“It’s not yours to carry”

“It’s Not Yours to Carry”

Now we step into the young adult years—where chaos tried to follow me, but God had already begun writing a better plan.

I was a hot mess of a teenager. By the time I was fourteen, my dad was gone again—choosing gambling over being present. He lost his job and moved in with my grandmother. I was sixteen when she passed, and my dad tried living with us for a while, but he wasn’t working, just gambling away what little he had. Eventually, we sent him back to the empty field we picked him up from. I know that sounds cold, but there were too many unhealed wounds—and my mom wasn’t thrilled he was there either.

Let’s back up a bit. With my dad absent for most of my teen years, I was always seeking attention. I was still the kid who didn’t fit in. I turned to food to cope and stayed “the fat girl.” Most boys didn’t want to date the heavy girl, which only added to my cycle of people-pleasing, manipulating, and surviving.

I ran with the wrong crowd for a while—kids up to no good. I barely escaped that life when I met the man who’d become my husband at 18.

Truth be told, I went to a party with my then-boyfriend, fully planning to leave with another guy. But God had other plans. I met this new guy, we talked all night, walked by the lake, and when he kissed me goodbye—I literally saw fireworks. That was it.

We dated all through senior year and got married the week after I turned 18. My mom and two friends were with us at the courthouse. There was drama with his family—they didn’t want us to marry. They even went to our pastor to try to stop it. So we eloped instead.

A couple months later, I was pregnant. Our daughter was born when I was 19, he was 20, and we were thrown straight into life as a family. We were broke, we fought constantly, and everything was hard—just like it had always been for me. I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, but he said that wasn’t financially possible, so I worked while raising our daughter.

He bounced between jobs, even did long-haul trucking. I am not cut out to be a trucker’s wife. Eventually, he got a steady city job, and I thought, “Finally, things will settle.” But then I got pregnant again.

We weren’t planning on it. We didn’t think we could even get pregnant after eight years. I had a miscarriage a year after our daughter was born—it broke my heart, but he was relieved. That created even more tension between us. Still, we moved into a duplex and kept going.

Within a year and a half, I got pregnant again—this time with a boy. Soon, we had three kids, two under the age of three. My chaos and survival mode didn’t stop. I was still robbing Peter to pay Paul. He didn’t want to talk about finances or get help. His view: he worked, I did everything else.

And I let that happen. Out of fear of being alone, of not being enough, of being abandoned—I enabled it. I enabled him. I enabled our kids. I was doing everything for everyone while losing myself.

Fast forward: my daughter moves out, and it’s just me, my husband, and our two boys. That’s when his anger became more frequent. More aggressive. I’d take the boys to a friend’s house to avoid his outbursts. I’d come home to holes in walls. While he never hit me physically, the emotional and mental toll was deep.

Years later, the boys told me there was physical abuse—things I didn’t know about, or maybe ignored because I was scared. Scared of being a broke, single mom. Ironically I was a broke married mom already.

We stayed in that cycle for 27 years.

But after my mom died in 2016, something shifted. I was done. We were miserable. I didn’t want to live like that anymore. So I filed for divorce. He moved out. And I didn’t try to stop him.

The breaking point came just before he left. One night, in one of his rages, he destroyed a door in our house and verbally berated me for 45 minutes. I remember thinking: Even if I don’t believe I’m worth much… I know I’m worth more than this.

We stayed separated for six months. I was serious about divorcing.

But God.

Between 2012 and 2016, before my mom got sick, I’d already started my healing journey. The Holy Spirit found me. Therapy, group work, deep soul excavation—I was learning who I was beneath the trauma. But I was also numb. I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel. I was either over-medicated or emotionally shut down.

During our separation, I went to a movie one night and cried the entire time it was a comedy by the way everyone else laughed the entire time. Sitting in my car afterward, I called a friend and told her, “I think I’ve been carrying the weight of everything—my marriage, my childhood, my family… all of it.”

And in that moment, I heard God whisper: “It’s not yours to carry.”

That night changed everything.

I realized God didn’t design me for that kind of pain—not for the shame, not for the striving, not for the survival. He had something better.

I wasn’t interested in dating. I wasn’t trying to find a new relationship. I told God, If I’m going to be single, I’ll be married to You. I went all in. Paid off my debts. Took care of my youngest son. Got my house in order. And let God begin writing the next chapter.

This is the unfolding of my Heaven’s Blueprint.

To be continued…