It's a hidden place, a place I haven't talked about very often with anyone. I may have surface touched the subject with less than a handful of people in my life but with Lou, he gets the ugly, raw version because, well, he loves me even though the broken pieces of me will never quite fit the way they were once intended to fit. He loves the way we as fleshly creatures understand Jesus' love for us. He loves us despite where we came from, what happened to us, despite the things we put ourselves in or the things that happened to us. He loves us fully and unconditionally and while we should ask for forgiveness and repent for our sins, He loves us regardless of our dirt.
In sharing my story, it requires I be very transparent. All my views are my own and it's my version of the truth. I say that because truth has 3 sides : mine, yours and the actual truth not marred by perception. In order to fully understand how I am where I am today, it requires that someone's feeling be hurt, not intentionally, but I know it will happen and in love and in truth, it is necessary. So let's start at the beginning shall we.
My name is Joni Lynn. I was born smack dab in the middle of October on one of those warm fall days. I was born in the morning in a small town hospital that has a 4 bed emergency department and could not handle any kind of major traumas there. My dad's family is from a small town not terribly far from there. It's the kind of place that unless you have a reason to go there, you will never go there. In the middle of town there is no blinking light, not even a stop sign. It's one of those places that you are sure you aren't meant to stay and yet, to this day, I have some type of weird attraction to the place that houses nothing more than a biker bar or two, a couple of over-priced gas stations and a school that houses K-12 in one building.
My mother's family is from the suburbs of Dallas though we all have spread out from our original place. At one time, we all lived in the exact same neighborhood. My mom's family is different from my dad's family and yet, they are the same in many ways. I'll talk a lot more about my family as I go through this process of telling my story.
My mom married my dad when she was 15 and he was 23 and they had me when she was 16 and he was 24. How my parents met is still a mystery to me. I'm not quite sure why I've never asked or maybe it's because it doesn't really matter. Life while my parents were married was similar to what I believe living in hell is like; constant stress, constant fighting, never ending conflict. Some of my first memories involve my parents. We lived at the end of this dirt road in a house my brother and I called The White House simply because it was white with black shutters. It seemed bigger when I was young but as adult and I went back there, it is a very small two bedroom house with a choppy design. In the back of the house is the laundry room, dining room and kitchen with a bathroom off the kitchen.
This part of the house was longer than it was wide and every single morning I would wake to the sound of my parents in that dining room yelling. My mom would be standing in the doorway to the kitchen, already having been awake to pack my dad's lunch and cook him a hot breakfast before he left for work because he said she had to not because she did it out of love. My dad would be standing in the doorway that lead to the laundry room. They called each other terrible names and when one would hurl and insult at the other, I would run to that person to try and protect them until they said something terrible about the other and then I'd run the other way. Life in my earliest memories was anything but pleasant and while I hated that the divorce meant no more every day with my Daddy, later I would be thankful for their divorce for many reasons.
In an effort to tell my entire story, I have to tell my entire story and today, today is about giving you plenty of background about where I come from; my family. I possibly know more about my paternal grandfather's family then any of the other branches of my family tree. My first ancestor who came to America was half Scottish and half Irish, born during a time that the Scottish and Irish were at war with each other. I tell you this because is it going to come into importance in a few minutes. How he came to the United States, I am unsure of but what I do know is he eventually landed himself in Texas where, in a time where you didn't marry Natives, he married a Native American woman and started the branch of my family tree. My great grandfather then married a white woman from an affluent family even though it was frowned upon that she would marry "a half breed". Her last name was Stewart and between her and her two brothers, they would change the way that name was looked at in the area of the world they lived.
My great grandmother lived on a mountain, really a hill because it's Texas, with her husband, her parents and her two brothers. They had cattle and were doing well until her parents both died. One brother convinced her and the other brother to let him take the cows and sell them. He would come back and they would split the money but he never came back. Then the other brother convinced her to let him sell what he could and he would split the money with her and yet, he did the same thing as brother number one. My great grandmother and great grandfather packed up their belongings and moved to town not far from there and my dad's family has had the curse of poverty on them ever since.
My paternal grandmother, I really don't know much about her family tree. One day I might play with ancestory.com and find out about them but until then, I know very little. My grandmother grew up poor. He father was an alcoholic and ended up with dementia because of alcohol. He was mean and cussed a lot, never really had a job that I know of other than running moonshine and trading. Growing up, my great grandparents always lived in shack like houses with deer borne heaters. My great grandmother always wanted you to "give me some sugar" on the lips. My grandmother must have had a rough childhood though she never really talked to me much about it and we were pretty close. It makes me wonder if she didn't talk about it because it was too painful. Nanny, that's what I called her, got pregnant at 15 I believe and her father made her have an actual shotgun wedding. My aunt was born from that "marriage" that lasted a very short time. My grandmother was still a teenager when she met my grandfather, who was pushing 30.
He made her a promise that if he took care of her while they were young, she would take care of him when they were old and my grandmother stuck to this promise. In her eyes, no one compared to the man my grandfather was. They raised 5 kids together and eventually, bought a house in town. Life for them, especially when my dad was younger was tough. They lived in a house in the country that was once a Texas Ranger's station. It had no running water and no electricity but ask my dad, my uncle or any of my aunts and they will tell you those were their favorite times growing up.
My maternal grandmother also got pregnant and married in those orders when she was very young. I tell you this because until you can recognize a generational curse, you are doomed to continue to repeat it, which I did. The daughter she has, my aunt, was raised by my great grandparents who kind of took over rather than allowing my grandmother to raise her own child. Granny would then marry my mother's father and have two kids with him and finally would marry the man I refer to as Peepaw and have my uncle. They also had a rough life, sometimes not having a television, working odd jobs here and there to make things work out. Granny never felt like she fit in her family she confessed to me once. She couldn't live up to the image of perfection that her parents saw in her sister and she wasn't a boy like her brother.
My great grandmother was a petite woman from a family who lived on the outer part of East Texas. I don't know much about her family even though thy have a family reunion every year. She had at least one sister that I can recall but I never heard any stories about how difficult or great her upbringing was. When you went to her house there was always cooked bacon on the stove, sometimes with biscuits, always cookies and bananas, ice cream in the freezer and cokes in the fridge in the garage. She loved to use Icy Hot on her body and I adore that smell to this very day. I have no idea where her family originated from but with blue eyes and dark hair, if I were guessing, I would say possibly Germany.
My great grandfather disowned me before he died. He had served in the U.S. Army, had been married once before my great grandmother but the death of a child will change a person and it did him. I have been told that somewhere down the line that he had Cherokee heritage but to say for certain, I cannot. He was mean and harsh but he would do anything for those he loved. In their house, he had his own room, which I used to find strange until I became an adult. The idea of my dating outside of my race was too much for him and so, before he died, when I married my 1st ex-husband who was Hispanic, he disowned me. By this point in life that didn't bother me and I could care less. Besides, he wasn't the first person to disown me.
My mother's father, because I don't call him my grandfather. Chuck is a wheeler and dealer. He spent many of his years working in the car sales industry working his way up from sales to GM. This man is the kind of man who talks slick, has a smart mouth and one who gives you the vibe that you shouldn't trust him. In his younger days, he was a proud member of the KKK and when I was 14 years old, he disowned me because I had an attraction to dark skinned black boys. We have spoken from time to time since then but even as he is currently knocking on the door of death, he still has his ways of thinking. His lineage is said to be Scandinavian and somewhere back there, Vikings. As much as I don't care for him, even he helped shape me into who I am.
So there's my family in a nutshell. I didn't get into my mom and dad much or my stepmother or stepfather much because I am saving them for later. In all, I come from poverty, from what some would refer to as white trash. I come from a line of pure whiteness on one side and on the other, marriage upon marriage for what was not acceptable at the time and yet, those same people would judge me later for my own choices. There are some really great people in my family though, on both sides, so in no way am I knocking the entire family.
I need my readers to understand the background in which I grew up, the ideas put into my mind at a young age and why they caused me such issues later on in life. This is me.
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