Welcome to Proverbs31andShackled

I grew up in your typical working class family. My parents both worked my dad worked a blue collar road construction job and my mother as a teacher's aide. My brother was diagnosed at the age of 3 with autism, He is non-verbal and semi-independent. Growing up he always needed more care than I which with his diagnosed was understandable. I graduate high school from a small town with only 38 students. I went to college with  big dreams of becoming a Veterinarian but that soon changed when I struggled to pass my animal science class. During this time I was in a dark place due to a guy "friend" taking advantage of me. Back story on that is the guy I was dating in high school had broken up with me and his best friend sought out that opportunity to get what he wanted by manipulating me into thinking he had my best interests at heart. 3 years down the road I met this guy that was dating my best friend at the time and she had told him what happened between me and ol dude ( the creeper) and he gave me an ultimatum of leaving guy alone or loosing my best friend. So as a people pleaser I chose the best friend and that within itself caused its own trauma lol. My best friend's boyfriend was a closet addict and neither of us knew this until him and I started getting close. 8 years later and a lot of trauma later I met my now husband on a dating website Plenty of fish (ya I know). We talked all day every day until one day he ghosted me and then he popped back up on the site. I sent him a message letting him know it was crappy to lead someone and make them believe that he was different when his profile looked like a f-boy. He came clean about why he ghosted me and we sat up a time to finally meet in person. We literally spent all night talking and I had to work the next day. So imagine being up for more than 24 hrs and having to work a 12 hr shift taking care of patients in a hospital. I was a nurse aide so I had to run around all day making sure my patients were tucked in all cozy, fat and sassy. I struggled with my self imagine and worth basically my whole life. When I met Tylor, He changed that and I felt worthy, yes there have been some struggles along the way. When we met he was fresh out of prison (I didn't know this until we met) and slowly falling back into his addiction. Honestly I didn't know the signs or anything about addiction actually. He was suppose to pick me up after my shift and failed to do so. I blew his phone up with no answer from him so I had to call my mom late at night to drive an hour to pick me up. Mean while I'm on the phone with the cops telling them this is unusual and where his phone pinged, sure enough that's where they found him with drugs in his system and a loaded rife he took me from my dad's gun safe. He later told me he had planned to commit suicide that night before the cops showed up. This is the first time I've talked about all of this in a long time. I felt drawn to create this blog to help with my healing and to maybe help someone else who might be in similar shoes. Few people in my life know about my sexual assault but now its public and I think this is the first step on personal inventory. I started attending meetings like celebrate recovery (now called regeneration) and open Narcotics Anonymous while has helped my healing in so many ways. When my husband came home from prison in July of 2023 he started to fall into old habits which led to addictive addiction. That year and a half was pure hell with him lying, stealing, cheating (with a supposed baby on the way). I had decided to walk away and failed for divorce but God threw every single road block you could thing of to the judge not wanting to sign off on it to not being able to file a protective order. I called a dear friend asking her "why would God do this?" "why can't he fix it?" "why me?" she told me "God has a plan for you and all he wants is for you to allow him in completely" Do you understand how hard that is when you are struggling greatly to control what is happening during all the chaos. I started praying, begging God for help, going to church trying to find answers and nothing was coming through. I started to feel at peace with what my husband was doing because I felt God was finally answering my prayers and then one day he told me to check on Tylor. This started a whole tail spin like tail on fire in the sky type tail spin. Tylor started to "stay home" and then when I had had enough I told him I wanted the divorce and was not trying to save "us" anymore. When he'd hit rock bottom because he was pretty much homeless he decided he needed to get clean. Shortly after that he was arrested on a blue warrant because his "girlfriend" filed assault charges on him in which parole then issued the warrant. While he was in county jail he started to stop the moving train of his addiction. He had a job in the kitchen and started reading his Bible again. We had slowly started the marriage restoration. Parole decided to send him to SafeP (parole drug treatment facility) both of us were anxious but Tylor was excited to finally get treatment. When he arrived to the facility is was a completely shit show (only words I can find to describe this place). A non-addict mind would say " he shouldn't touch drugs if he wants to be clean" in reality An addict struggles with drugs like little kids struggle with candy sitting right there in front of them. The facility he was sent to is infested if you will with mind altering substances and yes him being new in the recovery steps he relapsed. I reached out to TDCJ officials about this issue but being non-addicts they didn't (and still don't) see the issue. I've never suffered with addiction so I had the same way of thinking but being with my husband for 8 years I've learned that it;s not that easy. I would  get so furious with him because I assumed he could just say "no" and completely walk away but now that I've began to understand their brains a little more its impossible for them to completely walk away new into their recovery when temptation is right under their nose. When he relapsed he struggled to get back up and knew that if he didn't find a change that I was out the door completely. He is still currently at this facility in the Shoe ( restrictive housing) because that was his only way to be away from the drugs coming into that facility. We went through a month of silence because his phone didn't work. During this time we worked on ourselves individually and our walk with God. I started going to Celebrate Recovery and felt like I was finally in the right place for the support I needed. I have seen the change God has done through myself alone and is continuing to do a long with what he has done through my husband. I never read my Bible to now I quote relatable scriptures and created a war wall (since I live in a camper I don't have a closet). The pull from God has been so much stronger towards the addiction community for me and I pray they can find their way out because there is light on the other side of the rain storm. Mine and my husband's story will be living walking truth of his work and our testimony will one day help someone. This is also my healing journey and restoration when there was no hope for any type of happiness during a very very dark time.