Whassup...uh, I mean...Greetings and Peace to all who grace these pages! ;-)
I'm Deb Santiago and am happier than you can possibly imagine to be writing a few
personal thoughts about my Church home, New Jacob's Chapel Missionary Baptist Church.
To say that I was lost would be an understatement. I've never lost sight of God, understand,
but sometimes in life you can just get beaten down so low that it's hard to see the light.
I suspect many of you can relate to what I'm saying.
I'm a 42 year old Mom of a wonderful 11 year old son, and wife of almost 16 years to an
equally wonderful hubby. I worked in Healthcare my entire career, specializing in Eyecare,
until becoming sidelined on December 23, 1999 by Multiple Sclerosis. What a Christmas
present, huh? That really threw a wrench in the works, let me tell you. With me losing
my job, everything in our lives suddenly turned upside down, inside out, every which way
including wiggling loose. I'll spare you all the long-winded, soap operaesque type details;
you'll thank me one day. Basically, we wound up losing our house and moving from NC
where we'd been living (my family is all based in NC) to Fl and moved in with my inlaws.
The idea was to live with them for 2+ years, recoup our losses, and buy another house.
Ah...what do they say about the "best laid plans"?
That living arrangement lasted appr. 3 months. They meant well (my inlaws) but as large
as their house is, there were just too many people. They wound up helping us get into
the house we currently own, which was a huge blessing. We tried to keep up with the
bills, but because of my medications as well as our son's we started sinking fast. After
almost a year of Christian Debt Consolidation, our Counselor even had to admit that our
only recourse of action was to file Chapter 7. That made me feel even more guilty--if I was
still working we would never have gotten into this mess in the first place. No, it wasn't my
fault that I got sick yet all of our struggles were because of me. Once you have the
"Caretaker's Mentality" it's with you for life. I had tried many different things to help with
our finances but nothing worked. I was having a hard enough time just helping our son
with his homework and keeping the house clean. Cooking dinner? Yeah, right. By that
time of day, my already depleted energy levels had bottomed out. Most days when hubby
got home I was ready to collapse in bed--and usually did. Overwhelming fatigue was my
main disabling symptom of MS, as it is with many MS patients.
More in the next "chapter"...
