Bingo and cards. He had accused her of cheating on him, and before she knew it, they were in the middle of a heated argument.

I didn’t want to hear any more details. It made my heart hurt. All I could do was tell her to lie down. I lay down beside her, holding her tight. I told her everything was going to be all right. I suggested that she stay at our apartment for a while until she decided what she was going to do.

We both ended up falling asleep, and when I woke up, she was gone.

I immediately picked up my phone and called my parents’ house, and sure enough, she answered.

Those were the kind of days that were all too familiar to me and my six brothers and sisters. In the twenty years my parents were together, there had been no bliss.

My father was an alcoholic and a drug addict, who used crack cocaine and smoked marijuana. My mother was a compulsive gambler.

I sat back and watched my father physically beat my mother for years, and it seemed like the more he beat her, the more she loved him. I remember the yelling and cursing, the punched holes in the wall. But what I remember the most is holding my mother, wiping her tears as she lay in my bed.

Another time, I was only thirteen, and my parents were standing in the kitchen screaming at the top of their lungs at one another. My father had been drinking and grabbed the car keys off the counter and stormed out the door. He jumped in the car, and my mom went running after him. She grabbed ahold of the car door, trying to stop him from leaving, and he ran over her with the car as he backed out of the driveway.

My parents had a love-hate relationship that I don’t even think they truly understood at times. My mother tried to leave him plenty of times, but there was something that always brought her right back to him. Did my mother hold on to the good times all those years? Was that why she stayed?

Was I just continuing a cycle from my childhood? Had I turned into the very two people who I said I was never going to be like? If it was a cycle, I found myself wondering, how am I going to break a cycle when I don’t even know where or how it started?

Think, Mary, how did you get here? I asked myself that early morning as I drove off with my son. The