2007

We came into the world one at a time over the span of approximately six years, I, wedged in the middle of the estrogen-powered progeny of our parents.  Three girls.  All different. All somewhat the same.  It did not occur to me as we played in the sandbox or rode our bikes together that I would someday hold a sister's hand and think how much it looks like my own or hear her voice on the other end of a telephone line and feel that I had never left home.  The same soil from the same garden produced us, but the blooms were, though spectacular, very different.  It was that garden loam that still clung to us in September of 2007 when we all came together over Daddy's death.  Humming unmistakably in our hearts was the family song, this time a dirge.  Grief was the common lyrical line, but we each sang it differently.

In February of 2002, we had all met at Daddy's house to go over his finances and to discuss his future care.  It was the first time we sisters had been in the same room together for several years.  Our individual pain had customized our very different reactions to the train wreck that was 1985.  My younger sister had brought her daughter, as had I.  Heather had given us our first grandson in December of 2001, so she met me in Dallas to show him off.  Four generations crowded around Daddy as he leaned back in his recliner wearing pajamas and reading off his final wishes, his glasses pulled low on his nose so he could peer at the print through his bifocals.

In the kitchen that evening we were our mother's daughters as we peeled broccoli, chopped and diced vegetables for salad, kneaded biscuits, and fried chicken. We could have been in high school again; the air was familiar as we breathed it together, our differences lost in our kitchen busyness.  Daddy had a "lady friend" - a recent widow - he wanted us to meet.  The anticipation of meeting a new person in Daddy's life made the discomfort of our being together after so long apart seem familiar and safe. We barely knew each other any more, but no one knew her.

I had moved away.  That was much of the problem with our communication. My sisters lived in the same south Texas county and were integrated into each other's lives.  Though there was genetic soil beneath our fingernails, we had been planted in far different settings by then. Though we shared the same genes, it was apparent to me, after the trip in 2002, that being sisters would require some work; it was not an automatic ongoing "given" that we will deeply connect without pursuing each other.

Our hands were not the only common thread that was obvious to me; our hearts, also, were and are forever intertwined.  Though I could not take those hearts out and look at them in wonder nor hear the actual song birthed into each of the three of us, I was struck by the palpable love I felt for my sister as I cut her hair with Daddy's kitchen shears that evening when the plates were cleared, the dishwasher humming, and the "lady" was gone, leaving the foreign scent of her perfume behind.  She had clearly had no interest in Daddy, but, it seems he was hopeful that, since she had cared for a handicapped, dying husband, this lovely widow might take him on, also.  We all instinctively knew this and breathed a collective sigh of relief, as I clipped away at the reddish strands of my sister's hair, that this sweet widow was too smart to become entangled again.

Seeing my niece again, her beautiful face reflecting my sister's, made the world somehow smaller once more. Mother's dishes in her German hutch, the familiar knick-knacks gracing the mantle, and the oil paintings on canvas over the sofa all closed in to embrace us in "home" for a few hours.  It is in our marrow.  We have known each other from the beginning.  We know what we were like as kids; share memories that only sisters who have ridden long distances in a family sedan for seemingly endless hours on vacations can possibly know.  Though the lines had gone mostly silent for a while, it was not dead.

Daddy died on a Saturday morning in a month when the world seemed upside down with Blackwater security personnel accused of killing seventeen Iraqi civilians, with Nuon Chea, the second in command to Pol Pot, charged with the slaughter of over one million innocent Cambodians, with the massacre of ten peacekeepers by Darfur rebels, with Idaho's Larry Craig's resignation over allegations of homosexuality, the devastations of three earthquakes in Indonesia, and with the release of Bin Laden's latest video threatening to escalate killings in Iraq. Daddy's death was but a small, unheralded leaving - a quiet, early morning stilling of his heart, almost unnoticed as the world ground forward in its agonies and ecstacies.  My older sister was in Europe; my younger sister called me with the news.  We were not expecting it so soon; but, sitting alone in the overstuffed ivory chair in my living room, I held the phone in my hands long after the line was disconnected.  My world certainly changed that morning, and I had to close my eyes and replay life, my soul searching with some hot sensor for just what I should feel.  Forgetting the din of the grasping, screaming, clamorous world, the event no one recorded changed the tenor of my life.  Relief was the preeminent response.  Not red-hot and glowing.  Soft and peaceful.

Dear Readers

Thank you so much for entering into my life through these blogs.  I have learned so much from writing and praying through this story.  It would be such a great blessing to me if you would give me some feedback as I am seeking a publisher for the story. I would like to know your thoughts if you have a few minutes to post them.  I love you for taking this journey with me.  May you experience the blessings of our faithful Father in your lives.
Kay

Epilogue

Last night my mother and father came by to see me.  Daddy was wearing a silvery-gray suit, a white shirt, and a light mauve tie with tiny mottled specks scattered over it.  The ring of hair around his head still shone brown with streaks of silver.  Out of the passenger side of the huge green sedan in which my parents arrived emerged my mother.  Her hair was neatly combed, her cheeks aglow with the pinkish lipstick she had used her fingers to pat onto them, her mouth a lovely shade of light coral, and her glasses set just so across her nose.  A floral silk blouse crawled out of the top of her dark pink jacket and spilled a bow onto her chest.  They were early.

Always excited to see my parents, I had been preparing dinner for them; but, it was far from ready when I peeked out through the curtains in my kitchen to see their arriving car.  I could not quite remember where my children were.  Seeing them was always the most prominent part of a visit from grandparents.  It seemed to be that my three children were grown, but that could not be possible.  There was in me a growing longing to touch my mother, as though I had not for many years.  A curious joy whispered to me that Mother was still alive, as the worrisome knowledge that this could not be true nudged at my subconscious.  From somewhere deep within me, an argument arose.  The essence of it was that my parents were both dead, but my heart beat with such expectation at seeing them that I refused to understand.  Here they were, my beloved parents in their mid-sixties, getting out of their car, come for a visit.  Phantoms of what used to be, bringing with them the innocence that had now been defiled.  I did not merely want to grasp the visages, but to return to a time when they were safe, hearts unbroken, lives unscathed and I could feel the oneness of family and home again.

The sun shone on my parents as they walked toward my door, a creamy ethereal glow that emitted a warmth that drew me to it.  I wanted to bathe in its silky comfort.

"They are gone."  Consciousness slowly winning over sleep. "They are both gone."  Traveling bit by bit back to the reality of the hotel comforter, the darkness of a strange room, and the perplexing realization of loss experienced anew, I fought the knowledge that wakefulness would surely confirm.  Like the taste of honey lingering on the tongue, the joy of seeing my parents hovered sweetly around my heart until I had fully awakened.

The truth was that I had slept at a Hilton Inn on King Street in Alexandria, Virginia, third floor, with a window that gave a harried view of the nearby metro station. Bill and I were there to see Heather, her two sons and our son-in-law, who had met us at Reagan Airport only a few short hours before.  Lots of hugs and kisses.  Joy at the touch of a little warm boy-hand in each of ours.  Life had come around.  Thus the dream, I suppose.  The languishing emotion created by the virtual encounter with my parents stung, and as I rolled over onto my back in the hotel bed, I allowed the wistful tears to spill onto my pillow. My heart caught just a little with a silent sob that momentarily took my breath. I wished I had not lost both of my parents so profoundly; wished I could undo all that can never be changed.  I was wishing my father had not forever reconfigured our family history...wishing...wishing....wishing.  I wanted my mother to hold me again, wanted her to call me "precious."  I could almost feel the strands of her silky hair as I combed it once again, and I wanted to hear her pray, listening as she concluded her conversation with her God with: "You are holy, holy, holy."  I was wanting the father to return who was my hero and not the man next door whose face appears on internet websites exposing sexual predators.  Ohhh....wanting.

Lying there, I realized that I had not dreamt of my parents together since their deaths.  That seemed a hopeful sign.  As my tears gave way
 to an unsettled peace, I remembered with an ache for "home" that can never be fully eased on earth that there is a place where there are no more tears and all is washed in eternal brilliance.  The past is cleansed in purifying blood and the future assured by a wounded, risen Lamb.  A flowing river rushes, robust and teeming with life, from a throne room awash in emerald light as multitudes of saints and angels bask in the greatness of their God, singing and chanting, as they extol His immutable attributes.  Jewels which decorate the city walls shoot myriad rainbows of color onto the transparent streets of pure gold, lighting up heaven with unending beauty.  And perhaps, there, in the midst, stand Jim and Flossie, golden and new, seeing each other now as reborn and timeless.  Old things have passed away; all things have become new.

2010

The man sat picking desultory scraps of hay from the matted hairs on his forearm.  He stretched, yawning, and was struck by the fetid stench of his own breath. The crow of a rooster had awakened him, and his eyes squinted involuntarily against the bright rays of the early morning sun streaming in through the loosened, rotting boards of the old barn which he had called home for the past few days.  "Hungry."  His first thought in the morning; the constant of his day; the aching reality of his life as he lay down, head on meager backpack, each lonely, desolate night. Trapped by the consequences of his own choices, he had stumbled into middle age, a miserable failure.  Had the farmer not allowed him to feed the pigs and sleep in the barn, the man would have had no shelter to shield him from the chilly nights. 

Once a day, the farmer would deliver a large basket of scraps from his table, and the man picked through them to find any edible orts to satisfy the rumbling chasm that swirled and sucked his life from him, leaving his body emaciated and his soul unsettled.  He had walked the streets of the city for months, begging for food or coins; however, the patience and generosity of the passers-by had grown thin and no one took notice of him there anymore except for disdaining his rancid presence as he loitered in the roadway.  And, rightly so. Lice fell from his shoulder-length hair onto the collar of his ragged striped tunic, and the putrid odor of his unwashed flesh heralded his approach from many steps away.  Beneath his overgrown beard were sores, picked and itching, pocketing pus that dried into yellow beads upon his whiskers when he scratched them with his ragged fingernails.  The man, once young and rich, was now anathema. How had he come to this?

The man's father had let him go, unwilling to bind a son to him who wished his father dead.  The child did not want the father's business nor the father's oversight.  He just wanted out - out into the world to live as he pleased.  Wanted his share of the father's fortune now. Did not want to wait for the father to die. Love cannot be coerced, so the father watched his beloved child walk away.

There was another son. An older one who had stayed. Done the right thing. Always. Never complained. Worked hard. Took up the slack. Slaved in the fields to keep the family business running in order to guard his own inheritance from ruin.  He prided himself on being the "good" one; the one who could be counted upon to always do the right thing.  But, there was no joy in it, especially since his brother had made his work load twice as burdensome.  His brother! Lying with prostitutes! Stuffing himself with rich foods! Drinking himself into a stupor! Throwing his money around and his life away!  He would never do that!

But a stream flowed deeply within this older brother,stagnating with resentment and jealousy; for, he was bound to his father's house while his younger brother was free to do whatever he pleased.  Inequity bred contempt and the older brother smoldered with it as he plowed his father's fields and fed his father's herds, all the while conjuring in his mind the pleasures in which his brother indulged himself.

Perhaps it took his leaving in rebellion and abject deprivation of respect and compassion for the younger son to realize his need of his father's love.  In his youth he had despised the many parameters of his life and had viewed his father as embarrassingly out of touch with the world that existed beyond the borders of their mundane existence. Life on his own terms had proven expensive - left his pockets and his soul empty and sullied.  Penniless and miserable, having wasted a fortune and the best years of his life, the wayward son became homesick.  On this particular morning,  the daydream of going home became an urgent need.  Sitting on a log with his feet in the mud and slop of the sty next to which he slept, watching the lazy sow roll contentedly in the residue of her own feces and the offal of her pen, the young man came to his senses. He saw himself as he was; knew what he had become in a way he had not fathomed before.  And all he could think of was home. His father. Food. A bed. And, perhaps, forgiveness.  Maybe his father would hire him to work the fields - would not turn him away. This younger son began at that moment to form a speech to his dad. "Father, I have sinned against you and against heaven. I have done all the wrong things. I know I am not worthy to be called your son anymore, but would you consider hiring me to work, to serve you?"

With this resolve and the hope of home, the man left behind the detritus of the life he had so craved. It was a long journey back, and with each passing mile came deep doubts about his ability to make it and an even deeper resolve to try. With each footstep he practiced his "repentance" speech.  It had been many years since he had seen or spoken to his elderly father - many years since he had even thought of him. "Father, I have sinned against you..."  The words became the rhythym of his journey.

Ever waiting. Ever hoping. At dawn and at sunset, the father daily walked the path leading from his palatial home to the main road, the aching for his wayward son driving him to search the horizon for his boy's familiar gait. Love drove the father.  Hope kept the love ever aflame.  As the sun disappeared on the horizon and the sky burst with golden orange brilliance before giving way to starlight, the father would bow his head and turn toward home and vow to stand sentinel anew at dawn.

It was in the late afternoon that the son neared home.  From his stance on a distant hill, the man looked out over the landscape and his eyes drank in the emerald green fields now deepening in color with the setting sun. Flocks dotted the leas, making them look like a piece of mottled cloth that stretched out for miles. He had stopped for a minute, and he set down his backpack.  With both hands he tried to comb through the tangled mess of dark curly hair that moved gently on his head in the light evening breeze.  He brushed the lice and dandruff from his tattered cloak and fluffed his chest-length beard.  Taking once again his backpack to his shoulder and pulling himself up to his full height, he rehearsed his speech aloud as his heart beat furiously in his chest. "Father, I have sinned against you..." and his feet moved closer to the house now backlit by the glory of the evening sunset.

Something in the distance stopped the father at his gate - made his breath come in quick, short spurts. Dare he hope after all these years? As the form approached, the father saw the uneven slope of the shoulders and the hesitant short strides of a man walking across the fields toward him.  Closer and closer the figure came, pulled forward by the heartbeat of his father.  " It is my son!! " The realization energized his feet, and the father forgot himself as he ran toward his dejected boy making his way across the meadow. Velvet robes flying, leaving the heavy aroma of sweet incense wafting in the air, sandals patting the dusty earth beneath his feet, an anxious, joyful, smiling father nearly collided with his homeless, filthy son.

"Father," began the boy, "I have sinned against you and against...."  He was unable to finish, for his father covered his rancid face in kisses and hugged his reeking body to his chest.  "My son!  My son!!" was all he could say as he held his boy's face in his hands and cried.

"I am so dirty..."

"Bring him a robe!" the father commanded a nearby servant.

"I've been so wrong and am not worthy..."

"Bring him a ring for his finger," the father's imperative. "For this is my son!"

"I am so hungry..."

"Kill us a nice fat calf and let's feast! My son was lost and is now found. My son was dead but is alive to me again!"  That was all that mattered.

In the fields, the rays of the setting sun were disappearing behind the hillside horizon as the older brother packed his scythe and hoe upon the back of his donkey.  The sweat of the noontime sun still clung to his tunic and made a salty covering that had settled into his black whiskers and onto his weathered, sun-burned cheeks.  The man stood erect, stretching his aching back, and looked toward his house in anticipation of a quiet dinner and soft white sheets.  His life had a pattern - a definite tempo to it that had become almost immutable.  Sameness ruled his every moment.  Up early, out to the fields, work until dark, dinner, sleep - up early, out to the fields - never changing.  Life had not ever been the same for his father since his younger son left home; but, years had now passed without a direct word from him. Of course they had heard, though, about his younger brother's carousing and drinking, as his exploits were infamous.  God only knew what had happened to him.  Only God and the kid's father really cared.

The man bent to pick up the reins then wearily guided his donkey down the hill.  Lights were glowing from all the windows in the house, dimming the brilliance of the stars overhead; and, as the older brother approached, he heard an irritating, noisy din that drew him in confusion toward what must be some sort of celebration.  The aroma of barbecued meat piqued his hunger, making him salivate involuntarily.  He could not think what had happened since he left that morning to make the mansion quake with such merriment.

Half-drunk, bright-eyed and greasy-faced, the older brother's stable hand met him as he neared.  "Sir!  Your brother is here!"  Taking the reins from his master's hand, the servant continued. "He came in the early evening.  Your father has called together all the friends and family to celebrate!"

Immovable, the man stood brooding and enraged as he watched his servant head to the stable.  All these years - these long years of months and days and hours of sweat and labor and duty and now our father kills a calf I raised to feed this disgusting, homeless profligate whose life has caused such derision to come to our family and has hurt countless people! How could Father just let him come home ?  How is that fair ?"  There was no way he was going to be a part of that party.

As soon as the Father heard of his older son's arrival from the fields, he ran to greet him with the news of his younger brother's return. The Father tried to put his hand on his son's shoulder but was rebuffed as the son shook off the embrace.  "What is all this commotion I hear?  Your worthless son has come home to a party? Never have I had such a party with my friends!"  Venomously he spit the words at his father. "I will not celebrate his sin! "

"All I have is yours," said his father, ignoring the hostility that had made his son cringe in rage. "You could have partied with your friends at any time."  The father put his weathered hand on the shoulder of his righteous son and felt the wrath as it made his son's body tremble.  "We must celebrate today because the son I thought dead is alive!" 

How many years does the profligate live before the Father no longer looks for him to come home?  Is eighty-four too many?  How many people does the wayward child injure, wound or even ruin before the Father will no longer love him?  Forty?  If the son or daughter does not appear on the horizon until he or she is desperate, with no other possible hope, is it then too late, for the child has worn too thin the love, grace and compassion of the Father? Is the self-righteous child who has joylessly slaved to be good enough out of duty all of her life, all the while despising the sinful freedom of her brother, any better herself for having stayed yet not having loved the Father?  Only duty?

All along, that is what Daddy needed. A Father. One who would not abandon or abuse him. The understanding that Daddy despicably used and ruined boys is nauseatingly heartbreaking to me.  It is not something I have the power to understand, much less forgive. I was not there when Daddy was abused, used by a passing stranger then discarded.  But God saw, and I believe in order to redeem that situation,  my heavenly Father would wait until Daddy was eighty-four and had "come to his senses" to right the wrong done to him when he was a  twelve-year-old victim of abuse, if that is how long it took. That same Father waits at twilight and at dawn for the restoration and redemption of every child my father abused, hurt, ruined, because He was there aching over the sins of my father. I was not there when Daddy was stripped of his willfulness in the glaring light of who he had become, so I cannot say with certainty that he was ultimately redeemed.  Of course, I do not know my father's heart, but I do know the heart of my heavenly Father, and it is waiting for the lost to come home.

I am aware as I write this that there are those reading who believe that my father was irredeemable. I do not know where God draws the line, or if He does. I do know that God is looking for a repentant heart, and I can only pray that as Daddy stepped, in that eternal moment, from this life into the next, he finally held the hand of his Father in the journey.

2000

March 4, 2000, was an exceptionally warm day in Washington D.C.  Birds chirped their own joy from the branches of the budding cherry trees as the morning sun drank the dew from the nascent greening grass that surrounded Capitol Hill Baptist Church.  The historic red brick structure stood stoically in the fragrant early morning unaware of the bustling that would soon awaken its creaking stairs and give purpose to its somnolent inner chambers.  Flowers would dress the old church in electrifying colors - pink, green, neon orange, yellow, blue and red - making its sanctuary a spring garden worthy of the bride who would soon grace its very center with her groom.  Deep in its heart, the church would hover close and listen, as it had a thousand times before, as the bride and her party chattered of love and honeymoons, make-up and panty hose, and mothers and in-laws while they zipped up  pretty dresses and splashed on sweet perfume.  It was Heather's wedding day.

Anticipation stirred up my adrenaline, making my heart beat faster and my brain shift into overdrive.  Not only thoughts of the morrow and all its inherent excitement and tasks drove me to pace in wonder, but also the joy of being with friends and family from all over the country who had joined us and were asleep somewhere in the Marriot at that moment.  In a gesture of love, toward restoration, my older sister came, with her husband, from Texas.  Having my own family around for the first time in years was so healing.  During the rehearsal dinner the evening before, I could not keep my eyes off her.  We look alike, my older sister and I.  She is shorter and usually wears her hair cropped short, but our features are similar.  Slumbering, also, in the hotel was Daddy.  He had driven from Arlington, Texas, with a young man who rented out one of the rooms in Daddy's house.  Daddy had arranged for the two of them to share a room, but I paid for a separate room for his young friend when I discovered Daddy's plans.  Marlana had come with her husband and their two youngest children.  Friends from Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Wichita Falls, Texas, were also nestled in the quiet of pre-dawn in their rooms.

My younger sister could not make it but she sent a letter that was so precious to me that I kept it.  In part, she wrote:  "I'm mostly sorry (that I cannot come to the wedding) because it seems like the wedding might have been a good time just to show up, be present with you, help some, and start the process of getting back in touch with each other.   I really do hope that you'll know, despite my absence, that I'm marking this very important event in your life with you.  I think about you, and about Heather, so often, and about what it must be like to really let her go forward in this way.  I know you'll give her a great and memorable send off into the next phase of her life, and I'm truly sorry that I won't be there to see it, wagging my hankie in my hand.  I wish her the best."

I had not seen Daddy before the wedding, as he had arrived late in the evening on  Friday. Because the wedding party had to be at the church for flowers and pictures, it was not until guests began arriving for the wedding  that I greeted my father and his young friend. Though seeing Daddy was awkward, I could not help but be blessed by his desire to drive all the way from Texas to be with us.  It took great effort on his part.

At eleven a.m., I came down the aisle on my son's arm and was seated at the front of the church.  The moment was surreal, despite all the planning and anticipation.  One by one the bridesmaids, dressed in shiny teal blue dresses and carrying enormous multi-colored bouquets, solemnly strode to their places at the altar.  When we stood for the bride and turned to see her, gorgeous and radiant in her Oleg Cassini gown, a quick unexpected sob choked me, making me gasp.  My baby on her Daddy's arm was beyond beautiful. In a magical moment, Bill gave her to her handsome groom and then sat down beside me.

"How beautiful, the radiant bride, who waits for her groom with his light in her eyes..."came Vanessa's clear, exquisite voice singing God's love song to Heather and Nick, her groom.  Lilting, hovering in the dense aura present in the church, like the thick aroma of honeysuckle lingers near the vine on a warm summer morning, each note was almost unbearably sweet. I turned to look at my father and noticed the tears settling into the wrinkles on his rapt face.  My family was a mystery to him - my children, as adults, were unknowns.  Though my parents had watched a pre-school Vanessa sing into the hair brush she pretended was a microphone, Daddy did not know the beauty of her adult voice. After the wedding, he asked me several times if Vanessa would sing at his funeral when the time came.  I had no answer then.  The event was a wedding and not his funeral, so I put the question out of my mind.

It was Daddy's plan to leave right after Heather's wedding and drive back to Texas.  My sister and her husband, however, wanted the young man with Daddy to at least see some of the sights of D.C., so they left after the reception and took him to the mall and the monuments.  Daddy drove off before dawn the next morning without telling me good-bye.

2007

"It takes hope to survivie your personal holocaust, Kay...and to change your direction."  The counselor's words had survived the years and tumbled over and over in my mind. 

Hope.  By definition it involved something for which I must wait.   Like seeing the far distant light of an oncoming train, knowing it will probably arrive at the statoin, only there is not schedule it must meet.  An unknown estimated time of arrival on the hope train.

"If  you ever intend to flourish again, return to your intimate relationships, think about how you can  help others, and cultivate a spirituality that transcends yourself, Kay."  I had written these words down at the time and prayed for the energy to actually do the inherent imperatives.

Cultivating and maintaining cherished hope was a daunting task, but it became the catalyst for climbing out of my languishing existence and grasping onto the desire to truly live.  Early in the process I borrowed hope from Marlana and Bill.  On May 31, 2003, my phone rang around nine in the morning.  "Hi, Kay.  It's Marlana.  Are you up?"

"Yes."

"Well, God showed me something this morning, and He gold me to tell you."

"Okay."  Always a little afraid of what He might want me to know.

"God has given you a new name."

"Oh."

There is a brief pause in the conversation because I fall silent and my friend perceives my hesitancy.  Why would God rename me?  What does that even mean?

"Freedom.  That's your new name.  Freedom."

Marlana cannot see me, but slowly I nod my head up and down as I try to synthesize what this means to me.  Never has there been a more counterintuitive moniker given to a child of God.  My life, in it brokenness and confusion, was the antithesis of freedom.  "Freedom, huh?  What do you think that means?"  Cannot conceive of it; can only barely hope for it.

"It means He sees you differently than you see yourself.  That's for sure!"

Only a few days earlier, for Mother's Day, Vanessa had given me a journal even though she knew I have a pernicious distrust of the things.  My fear is that upon my death all will see the perfect mess I was and quit mourning should my family betray my dying wish that my journals be turned to ashes in a bonfire which would send my raw, unedited words floating ubiquitously into a smoky cloud of eternal anonymity.  So, it was with great consternation I took a pen from my desk and rescued the journal from under my bed and entered into dialogue on parchment.

May 31, 2003

Freedom is my new name.  I accept the name by faith, Lord Jesus, for I awoke this morning looking at the black hole of emptiness brought about by walking away from what I can only describe as addiction. As I embrace my freedom in You, I need much wisdom,grace and work.  Take me forward.  I have run a worthy race, for sure, but in the wrong direction.  How truly, awe-inspiringly ignorant.  I wanted to run somewhere so badly it didn't matter if it was the wrong way as long as running made me feel better.  Make this crippled athlete a winner - let me run with one goal in min.  Hope.

My desire was that God sovereignly show up.  I wanted a revolution to brew in me with its genesis in Him - one that stirred me to change.  My daily prayer was: "God, I need You to intervene.  No bullshit.  No pretense.  I am not looking for religion.  I need You!  Authentically."  Waited for the lightning bolt, but it never struck.

Two steps forward, three steps back.  A frustrating pattern to waylay hope.  At first, it was difficult to even glance at all the work before me - like looking into a magnifying mirror and seeing so many flaws at once that I wanted to hide my reflection, giving up on any real beauty flowing from all the imperfections.  I could not have dealt with all my neediness in one fell swoop or I would have despaired.  Often, early on, when I had time alone I would just lie on the floor or stay in bed much of the day; but, slowly, my deeper reasons for living crept to the fore and I would rally.  Matthew Henry once said that "inordinate affection sets the stage for inordinate affliction."  Certainly that was my truth.

On June 13, 2003, I dug my hidden journal from its dark home beneath my bed and wrote:  Isaiah 50 is so true. "Those who turn to idols, who trust their own light to guide them will lie down on a bed of pain."  This turning to find love and adoratoin in anything or anyone else buy You has certainly been painful.  Thank You, God, that Your word is so appropriate to me.

Up the mountain - down the mountain.  Never seeming to reach the top.  Always seeming to fail again.  Ten days later, I had to plead for strength again:  Here I am again, Lord.  What will You do with me?  I have no real ability on my own.  I will try to get up the hill one more time, but I am not very successful at it.  I need more than a push.  Sometimes it seems You are the fantasy and this world the only reality, and I seem to need too desperately what the world offers me.  Prove Yourself strong for me!

Steadier feet were taking a bit of ground by the end of August.  Scripture was my best friend.  On August 22, 2003, Psalm 9:10 woke me up:  "My God loves me and goes in front of me."  Love, unconditional and free, was of course, what I was yearning for and running from.  It had taken months for me to entertain the idea that God could deeply, personally, clearly irrationally, love me.  I kept repeating over and over..."God loves me."

By spring of 2004, after Daddy's second arreest, I was radically dealing with my heart, dashing to bits whatever remnants of addiction physically and emotionally still clung to me as I struggled forward. One morning in prayer I was reminded of two gifts I had stashed away.  They stood between me and real freedom and hope.  I had not forgotten them;  I loved them, which is why I could not keep them.  I climbed the spiral staircase to my bedroom and pulled the treasures from their hiding place. As I held them as idol residue in my hands, there was a painful aching in my chest and a mild hysteria started to build.  I could not do this.  This one last thing.  Panicked, I paced the floor, feeling like a caged animal clawing hopelessly to free itself.  I knew what I had to do and I had to do it right at that moment.  It felt like a death march as I descended one step at a time from bedroom to living room and then on to the garage where the trash cans were, all the while looking at the little box I was clutching, now tear-soaked in my hand.  I opened the lid to the garbage can, closed my eyes, and threw it away.  As the lid thudded shut, I ran back to the living room, sprawled out on the carpet and cried.

It was not enough.  There was the thought that they were still there, alive somehow in the garbage.  Given the chance to kill the enemy or be killed, one should always kill the enemy.  "No, God," I wailed.  "Please, no!"  But again, I knew.  Every last vestige of hope for the past had to be annihilated in order for me to move into hope for the future.  The gifts were not the enemy, but I was aware they tied me to an idol as surely as a hypodermic needle to a heroin addict. All the other choices had been made.  This final one was left.  And it was brutal.

Back in the garage, I reached deeply into the pit of the trash can and pulled out the items.  Hanging on the wall with the other tools was the sledge hammer.  Catching my breath to stifle a sob, I reached for it and headed to the sidewalk at the back of the house.  Laying the precious glass gifts down on what was now their sacrificial altar, my tears splashing over the concrete, I raised the hammer and beat them, pulverized them into dust, as I sobbed the loss of what I had held on to and reached forward, in hope, to God alone.  Terrified, I knew I was stepping into thin air and God must catch me or I would fall into a great, empty abyss.

2010

Bill.

From His cross, Jesus looked down, blinking back the blood and perspiration that streamed from His forehead and stung His swollen eyes to see only one of His disciples standing there, faithful.  Though John did not understand any more fully than the other disciples the events that brought their master to this ignominious, crushing death, the "disciple whom Jesus loved" followed Jesus all the way to His death.  Summoned by name, John came close to the blood-soaked wooden cross - close enough to hear the Savior's labored breathing and maybe to be splattered by the sweat of His dying.  "Behold, thy Mother."  Into trusted, constant, reliable hands, Jesus committed His own mother.

Peter should have been there, too.  After all, he had seen Jesus heal the lame, give sight to the blind, raise the dead.  On a high mountain near Jerusalem Peter and John had seen Jesus transfigured before them, giving over for an instant His earthly body for His heavenly one.  The night before the crucifixion, at the Passover meal, Peter proclaimed passionately that he would follow the Lord anywhere!  Fight for Him!  Then things got hard. Counterintuitive. Peter strikes Malchus, a soldier, with his knife that evening, and severs the officer's ear - an ear Jesus lifts from the ground and restores to Malchus. Clanging swords, Judas and his kiss, loud shouting - all became confusion as Jesus was led away, and Peter could not understand what was going on.  He did not see Jesus again until the next morning when he turned and looked into the eyes of his master in the same instant when Peter cursed and denied for the third time that he knew Christ.  The morning rooster's crow penetrated the dewy air, and Peter ran in shame to hide.

I am Peter. Bill is John. Faithful. In his own confusion, still following Christ through our crucible of pain.  Still loving me when I was unlovable - even absent.  He is not perfect.  He made some heart-wrenching mistakes in the process with Mother and Daddy; but, Bill never ran away; he just kept looking at Jesus.

And, Bill walked.  Miles.  And listened with his hand in mine, to my sorrow, heartache and confessions.  We tromped about California searching in our conversations for an elusive clarity that would not come full circle.  Why?  How to repair it all. Mother. What to do with Daddy. No answers. Talking in the same circles in which we walked.  Tirelessly, Bill's heart tried to be open - to offer up solutions, or at least, consolations.  Lesser men would have removed their walking shoes and grabbed the remote.

When Mother and I brought Daddy home from jail, Bill did not recoil from the sight and touch of him, but endured the guttural wailings of a man sorely in need of mercy when I could bear to hear it no longer.  Bill loved Daddy, too; and his love was ripped and tattered as mine was.  But Bill saw Daddy's need; was sorry for his great sin, and held the man.

In my time of wandering in the far country of my rebellion, taking my life into my own pitifully ignorant hands and nearly throwing it and my family away, there were times when I wished Bill would "play the man."  Maybe he should have. I do not know what would have happened had he gone "gladiator" in the situation.  What I understand now is that Bill was clinging desperately to the side of a sinking ship, praying for mercy from a God who alone had the power to right it.  Daily, my husband walked alone with God during his lunch break. Touching me was like grasping a dead, withered stick that looks alive until, with the slightest pressure, it disintegrates into brittle, dusty pieces.  Bringing life-sap back to me was beyond my man's ability. Only God knew how.

Before the onslaught of cataracting anguish in 1985, my heart was overtaken by my God and my husband.  I was desperately in love with both.  Imagining I could feel such cavernous estrangement from them was impossible.  I would never change!  Like Peter, I would swear to stay the course!  Then life sabotaged my journey with a brutal assault, leaving me near death, struggling for breath, bruised and quaking.  Blocking my way now was a mountain of pain, doubt, fear and loss.  I could not see around it or over it.  Moving past it was too great a task; so much to contemplate that my wounded spirit wished to die rather than even attempt the feat.  Shame put its icey fingers around my shoulders and bowed my head, whispering that I had created the mountain somehow and would never conquer its height.  Stripped of forward motion, I seemed for years to roam zombie-like in circles doing what I had always done before but with a fractured heart and a perplexity of spirit that I could not even articulate.  I did not know what God was doing - could not see that He is good.  Already winded from the first collapse of faith, I stood near the rubble mountain and beat my breast as I watched my friends struggle against death and lose.  So, in my running from the unconquerable ascent before me, I ran also from Bill.  How could he possibly understand and fix what I had not even begun to comprehend myself?

"Please bring her back to You, Father," was the heartcry of my husband.  Not "bring her back to me," for in returning to the Father, I would surely find again my love for Bill.  They were intrinsically bound together.  The day I told him I no longer loved him, he sank down into the deepness of the white overstuffed couch in which he was sitting and deflated. "I don't know what to do, Kay. I can only pray." Swallowing hard, he said, "I would go to hell for you -to know you loved God again."  Hell. Forever.  I heard what he said, but the extravagant and ferocious love behind those words did not permeate my heart until I had very nearly thrown Bill into Hades.

Like a man with an incurable disease who puts on a happy face for friends and family, Bill rarely revealed his deep concern for our marriage.  Walking in faith is quite courageous.  There is no falling down and playing dead on the battlefield of trust.  One afternoon Marlana came over to pray with and encourage me.  My plea was for an authentic relationship with Christ-wanted to know Him as He knows me.  Otherwise, it was just a religious exercise that could not change me, much less save me from the mess I had made. I was sincerely not trying to be difficult; I wanted God to reveal Himself to me in my situation.  If I were to get over the mountain, it was not going to be on my own power.  But, difficult, I was!  That day particularly.  Before leaving, Marlana found Bill, who had just come home from work, up in our bedroom near the bathroom sink. I followed her at a distance and walked in just as Bill took a sobbing breath and put his head heavily down onto Marlana's shoulder for support.  He did not cry - he merely collapsed for a moment.  Took refuge in a trusted friend. I tiptoed away, understanding his grief, but unable to assuage it all alone.

From the hotel room where Marlana prayed the night away with me, I went directly to Bill's office.  He had no idea where I had gone the day before - where I had spent the night.  Hope was shining a very tiny ray of expectation in my fresh-washed soul, exposing a longlost love buried deeply in the detritus of shame and loss.  The beginnings of warmth - a remembrance of the joy of touching and being touched by my God and my man.  Just a thought, really, that it might be possible to get to the other side and run free again.  My fingers worked the numbers on my cell phone, calling Bill out into the parking lot, with hope. Nothing more.

Reticently, Bill walked toward me, wondering at my disheveled appearance and swollen eyes.  I took his large familiar hands in mine. "I hope we can start over.  I know I have a long way to go."

Tears sparkled in my man's eyes and he grabbed me, kissed me and held me tightly.  "I have prayed so hard for this moment." Into my ear he said, "Yes. Yes, we can start over."

With all my heart I wish I could say from that day forward we took up where we had left off in 1985. But, I had so much work to do.  For months I read the Bible, profoundly wise books by great Christian authors, and lay on my floor face to the carpet sobbing sin, doubt and fear into its threads.  It would seem I made progress up the mountain and then I would slide all the way down again.  Hope coaxed me back up onto my feet and I would will myself to try once more.  It was during this time I found Micah 7:8-9 in my Bible.  "Enemy, do not laugh at me. I have fallen, but I will get up again.  I sit in the shadow of trouble now, but the Lord will be a light for me.  I sinned against the Lord, so He was angry with me, but He will defend my case in court.  He will bring about what is right for me.  Then He will bring me out into the light, and I will see Him set things right."  This became my life verse. Over and over, hour after hour, I would quote it...begin to believe it.

Bill did not hover over me expecting me to change immediately. There were no daily quizzes about my feelings for him or God.  I was only capable of crawling toward the mountain and touching the edges of its base.  No running jumps to scale it full on. Surprising emotions would grip me at the most inappropriate times...dinner with the family, a play, during my daily workout...and I would be immobilized.  Had Bill expected warmth and wholeness from me immediately, I would have been too overwhelmed, I think, to live.

During those months of prostrating myself, God did make Himself real to me, giving me guidance from the Bible that was nothing short of stunning.  Especially these verses from Zechariah 4.  "This is the Word of the Lord...'You will not succeed by your own strength or power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord All-Powerful.
Who are you, big mountain? ...you will become flat, and Zerubbabel will bring out the topmost stone, shouting, 'It's beautiful! It's beautiful!'"  Then the Lord spoke His word again: " The people should not think that small beginnings are unimportant."  This after I had expressed to God that I thought I would never get up the mountain looming before me. It was taking too long and my efforts often counterproductive. After reading these verses I felt a  deep assurance that I would, like Zerubbabel, either see the mountain flattened or persevere to its top and find that "It is beautiful!"

Bill had a yearly trip to Las Vegas with his company and I usually drove to meet him there.  Hearing from God again seemed virtually a new thing, though entombed and slowly resurrecting were the prayers I used to pray and Bible verses I had memorized dancing around the edges of their grave. Whispers of rebirth that excited me for no small reason.  God must still love me.  Bill did. No small miracles.  All I could talk about was what was going on within me - imperfectly manifesting, but churning and deliberating even in my sleep.At the Mon Ami Gabi restaurant in the Paris hotel on the Strip, Bill listened to me for endless hours as I tried to synthesize my spiritual journey.  Never once did he say, "I already knew that" or "This can't be new to you, Kay.  You used to teach all of this."  No. He listened while I gushed clean water for dirty.  Somehow he loved me enough to hear me without judgment.

Bill was my protector in the battle for my life.  That is what William means, protector.  In war, real men stand, uncowering, and trust their leader, faithfully following orders. They are the kind of men to which other warriors entrust their mothers. I know God loves me. But I will ever be convinced God saved our home because He loves my husband.

Bill.