Spiritual Honey: Restoring the Spirit

By Ray Minjarez and Mary Ann Minjarez

Spiritual HoneyRestoring the Spirit follows the lives of Ray and Mary Ann Minjarez from childhood sweethearts through forty years of marriage. Their love story takes them through the devastation of sin that comes close to destroying their marriage and their lives. You will walk with Mary Ann and Ray separately as they each tell their story, touching every human emotion. You will see how Jesus showed up and saved them just in time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449738433

Ray Minjarez

Ray and Mary Ann live in Leander, Texas, where they celebrate each day as a gift from God. They have three married children and six grandchildren. Michele, Michael, Lori, Wes, Chris, Jennifer, Nicole, Joshua, Emma, Caleb, Landon, and Maddie all share in the celebration of Jesus and His perfect restoration. We pray that Spiritual HoneyRestoring the Spirit will bless you and cause you to seek His presence in your life. It is never too late. His promises are for all.

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Copyright © 2012 Ray and Mary Ann Minjarez.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-3842-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3841-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3843-3 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012901270

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/21/2012

"If we receive the witness of men,

the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God, which he hath testified of his Son"

(1 John 5:9).

This book is dedicated to the glory of God’s power working in our lives. It is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are able to recount the moments in our lives that brought us great happiness and great sadness. It is only for His glory that we now open our hearts and share with others the story of our married life together. We pray that every person who reads our story won’t reflect on the sins committed but rather on the restored lives God has given us. Restoration is available to all. This is His promise.

To our children, their spouses, our grandchildren, and the seed still to come:

Please know that we love you each dearly. With purpose, God picked you to be a part of our lives and legacy. Turn to Him in all things, knowing that God is your Father, Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God, and the Holy Spirit was sent to be our comforter. Dwell with Him and listen to Him, knowing that He will always reveal His glory in your lives. We are witnesses to that truth.

Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen (Jude 24-25).

Contents

Part 1 

Part 1 

Part 2 

Part 2 

Part 3 

Part 3 

Restoring the Spirit

Restoring the Spirit

Part 1 

Mary Ann

I don’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love Ray.

It was a typical day in the southwest—hot and windy. It was the summer of 1958, and the morning hours were cool enough to venture outside to play in, making room for Mom to do her usual Saturday morning cleaning routine.

Our half of the duplex sat on the corner of the street. It was an old adobe structure with two bedrooms and one bathroom. A small kitchen and living room were combined to give us a little family space to move around in. I shared one of the bedrooms with my older brother, Doug, and my older sister, Cheryl. I was five; Cheryl was seven; and Doug was nine. Of course, my space in the bedroom was a single bed, which sat along the wall under a window. Doug and Cheryl had the fun one—the bunk bed. Doug slept on the top bunk, and Cheryl slept on the bottom bunk. We didn’t know how small the space was for three kids, nor did we care. It was home, and Dad and Mom were just steps away in the next bedroom.

On this day, Doug, Cheryl, and I were sent outside to play so that Mom could mop the floors. Doug was riding his bike up and down the dirt street, kicking up the dust every time he hit his brakes. The boys riding with Doug had pulled out some playing cards and attached them to their spokes with some of Mom’s clothespins. They made the best sound when they rode their bikes up and down the road, almost like a motor on a motorcycle. Cheryl and I were playing with our paper dolls under one of the only trees in our front yard. The wind picked up one of the small paper hats we’d made and blew it down the street. We ran out onto the road to retrieve it, but the boys saw us and came riding full speed to see how close they could get to hitting us. We screamed, Stop it! at Doug as we quickly retreated back under the tree.

There were some other children playing in the street just a half a block away. They were kicking a can around as if it were a ball as they screamed and laughed. We didn’t know what they were saying because they spoke in a language we didn’t understand, but it was one that we had heard often since we had moved to Anthony, Texas. The can they were kicking around was coming toward the intersection of our dirt street. One of the boys was laughing as he kicked the can away from the other children. They couldn’t catch him, and he was coming closer and closer to our sanctuary under the tree. He ran right up to the fence surrounding our duplex. I stood up and walked to the fence, holding my favorite paper doll. He stopped at the fence and just stared at me. Only the fence separated us. We said nothing; only a brief smile was exchanged, but the face of that boy would be a part of my memory forever.

For the first four years of my life, Indiana was my home. For two years after that, home was Texas and then we moved to Minnesota. Each family move was dictated by my dad’s job.

Seven years in Askov, Minnesota, was long enough for my parents, but Doug, Cheryl, and I loved living on a farm with the chickens and cows and a horse named Happy. We also loved the snowy winters. I even saw Santa Claus from my bedroom window one Christmas! He was on his sled being pulled by the reindeer and was circling our large, two-story farmhouse. That was a great Christmas. Santa brought me a set of skis; Doug got a sled; and Cheryl got a red saucer. The red saucer always beat the sled down the hills, and then I came last on my skis. There was plenty of space for the three of us to spend long hours dreaming our dreams and playing with our friends.

While we lived in Askov, my twin brothers, Darryl and David, were born. Doug, Cheryl, and I had been the only three children for many years, so the twins’ arrival changed everything for us. To make sure we helped with the busy needs of new babies, Mom assigned a twin to Cheryl and a twin to me. Darryl was my baby and David was Cheryl’s. We bathed them, changed their diapers, fed them, and loved on them as if they were our very own baby dolls. I was ten years old when they were born.

My dad worked for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and was offered a promotion, so we had to leave Minnesota. Back to Texas was the message Dad and Mom gave us one night over dinner. We tried to negotiate another summer of Bible school camp at Lake Grindstone, but Dad had already been given a start date. We were moving back to Anthony, Texas, as soon as school ended.

I didn’t care that we were moving, but I’d really wanted another chance to go to the camp. I’d made new friends the previous summer, and I’d had plans to see them again. The memories of hearing the ringing bell at 5:00 a.m., jumping out of my bunk, putting on my swimsuit, and running down to the lake for an early morning dip were things I thought about often. The screaming coming from the lake as we sprang up from the first jump was intense. It was followed by laughter while we treaded water with blue lips, waiting for the second bell to ring. The second bell was a signal to get out of the water and run back to our dorms. We were to dress for the day and meet under the flagpole to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and then our morning prayer. Only then were we dismissed to run to the building where breakfast was served. Those days were filled with adventures in the woods and on the lake. It was great fun.

In the evenings, we would have a prayer service, and a pastor would come to talk to us about Jesus. I don’t remember anything that was said during those talks, but I remember the last night at vacation Bible school: All the parents were invited to join us for a church service. Both my parents and Doug and Cheryl came to the service, and they sat on the right side of the church, about halfway up the pews. I was sitting with the girls from my dorm on the left side of the church. The pastor repeated what we had heard all week long: stories of Jesus helping people, healing people, and loving people. That evening though, there was something different coming from the pastor. He wanted us to make a decision—a decision, he said, which would change our lives. He asked us to give our hearts to Jesus, and if we were willing to do that, he said we were to get up out of our places on the pews and walk up to the front of the church to him.

I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time, but I do remember the walk up to the front of the church. As I walked to the front, I turned my face to my parents. They were both looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before. The smiles from them were etched in my memory as perhaps the happiest I’d ever seen. It is a picture that I would pull from my memory thirty years later. I was eleven years old that summer.

The move to Anthony was simple. Daddy rented a truck and loaded all our belongings into it. Doug and Cheryl accompanied him to make sure he stayed awake. My mother followed in our family station wagon with the rest of us, including our dog, Tabby. Tabby was a boxer. He was known to lie around on the floor and let my twin brothers roll all over him, pull his ears to peer inside, and lift his eyelids when he tried to nap. He was part of the family, even with the terrible smells that escaped from him at all the wrong times. That was the case many times during our trip. My mom always asked Tabby, Is that you, or do the twins need a diaper change?

He didn’t need words to reply: you could see the guilty look on his face. We all loved Tabby, and he spent many more years as part of our family.

There was no such thing as an air-conditioned car, at least not the type of air-conditioning we know today. There was some sort of contraption hanging on the passenger window in the front that produced cold air, but the dripping water inside the window was a constant nuisance. The rental truck had no air-conditioning, and the ride was difficult through the deserts of Texas.

We arrived in the small Texas town of Anthony at a house that was located on the prison property where my dad would work. It was a small, white house with two bedrooms upstairs and a small basement. Doug’s room was in the basement, Cheryl and I shared a bedroom, and my mom and dad, along with Darryl and David, shared the master bedroom. The house was made from stucco, and it was cool all year round. We settled in to live there until my parents could buy a house.

That September, Doug, Cheryl, and I started school. I was starting sixth grade, and what we had known in Minnesota was gone for sure. There were no tennis courts to ice over for ice-skating in the winter, and there were no green fields to look at through the windows of the school. It was hot, and only the desert landscaping was visible from all sides.

It was so different, and I didn’t know anyone. Finding friends had always been hard for me. I’d had a couple of girlfriends in Minnesota, but no one whom I really cried over when I left. The girls in Anthony had all grown up together, and it appeared there was no room for anyone new. I sat at my desk most days, feeling very much alone yet trying to fit in. The popular girls didn’t give me the time of day, and only one or two girls actually spoke to me, so for the most part I tried to sit next to them during lunch or stand by them in the playground.

Not long after the start of school, I was sitting at my desk and looking out the window into the hallway. Every two hours, different classrooms took a break and walked in single file to the water fountain, and to the bathroom if needed. On that day, the seventh-grade class was filing past the window and a boy looked in directly at me. Our eyes met and I smiled. He didn’t. He just kept walking. I wondered who he was. He had dark hair and was dressed very neatly. After that, I constantly remembered him looking at me, so I frequently looked for him. I searched him out in the mornings before school, in the cafeteria, on the playground, and after the bell rang to mark the end of the day.

It was on the playground, as I watched the seventh-grade boys throw a baseball around, that I first heard his name. Someone called out, Catch the ball, Ray.

With perfect reach and timing, the boy I’d been watching caught the baseball. His name is Ray. What a great name, I thought. Ray, Ray, Ray—how I loved to say his name! I said it over and over again, pretending we were having some important conversation.

The school days went by with all the silliness and seriousness of girls turning into young ladies. Our bodies were changing, and we were beginning to really care about what everyone else was wearing. There wasn’t much I could do about that. I wore what was handed down from my sister, Cheryl, and she wore what was handed down from a girl my parents were friends with back in Indiana. There wasn’t any choice. The only new clothes we had were our Easter outfits. My mom always managed to buy us matching dresses, gloves, hats, and shoes from Sears for that occasion. I am sure my parents gave up something in order to buy them, but every year, without fail, we had new outfits for Easter Sunday. I loved Easter.

Easter came and went, and I was in my final days of sixth grade. Some of the popular girls were getting together for an overnight pajama party. I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t invited. I’d heard some of them talking about me and that boy named Ray. They mentioned that he was a Mexican. I hadn’t noticed, nor did I know why that might matter. Somehow it made me feel guilty for reasons I didn’t understand. I hadn’t told my mom or dad about Ray. No one in my family knew there was a boy I looked for every day. It wasn’t a secret; it just didn’t come up at home.

I hated when summer finally came that year. I knew I wouldn’t see Ray for three months. My parents bought a house in town, which was only two blocks from the school. I spent the summer helping my mom with the twins, cleaning and setting up the new house.

September came and I was ready for seventh grade. Ray was in eighth grade, and it wasn’t until later in the first week that I saw him. I joined the seventh-and-eighth-grade choir, and we started to practice a few days after school began. Ray was there. I purposefully chose to stand close to him. When the song began, I sang as loud as I could so he would hear how beautiful my voice was. I knew I had a beautiful voice: music was in my family, and I loved to sing and play the piano.

I really enjoyed choir. As I stood next to Ray each day, I breathed in that wonderful smell that seemed to follow him. It was delicious. Sometimes when I ran to hug my dad in the morning, he had the same smell. I knew it was a sign. Later, I learned that it was the spray starch his mom used on his shirts—the same spray starch my mom used on Daddy’s work shirts.

One morning, while I was crossing the street to walk to school, I saw Ray driving a car! I couldn’t believe it. How could an eighth grader drive a car to school? He looked so grown-up and cool getting out of his car as his friends followed. I’d never seen anything so amazing. My Ray drove a car! I found out later that Ray only had a driver’s permit.

I followed him that day, purposefully trying to bump into him so I could say hi. I waited at lunch in the hallway for him to come in with his friends. There he was . . . I walked toward him and quickly said, Hi, Ray. He just smiled. Wow, that cool guy smiled at me! He had the best smile I’d ever seen.

He became the reason I fixed my hair and made sure I looked my best at school. Every day I planned to see him at some point, if only for a moment, so that he would remember who I was.

It was well into fall when a paper sign appeared on all the doors in the hallway announcing a holiday dance. The seventh and eighth graders are having a holiday dance! Oh my! It was going to be my chance to dress up and look beautiful. I sat at my school desk that day, dreaming of the moment Ray was going to cast his eyes on my great beauty. He would walk up to me and say, You are beautiful and I love you!

The dream was disrupted by the bell, but I remembered again later when I was alone. That way, I could dream what it would be like to dance with him, embraced by his arms, just like the beautiful dancers on The Lawrence Welk Show. Every chance I had, I’d dream it over and over, until the day finally arrived.

I wore my Christmas dress and shoes. The shoes hurt my feet and rubbed the back of my ankles red every time I wore them, but I was ready to take the blister, I would take the blood. I didn’t care because I was going to be beautiful. I entered the room that served as the cafeteria, gym, and choir practice room. The room was decorated with crepe paper ribbons hanging from the ceiling. There was a band made up of seventh and eighth graders, and they were called Rudolpho and the Bandits. They knew how to play three songs, and they played them over and over again. The girls started to dance together while the guys sat around watching. A couple of the girls had boyfriends they danced with, and the other boys finally joined the single girls on the floor. The lights were dim, with Christmas lights flickering around the doorway. I sat and waited. It seemed like hours.

And then there he was, standing in the doorway with his friends. He looked so cute! He was wearing a gray Beatles suit and so were his friends. They were all dressed alike! It didn’t matter to me—I was only looking at Ray. They walked into the dance room and headed toward the chairs directly across from where I was sitting. Quickly, I slid my feet into the painful Christmas shoes. I knew it was only a matter of time before Ray would walk over and ask me to dance. I waited . . . and I waited. Then I heard the band’s lead singer announce it was the last dance. The band was going to play the only slow song they knew one more time. I waited.

And then, to my surprise, Ray’s friend Ruben walked toward me and asked me to dance. I stood up and we began to dance. As we did, he carefully maneuvered over to where Ray was sitting. He stopped dancing, turned to Ray and said, Dance with her.

Without any hesitation, Ray stood up and walked toward me. He put his hand out and I took it, following him onto the dance floor. It was a dream come true. I was dancing with Ray and his arm felt so wonderful around my waist. My hand on his shoulder felt so right. We were holding hands, gently, while we barely moved to the music. Within seconds, the lights came on and the dance was over. Ray said thanks, turned, and walked out of the room with his friends. I don’t remember the walk home . . . or the fact that my feet were probably throbbing. That was my first dance, the first time I’d held hands with a boy. I thought, This must be love.

At the end of the school year, the seventh and eighth grade classes had a swim party. I was so excited because I knew Ray would be on the bus with