Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!
I was born and raised in the Catholic Church by my ethnic Polish mother. My father always claimed to be Church of Christ, but he never went to church. As a teenager I attended church {under duress from th leather belt of my father}, and was a member of the Legion of Mary. While serving in the military I drank a lot and partied, but I never lost my faith. I married a Catholic girl in Belgium in a beautiful four-hundred-year-old cathedral.
When I was out of the military, My wife and I attended a Catholic Church here in Texas. I didn't agree with the doctrine and so started to look around. A Pentecostal brother invited me to his church, I went and was scared to death! But I knew that was God in that church. My very Catholic wife did not agree and a spiritual battle ensued.
We compromised and attended a Lutheran Church near our home. I'm glad that we did, because the pastor there, Brother Mann, was the perfect example of a man of God. When he was transfered to Arizona, I started to attend antoher Pentecostal church a co-worker attended.
This brother was a former male stripper and extremly good-looking! So I had him witness to my wife and she started to attend with me to this penecostal church. Yes it was sneeky, but you gotta do what you gotta do! We attended there for fifteen years.
When our youngest daughter went off to college, my wife told me that "her" children were raised and she didn't need me anymore and that I needed to go! After a few years of marriage counceling and several attemting stabbing, I divorced her. This broke my heart!
After about a year later I met a Mormon woman who wanted to marry me. I was not in a good place emotionally and made a bad decision and married her. Our first year together was very good, but then she said that she fell off a chair at work. She had six major surgeries in three years in which I took very good care of her.
When she healed up and got better, she told me that she was not going back to work and that I would have to work more hours at mine. Intimacy in our marriage would now end, and she was now longer going to do any housework or cooking! If I didn't like it I could just go!
I didn't go, I'm a slow learner I'm afraid. A few years later, last July, she put on a wrist support, called the police and told them that I hit her! I was asleep in bed when they arrested me! My sorrow is now very great. I feel like a failure and very foolish! My heart is broken!
My greatest joy now is in Bible study. It is keeping me sane. I just receved my Master's degree in Biblical studies. I am now starting a new Master's program in Biblical languages. My faith and prayer is keeping me going on in life. Now that I am divorcing my second wife of eight years, my church has abanded me. I am a sinner in their eye's. I still attend but just sit by myself on the back row.
I have descovered in all of this is that there are two people who will never abandon you in life, God and your mother! The good thing in all of this is that I am now free of all commitments and am free to be used of God in a bigger way.
I have written two books. "The Basics of Biblical Hermeneutics," and "Love Without Limits." Both can be found on Amazon.com. I have been a Hospice volunteer for ten years now and is a blessing in my life! I teach Bible lessons on YouTube, my channel is called, "Brother Roop teaches the Bible."
I feel like I am alone on a small sailboat sailing away to a large and open ocean. The wind is in the sails and the boat is carring my away to some unknown location. I don't know if I will land somewhere or if a storm will overtake me and wash me away. But I do know is that God is with me and angels are flying high above me. I have hope.
THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR LIFE AND YOUR HEART WITH US BILL! AND YOU ARE RIGHT, WE CAN NOT CONTROL WHAT PEOPLE SAY, DO, OR HOW THEY BEHAVE, WE CAN ONLY CONTROL WHAT WE SAY, DO AND HOW WE BEHAVE. AND YOU ARE RIGHT, WE DO HAVE THE SWEET REASSURANCE THAT JESUS WILL NEVER LEAVE US NOR FORSAKE OR ABANDON US. AND WE HAVE HIS WORD TO STUDY AND MEDITATE ON, WHICH IS BREAD, WATER, AND BREATH TO US ALL!