Never Goin' Back: Healing, Help, and Hope

By Maggie Mylie

With a carefree childhood, Maggie's adolescent to teenage years would have but one flaw: her mother. Her remedy to this problem would be found in one perfect man that she met her first year away at college. However, her "home remedy," coupled with her lack of understanding about her mother and her "perfect man," would lead her through the worst life she could have ever imagined for herself and her children. Her pride and selfish ambition would mask the dysfunction for years, until her grown children would rescue her, but not before she had taught all four children how to wear the same masks that she forced herself to wear.

This is the true-life story of Maggie and the family curses that would negatively impact her and her children's lives. She assumes that she knows best how to live life at every turn and in every scenario, but can she be convinced that her pride is in the way? That there is a better way to do life?

Once freed from the curses, the masks, and the man who holds them both, she continues to selfishly look for ways to satisfy the deepest longings of her heart...until her life intersects with a woman twenty years her senior, but not a day older in vitality and passion for life. Maggie is drawn to this mentor who adopts her as her own and endearingly refers to herself as her Mocha Mama. Maggie is just one of her hundreds of adopted children. Michelle leads her on a journey to find the most kind, loving, and fulfilling arms that would ever embrace her. It's a journey to wholeness, and she's never goin' back!

The honest, open approach Maggie uses depicting her years of mishandling life is both refreshing and riveting. This authentic story of Maggie's demise, rescue, and redirection into an attainable fulfilling life will inspire you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889437833

Book preview

cover.jpg

Never Goin' Back

Healing, Help, and Hope

Maggie Mylie

ISBN 979-8-88943-782-6 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89130-859-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-88943-783-3 (digital)

Copyright © 2024 by Maggie Mylie

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

All biblical citations were taken from the New Living Translation of the Holy Bible.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

To my mother, for her unfailing love, patience, and encouragement; and to my supportive husband and his sister and brother-in-law.

Fact or Fiction: Embracing the Truth

Chapter 1

Bit of Backstory

Chapter 2

The Hate That You Love

Chapter 3

The MRS Degree

Chapter 4

Pain and Prejudice

Chapter 5

The Distraction

Chapter 6

The Tipping Point (Cruel and Unusual Punishment)

Chapter 7

The Grudge

Chapter 8

Present Evil

Chapter 9

Survival 101

Chapter 10

Trial Date: Endless

Chapter 11

The Unwelcomed Walk-In

Chapter 12

The Altercation

Chapter 13

The Great Escape

Chapter 14

Temporary Housing

Chapter 15

Old Enough to Know Better (Sowing Wild Oats)

Chapter 16

Returning to Something New

Chapter 17

Like a Marble or Moldable?

Chapter 18

The 40-Day Challenge

Chapter 19

A Transfer of Power

Chapter 20

Encounters with God

Chapter 21

Directions from God's Positioning System

Chapter 22

The Rewards of Surrender

Chapter 23

Someone Thinks You're Beautiful

Chapter 24

The Heart of a Child

Chapter 25

The Grin Reaper: Ultimate Healing

Epilogue

About the Author

To my mother, for her unfailing love, patience, and encouragement; and to my supportive husband and his sister and brother-in-law.

Fact or Fiction: Embracing the Truth

There comes a time in every woman's life when she just does it: accepts the added menopause weight, gets groceries without covering the wrinkles, you know…waves the white flag to the aging process and embraces the truth. I'm not getting any younger. I represent thousands of women. Menopause (or turning fifty) is what sets us free. It's the driving force behind my confident, carefree attitude. I still care about a great many things, but what people think of me is no longer one of them. I wore a heavy mask for twenty years, and when it came off, I swore I would never wear it again. I have promised myself to never go back to many things—my old self is one of them. I embrace beautiful truth, and with equal tenacity, I embrace ugly truth. Resilience comes from hard times: Tranquility from accepting the things we cannot change but changing the things we can. There will be ugly (but honest) phrases ahead. If you need culture and refinement, don't take this ride. Wait for the limo. None will be gruesome, but some will be brutal with honesty.

I want you to know, up front, that I am not a writer nor the offspring of one. I have tried to begin this book on three separate occasions but could not get past page 6; so there I would stop, close the journal, and not give it another thought. There was no love lost between me and the pages I had written as it was not my goal or passion to write a book. I had dozens of people tell me (after hearing my story), You need to write a book. I would nod at them out of respect and put the thought behind me. Each time, I told myself that there would have to be someone to come along and write it for me because I don't write.

It has been years since I have told anyone about my previous life, so the wordless book stayed on the shelf, waiting for the day when I would meet Lilian. By the way, her name is not really Lilian. I have changed all of the names and places in this book to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent (but forgiven).

I have been helping my ninety-five-year-old neighbor, Lilian, get back on her feet after a fall that could have taken her life. I had one goal: to get her back to taking care of herself in eight weeks. It has been ten weeks, and yesterday was my final day with her. As we sat together, day in and day out, we would converse about each other's lives. She could not see well, just shapes and people moving about the room or yard. She could not hear very well, so I would have to raise my voice to be heard (she so disliked asking me to repeat things). Television would not help pass the time, so we would talk. She proved that she was quite a good listener. She had a lot of practice listening since the library would send her specially designed books on tape that she could listen to on a special tape player for the visually impaired.

She must have thought about the things that I would tell her in her quiet hours at the end of each day because she always had new questions to ask the next day when I arrived. It was a strain on my voice to speak for too long in such forceful tones due to her hearing loss, so I would stop talking when the question had been answered to her satisfaction. She never seemed to run out. She dug deep into the nitty gritty of my previous marriage and exclaimed after a few weeks, You need to write a book. Now, just as I always had done in the past, I stated that it would be a chore for someone else to have to accomplish because I am not a writer.

But she chuckled and said, Neither are half of the authors of the books I get from the library. We both laughed. She wanted me to know that hearing the background of where I have been and what I have been through was quite fascinating to her, and she never tired of hearing about it. Sometimes truth is more fascinating than fiction.

The next day, I went out and purchased a new journal and began writing that evening. Much to my surprise, I couldn't stop and would have kept going, except that I was rounding page 12 and 13 and then realized how late it was. I wondered, as I closed the journal that night, if it would come that easy tomorrow. I have kept a prayer journal for over twenty years, but its only purpose in the past ten years has been to stay focused as I prayed for others and my family and concerns. But in my first marriage, it served as a place for me to share my secrets—things that I could tell no one. Most of the pages that were written during that era—my time in the deepest valley, where I saw nothing but dirt—had to be torn out for fear that my husband would see them. If some of the entries could be read today, they would reflect a tormented mind—a mind that obsessed trying to free myself from the prison I was in. A page might denote arguments and questions that I had—trying to figure out how to change things somehow. On another page, I might have written down a reenactment of what was going on between my husband and I—a recollection to help me lock into my memory what happened so I couldn't be convinced otherwise. It would need to be studied and then destroyed for fear he would read it. Sometimes, he would try to convince me that things were different than I remembered them.

Today, without any fear, hatred, or bitterness, I can write freely and without hesitation. It's certainly not me that is accomplishing this. It is my heavenly Father who is giving me the freedom to do so. This is a true story, and the facts you will read are from my perspective as a mother and a wife as I experienced them. I am raw, real. I am authentic. I'm an open book.

I no longer wear a mask. I've found freedom enough to demolish the facade. Our masks can become our prisons, you know. You will read things that are brutally honest (about me), so I ask you not to be too harsh in your scrutiny of me or too lenient. I had many women who tried to help me—excused me—into going lighter on my self-evaluation. For instance: You didn't really hate your mother.

Well, yes, I did. So I would clarify: Does ‘to hate' mean that you want someone to die? Because if it does, then, yes, I did. Being honest with ourselves is a good place to start. I don't want to ever get to the place where I can't handle the truth. Some people cannot, so they come to believe their own deceptions. They have played the deceit game so long (masks and all) that they start to create for themselves a false reality where they are talented, generous, good, or wise all the time. Things that we have covered up for years can become our virtual truth. I want to see my blind spots and have asked God to reveal them to me, especially in this past year. Maybe I can finally handle it. Luckily, he lovingly gives me bite-size pieces that I can handle, instead of throwing them all at me at once, and I know he's not done yet. He has been a kind, patient, and gentle teacher. I think, to some extent, when it comes to being honest with ourselves, we find out that we shouldn't judge someone if we have never walked in their shoes. We don't really know how we might react until we are in that circumstance.

I ask that you not judge me based on the first half of the book but see it through to at least the middle where I have experienced some enlightenment that changed me into the woman I have become. We are all a WIP: work in progress. I hope that this book helps you to find the freedom to burn any masks that you feel you need to wear. There is hope for those who will open their hearts to truth and to doing something different. There's so much inner peace and joy that can be yours, but you'll need a few necessary tools. You will find them in the pages ahead of you but not before you understand some things.

Chapter 1

Bit of Backstory

Forty-five years I spent trying to fit in with the in crowd. The first ten years of my life were lived as a country girl, and the second ten were spent living the city life. I preferred the city. I swore I'd never marry a farmer: the only kind of man I swore off. But before my nineteenth birthday, I would make a decision that would negatively impact my children for the rest of their lives. Of course it was a negative impact on me as well, but I was an adult; they were innocent children. In my midlife, I was doing all I could to punish God for the decisions I made and everything else (the bigger mess) that came out of it. Regardless of my outright rebellion, God came to my rescue (when I was at my worst), and I will tell you how. I have lived my best life ever since (better than I could have imagined). This best life is not just for wounded souls living destructive lives, and it's not a trade secret or anything like that. It is available to all of us, and I think he would want you to know how you can live life to the fullest, with excitement, and how you can be thrilled about the adventure (of everyday life). You know, living like you're dying. But, first, there are a few things you need to know about me and my upbringing. It helps to explain how I ended up making the dumbest decision of my life—to pick my man for all the wrong reasons.

As a child, growing up barefoot, I learned to explore the world around me, running free, without fear. We owned neither farmland nor livestock, but we lived in an old country farmhouse on a couple of acres, and we had a pony too. I guess you can consider that livestock, but she was just to ride, not to eat. I don't know who fed her every day, but I didn't. These years in the country, I didn't do as many chores unless it was time to harvest our huge garden, but my time for chores would come (in my teenage years). The house I lived in up to age eleven, way out in the country, was drafty and creaky as it was one of the first houses built in our little berg of about a dozen others. When we moved into it, it was already eighty years old. We kids could play in the creek, ride the one bike (that we all shared), explore old abandoned houses or barns. Occasionally, we would receive a treat that could hardly spoil our dinner from a kindhearted widow or farmer's wife who felt it was her duty to keep her cookie jar stocked for the farmer at all times.

Country life was great! We could all run barefoot through the wildflowers that the wind had planted in the ditches, ride bikes down the gravel roads (which all of them were paved with), climb trees, pick apples, and pluck cherries and raspberries right at their sweetest stage—fully ripe! None of the kids in our little berg knew that we were poor. The general store had shut down many years before we moved into town, but the sign on its frontage still beckoned you to come and peer into what might have been. We all had addresses that reflected just how far out of town we were from the local post office: Every envelope bore our name, Rural Route #2, and the city, zip code, and state. Even though country life was somewhat carefree, my being the oldest girl in the family held with its position, added certain responsibilities that my other three siblings did not carry. I helped my mom with a lot of her chores or at least it seemed like that at the time.

My father was the minister of the little country church in this tiny little town, which was the only church for miles in this rural countryside. I was a PK (preacher's kid). The church that my father pastored had about fifty congregants, but the numbers had been dwindling. The first few weeks, many came out of curiosity to see what the new minister looked like or to see whether his four kids were well-behaved or not. Hopefully, it was to see what he might have to share with them in the way of spiritual guidance. They were skeptical, but they couldn't deny he was interesting enough and so was his family. He and Mom made sure that we were well-behaved and respectful at all times. And so the church grew. It was there at the tender age of nine that I decided that I would never marry a farmer. They would pull ornery pranks on my father since that was the only way, I guess, that they knew how to show love or appreciation.

For instance, one day, my father came out of the church building on a bright, beautiful, sunny day to see his car's rear tires jacked up on the front steps of the church. More than one of them had worked to lift the back end of that little Subaru up without turning it on! They thought it was great fun—hilarious. They were a strong breed. That's for sure. I never saw how Dad got that car down off the steps, but I am sure it was a challenge. The older farm couples seemed so matter-of-fact. It seemed to me like they were the nonnegotiable types who only saw one side—their own. Stubborn: Not the kind that I would like to get old with at all. The one-hundred-year-old church building was kept up well enough and had an old belfry, and on special holiday Sunday mornings, if we were the first one up and ready, we could go early before the service began and help Daddy ring the church bell. He would pull the rope down so our little eight-year-old fingers could grasp it tight, and then he would let go, and we would fly straight up as it pulled us up, off the ground. To look down from those heights well above my father's six-foot stature, it seemed like we had been launched all the way up to that belfry ceiling! Up and down it would carry us as the bell's momentum went on and on. Up and down.

My father liked to act out or dramatize Bible stories and make them come alive; opening up the mind's eye, you could imagine being there in the story with him. He was the favored summer camp pastor with the kids. He was passionate about his work, and that passion could be seen and heard in his teaching. Teenagers, the hardest to engage, would find themselves on the edge of their seats as he would teach the words of God as they had never heard them before. The church quickly grew so that in the three years he pastored there, the numbers quadrupled in regular attendees.

I was known as the church girl by junior high. In spite of not fitting in and being called names due to my fiery red hair (especially on the bus), I still liked school very much and hated to miss it. I was a social butterfly as my mother put it, meaning that I liked to talk. And I liked to be with the other girls, even if they didn't include me in their cliques and clubs. My mom made our lunches in elementary, and they basically consisted of an apple or a PB&J sandwich minus the J—no jelly. I hated them. The plain peanut butter caused me problems—getting stuck to the roof of my mouth, making it hard to converse about anything (to anyone who would listen). By junior high, we could afford to buy the school's lunches. I was so grateful to eat what they cooked and venture to think now that I would not have been thankful, if I hadn't gone without it for a bit.

There were mornings in that old two-story house that the school bus would arrive out in front of the house, and the driver would beep his horn, hoping that we would come running out on this signal of his arrival. But some mornings, the driver would have to peer up into the second-story window, looking for a sign—any sign of life. Could he go on? Or did he need to stay and wait a minute while we rushed to get dressed because my mom had slept in by accident? We would run into Mom's bedroom to see what she wanted us to do. Dad had left earlier to go to his office, so it was her job to get me and my siblings in second, fourth, and fifth grade off to school in the mornings. We would try to gently, quietly awaken her with a whisper, Mom, the bus is here.

She would moan and roll over and stick her arm out of the covers with a half-hearted wave (as if to show us how to do it) and mumble, Tell him to go on. The driver was waiting patiently for the wave to Go on without us or Wait a minute (or three). We would rush out the door and up the bus steps and look for the nearest seat. It seemed to me as if he rolled