Where to begin this story is perhaps the toughest part so maybe I should start with my background. An unwanted pregnancy, an accident, between a man looking for a rich girl and a naïve college student. By the time he tried to call off the wedding I was already on the way. Needless to say the marriage didn't last and my mother ended up remarrying. Unfortunately this failed also and I got shuttled between father and grandparents till I was in the process of being sent to a group home.
Because of a fire at the group home, I was put into foster care. How I wish I could say I was taken in by a loving family but that was not the case. Spending the next 13 years of my life there I never once heard the words "I love you". My days were filled with tending the farm animals, cutting wood to provide money, school, and being used to provide income. I was whipped, beaten, and kept isolated from my peers as punishment. And even though the lady of the house professed to be a Christian, her biggest goal was to get me to shed tears.
Never once did they ever stand up for me but in some twisted way I figured it was my fault and if I tried just a little harder they would love me. The most I was able to be was a friend of the family. When I became of age, the money stopped for fostering me and I suddenly ended up on the street to fend for myself. Yet still I kept in touch because this was the closest to family that I had.
After getting done with a tour in the Air Force and in a failing loveless marriage, I used to visit them 1 week each summer. That is where I met Lisa and in spite of the age difference I considered her a friend and knew how special she truly was. She and her mentally handicapped brother were eventually adopted by the family I had lived with after they worked out a way to continue getting state aid.
Watching little Lisa grow up was so special and caused me to yearn for a daughter of my own some day. She would sit on my lap and watch me do things on the computer until late at night. She was so shy and would run from any other men but always seemed comfortable around me. I figured it was because she knew she could trust me and I vowed never to violate that trust.
How I wished she could have a rich life instead of being kept isolated and treated like a servant. At least I had one week a year where I could share something special with her and our friendship grew. I even offered her advice about boys although it gave me a funny feeling inside. How I dreaded the thought that her first experience might be by someone who only wanted to use her. Considering her mother was so uncaring that she put a 12 year old girl in charge of grown migrant field workers in an isolated field all alone, it is a wonder she wasn't raped. No truly loving mother EVER would have allowed this situation to develop. But it continued to happen year after year. I can't give details due to promises I have made but you can pretty well fill in the blanks.
Finally, at the tattered end of my marriage, Lisa came down to visit me. Raised in a home where her mother prided herself in cooking from scratch, nevertheless Lisa knew almost nothing about cooking. Her life was being ordered to clean the house and to take care of her older brother.
She was just shy of 17 when she visited. She was full of faith in God and she had a heart of purest gold. As my loveless marriage was falling apart, I was praying the Lord would send someone into my life who I could give my heart and my trust to. Unbeknown to me, her mother was praying an older Christian gentleman would accept Lisa as she was and love her wholeheartedly. Lisa also had a prayer that I would always remain an important part of her life. She was very jealous of my soon to be ex-wife. Little did we know that God would answer all 3 prayers when she went to wake me up one morning and I drew her on top of me. Our eyes locked together and we KNEW.
There were no doubts whatsoever that God had drawn us together. Two people injured by the same woman drawn together to be healed. How we both wanted to promise each other the world in that moment. But I had to finish getting divorced and she needed to find if that was what she truly wanted for her life. I wouldn't let her make those types of promises until she was a little older.
This part of my story starts to overlap with "A Memory to Cherish" so I will refer you to it for more detail. Suffice it to say that when she got back home, she was so scared of what her mother would do she denied what her heart felt and broke it off. It hurt but I understood and wrote her "May all your Dreams come True" for her birthday present.
After I visited over Christmas, she decided she didn't care what her mother thought, she would be true to her heart and to what she knew was God's will in her life. We e-mailed and instant messaged for 6 months and our relationship grew deeper and stronger as time went on. I made a book of all this which we referred to as our "Book of Dreams" that we would show to our children someday.
I gave up everything for her for love and on faith. I gave up a house, and left friends and a career behind. I proposed to her just shy of her 18th birthday and her mother even gave her permission to help me pack my things to move 700 miles so I would be near her. It took 2 weeks to pack things up, quit my job, and move. Those were 2 glorious happy weeks we spent with each other and her older brother was there to help also. Although he may have been mentally slow, I saw a side of her brother you never could have seen around his mother. He made his own decisions, microwaved his own meals, and except for worrying the neighbors while he was watching the trains go by, handled himself quite well. It is a shame his mother went to court and had his adult rights taken away.
Her mother still dictated most of her choices like which college she would attend and what car they would buy her. She was told she had to come home every weekend and that she had to call once a day. The apron strings were strangling Lisa and she hated it. Her mother failed to prepare her for the world and wouldn't allow her to have any independence. And to make matters worse, she was put into a dorm with other girls that wanted to get her involved in drinking, drugs, and wanton sex.
When she allowed one of them to talk her into accepting a drink I was very concerned she would be gotten drunk and taken advantage of by some guy bragging how he got her cherry. So I got her to promise she would only drink at my house where I could watch over her. I was really hoping she might get sick and hate drinking but I loved her to much to let her have that much. And to top it off, I found out she was a very horny drunk. The hardest thing I have ever done was turn her down while she was drunk. That is not the way for your first time to be. We did make out and she enjoyed it very much but I wouldn't go all the way.
Feel free to read "A Memory to Cherish". This story is more about what came afterwards. How incredible it was to have her snuggled by my side. The love, the joy, the commitment made everything that I suffered in the past worth all the pain. I wanted Lisa to be able to have ALL of her dreams come true. We had our vows to each other but I wanted the actual ring on both of our fingers. Unfortunately this couldn't happen without her mother knowing about it because she was the town official that had to issue it. And she was so afraid of her mother.
