There we stood in the middle of our life, caught up in the undertow of our past, struggling to make sense of the present. God was giving us hope for the future.
We both came through this life collecting things that we had learned. Some things were taught to us by our parents, other things were from generations long ago from people we had never met before.
We came from two different worlds, together we needed to sort through everything and allow God to show us the way out of the mess we were living in.
Tony was an only child, raised by his mother and step father. Lessons of love and life seemed to go untaught. His family was quiet and rarely spoke even if they were all in the same room. Things were often swept under the rug as a means of moving on. This was their normal.
I was raised by a father who was abusive, he controlled everything about my life. He was a master manipulator and a deceiver at best. We had big family secrets and were taught to be quiet, never to tell of things done in the dark.