My marriage resulted in 3 beautiful children. Joey was 10, Sarah 9 and John was 4. After reading The Secret I learned to be grateful for them and all things, every day.

My husband was an abusive alcoholic. There is no nice way to put that. I often thought of leaving but for some reason I didn’t seem to have the courage. I felt like it would get worse before it got better. One hot summer night in 1994 my husband was well into the beginning of a “bad night”. Long story short. He was going to kill me, then himself.

I had to leave. My husband was sitting at the kitchen table drinking and talking out loud about what he was going to do. The kids were sitting on the couch in the living room. They were all in different phases of crying. Joey my oldest was crying so hard he was doing the hiccup thing.

I grabbed the kids shoes, handed each pair to them and told them to follow me out the door. We got to the car and drove away.
I had no idea where I would go or what I was going to do. The Secret was still in my head so I just went through the physical motion of getting away, the rest of the details would have to follow. The younger two had stopped crying but my oldest was still sobbing. I thought we would drive to WalMart and buy some food, coloring books, a change of under clothes and some snacks for the night. I remembered a little Motel next to the WalMart a couple towns over. He wouldn’t think of looking for us there. It was a twenty minute ride.

When I told the kids where we were going Joey said softly “What about Dad?” After everything his father put us through, everything he saw and heard, this sweet little boy was worried about his father. I told him we would stop at the police station and have them check on him. When we got to the police station Joey told me “I can’t go in I don’t have any shoes” I could not understand why he didn’t take them when I gave them to him. This made him cry again. Years later we can only speculate why he left them on the couch when we fled. Maybe he didn’t want his dad to see him walking by with his shoes, sort of like he was abandoning him? We will never know.

After the police agreed to check on my husband, we set off to WalMart. Joey was still crying. As we were driving to the store Joey kept on repeating that he couldn’t go in the store without shoes. He was crying and hiccupping again. I tried to comfort him, but nothing I was saying was working. As I looked at him in the rearview mirror I thought my little boy was going to have a nervous breakdown. It broke my heart to see him like that. All these years later I can remember the feeling like it was yesterday. Every now and then I would come up with a lame idea like, “We can put you in the carriage”.  Joey replied “No I’m too big for the carriage!” Then more crying.
Me “How about you walk next to the carriage?”
Joey “No they will see I am barefoot!” More crying…
Then he came up with “I’ll just stay in the car”
Me “No, Sorry Joey I can’t let you do that either”

Then I remembered The Secret and I started praying for help. I was unsure of what, where or how but I prayed for anything to ease his mind. I remember repeating…”Not for me but for him. Just help me find some way to ease his mind”, over and over and over. I had no clue what to do, my ideas were not working but somehow I believed that something would help us. I can’t express enough how much I believed that.

It seemed like after all he went through, the fact that he didn’t have shoes was going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. He was still crying and sniffling so much that he had a big red line across the bridge of his nose. Well, we got to WalMart and I was at a loss as to what to do. I literally was coasting in the parking lot. It was dark but the lot was lit here and there with pole lights. I pulled over near a pole and got out to unbuckle my 4 year old. Joey got out of the car on the opposite side of where we were. I will never forget Joey’s little face straining to see me over the side of the car as he said “Mommy look!!!!”

I walked around to his side of the car and saw a pair of brown flip flops, child size 10, on the ground by his feet. Joe was smiling. He was at ease. I knew we would be OK. Our journey was far from over that night but I was given the strength to take on all that I needed to bring harmony back into our lives.