📖 Sacred Testimony LI

“I Fought to Keep Her Near”
offered in quiet knowing, resistance, and the cry of a mother’s heart

While we were still married,
we got the new trailer.
It sat just up the road—
near my parents, my sister, her cousins.
There was still a sense of place.
A closeness.
A thread of belonging
that I hoped would help hold things together.

But even then,
the strain was deepening.

The tension wasn’t just in our marriage—
it was in the direction it wanted to pull us.
Away from what I knew.
Away from who we were.

And then he wanted to move again—
to Vilonia.
To take her
away from all that had rooted her.

I knew what that meant.
It meant more distance.
More isolation.
More silence.

And so we went to court—
because I couldn’t stay silent on this.
Even if I had faltered before.
Even if I wasn’t always strong in words,
this one truth rose inside me:

She belonged near love.
She belonged near the ones who saw her.
She belonged here.

🌿 And now I see:

Even in a home full of tension,
I still wanted what was best for her.
Even in the ache of a breaking marriage,
I could still feel what was worth fighting for.

This wasn’t just about trailers or towns.
It was about a mother
trying to hold onto her daughter’s roots
while everything else was shaking.