Post by Brother. Ross on Jan 5, 2010 13:51:20 GMT -5
Married To A Drunkard
The following article was printed several years ago and the author is unknown, but I feel like reproducing it and am praying that it will have a restraining influence on many and save some from the pangs this poor woman suffered.
""She suddenly rose in the meeting and spoke as follows: “Married to a drunkard! Yes, I was married to a drunkard. Look at me! I am talking to the girls.” We turned and looked at her. She was a wan woman with dark, sad eyes, and white hair placed smoothly over a brow that denoted intellect.
“When I married a drunkard, I reached the acme of misery,” she continued. “I was young and oh, so foolish. I married the man I loved, and who professed to love me. He was a drunkard and I knew it-knew it but did not understand it. There is not a young girl in this building that does understand it, unless she has a drunkard in her family; then, perhaps, she knows how deeply the iron enters the soul of a woman when she loves and is allied to a drunkard, whether father, husband, brother or son. Girls, believe me when I tell you that to marry a drunkard is the crown of misery. I have gone through the deep waters, and I know. I have gained the fearful knowledge at the expense of happiness, sanity, almost life itself. Do you wonder that my hair is white?
It turned white in a night-‘bleached by sorrow,’ as another said of her hair. I am not forty years old, yet snows of seventy winters rest upon my head, and upon my heart-ah! I cannot begin to count the winters resting there,” she said, with unutterable pathos in her voice.
“My husband was a professional man. His calling took him from home frequently at night, and when he returned, he returned drunk. Gradually he gave way to temptation in the day and was rarely sober. I had two lovely girls and a boy.” Here her voice faltered, and we sat in deep silence, listening to her story.
The Terrible Sight
“My husband had been drinking deeply. I had not seen him for two days. He had kept away from his home. One night I was seated by my sick boy; the two girls were in bed in the next room, while beyond, was another room into which I heard my husband go as he entered the house. That room communicated with the one in which my little girls were sleeping. I do not know why, but a feeling of terror suddenly took possession of me, and I felt that my little girls were in danger. I arose and went to the room; the door was locked. I knocked on it frantically, but no answer came. I seem endowed with superhuman strength, and throwing myself with all my force against the door, the lock gave way, and the door flew open. Oh the sight! The terrible sight!” she wailed out in a voice that haunts me now; and she covered her face with her hands, and when she removed them she was whiter and sadder than ever.
Delirium tremens! You have never seen it girls: God grant you never may. My husband stood beside the bed, his eyes glaring with insanity, and in his hands a large knife. ‘Take them away!’ he screamed. ‘The horrible things; they are crawling all over me. Take them away, I say!’ and he flourished the knife in the air. Regardless of danger, I rushed to the bed and my heart seemed to stop beating. There lay my children covered with their lifeblood, slain by their own father. For a moment I could not utter a sound. I was literally dumb in the presence of this terrible sorrow. I scarcely heeded the manic at my side-the man who had brought me all this woe.
Then I uttered a loud scream, and my wailings filled the air. The servants heard me and hastened to the room, and when my husband saw them, he suddenly drew the knife across his throat. I knew nothing more. I was borne senseless from that room that contained my slaughtered children and the body of my husband. The next day my hair was white and my mind was so shattered that I knew no one.”
She ceased. Our eyes were riveted upon her wan face, and some women present sobbed aloud, while there was scarcely a dry eye in that temperance meeting. So much sorrow, we thought, and through no fault of her own. We saw that she had not done speaking, and was only waiting to subdue her emotion to resume her story.
She continued, “I was a mental wreck; then I recovered from the shock, and then absorbed myself in the care of my baby. But the sin of the father was visited upon the child, and six months ago my boy, eighteen, was placed in a drunkard’s grave; and as I, his loving mother stood and saw the sod heaped over him, I said, ‘Thank God, I’d rather see him there than have him live a drunkard,’ and I went to my home a childless woman on whom the hand of God rested heavily.
“Girls, it is you I wish to rescue from the fate that overtook me. Do not blast your life as I blasted mine; do not be drawn into the madness of marrying a drunkard. You love him! So much the worse for you; for, married to him, the greater is your misery because of your love. You will marry him and then reform him, so you say. Ah! A woman sadly overrates her strength when she undertakes to do this. You are no match for that demon, DRINK, when he possesses a man’s body and soul. You are no match for him, I say. What is your puny strength beside this gigantic force? He will crush you too. It is to save you, Girls, from the sorrow that wrecked my happiness, that I have unfolded my history to you. I am a stranger in this great city. I am merely passing through it, and have a message to bear to every girl-never marry a drunkard!”
I can see her now as she stood there amid the hushed audience, her dark eyes glowing and quivering with emotion, as she uttered her impassionate appeal. Then she hurried out, and we never saw her again. Her words, “fitly spoken,” were not without effect, and because of them, there is one girl single now. Sel.""
Marriage is serious and is forever, so take heed to God's word. This is just one example why we ought not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.