Hello to anyone who would be so gracious and giving. I am a struggling single mother of two boys. I am sober; I don’t drink or do drugs, and I haven’t even dated. I have put my kids first. I have raised them up in the church and according to Biblical principles. People who have no idea and judge me have asked, why did I marry the jerk in the first place? I was married to my husband for 23 years. When we married at 17 and 21 years of age, he was a good decent sober guy with a good job. I worked hard too for the first 11 years of our marriage as a home daycare provider and even supported him when he got laid-off from his job. No one could have possibly have predicted that he would be so irresponsible or what he would do to his wife and children when he hit mid-life.
At mid-life my husband had a personality change and divorced me purely for materialistic reasons and simply because he could get away with it. The proof of that is that since our divorce, he has spent money that should have been going to support his family like there is no tomorrow; he has bought a $90,000 home, 2 Harleys, a motor home for camping, a Labrador dog for $400.00, a $3000 couch, a computer, a new Chevy Pickup and a brand new Chevy Cavalier, and a big screen tv, stereo equipment, and dvd player, and that is what I know about, Lord only knows what else, plus he smokes name brand cigarettes and drinks heavily, uses marijuana and occasionally cocaine. He is on his 3rd live-in girl friend. And all of this, while his ex-wife and children are on food stamps and living below the poverty line.
We had two boys 6 and 11 at the time that he filed for a divorce against me. He abused me mentally and physically in the last few years of our marriage with the aim of driving me to divorce him, but I resisted strongly. I actually worked as a child care provider for 11 of the 23 years, and supported him when he was laid-off and unemployed.
I took a few years off to parent fulltime after our second child was born. My husband knew that I had planned to go back to college and get a teaching degree as soon as our second child was in school fulltime, but before I could do that, he filed for a divorce against me. I was faced with a decision to either give up my dreams of being a teacher and go straight out and get a low-paying, minimum wage, dead end job, or take a risk and stay with my plan to go to college. I decided to take the latter risk, because I felt I shouldn’t let anything rob me of my dreams and a better future for myself and my kids. I managed to struggle my way through college for that past six years and I just recently graduated.
It is difficult to even list all the innumerable hardships I have endured, and still am enduring. During the years that I was in college it turn out that both my boys are ADHD and learning disabled. I had to scrape from the bottom of the barrel to pay for expensive educational therapy for them. My husband never gave a dime to help me with it. I have approximately $18,000 in college loans, and $15,000 in credit card debt. The credit debt is mostly from purchasing everyday necessities that I needed but could not afford on my limited income of child support, college loans and grants, i.e. school books and supplies, school and work cloths, car repairs, Christmas and birthdays presents for my kids, and other miscellaneous emergency expenses.
Right now I am fresh out of college and in transition from college to work. I am searching for a teaching job for the fall, but the school budgets are such that teachers are being pink slipped. Probably I will be substitute teaching this fall, but actually I have no guaranteed income for the near future. Currently I am delivering newspapers from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. in the morning. If I get no calls to substitute teach by October, I plan to apply to Family Dollar or Walmart for the Christmas shopping season. But in order to apply for substitute teaching I have to make myself completely available on call with no guarantees that I will be called. I have to get teaching experience in order to make myself more employable permanently, and so that I can keep my teaching certification after the initial four years.
I greatly fear that we are at a seriously risk of ending up homeless by the end of this year. My food stamps have been cancelled because my children have gotten too old (13 & 17) for us to qualify for them anymore, and DHS is requiring me to payback $1600.00 because they made a clerical error in awarding me food stamps after my younger son turned 12. Plus, as if things weren’t bad enough, last October as I was headed home from an afternoon class to have a quick dinner and head straight back for an evening class when a 16 year old driver who was going 50 mph through an intersection and ran a red light struck my van. My van spun around and was tipped over. Luckily I had on a seatbelt and survived, but my arm was broken, shattered at the elbow, and I have had to have 2 surgeries. I have no medical insurance and the driver was underinsured. So I still have approximately $5000.00 in unpaid medical expenses at the moment. I owe on a mortgage (I won the house in the divorce), and not to mention everyday living expenses. I need money to invest in job interview cloths and a modest professional wardrobe to begin working. All I am hoping for is a fresh start and help to get on my feet now that I am out of college. Please if you can spare anything to help us out, it would be greatly appreciated, and may the Lord, God bless you for your generous giving. Thank you.
