In a Blaze of Glory

By Mary L. Herbert

it is my hope my readers are left with a lasting impression of the extent to which Jesus is able to reach down into human demise and resuscitate those who have been deemed by society as the least, the last, the lost, the lame and the lonely. I was included among them and I thank Him for my rescue

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 11, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450088664

Mary L. Herbert

Mary L. Herbert is a native of central Connecticut and now resides in Providence, Rhode Island. Despite having dropped out of school at age 16, her determination led her to attain a GED diploma at 31. Her natural talent spurred her on to become an accomplished writer, poet, artist and Christian evangelist. This, her first full length book, is a collection of her memoirs written in appreciation of the awesome power of Jesus Christ to deliver us from childhood hurts that haunt us into adulthood. Herein, she shares her battles with overcoming childhood rape, heroin addiction, marital infidelity and a deadly diagnosis to achieve the goal of a purpose driven life. To God be the glory.

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Mary L. Herbert

Copyright © 2010 by Mary L. Herbert.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010905679

ISBN:   Hardcover              978-1-4500-8865-7

              Softcover               978-1-4500-8864-0

              E-book                  978-1-4500-8866-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

Sunrise

The Rivers Edge

Rocky Shoals

Rising Waters

Boat Named Bobby

Trolling The River

Island of Dis-Enchantment

Haverhill Rapids

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Providence Landing

Epilogue

In Memoriam

In Tribute

In Regret

This book is dedicated to

His glory,

—His Blazing Glory.

PREFACE

Anabasis House Interview, July 1977

Mary. Her name was Mary. Yet unlike many Marys, garden variety Marys such a name might suggest, even at the early end of her interview, she was leaving an indelible mark on my mind. Within this Mary’s eyes, nothing common or ordinary appeared to lie; no order, no hope, little tranquility.

Conceived as the middle child of nine, this Mary was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in early 1953, and grew up on a farm in its rural hinterlands. Many indications would point to a life destined to follow the serene and commonplace. Ironically, I speculated that her life could have proceeded with all the excitement of a snail race; the span of her years to be benchmarked by Roman Catholic confirmation, marriage to a local high school sweetheart, nine kids of her very own and latter day confinement to a local nursing home. Her funeral mass would be said by a parish priest who knew her rather well, one who had baptized 8 of her 9 progeny.

I suppose her life could have gone that way, but what shot at me out of those eyes told me otherwise; those eyes whispered across the table, loudly. A review of her life was being spun behind them, a saga from the backwoods, one that would tell too much about things that happened too early and lasted too long. During a few stolen moments, I got a grip on myself. I felt impelled to uncouple from the forces emanating from life behind those eyes that kept beckoning me to climb through the windows of her soul into that which lay behind. Yet clearly I resisted what lurked in hiding.

There! I straightened the creases of my pants as I stole a glimpse of her tall, thin frame. My eyes came to settle on her hair, straight and long. My gaze dropped slightly landing on her curtly defined mouth, so expressive as words seemed to cascade over her lips like a waterfall at the end of a placid lake. As if by design, the gentle breezes of her words softly coaxed my attention upwards, back to those eyes and to the mountains above, to those sculptured brows that cast hard shadows over her deep set lashes, eyebrows that danced in rhythm to the movement of her words.

So why did you choose my program?, I uttered with a feigned professional tone.

I heard you were doing something different here, her response, left eyebrow arched. I’m in a big mess, man. I can’t live like this anymore.

Oh, yes, the mess. I now dared to examine the mess. I listened and learned that behind those eyes laid a cesspool, the mess that had made this Mary a somebody, a somebody pushed out of a catch basin on to the side of the street. An otherwise nobody Mary, who could have enjoyed an otherwise placid life indistinguishable from the millions of other nobodies we see in droves at Grand Central Station or at the Mall of America, but became somebody by being belched into that mud puddle aside the curb.

She had become trapped in that slimy, fomenting morass called drug addiction, hooked on heroin, seasoned with armed robberies, possession of $10,000 worth of heroin with intent to distribute, a dead marriage, a dope sick lover and two very young children in tow; a boiling morass, superheated by adolescent incest, a rape, and two abortions. At twenty four, pain had infected this woman-child and its ague had filled her soul with a toxin waiting to harm anyone who got too close.

A gun. You used a gun to rob drug stores?

That part was easy. You stick a 9 millimeter in someone’s face they take you seriously. But I never put bullets in the clip though. I didn’t want to kill anyone. I just wanted to get high.

Her laughter, robust, throaty, real, drew me back into the room; my desk, walls, a ceiling.

Well, it’s been nice talking with you, I said putting on the stiff persona of a drug program director. I returned to my authority thing. You might get something out of the program if…. I rose from my chair.

If what?, she asked.

I pondered who sat before me. Maybe I didn’t want to tell her I felt she might be phony, wanting to come into the program in hopes of beating her charges. Another dope addict; they lie, they maneuver, they manipulate. Programs like mine are just a convenient cave in which to hide out until the heat blows over, a respite between the last high and a future fix. Perceptibly, she fell outside the profile of currently enrolled residents in the program. While I lauded her having shown determination to change just prior to this interview—she having recently kicked a flaming heroin habit cold turkey—it was a stretch for me to feel she was a fit for the program. She was too well mannered, too well put together in her speech, too smooth, too smart, too beautiful, too… , too… much for our newly instituted rehabilitation regimen.

. . . if you were to come with me now., testing her resolve. If you were to leave with me right now and follow me down the road to the residence… Come now or forget it.

I walked toward the door, reached for the knob, quickly turning it and began walking out. I felt she’d say no, forget it, just as do many of the junkies I’ve interviewed.

I’m right behind you dude, she said. I’m coming.

*     *     *

On that day, some more than 32 years ago, Mary crossed the threshold into Anabasis House Residential Drug Treatment Program, after which both our lives became inextricably bound. At that point in time, neither Mary nor I knew Jesus as Lord and savior. However in His perfection of time, our destinies would converge on a collision course with meeting the Master.

That day, as well, marked the turning point in the personal story of a woman whose life’s journey is about to be told in the pages that follow. Hers is a saga set in her overcoming the ravages of habitual childhood rape, in her victory over enslavement to drug addiction, and in her overcoming a host of setbacks and turmoil, to attain a pinnacle of peace and joy. It is foremost, however, an amazing chronicle delineating the awesome wonder working power of Jesus Christ to shape destiny.

Frank Lennon

December, 2009

FOREWORD

The eyes of a casual bookstore browser might glance upon this book cover and settle in on the quick conclusion that "In a Blaze of Glory" is a book about something or someone that crash landed somehow, somewhere in a fiery conflagration, somewhat. And why not form that opinion, in the wake of the seeming overabundance of tragedy embracing material found on today’s bookshelves. To the contrary, this is my story, memoirs of a woman born into the all American two parent family, raised on a farm with plenty of brothers, sisters and an emboldened rooster named Rosario.

What a great way to begin life. But as with so much in life, not all was to continue so smoothly. Evil arrived early on, rearing its ugly head; routinely raped by my father beginning at age 10, emancipated at age 13, married to a good looking underachiever at age 17 and addicted to heroin by age 18. I became salvaged from misery through a residential treatment program at age 24 only to find out the most intense part of my journey lay ahead. I’m now 57 and, Oh boy! what a lot happened in those intervening years.

Along my journey one stark insight has surfaced; pain cast the mold of my life. No work touching on a drug abuser’s life experience can sidestep or avoid deep set unresolved pain as a major causative agent. However, this personal history, my life story, embodies a life journey which while rooted in early childhood rape, it ascends to a tranquil resolve. A desired result of my shining a light on my life through writing this book has been that of wanting to hold my readers’ hand in mine, in celebrating the redeeming Blaze of Glory of Jesus Christ.

For He is like a refiner’s fire and the heat from His burning love lifted me up and out of the ravishes of a ramshackled life. My intended focus herein is on my climb out from under the cumulative weight of multiple tragedies, rather than focus on the ugliness of those tragedies.

Herein, I’ve drawn the analogy of my early life to the crossing of a dangerous river by boat in pursuit of getting to the promise land of meaningful adulthood. Like Moses in the Book of Exodus, his trek was but 40 miles, yet it took 40 years. A child’s journey to adulthood under typical circumstances is relatively a short one as well, let’s say 18 years, but for troubled youth the years can be considerably more, often a lifetime. A large share of my time on earth, has been spent crossing the river.

With certainty, any one of my painful encounters with tragedy, given the frail nature of my damaged ego, was a potential tripwire for causing me to stumble into irreversible drug dependency. Or to say it in terms of the river analogy, pain caused me to continually fall overboard into the river. Notwithstanding the potentials for serious damage to occur, such was miraculously averted. I failed to drown. For some reason