When Love Is Blind: From Hurt to Healing

By Ms. Mary Louise

My book describes how you can be born into a family yet not accepted or understood. It describes how one can spend a lifetime seeking approval from family, never to achieve that goal. It describes how choices made can affect your entire life but never to wallow in self-pity and to always remember that we have a resource to fall back on. There is someone who will always be there to help with directions and guidance if we allow him to be a part of our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984541925

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Ms. Mary Louise.

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-9845-4194-9

                             Softcover                         978-1-9845-4193-2

                             eBook                              978-1-9845-4192-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/23/2018

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Contents

Introduction

Preface

Chapter 1     Humble Beginnings

Chapter 2     Family Tragedies

Chapter 3     First Trips

Chapter 4     Parents’ Trip / Family Move To California

Chapter 5     Growing Up In Southern California

Chapter 6     Life-Changing Events

Chapter 7     Life Will Never Be The Same

Chapter 8     Married Life

Chapter 9     Restaurant Life

Chapter 10   Moving On

Chapter 11   Starting Over

Chapter 12   Extending A Helping Hand

Chapter 13   A New Love

Chapter 14   Move To North Texas

Chapter 15   Healing

Introduction

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What is love and acceptance? This is a question many have asked. The purpose of this book is to answer this question and to share my life’s journey to let you know you are not alone in your feelings of loneliness or abandonment and that you don’t have to look for love in all the wrong places and to let you know you have choices. Also it is to share my definitions of love and to share what it means to know true love, which is the love of God! It is also to share what it feels like to be born into a family but has never really felt a part of it—never fully accepted, appreciated, or felt like you belonged. I spent my whole life searching for love and acceptance from my family, particularly my older sister Jessie.

When love is hidden and you can’t see the faults in the people you love, I call that blind love. When you give love and don’t get it in return, I call that hurting love. You must know the many definitions of love to be able to identify it when it comes your way. I never really knew the true meaning of love until very late in my life—this I must share with you!

Here’s a question: What is love? You must ask yourself this question and define which category of love you feel for the people in your life.

Agape is unconditional love. It is love by choice even if you are not pleased. A good example is God loves us with our faults. Unconditional love does not mean only caring for the other person. It means balancing your own happiness with theirs in a way that makes both of your lives better.

Philia is charity or brotherly love, guided by our likes or our healthy or unhealthy needs and desires. This is why Philadelphia is called the City of Brotherly Love.

Storge is the word for family love and the physical show of affection, the need for physical touch. Sometimes it’s the love between exceptional friends.

Eros is the physical, sexual desire—intercourse. It is the root word of erotic and eroticism.

Blind love is when you can’t see the faults in the people you love.

Passion underlies physical desire, sexual behavior, and arousal. This is the physical side of love.

Intimacy is the emotional aspect: closeness, connectedness, and warmth of friendship.

Commitment is the conscious decision to stick together for the long haul—you must be willing to take that step.

Love hurts when having a good heart is like a curse—you tend to give too much, and you end up hurting the most. Someone may tell you, "I am forgiving you so I can let go of the hurt and move on."

People are capable of falling in and out of love, so if your true love turns out to be abusive or makes you cry more than you smile, end it and find a healthy person to love.

You must be totally committed. Pray and seek God and His will for your life, your marriage, or your relationship. Let your behavior reflect your commitment. Say it with actions, and say it with words! You must communicate, you must have trust, you must be honest, you must compromise, and you must be supportive.

I believe my novel will cover all these definitions for love! Search for them!

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Preface

Our mother passed away when I was fifteen years old. I was the only one left at home to try to figure out what came next for me. My father was a good Christian man who also loved the Lord, and after my mother died, it didn’t take him long to remarry, because he believed in what the apostle Paul said, It is better to marry than to burn—you know, have a companion. So ten months after we lost our mother, he was remarried. Well, this certainly put me in a very precarious situation. Not one of my siblings contacted me to provide any emotional support, advice, or suggestion—actually not anything, except my oldest sister, which I believe she did strictly out of obligation. I know this because she would always tell me, Call some of the others to see if they can help you. I always felt like I was in a market shopping for someone to help and an imposition for her. She would provide for me only after no one else did. I loved her like a mother, and actually, she could have been my mother because she was twenty years older than me. Actually, sometimes in my quiet moments, I wondered if she had been, and maybe it was covered up. Well, that thought was finally laid to rest when I moved back to Texas and developed a new relationship with my next oldest sister, Roberta. She told me she was in the room when I was born. So yes, I am the fifteenth child of our parents.

All my siblings were married. Most had their own homes, and each had made their own place in the world. So it wasn’t like they couldn’t help, but obviously, I wasn’t a priority. I felt totally abandoned and left all alone. I have spent most of my whole life seeking acceptance from my family. I always felt like I was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, never seeming to really fit in. All I have ever wanted was to be accepted and appreciated for who I am. God has granted me the know-how to do many things—seems like the ideas would just drop into my head. I have gone out of my way for most of my siblings to try to help them understand and know me and to accomplish the closeness I had in my heart for them and to know the favor I have with God. I have given myself totally and unselfishly for whatever their projects or goals were. Being the youngest in this family, it seemed to be expected of me, because I had youth on my side, to labor far and beyond the call of duty. As always, I never turned them down. I would work untiringly until the projects were finished without ever expecting anything in return. I always wanted to share God’s blessings with them, whether it was babysitting, advice, suggestions, or financial help. I wanted them to benefit from my connection and experience His awesome blessings.

I have a very unique relationship with God. If it had not been for Him guiding my paths and looking out for me, truly, I don’t know where I would have wound up. He comes to me in the form of a whisper into my spirit with suggestions and advice for me and my family. When taken, it’s always beneficial for whoever heeds it. I must say at this point that my two sons always believed in me and had confidence in my judgment and my connection with God, and each of them heeded most of the advice and suggestions and have done exceptionally well and have accomplished their own personal goals in life.

I have struggled over the years on how to go about sharing my life with you, but I have come to the conclusion that sharing may help someone else overcome the hurt, emptiness, and loneliness I have felt for so many years. Love is blind when you don’t see the faults in the people you love (usually until it’s too late). Love hurts when you continually hurt the people you love, even though you may not intend to. We all have this ideal that everything is perfect in love, but it’s not. Sometimes we do or not do things that just don’t reach one another’s expectations. This has been my life’s journey from the very beginning, blind and hurting love for and from my family.

Yes, I’ve been through the storm and the rain, but with God’s help, I made it. Today, I no longer have any emptiness, anger, or loneliness. God filled my heart with love and forgiveness. When I gave my heart completely to Christ, searched His Word, and learned what my specific purpose was, my whole world changed, and now I am no longer the same. When we accept Christ as our personal Savior and experience a personal encounter with Him, it transforms our lives forever!

This book is dedicated to my family and remaining siblings, who never really understood me; to my husband, who never really knew me; and to my two sons, who have completed me!

Chapter 1

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

My story begins here!

In a rural town in East Texas, April 1924, when my mother was only fifteen years old, she and my father, who was twenty-three, eloped to Oklahoma and got married. This action brought about a huge dissention between the two families because my mother was, for all intents and purposes, a child. Her father was angry and very bitter with my dad for taking his second youngest daughter, but they were very