I remember growing up all I wanted was to find that special someone and have two children.  A boy and a girl.  It’s what most little girls dream of.   Little did I know, that after years of abuse, I would struggle with PTSD and God knew what He was doing when he blessed me with two little boys instead.  Despite years of abuse and my dad’s obsessive jealousy over me, he always assured me that God would fulfill my dreams.  Well, he was right…about that part atleast.   God did indeed fulfill my dreams, just not in the way I had imagined.  He sent me someone all the way over from the other side of the country.  Born exactly nine months before me.  I have always said God made him and then once he was born, He made me for him. Or maybe God knew that I would need him in my life.  In 1996, he moved to my side of the country.  He was planning on coming here just for two or three years then heading back to his home state on the west coast.  I was just out of a relationship;  he was just out of a relationship.  I was working with the wife;  he was working with the husband.  I was still at home, helping my dad care for my grandmother, as my mother had committed suicide by this time, and I was still being molested.  I was thirty-two years old.  Shameful, but that is how controlled I was.  I still to this day don’t know how I was ever allowed to date.  Even though I was full grown, I still had to ask permission for everything.   I think my dad knew what was right and that what he was doing was wrong.  He would often tell me that he would “try” to quit messing with me but that he couldn’t.  Then he would blame it on my mom and all the years of “hell” she put him through that caused him to start messing with me in the first place.  He would tell me that he knew that he was mixed up and that he loved me “too much”.  I also know that he messed with my willing cousin and my willing brother’s girlfriend.  He was just sick.  Plain and simple.  Today he is 73 and has a girlfriend in her early thirties.  He actually had one , at one point, even younger.  This one he actually plans to move over to her native country and marry.  I want to think he’s changed, but I wonder.   After a big showdown at my house,  nine months after meeting my husband, I was rescued from the clutches of my dad.   I say God sent the boy, born nine months before me, to save me from my dad.  We eventually married.  Despite the showdown at my house the very night my husband came to me and rescued me, my husband (being the good person he is) has always remained cordial to my dad- at least until a year and a half ago when he found out the whole truth.  He even agreed to drop the charges against my dad for which my dad had been charged the night I left home.  With all of this, let us not forget, my disabled grandmother was still at home with my dad and me.  Mom had committed suicide, brother was smart and left home at 18 and never looked back for many years.  Really, the whole reason I was staying there at home was to help take care of her and prior to that my parents needed financial assistance.  My grandma had a stroke and my mom, already struggling with depression, quit work to take care of her.  After my mom committed suicide, my dad couldn’t do it alone. Physically or financially.  So there I stayed, still trapped.  At this point I didn’t see things EVER changing for me.  Eventually, as I said, God got me out of it.  I got married.  I adored my grandmother and had prayed that God would allow her to see me have a child.  I would go out every weekend to visit and God found a way that my husband and I could give money to my dad to help pay for sitters to be with my grandmother.  I finally went to counseling.  The hold my dad still had on me was still so strong.  I would call him everyday on my way to or from work.  Drove my husband crazy.  With counseling, I was able to break the hold.  We tried for three years to get pregnant but couldn’t.  I was convinced I had been damaged because of the molestation ranging from age nine to thirty-two.  We made our way to the infertility specialist and eventually delivered a baby boy.  Six months later, my grandmother passed. But, most importantly to me, God answered my prayer and she was able to meet my baby boy.  Boy #1 delivered at age 37.  Two years later, pregnant again and hoping for a girl.  Boy #2 delivered at age 40. Both healthy despite my advanced maternal age.  Four prayers answered.  God sent me my prince, He gave me child #1, He let my grandmother meet child #1 before calling her home, then He gave me child #2.  Disappointed that it wasn’t a girl?  Maybe only for a second.  I was happier that they were both healthy and that God had allowed me to experience this love like none other.  Someone asked me after my first child, “how does it feel?”  I answered, “Outside of my salvation, it’s the best gift God could ever give me”.  The amazing thing is that you and I have no comprehension of the depth of God’s love for us.  I do, however, know this… GOD BLESSED ME WITH THE BOYS.  Boy #1, my husband; boy #2, my first-born and ecstatic beyond belief; AND, boy #3, protecting me from the PTSD effects which include mistrust.  You see, God protected me by not giving me that little girl that I always thought I wanted.  Had I given birth to that little girl, the one I wanted so badly, there would always be a fear..a  suspicious monster, slowly consuming me in the back of my mind about molestation.  Despite trauma and undesirable circumstance you can always look back and see how God has protected and carried you through…even when it didn’t seem like it at times.  Remember, sometimes the best answered prayers are unanswered prayers.