Why Thirst

Why Thirst

John 4:13 states "Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

Why Thirst

I grew up in a church congregation that taught of God's vengeance and not of God's love. I spent the majority of my pre-teen, teen and adult years in fear of God. In fear of what would happen when I sinned. And of course I did sin. Instead of asking God for forgiveness for what I deemed unforgivable sins, I figured in my own mind, that since I was going to Hell, I might as well continue to sin. Today, I will share with you my life choices, my life circumstances and the plan that God had all along for my life to serve him.

I Thirsted

The summer before I went to fifth grade, my family moved. I was taken out of my comfort zone with my friends I had since before kindergarten and moved to an unknown. My Mom and Dad wanted me to be in a better school and since my mother worked for the Board of Education, she knew the school system she wanted me to be in. The neighborhood we had just moved to had just begun to be segregated. That year I was called the "N" word for the first time and really the only time I could think of. I did find a friend before school started. This friend and my choice to remain her friend would begin to mold my life early on.

The funny thing is the harder I try, I cannot seem to remember my "friends" name. She moved within the first year of my being there and besides I have a horrible memory. We played with each other over the summer and went to school in the fall. Within the first week one of the "popular" girls told me that if I continued to be friends with this girl, I could not be in the crowd because they did not like this girl. I selected friendship over popularity and this affected my self esteem for the rest of my school years. The popular people begin avoiding me and out and out calling me names. They would taunt me telling me how ugly I was, how my face was filled with pimples, how I was smelly, how I looked like a giraffe, and so on. My self esteem took a nose dive. I began to let them dictate how I felt about myself. I am an only child; I was shunned at school and only had one friend through elementary school. That's about the time I began to yearn for a family, for someone to love me for me and for children to love me because I had never learned to love myself. I wanted for my children what I never had, to be beautiful, to be popular and to be smart. I held on to this fantasy world throughout high school. Since I was so unpopular, I dated older men. They were the only ones who found me attractive. When the first relationship failed with an older man (because I was young and a virgin), my self esteem took another nosedive. I was in love with him but he turned away for an older woman (better suited for his age) and I was devastated. I decided that the way to grow up was to stop being a virgin. I did and ended up pregnant at 18 and given a choice to have an abortion (which I do not believe in); move out and take care of my child (which I was not mature enough for) or get married (which I figured was the lesser of the evils. I chose marriage.

John 19:29 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they socked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips.

The drink of the world

I had finally got what I prayed for, a husband and a child. I knew that I was going to do good with this as this is what I had wanted for the majority of my life. I will tell you that this particular husband was not what I wanted particularly. I had made the choice given my circumstances and did not love him as I should have but was content to make the best of it. When I joined my husband in Las Vegas (he was military) things went pretty smoothly for a few weeks. The physical abuse began over a trivial thing involving me not mailing and envelope for him to his mother. It worsened over the time I was there with him (3 months) in all to the point that I had to have the military police escort me to the airlines to come home. When he tried to follow and find me (after having been dishonorable discharged), he was convicted of gang rape and spent 20+ years in prison.

I still thirsted for a family. Husband #2 was another brief stint. We were married and together for approximately 3 months. He was physically abusive and bisexual. Our marriage was annulled and I do not know where he ended up.

I took another sip of the water of the world when I married husband #3. I married him because I was appreciative of what he had done for me. My daughter and I and a good friend of mine was living in a really beaten down house. I was dirt poor and depressed. I was drinking and partying. Husband #3 had just lost his mother when I met him and we helped each other through the pain. Not the right way (Jesus) but all the wrong ways through alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct. When I was evicted from my house, I was homeless for a time. Husband #3 stayed with me through my homelessness and eventually found a home for us. There was a rift with my mother at the time (my fault) and I ended up pregnant again. We had two children and I decided to get married to him to appease my mother and do the right thing. He was an alcoholic and I was an abuser of alcohol and drugs at that time. God never allowed me to be an addict but I was an abuser. Husband #3 began to become abusive, not as physical as the other relationships but still abusive. I began to have affairs and hang out in clubs. On one such occasion (clubbing), I was gang raped. Another blow to my fragile self esteem. My husband and I departed ways and he is now a member of a good Christian congregation and a deacon in his church. He is remarried and happy now. God is really working in his life.

I ended up moving out of town in the late 80's. I started to establish myself and gain some self esteem. I was in my late 20s and began my college career in the early 90s. I had moved to Kentucky with a man I was living with and who for the first year was never abusive to me. When he began to get further and further into drugs, he became abusive. We parted too and I had met a man who would be husband #4.

Husband #4 was not abusive to me. He was abusive to himself. He was a drug addict and turned further and further inside himself to the point that he was not taking care of himself mentally, physically