The Rest for My Soul: An Inward Look into a Life Full of Trials and Tribulations

By Antoniette Leigh

My childhood was overshadowed with many difficulties, and I lived in fear of the mental disease that consumed my mother, often wondering what was going to happen next. Would it be worse than yesterday, or could it be beyond my ability to comprehend?

Life certainly handed me a lot of challenges to overcome, and this is my story of these challenges and how I managed to reign over them with the help of the Lord.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490857725

Antoniette Leigh

I write to release memories and to share my hardships with others, so that they too may find the strength, especially within the Lord, to conquer the struggles of life. I want others to know that they are never alone and that in the end, our earthly struggles, no matter how difficult or how unfair they seem, are only preparing us for our final resting place with God. I live happily with my husband and two dogs. I live near enough to my children that I often spend time with them and my grandchildren.

Book preview

Chapter 1

T he excitement of the coming days was over-whelming in our classroom, as we were in the first week of June, anticipating the end of the long school year. We were all bubbling over with dreams of our summer vacations, days of sleeping in and the idea of being able to play all day with our friends, especially looking forward to singing, School’s out. School’s out. The teacher let the monkeys out. I believe it was our class’s most exciting tradition to anticipate these little tricks we played on one another and our teachers. Such a fun time we had on that final day of school as we said our good-byes and rushed from our classrooms to our lockers and then onto the buses.

Once I was on the bus, my excitement was now starting to fade, as I knew what to expect when I arrived home. So for a little while longer I was able to stay in my fantasy world—that is, until the brakes of the school bus came to a screeching halt in front of my house. It was now my time to awake from my make-believe world and to step into my harsh reality. As I walked toward my home, I was full of dread and fear, wondering what was going to happen next. Would it be worse than yesterday, or could it be beyond my ability to comprehend? I pondered to myself.

When I entered our home, there sat my mother wearing her smelly, sweaty nightgown, which was no surprise because it had become a very routine way to find her. She had been lying on the mattress that was on the floor, playing with an Ouija board. She was asking it all kinds of frightening questions. She had complete trust in the board, and she believed that the responses it gave her were completely true. As the time seemed to stand still, the fear building within my heart became an obsession that I could no longer hide from. As my mother continued on, an evil laugh would come out of her mouth. I was extremely afraid of what I had observed my mother doing and how she was acting, so I slowly got up and went into the bedroom closet to hide from it all. The closet was littered with dirty clothes.

There in the midst of all the dirty clothes that were lying on the floor, I found comfort. The clothes were like a shield of protection. I was tossing about amongst the clothes, trying to make myself as comfortable as I could. Then I came upon my mother’s Bible lying in the squalor of all the filthy clothes. I was so thankful to have it there, as it was now a comfort to me after I had witnessed my mom with the Ouija board, something I knew and believed to be evil. When I picked up the Bible, I began turning to pages where I thought I could understand the words before me. I was a pretty good speller, so I had faith that I would be able to make some sense of what I was reading. After all, I’d just completed the second grade at school, and being the only student in my classroom to win the spelling bee, I most certainly was going to attempt to make sense of the pages I read. I already knew the Ten Commandments, so I thought to myself, How much harder could the rest be?

Much to my surprise and disappointment, my journey into the Scriptures was a whole lot harder to understand than I initially imagined it would be. What I had read made the Ten Commandments seem extremely simple. I knew if I could get through my newfound confusion, someday I would be able to make sense of it all. I knew in my heart there was a lot of wisdom in the Bible for me to discover and that I would find the rest for my soul amongst these pages of confusion.

Mom was finally ready to put the Ouija board away and start the day. It was already after two o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was high in the clouds. I was more than ready to be outside to see what the other kids in the neighborhood were doing. I wanted to be free from the realms of the indoors to clear my mind of the seemingly never-ending episodes of mom’s relentless pursuit of complex questions and the despair of her belief that she herself had somehow killed Jesus.

We had eaten our lunch of butter beans and bread, which was a pretty common meal—that is, if we had one at all. I got up, and out the door I went. Ah, I’m free, I thought. All of us kids in the neighborhood met up and played in the woods nearby. We would spend most of the afternoon there, playing and exploring until we wore ourselves out. As dinner time rolled around, all of us kids began to retreat to our homes for supper, and we would remain indoors for the rest of the evening. Most of the kids were excited to be done playing and ready to settle in for the night with their families. Once again my overwhelming feelings of dread returned to my mind, knowing what was likely happening at home. I was looking forward to seeing my brother, Dean, at home. He usually would escape for the day himself in order to hide from the truth that only he and I knew.

Dean and I wouldn’t dare tell anyone what or how Mom was doing,