CHAPTER FIVE

I got my first job running a machine in a factory making alcohol swabs. I worked the evening shift, 3:30p.m. to 12 midnight. I did that for almost three months, when my sister saw an ad in the newspaper for a Youth Training Option Program. I applied and was accepted into a Microcomputer course.

My brother-in-law wanted to pick up right where we left off and my parents started to panic because they noticed his attitude towards me was different. They thought there was something going on between us, when in fact there was nothing. I wouldn't talk to my brother-in-law unless it was to communicate information - even to this day. My mother one day fell at my feet and begged me not to do anything to bring shame and disgrace to the family. I didn't like that at all. I told her not to do that.

Meanwhile, Saul wouldn't even reply to any of the letters that I sent him so I mailed the engagement ring back to him. That got a response from him. He replied to every one of my letters, and in every one of them he preached to me. He was now a "Child of God", a Christian, and he wanted me to be also. He was the first person to witness to me about Christianity but I didn't know anything about Christianity. I didn't understand but I was still open.

He wrote in one letter: "Marge I'm serious about this and hope you should be also. Now this life I'm living right now is far differ to the one before and I'm gonna carry it through to the end. Remember that girl Mona, well to be honest I don't want to hurt her but it seems that it's going to take a little while more and it'll be over (up to this point I didn't even know he was with her), and I trust in the father that I don't get involve with another unless it is the woman I suppose to marry...I can't have you if you won't change and become a Christian and live a Christian life you don't have to wait until marriage. Start now if you're still in love and wanted the relationship to continue. Remember darling we're far apart and my love for the father is growing stronger daily. I'm trying to do what he wants me to do. I can only marry a believer of Christ. So if you want us to be together, Love the father more than anything else and worship him and our love for each other would grow stronger."

In his next letter he wrote the same thing again (grammar and capitalization his): "A Believer must at no time marry an unbeliever. So you see if ever our relationship should continue you have to become a child of my father (our Heavenly father) by being saved by Christ Jesus and we'll become united as one and live forever. Honey you may think that I've gone nuts but what I've learned for the past few months, many tried and it cost many their whole life time and some tried for years and haven't learned as much as I do. But all is credited to the Father Almighty and because he has been my teacher all the while and will always be. Marge I'm blessed because I wasn't taught by any priest or man of God but by the father Himself you may wonder how that is possible but it is. That dream I've told you about when I were in the bush it wasn't a Dream it was a Vision and it isn't any ordinary vision." He ended by saying: "Be a child of God and give unto him the thanks, Praises and Glory due to his name then you could seek me later." Pretty mystical! In retrospect, I wonder to whom he was talking/listening.

One year after I arrived in Canada, I moved out and went to live on my own. I was the first one to move out; my brother was kicked out a few months later. I was twenty-one years old and so my parents couldn't stop me although they tried. Ironically, it was my brother-in-law who told them they couldn't stop me legally from moving out. They felt helpless and my mother who is a chronic worrier, worried for my safety. Now on my own, I had time to hear myself think once again. I had rented a cozy store-top bachelor apartment and for the first time had my very own bed, my own table and cooking utensils. I felt for the first time that it was really possible to make my dreams come through.

I wanted to have a successful career, travel the world, and have a husband and children, a house, white picket fence and all. The perfect American dream! So I sat down at the kitchen table and started to plan my future. I decided to seek a career in Travel since I wanted to travel. I did some phoning around and found a travel school that offered a diploma course in Travel and Tourism. I took out a small loan from my bank, paid the tuition fee and started evening classes.

Meanwhile on the relationship front, I had a few sexual encounters. Two were one-time casual encounters, the other one was a disaster. I finally admitted to myself that I wanted Saul to fill that void in my heart. I decided to sponsor him so I filed the sponsorship papers. I wrote to him and told him I had filed the sponsorship papers and I received a grateful reply. I was so surprised I asked him if he was being truthful or if he was just pretending for he used to brag in high school that he was a very good actor.

He replied that he wasn't pretending. He said, "Honey I don't blame you for feeling that way about me once a thief always a thief as the old saying goes. I'm not trying to say that I've become an angel over night. I realize I'm the cause of the way you felt about me, being a liar and so forth. Honey man don't change time it's time that changes man. Love me the way I am not the way I used to be or what I will be. Let's forgive and love each other as the way Lovers should. And let's give unto the Father the glory due unto his Name. Bless his holy name." I thought, "Fine! I can live with that. If he has truly changed. After all, that's what I asked him to promise me that day on the sea wall."

I completed the Travel course, but failed the final exam on Ticketing and Tariffs mainly because the teacher didn't know what he was teaching. In one evening he taught one thing, however, he had someone in the class with some prior experience telling him something else and the rest of that evening was spent with that student trying to straighten out the teacher. The teacher after that evening seemed lost and so what happens when the lost leads the lost? Why they get lost too. I was still able to get a job as an Airline Reservations Agent for an airline that operated out of the Toronto Island Airport. I held the job until my husband made me quit.

I returned to Guyana via Barbados, (to visit my brother, Nigs and his wife), in time for Saul's birthday, June 28th, 1986. I met my family at the airport and surprisingly Saul and his family were at the airport to meet me also. I tried to spend as much time with Saul as possible. I was still very reserved and still had no relationship with my second brother, where I stayed for the most part of the trip. Looking back now, that was really the reason why I first went into my shell. This brother was very good to me when I was a little child. He and my sister, Chick, were my favourite brother and sister. Once, when he was still dating my sister-in-law, he had taken me to visit his school where he was teaching. He was the first one to buy me a doll but when I later went to live with him and his wife and child, he had changed.

One day soon after I had just gone to live with this brother, I was playing a game of Jacks which my sister, Chick, had bought me. My youngest brother came over and started to take the game away from me. I complained to Richard and he responded by coming over to both of us, whacking both my brother and I and taking the game of Jacks and throwing it out the door of the verandah. I never got another game of Jacks again and I never ever went to him again for any kind of personal help or protection from other people. I realized from that moment on that I had to fight my own battles.

The day before I was to leave Guyana to go back to Barbados, Saul decided that he wanted to marry me. We never discussed it. In fact I didn't hear about it until my brother, Richard, mentioned it. Apparently Saul had gone to him and said, "We want to get marry". I wanted to wait until he came to Canada, but I thought I'd better go along with it before Saul changed his mind. He was a strange character. He kept talking a lot about "Father" this and "Father" that. Apparently he was still reasoning with his "Father Almighty." So if he was reasoning with the God of the universe, I wasn't about to question him. I thought he wouldn't do anything his "Father Almighty" wouldn't approve of.

The reader must understand that I was not an enlightened woman about things of the Psyche. I had never heard of Psychopath, Psychosis, or Psychotic and certainly couldn't diagnose someone who had it, much less someone I was emotionally involved with. Manipulation and brainwashing was not in my vocabulary, I didn't know about such things. So we had the quickest marriage ever. On the day I left Guyana we got married, and then we had to get ready to go to the Airport. I enjoyed a couple of days with my brother, Nigs, his wife and new born son in Barbados, then I came back to Canada and went back to work.

I received my fist letter from my husband and he was happy, or so he said: "I'm feeling just great anything better than this is "SPOILED." Sometimes I keep wondering if it is right for a woman to take possession of me and my heart keep singing that it's one of the best thing's ever happened to me and honey I'm damned happy that it's you. Honey this body and all it's possessions belongs and was always meant for you but...was blind and numb to...the facts and sensations of these two bodies." If only he was this eloquent when he was with me but he never talked to me like this in person, only on paper. Then he blew it in the very next paragraph. "You had always knew how I had always felt about women and that hate at one time had risen so high within me that I had started looking at every woman or most women as my sister. It was the only way to save my self from sinning or coping with society rather." I never knew this. This was the first time I was hearing about him hating women. I had always thought that he loved women. Lots of them!

He went on to make an interesting observation about me, "I feel and look at it a few times when we were together that whenever I finds (grammar, his) my self reasoning something positive or let me say I give my opinion about the way I accept certain things, you just seems to me that those times that you're far away or if not you just try to switch conversation." That was true, I didn't understand this thing about Christianity and God, I was an unbeliever and I didn't feel comfortable talking to him about it because I still didn't trust him fully. He had caused me intense pain and grief and it would take more than preaching and a changed life to convince me that he was for real. I had to see a changed heart/character. I remained open.

One night a Spanish girl, Ruth, whom I had met in my Microcomputer class, invited me to a Spanish nightclub. She was married so I trusted her not to do anything foolish. I was wrong. She invited two young men back to my place, and then turned to ask me if it was ok. I don't speak Spanish so I didn't know until she said to me that she wanted to bring these two guys to my place. I asked her if she was sure that she knew what she was doing, and she said yes. I asked her again and again and she said yes, don't worry, so I said ok. Well, she was drunk because I ended up sleeping with one of the men. My guilt was immediate and overwhelming and that guilt remained with me until the day I received Jesus Christ, almost ten years later. I could not forgive myself.

I felt something died inside me that night. I felt my marriage was over, and I begged God for another chance. It is not funny; in fact it is downright shameful when an atheist/agnostic turns to seek God's forgiveness. Either I was loosing my mind, or coming to my senses. Either way, I felt the need for God's forgiveness and that need stayed with me until the day I received God's Forgiveness (Jesus Christ), and I could not forgive myself until I knew God's Forgiveness, Jesus Christ. That tells me that it is God's Forgiveness (Jesus Christ), we need not our own forgiveness that we need. Forgiveness is of God and from God and only one who knows God's complete forgiveness, is able to forgive another completely. (I will talk later about what forgiveness is and isn't).

Meanwhile, things couldn't be going better for Saul, he wrote: "I've attended my interview with Canadian Embassy, High Commission on 3rd Oct. and I got through alright. He asked me to signed under your signature on a form declaring that we'll get married (must) before (90) ninety days when I get over there. Well I just give him back the form smiling and said, "It has already happened" he said "what?" and I replied "our marriage" "when?" "on the 3rd, July, '86. "Have you a certificate to prove it" I said "OH Yes, Here is it" and that was that, I hadn't had to show any photograph or letters or answer any fiancé question, No way, A husband is a husband and nothing less, isn't it? We chat for about half an hour about myself as well as himself and would you believe it that we became friends. Yes, I have to carry a fish (Saul was from a family of fishermen) by him. So you see, "when the Lord is with thee even your worst enemy could become your friend."