What a huge, beautiful wedding we'd had.  People came from the church, from my neighborhood, from my well-connected parents' civic organizations.  And the gifts! Surely there were hundreds! Not bad for a girl from Southwest Atlanta, God's country.

So during the week after the honeymoon while I was writing the acknowledgements, I asked hubby not to open the gifts so fast.  I could barely keep up.  He suddenly and unexpectedly snatched me up from the hassock I was relaxing on and slammed me against a wall in my parents' home! Holding my neck he hissed 'Don't you EVER tell me what to damn do, bitch.  Do you hear me?  These are MY gifts!"

And did I mention that hubby had not one guest of his own to make an appearance at our huge event, nor did any one bother to send a gift.  That should have told us something.  Well, family members who weren't infected by the love bug were probably in the know.

For some reason other than low self-esteem I, a well-educated, well-read woman with enormous potential for success not only married down; but stayed in an abusive relationship for all of the wrong reasons.  Once when I couldn't console the first of our two babies, born 20 months apart, hubby slapped me, causing a physical confrontation with my beloved brother.  Hubby stormed out of my parents' home in SWAT and called from Carrollton, Georgia:  'If I have to come get you, I'm going to blow your brother's brains out.'

Another time my father, the coolest dad of them all, even went after hubby with a gun.  I remember my mother saying 'Look what you caused your father to do.  He hasn't been like this for years!'

God freed me and my warped mind when my children were both still babies.  Thankfully they have no recollection of the fact that I was ever married, an explanation I had to make repeatedly when they started school, and all the other children had two parents.

Last month Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was instrumental in upholding the Supreme Court federal ban on gun possession for people convicted of all forms of domestic abuse.  I want to thank her personally, on behalf of all battered people stuck in bad situations; and I can spot them a mile away.  Justice Ginsburg has no idea how many lives she has touched and possibly saved from a sure death.  In her ruling she said that 'Firearms and domestic strife are a potentially deadly combination nationwide.'  If you can't access the statistics on the internet, then  just watch the nightly news.

I commend Justice Ginsburg for her courage.  After all, I live today because of God's grace and the certainty of my family's support and believe that I would soon, in less than four years, return to my senses.  So if you want to hear my story and how I overcame it, contact me bye mail.

Peace!