“Everyone Has a Backstory”

The term “backstory”, as defined by Websters dictionary, is a literary term meaning a set of events invented to develop a plot.  However, the secondary definition of this word can be used to describe a person’s history, or life story.

A friend recently suggested I should make my blog a little more personal, so, here’s my backstory…..

Growing up in southern Arkansas, my childhood was, in a word, carefree.  Trauma didn’t find me until my late twenties when my father dropped dead of a heart attack on the golf course.  Seven years later, my younger brother died accidentally when he was thirty. Seven years after that, my mother died of breast cancer, followed by the sudden death of my husband when he was 44.  Just when I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, over the next few years I went through a bankruptcy, suffered a heart attack and was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer.  Throw in a couple of job losses along the way and you have a Job experience.

During this dark period I drifted away from God.  I became angry and couldn’t understand why he was letting all this happen to me.  It felt like punishment. I rationalized since I had wandered away from him spiritually, I probably deserved it.  However, God in all his mercy, still looked upon me with loving kindness when I finally turned back to him and he gently began to heal my broken heart.  Little by little, he helped me put my life back together.  It was different and it didn’t feel like “normal”, but I began to move forward going through the daily routine and allowing new people to come into my life.  Psalms 68:6 says “God sets the lonely in families.”  He has directed wonderful people across my path who have truly become part of my extended family.  I learned that you don’t have to share a gene pool with someone to feel like family.  My co-workers all became like family.  My best friend in New Orleans is truly like a sister.  She is the godmother of my two grandsons and we forget we’re not actually related!  The same is true for my lifelong friend in Oklahoma – we’ve been like sisters for almost 50 years now and the irony of that is it’s always been a long distance friendship.  I’m not sure I’ve even been around her more than perhaps a dozen times, if that many, over the course of almost 50 years.  That in itself is another story altogether.

While God did not choose to deliver me from all my circumstances, he did walk through each one with me.  What I’ve learned is the heart-felt realization he’s true to his word – he’s there every moment, whether I feel his presence or not, whether I understand what’s happening or not, and overall, his plans for me are good.

Hopefully this will give you a peek into my life and a little about who I am.  In writing these posts, my goal is to encourage you in any way possible as we journey together through life.  There have been a lot of adventures and “misadventures” in my life, a good deal of hardship, but also an abundance of love, joy and in these later years much more peace and contentment.

I would be greatly honored if you leave a comment and share a little about you!  Also, please share a link to my blog with your friends – http://www.cathydeskins.wordpress.com

Let’s get out there and have some fun each day and try to find the adventure in our lives!

Hope you’ll stop back by for the next post and bring a friend or two….

Cathy