Hope, Healing & Heaven: How a Hopeless Mess Became a Message of Hope

By Julia Jourdan

Hope, Healing and Heaven is for everyone in search of hope. I have walked in your shoes. I’ve been mistreated, rejected, addicted, depressed and anxiety-ridden, hopeless and grief-stricken. But that is not where this story ends. My journey out of the pit of hopelessness is outlined in these pages as I discover the truth that whatever the present circumstances, hope still remains. Hope that is not just wishful thinking, but hope that comes with the certainty of an expected conclusion. The key is to understand that this present and short life is only the first act on the stage of eternity - just the opening scene in an infinite drama where the second, final, and never-ending act is spectacularly better than the first. So take heart - even the worst of situations can be overcome with hope and healing and the certain expectation of Heaven.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664215092

Julia Jourdan

Julia Jourdan is a first-time author and stay-at-home Mom who resides in beautiful rural New England. She is married and has three children in Heaven, two adult children on earth, and is looking forward to adopting a few more. Julia’s life story as contained in these pages begins in hopelessness, includes loss, deep disappointment and tragedy, but concludes with her testimony to the power of the overcoming, amazing mercy and grace of God. Hope, Healing & Heaven is the account of her journey out of despair and into overwhelming hope.

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Chapter 1

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In the beginning

E ven as a child I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God exists, and that Jesus is God. The problem was that I saw God as a mean, iron-fisted, unknowable, humorless Universe-ruler. I pictured Him observing me with His arms folded, detached, from some distant nebulous world where He was constantly searching for an excuse to destroy me.

I also believed that in order to be a Christian and go to Heaven, I would have to be exactly like my father and adhere to a very strict and oppressive set of rules. In other words, I would have to live a very strange and miserable life, which was not something that I was willing to do.

My jaundiced-eye view of God was developed as the result of my experiences growing up in my parents’ home. It has been said that a person tends to see God, their Heavenly Father, from the same lens through which they view their earthly father. In my case that was absolutely true. But mercifully, over the years and through many circumstances, God revealed the true picture of Him as a loving, merciful and healing good Father. As the result, I now have a very different relationship with God and consequently, with my parents as well.

In retrospect, and with the 20/20 hindsight that brings, I realize that my earthly father suffered from a deficit of the self-awareness that is needed to be a good father, husband and follower of God. The experiences of my early life shaped my view of God and caused many wounds to my soul. But, by the grace and mercy of God, I am no longer bound by the wounds of the past, and instead I have found hope and healing and the expectation of an amazing future. I believe and pray that while reading this account of my life story, you will also find understanding and insight, healing for the wounds that have been inflicted upon your soul, and the certain expectation of mercy and hope for you and your family’s future as you read it.

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I am the oldest of three children born to my parents, Jacob and Linda. My brother, Josh, is two years younger than me, and my sister, Jae, is seven years younger. We lived in a tiny three-bedroom, one bath home in a fifties-style suburb of identical homes in NJ.

Life revolved around our church and growing up there could and should have been a wonderful experience, but my father turned it into just the opposite. Our family was completely under the control of my father who unfortunately had a terribly distorted understanding of God.

My mother has told me the story of one of the first notable incidents of my childhood, but I have no personal recollection of it. When I was about 18 months old, my parents and I were staying in my grandparents’ home while waiting to move into our own house. My father was supposed to be taking care of me while everyone else was out, but my mother returned to find me in the bathroom standing in the toilet while my father was in the living room. Instead of seeing this as a stunning lack of responsibility on my father’s part, my mother actually thought it was funny. Worse, knowing what I now know about my father, I’m pretty sure that he actually put me in the toilet. It is a very telling illustration of the level of care and concern that my father had for me.

I was an extremely compliant, soft-hearted child who had no interest in causing any kind of trouble. I did not require discipline to keep me on the straight and narrow because I was a people pleaser from the beginning. My brother was a completely different story and would do whatever he thought he could get away with. Two very different personalities, yet my father treated us as if we were exactly the same. When my sister came along years later, she got a bit of a break from the strictness of my father but she had her own set of disturbing issues with him.

Any small infraction of my father’s set of rules was met with blunt force. His parenting style was strict discipline without love, communication or explanation. We were never spoken to by my father other than to be criticized, and were told that children were to be seen and not heard. We were never given affection, advice or instruction, which I now realize was because he couldn’t share what he himself did not have. But that does not excuse him from being responsible to make his best attempt to learn how to be a good father, husband and person.

I remember as a young child being very attached to my mother and terrified that something might happen to her. Even though she never told me that she loved me or gave me any kind of affection, I always knew that she cared for me and never treated me unkindly. The only time she ever left the house alone was on Thursday nights to go to choir practice. There was a very small bridge between our house and the church and I would worry the entire time while she was gone that the bridge might collapse as she drove over it. I was always so relieved when she arrived home safely because that meant that for at least one more week I didn’t have to learn how to survive with my father as my only parent.

One night while my mother was at choir practice my father decided to teach me how to tie my shoes, but then suddenly decided that I wasn’t paying attention. I feebly tried to argue that I really was listening but he didn’t care and sent me, crying, to my room. I tied my shoes to prove that I really had been paying attention and then went back to the living room to show him. He just mumbled something and told me to get back in my room. He never apologized or said good job. He was a very cold person, completely lacking any feelings of sympathy or empathy.

Brian, a kid that lived across the street, and I decided that we were going to walk to my church one day when I was probably around five years old. I didn’t do it out of disobedience – I had no idea that I was doing something stupid. We just randomly came up with the idea and decided to do it. When my mother realized that I was missing, she called my grandmother to try to find us since my mother didn’t have a car. My grandmother picked us up just beyond the little bridge on the way to church and we were quickly delivered safely back home.

I don’t remember my mother saying much, but when my father got home, I got the belt. Being beaten crushed my spirit. It certainly stopped me from ever thinking about walking to church again, but looking me in the eye and telling me why it was a bad idea would have worked much better. I might have even felt that he cared about me. Being beaten left me feeling even more misunderstood, humiliated, uncared for, and physically and emotionally damaged.

Sometime later Brian put me in a garbage can in his back yard, turned it (and me) upside down and left me there. I don’t know for how long, or who eventually rescued me, but I remember not even trying to yell for help because I always felt like I just had to accept whatever was done to me.

When I was in first grade and just learning to read, I was given a vocabulary list to learn. My father made me to go over it so many times that I can still recite it to this day.

That was also the year that Mr. Gates was the teacher in charge of overseeing indoor recess at school. He was an angry, over-the-top disciplinarian who nearly every day grabbed some child by the collar or the back of their pants and slammed them against the wall. That was the punishment for speaking when we were supposed to be quiet.

I was so upset by it that I was sick to my stomach every morning for fear that Mr. Gates might decide to slam me against the wall. I started asking to go to the nurse because I felt so sick. She actually took me home a few times until she confronted me in front of my mother and asked if something was happening to make me feel sick. I was forced to admit that I was terrified of what was going to happen during recess. I was no longer allowed to go to the nurses’ office after that.

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Over the years growing up in my home, it became clear that the rules for being a good follower of God consisted of a long list of no’s. There could be no playing of cards (leads to gambling), no going to movies (the money goes to people who are anti-God and the price of the ticket provides them with the money to make more anti-God movies), no dancing (leads to things even worse than dancing), no wearing of two-piece bathing suits (immoral) no chocolate (can’t even imagine what was wrong with it), no pillows to rest your head on (bad for your neck), no going to a restaurant that served alcohol (you could become an alcoholic) and most importantly no participation in any type of fun (I’m guessing on this one – fun might take your mind off of the seriousness of life). If at any time it appeared to my father that we were having fun, the atmosphere had to be quickly brought under control by launching into a monotone lecture about the perilous times we were living in.

On the other hand, there was also one must do in my father’s system of belief which was church attendance. We were literally there every time the doors were open, and even sometimes when they weren’t – like the time there was a heavy snow storm. We already had a few inches of snow and it was still coming down one Sunday evening. We had of course already been there for the morning service, but we still had to drive to church so that my father could prove that our family was completely committed to being there. The Pastor was the only other person present that night because he actually lived in an apartment in the back of the church – no driving in the snow required.

My father never heard a conspiracy theory that he didn’t love. The topic of Our lives are going to be nothing but misery because the communists are about to take over the country was usually brought up at holiday get-togethers and any other time he possibly could. He just couldn’t resist ruining any kind of a good time. My father would warn us in his monotone lecturing voice that we should always be aware that evil would soon be overtaking our country, at which time we, as Christians, would be horribly persecuted. He told us that our family was particularly at risk because he was known to speak out against them. Whenever we saw two cars pulled off to the side of a road he would comment That’s how communists meet. We were told that we would have to hide in the woods to save our lives, living off the provisions we had managed to stockpile while waiting for the persecution to be unleashed. It felt all the more real and imminent when I realized that my mother was storing canned food in the basement in anticipation of the horrors to come.

One summer night we had the worst lightning storm I can ever remember experiencing. There was almost constant lightning and thunder and I was terrified. All of us ended up in the kitchen because there was no way to sleep through a storm like that. So of course that’s when my father decided we needed to hear more about the end times – while we were all interested he said. Of course the truth was that none of us wanted to hear it.

No one ever dared to confront my father that his thought processes might be flawed. So, being a child and knowing nothing different, I accepted what he said as truth. Since I was certain that I wouldn’t survive long in the woods, I told my friends that I wasn’t going to live much into my 20’s and thereby turned into the really strange person I was so afraid of becoming - without even having to be a Christian.

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As a child I always felt that I was the one who never fit in. Not with my family, friends, in school or in church. I was painfully shy and found it difficult to even say hello to someone that I didn’t know well. My family attended a church that no one else in my neighborhood or school went to, and I thought that it was a very weird place.

There was a period of time when my father used to make us go to bed in the summer before the sun went down. I could hear all my friends outside laughing and having fun at my friend Nancy’s house, whose yard backed up to ours. Of course I couldn’t sleep, but it didn’t matter, we still had to be in bed.

My family also never had the money for any extras in life. I always had things that I felt were not as nice as what my friends had. When my friends got Barbie cases for their dolls, I was so disappointed when I was given one with a picture of the inferior Midge on it (lol). Every year I had exactly five outfits to wear to school, but my friends had many more. One year one of my five dresses was sewn so crookedly that even I realized there was something terribly wrong. My clothes came from discount retail stores like Two Guys and Kresge’s but my friends’ clothes came from the upscale Department stores like Steinbach’s.

One year there was a particular sweater that everyone HAD to have. My friends already had theirs, but I had to wait until they went on a big sale. Of course by that time only the ugly colors were left, so I ended up with the right sweater but in the horribly wrong color of big bird yellow.

Then there was the year that all my friends were given nice bikes for Christmas. I also got a bike, but it was not like theirs. Mine was small and had fat tires, unlike the rest of my friends who all got the cool normal-sized bikes with narrow tires. Looking back now of course I realize that this was all so trivial, but at the time I felt it was just another confirmation that I really didn’t fit in.

We lived a short drive from the ocean, and all of my friends from the neighborhood went to the beach in the summer. My family was the only one that never went to the beach (I’m sure because it was too expensive). I was often the only kid at home in the neighborhood during the summer months unless one of the other Moms was kind enough to take me with them. My brother would either get invited to go somewhere with a friend or he would hike through the woods all day. When I was the only one left at home, my mother rarely tried to get me engaged in doing something or even talked to me. I was told that I was not allowed in the house so I would just sit outside on the steps or on the curb all alone. Sadly, I never learned to put that time to good use by engaging my imagination. I’m sure that my mother, just like my father, had no life experience to draw from to understand how to be a good parent. They provided the bare basics of shelter, food and clothing, but there was no instruction, no healthy interaction and no affection. I have no recollection of ever getting a hug or being told that they loved me. The only things we had in abundance were church, awkwardness, and cold harsh discipline.

Occasionally a friend’s parents would invite me to go out to dinner with them. My parents never once let me go because I was told that since they couldn’t afford to return the favor, it was better that I just didn’t go in the first place.

I was also not allowed to attend most of my friends’ birthday parties because they usually went to a movie. Disney or not, they were movies and were strictly forbidden. And to add to the problem, they would usually go to a restaurant afterwards where I was also not allowed to go because there might be a bar in that restaurant.

We did not have a television when I was in middle school because the old one broke and we couldn’t afford another one. When I was in sixth grade, my teacher assigned watching The Adventures of Jacques Cousteau program which we would then discuss in class. I was far too embarrassed to speak up and admit to my teacher that I didn’t have a television to watch, so I went to my friend Nancy’s house every Thursday night and asked her family to let me watch it. Thinking back on it now, I’m amazed that I was even able to work up the nerve to ask a friend to let me watch a tv program at their house so I could do my homework.

With no tv to watch, I ended up becoming a voracious reader. A bookmobile came to my neighborhood every other week and I would check out the maximum number of books allowed each time. Instead of playing outside during recess at school, I read books. I would read late at night by the light of a flashlight because books were my only escape from the hopelessness of real life.

When I borrowed a book that my mother deemed inappropriate, instead of talking to me about it, she just took it from my room and kept it in her closet until the day that I could return it. Without saying a word, she managed to make me feel terrible and ashamed that I had made such a bad choice.

I once made the comment that my father and I had something in common because we both liked to read. He replied No, because you only read garbage. My father had no idea how to carry on a conversation. I was never spoken with, only spoken to. There was no give and take, no back and forth. There was just a statement by him to which I was not allowed to respond.

I used to love reading The Adventures of Nancy Drew which I borrowed from a friend who owned the whole series. But one day I accidentally got some gum stuck on the back of one of the books. My mother was so upset with me that I had ruined someone else’s property (the gum took about a quarter-sized piece off of the back cover) that I felt like a criminal. I felt terrible that I had done something so awful, and my mother would not allow me to borrow any more of the series after that.

Another really awful thing I did was to go with my next door neighbor to their church bazaar. My mother for some unknown reason allowed me to go, but when I got home she told me what a horrible thing it was to sell things in church. Jesus had run the money changers out of church and she let me know what a bad thing it was for me to have been there. I was again horrified at what I had done. After her lecture on the evils of church bazaars, she left me alone crying in my room so I could really focus on my mistake.

I once asked permission to go next door to keep my friend Nancy company while she was babysitting. The only thing my father would say was It’s not necessary. That was the only reason I was given, and no discussion was allowed. I was so upset that I remember not even knowing what to do with myself. I was not allowed to argue, not allowed to express anger or frustration, and not allowed to leave the house. I was beside myself with the level of hatred and rage I felt for my father and I thought I was going to lose my mind. Even though I felt like I was about to explode, I had no choice but to shut everything down and just go sit in my room and sob quietly enough that they couldn’t hear me.

I was in Jr. High when I went on a class trip to the U.N. We were returned to the school just as the buses were leaving, and I missed the bus. My father had been at the school to pick me up but he just assumed that I was on the bus, so he left. I called my mother from the school office and told her what happened. My father wasn’t home but my mother told me to just stay there and wait for him. A teacher stayed with me for a while and offered to take me home, but I had been taught to never ask anyone for anything so I couldn’t bring myself to accept a ride. The teacher stayed as long as she could and then reluctantly left me standing there. By the time I finally decided I had to walk home, the school was closed, I was the only one left and it was dark outside and extremely cold. I had a dress on and only a short coat, so I was freezing. As I walked along the side of the highway, some guy pulled his car over and offered me a ride but I refused (probably a good choice). I walked to a store and called my parents collect from a pay phone. Of course, my father insisted that I was the one at fault. My parents called the police when my father had finally shown up only to find that I wasn’t there, and they were angry with me for making them call the police. Once again, I was stuck in a situation where I was made to feel that I had done something horribly wrong. I deeply resented my father’s dismissive and uncaring treatment. Inside I was boiling over with hurt and anger, but outside I remained obedient to the unspoken rule in the family to never show any emotion.

All this time I remained a submissive and soft-hearted child who never choose to be willingly disobedient, and yet I kept finding myself in situations where I was being told that I had done things wrong, which frustrated me beyond words. My father always made a big deal about how we had to do what the Bible teaches. Now that I am grown, I find it very interesting to learn that the Bible actually teaches that fathers should not frustrate their children. In Col. 3:21 (NLT) it says Fathers, don’t aggravate your children. If you do, they will become discouraged and quit trying. And then in Eph. 6:4 (NLT) it says, And now a word to you fathers. Don’t make your children angry by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction approved by the Lord. These were just a couple of the many passages that he chose to ignore.

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I had never seen my father give my mother gifts of any kind. Not for Christmas, their anniversary, or for her birthday. It always made me sad on Christmas that she had nothing to open. And it was especially hard when we would go to my grandparent’s house on Christmas afternoon. One of my uncles had always given my aunt a dress or something nice that he had put a lot of thought into. They would show everyone what he bought her and he would tell an amusing story of what happened while he was shopping for it. My mother would sit there with nothing to say about the gift that she didn’t receive, always managing to keep a smile pasted on her face, trying to pretend that it didn’t bother her.

But then one year, my mother’s birthday was coming up and my father started telling her that he bought her a birthday present – the first one ever, that I was aware of. He kept talking about it and built it up like it was going to be a big deal. On her birthday, after she made dinner, he handed her something in a paper bag. He didn’t even bother to wrap it. I could see her face drop when she opened it and saw that it was just a cheap plastic bottle of bubble bath – and she never even took baths. He started to laugh and said You thought it was something good, didn’t you? I wanted to cry when I saw the disappointment written all over her face. My mother’s birthday was shortly before Christmas, but again, as usual, there was no present for Christmas.

One night my mother had gone to a lot of trouble to make a nice pot roast dinner. As she was putting the last item on the table, a glass bottle of milk, she accidentally hit it on something and the bottle broke all over the food. The entire dinner had to be thrown away and of course my mother was upset. But instead of helping to clean it up, my father just sat in the living room and told us that he was the King of the house, so he didn’t have to help. I could just feel my mother’s seething frustration, but she never said a word.

There were only a few ways that my mother felt that she was allowed to vent the overwhelming frustration and anger in her life. She would bang pots and pans together while pretending to just be putting them away, but we all got the message (except probably my father) that she was angry. I also realized much later that she had refused to make her bed for years, and during that time she always wore a shredded nightgown that was no more than a tattered rag. Now I understand that she was not only terribly depressed, but she was also sending my father a message that I’m sure he never picked up on.

One day I found a letter written by my mother in her jewelry box. She wrote about how desperately unhappy she had been and that she had often considered leaving. She had written the letter so that it would be found if she ever got up the nerve to actually go through with it. I was extremely upset by it but there was absolutely nothing I could do to make the situation better so I never told my mother that I had seen it.

This is what the Bible says about how husbands should actually treat their wives: Eph. 5:25 (NLT) You husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her…husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife. No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church. Another good example of my father just flat out ignoring the part that he doesn’t like hearing.

My father used to read a chapter of the Bible at the dinner table every night. Unfortunately, he chose to read after all the food was put on the table, but before we were allowed to eat. We all sat there staring at our food that was getting cold as he droned on, making sure to read an entire chapter. I absorbed none of it because I was too busy focusing on being frustrated by him. I can assure you that it did nothing to make me want to read the Bible or know anything about it. It was just another thing that made me see Christians as being terribly strange and something that I had no desire to be. My father also used the dinner table as the time to discipline my brother by hitting him in the head with a fork whenever he broke some household rule of behavior.

The Sunday newspaper was another hang-up of my father’s. In his position as King of the household, he felt that he was entitled to read every section of the newspaper before anyone else could. As he finished each section we were allowed to read only that part. So as he was reading the first section, we were not allowed to read the comics or entertainment. We had to wait until the King was finished before his subjects, the child peasants, could read it.

Then, for some unknown reason, my father started playing records at night when I was a teenager. The house was so small that there was no way to escape hearing all of his favorite Eddie Arnold songs – pretty much all of which were about death and dying and heading off to the blue horizon where the mountains meet the sky. Nearly every one of them was horribly depressing and upsetting to me.

Another of his favorites was eerie Hawaiian music which I also found terribly disturbing. I would close the door and hold pillows over my head in a futile attempt to block it out (we were allowed to HAVE pillows, we just had to put them under the bed at night so we couldn’t use them for sleeping and thereby injure our necks). Unfortunately, pillows don’t work all that well as sound barriers either.

But conversely, if we had company, my father refused to allow any music to be played or the sound on the tv (when we eventually had one) to be turned on. Everyone would have to watch the football game or tv show with no sound which only served to magnify the awkward atmosphere of our home. I have no idea what his reasoning behind it was, and we all hated it, but no one ever dared to ask him to turn up the volume.

My father used to say that children should be seen and not heard. Now that I am an adult, I find that rather ironic because I eventually became convinced that I was invisible, believing I was neither seen nor heard. I began to think that I was invisible mostly because I was, for the most part, ignored. My thoughts or feelings were almost never taken into consideration. I remember calling my mother from the mall once and begging her to talk my father into letting me buy a two-piece bathing suit. I give her credit because at least she tried – but he shut down all discussion with just one word No. I also remember asking to listen to a song that came on the radio while we were in the car (on the way home from church, of course). Instead of bothering to answer me, or just letting me listen to it, without a word my father pressed the button and changed the station. He obviously didn’t see or hear me – so apparently, I was invisible.

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One positive thing that my parents did for me was to buy a piano. I had always wanted to learn how to play so I was beyond thrilled. I know that it must have been very difficult to pay for, but they managed to do it, and then also paid for me to take lessons. I have to give them credit for that. But then there was the time that my father took me for my piano lesson and instead of taking me directly home, he pulled over into a parking lot. He handed me a stack of porn and said Someone has to teach you about sex. I handed back the pictures and said that I learned about it in school. Thankfully he didn’t argue and took me home. He was a very twisted man.

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I never witnessed anyone in my family trying to contradict anything my father did or said. The one time I tried to argue a point with him he just laughed in a very condescending way, like I was incredibly stupid. As an already psychologically weak and unsupported child, I never tried that again.

Another disturbing thing sometimes happened at our family get-togethers. My father would find some reason that he thought my brother needed to be physically punished, and he would take him into the house and hit him while the whole family was outside and could hear my brother crying and yelling. As far as I know, no one ever confronted my father about this or took him aside and told him to stop. Everyone pretended that nothing was happening, but I knew it and hated it.

My father informed me that he would tell me what to think – I was not allowed to make up my own mind about anything. The result was that I learned to have no faith whatsoever in my own judgements, and so I made none. That caused me to end up allowing people who did not have my best interests at heart to make some of the worst and most important decisions in my life for me.

As you might imagine, I had a terrible case of low self-esteem. It included not only a complete lack of confidence in my ability to make decisions or do anything well, but I also felt that I was very unattractive and even misshapen. I felt that everything about me had been put together wrong (okay, to be completely honest, I still struggle with this one). This was just one more reason to be angry with my parents for causing me to be born, forcing me to have the genetic code that put me together this way. I spent a lot of time trying to cover up all the things that I felt were deformed. I could not accept a compliment because I thought that it couldn’t possibly be honest. Consequently, I could not handle any criticism whatsoever (also admittedly an issue I have not yet completely overcome).

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I came very close to having a nervous breakdown when I was a young teenager. I had been completely overcome by thoughts that I would have to hide in the woods, run for my life as long as I could, die a horrible death and then end up in hell forever. I had no hope at all of living what might be considered a normal life because all I was taught was gloom and doom, death and destruction.

As a younger child, I used to wish that my uncle (the one who bought my aunt nice Christmas gifts) could be my father. He was happy, funny, kind and loving and treated my aunt and cousins with great respect. He was also the only positive example of a Christian that I had in my childhood. Of course I eventually realized that it was useless to try to wish him into being my father and I gave up thinking about it.

As I grew older, my thoughts more and more often turned to I hate myself. I wished over and over that I had never been born. I desperately did not want to live this life that I was sure would inevitably end in being sent to hell. I also spent plenty of time over the years thinking about suicide, but I was pretty sure that suicide was just a quicker path to hell. These thoughts would race around and around in my head, wishing that I had never been born, knowing I couldn’t change it or do anything about it, hating myself and my life and believing that there could never be an escape from its misery.

One night I was in the bathroom completely distraught and hyperventilating over all the things going endlessly around and around in my mind. My father was standing in the hallway outside and I heard him say with disdain dripping from his words What’s wrong with her NOW? At that moment I just knew that I could no longer contain all the fear, frustration, anger, confusion and pain going on inside my head.

It was then that I realized that if I didn’t do something to change my thoughts, I was going to have a nervous breakdown. Not that I even understood what that was, I just knew that I was losing a grip on my mind and emotions. So I came up with a plan that I now realize came from God, but at the time I thought I made it up. There is a verse in the Bible that says – Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise Phil. 4:8 (NLT), but I was not aware of that verse at the time. I just decided that I would completely block any thoughts about what my father was saying by forcing myself to replace all the thoughts of gloom and doom with something good and pleasant.

Christmas was around the corner so I came up with the plan to choose to set my mind on finding a way to get a gift for my mother. Every time the upsetting thoughts tried to come in, I immediately forced myself to think about what I could find for my mother, and it made me happy to think that she would have a gift to open that year.

I didn’t have any money to guy a gift, but at that time you could save box tops from a frozen food that my mother often bought. If you saved a certain amount, there was a woman’s pin that you could redeem with the box tops. I told my mother that I was saving them to get something for my grandmother, so she was glad to help me do it. I kept thinking about how surprised my mother would be to have a gift to open on Christmas morning, and that one single happy thought kept me going.

It was very difficult to keep my thoughts under control, but after diligently forcing myself to discipline my mind for a few weeks, it actually worked! I forced out the thoughts of torture, death and hell, and replaced them with a happy thought of something to look forward to. I was able to pull myself out of the immediate danger of losing my mind. I still had all the other problems in my life to deal with, but actually choosing to take control of my thoughts was a process that I would learn to use again later on in life. How interesting that the God that I thought was so mean, was actually the One who came up with that idea.

Chapter 2

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From the frying

pan into the fire

I t was in the summer before my junior year in high school that I started my first job. The rest of my friends had all been working at a hotel the previous summer, but I hadn’t been able take a job because I had no transportation. Thankfully, my parents had recently bought a second car which was a tiny little orange bucket of bolts with manual steering, but I didn’t care what it was. My mother was willing to drive me back and forth to work, and so I found a summer job bussing tables at a beachside cafeteria.

The cafeteria served breakfast, lunch and dinner. On the five days a week that I was scheduled, I had to be there from 7 a.m. until around 9 p.m. There were breaks between breakfast, lunch and dinner, but there was not enough time to go home. Each day that I worked I had to spend the entire day, 12 hours or more, hanging around the hotel. It was very tiring to work such long days, but I really enjoyed being able to earn some spending money for the first time in my life.

There were three other girls that did the same job but they were all a year younger than me. Two of the girls were a set of identical twins, Lynn and Marcie, and the third, Jill, was a friend of the twins. Lynn and Marcie were tiny, pixie-like, super-energetic and bubbly, and Jill was also small but had a more serious personality. The three of them were friends and spent their breaks hanging around together. I tried my best to fit in with them, but I really didn’t. At 5’9" and anything but pixie-like, super-energetic and bubbly, I felt like a giant awkwardly trying to blend in with a Lilliputian crowd. Once again, I ended up doing something different than the rest of my friends, and didn’t fit in at all with the group that I ended up with. Always on the outside looking in.

After each meal we were all supposed to pitch in to clean up around the dining room and kitchen. The other girls liked to go into the kitchen to joke around with the cooks and dishwashers and weren’t at all concerned about actually getting things done. I always got my share of the work done first and almost inevitably, as soon as I would sit down, my boss would come bursting into the dining room and just assume that I had done nothing. The other girls were usually in the kitchen at least looking like they were working. I was sometimes yelled at, but I didn’t have the inner strength to speak up and defend myself. I would just go and find something else to do, crying on the inside, feeling weak, awkward, powerless, weird, alone and misunderstood.

And this is where my life took a major turn in the wrong direction. Marty was an employee at the hotel as an assistant to the owner. He was always there during breaks when I had nothing better to do than listen to him. He was usually bragging about making more money than anyone else in the restaurant. I didn’t really like him, but he paid attention to me. And at the time, I thought that was the best I could ask for.

One day, Jill took me aside and told me that she heard that Marty had made a bet with one of the cooks that he could get me to go out with him. Looking back now, I realize that she was trying to warn me, but I didn’t understand that. Later when I actually did end up going out with him, I remember her being confused by it. I’m sure it was obvious to everyone except me that he was not a good guy. The truth is that I went out with him just because he asked me to. Since I was incapable of making any kind of judgements, either good or bad, I allowed everyone else to make decisions for me. I didn’t understand that you could and should screen the people that you get involved with. Marty was not a nice person and didn’t treat me well. He loved to tell jokes that I found shocking and offensive, but I never let on that it bothered me. The only thing he had going for him was that he had a car so he could take me out and I could temporarily escape from the rest of my life.

To this day I find it odd that the one thing that my father allowed me to do at a young age was to date. He had put a lot of effort into keeping me from chocolate, dancing, pillows and movies, but when I started dating a person of very questionable character, he made no attempt to stop me. Now that I am an adult with the ability to look back and see the things that really affected my life, I realize that one of the easiest and quickest ways to mess up your life is to get involved in a relationship with a person who is obviously not the right one for you. So I find it quite bewildering that even though my parents did not like Marty, they never even attempted to make me stop seeing him. The one major thing that ended up affecting the rest of my life in a really bad way, they inexplicably made no attempt to stop.

I remember the first time Marty met my parents. He was very nervous and as soon as he said hello to my father he was at a loss for anything else to say, so he just randomly asked what time it was. My father, in his usual monotone voice replied There’s a clock on the wall. And so began the cold war between him and my father. I was well aware that my mother did not like him, but she at least made an attempt to put on a happy face on the very rare occasion that he was in the house.

Even though they didn’t try to end the relationship, my father still continued to do everything in his power to make my life miserable. I had an early curfew and if I missed it by even a few minutes I was grounded. One night I was less than five minutes late getting home. When I walked in the door he told me that I was grounded for two weeks - which happened to include Christmas and New Year’s Day. I was so angry and frustrated that I ran down to the basement and slammed the washing machine door so hard that I broke the cord that attached the door to the washer. It was the only way that I felt at the moment that I could express any level of anger. I certainly couldn’t scream at him, which would have been my preferred reaction. When my mother found the broken washing machine, she actually intervened and succeeded in getting my father to withdraw the punishment – the only time that ever happened. I think she must have finally realized that I was emotionally fragile and thought that she had to do something.

My father decreed that I should not be allowed to talk on the phone for longer than five minutes at a time. There was a wall phone in the hallway that had a cord long enough for me to take it into my room. While I was in my room talking, my father would stand in the hallway timing the call and at the five minute point, with no warning, he would just disconnect it. I can still feel the anger and frustration of being so rudely treated. This was just another one of the things that led me to believe that I didn’t matter as a person, made me feel powerless, and led me to the conclusion that I was invisible.

Even before we started dating, Marty began the process of tearing me down emotionally – as if that actually needed doing. I am convinced that he saw me as a weak person that he knew he could control, and that is why he targeted me.

The first thing he did to make me see myself as even more inferior than I already did was to tell me about his former girlfriends. One day while I was watching him clean some fish outside the hotel, he asked if I knew his old girlfriend Trish. I said no. He showed me the picture of her that he carried in his wallet, and she was very pretty. From that point on, he would bring her up in conversation as often as possible. He would tell me how attracted he was to her and would tell me that she was more attractive than me. Whenever we drove past her house he would talk about her and point out the entrance he used when he went to visit her. His efforts to make me feel jealous and even more inferior were quite successful.

A few months after we started dating, he demanded that I give him my paychecks. He told me that if I wanted to be with him, to be able to escape from having to be in my own home, I had to contribute to the cause. I attempted a feeble argument against it, but, feeling completely powerless, I started giving him all my money.

The summer ended and my junior year in high school began. Marty was a year ahead of me in the same school, and he somehow arranged for us to be in the same English class. Then he told me that I had to do all of his homework. I had to be imaginative in giving somewhat different answers to each question, so as to not give away the fact that I was doing both assignments. He ended up with an A in the class while I was awarded a B for my efforts. Next he decided that I should also do the reports for his other classes, so I also researched and wrote all of his reports in addition to doing double English assignments.

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My parents had always told me that I should not even consider going to college because they couldn’t afford it. Because of that there were never any hopes or plans for a future that might have made me re-consider my relationship with Marty. The truth is that I had no hope or plans for the future at all. I had absolutely nothing to look forward to.

Other than my father who had an associates degree, no one else in my family had ever gone to college. It doesn’t surprise me that my family didn’t know that I could have gotten loans and/or scholarships and actually gone to college, but it does surprise me that my school guidance counselors never clued me in. I was always a good student until I was a senior and starting missing a lot of school. What are counselors there for if not to see that a student is in trouble and could actually use some guidance? No one ever even asked why I wasn’t going to college. In the end, I’m sure that I would never have been able to pull myself together enough to step out and go to school against the will of my parents even if someone had encouraged and helped me. But maybe if someone had paid any attention at all to what was going on in my life, I might have at least been rescued from feeling invisible.

Around this time I allowed myself to be talked into making another really stupid life-affecting decision, and I started smoking pot. Marty liked it, and some of my friends had started to smoke it as well. Initially I had no interest in it whatsoever, but after Marty repeatedly pushed me to try it, I gave in. Once I started, I would get high whenever it was available, which at this point was not all that often. But it was the opening of the door to things to come.

I somehow made it through my junior year and got a job at a local hamburger chain for the summer. Once again I had a paycheck and once again Marty insisted that I hand it over to him.

Marty and his parents had not gotten along for years. When he was middle school-aged his parents sent him off to military school. I am not sure what caused them to do it, but I know that he hated it and deeply resented them for sending him there. In retrospect, I believe that this was at the root of a lot of his anger towards them. In any event, military school certainly did nothing to straighten him out, and very likely only gave him new ideas for ways to get into trouble.

When we first started dating he told me that he spent a lot of time trying to figure out how he could pull off a burglary at our local Two Guys store. He told me his plans and said that he had to commit the crime before he was 18 because he figured that you could get away anything if you were underage. Thankfully he never went through with his plans, and I never had to be charged with being an accessory to the crime.

At some point that winter, Marty’s parents had had enough of him. I was there to witness a screaming fight between him and his mother over his senior photos. She said that she would not hang a picture of a liar on her wall. He ended up moving out of his parents’ house and into a small over-a-garage rental with his friend, Dan. As soon as they moved in, Marty and Dan started breaking into the garage below the apartment and stealing things out of it to sell. Apparently it was packed so full of stuff that the owner never realized that their belongings were being stolen. Neither Marty nor Dan appeared to have even a shred of a sense of right and wrong. Whatever they thought they could get away with was what they would do. They spent their time dreaming up new ways to lie, cheat and steal. That was when Marty started telling me that he was the devil himself.

One day he bought a satanic bible, and was very excited to have found one. The really strange thing was that when he got home from buying the book, it had inexplicably disappeared from the car. He was never able to find it or figure out where it had gone, but I am convinced that God arranged for its disappearance. I am certain that life would have quickly become far worse if he had actually had a satanic guideline to live by and empower him.

By this time, Marty was telling me that we should get married. There was no actual proposal, it was just casually thrown into conversation. I had no desire whatsoever to marry him, and I always said no. But we still kept going out. Then one day he slapped me in the face. I was so angry that I actually found the nerve to tell him I didn’t want to see him anymore. The next day he sent me flowers and then just showed up at my house and acted like nothing had ever happened. Of course, I ended up going along with it like the wishy-washy marshmallow person that I was.

Marty finally managed to find a job driving a truck to deliver frozen foods for a local one-man company. The owner treated him well and it was a decent job. But as usual, he had to have some kind of an angle to leverage. He decided that he would sue his boss for getting hurt on the job. I don’t know whether or not he actually fell inside the truck as he said, but I know that he was not really injured. He went to a doctor and got a neck brace which he would only wear when he left the apartment. He was paranoid that people were watching him, so he made sure not to be seen without the brace on. Eventually he lost the suit and of course the job.

Next he ended up working part-time at an amusement park where his father owned the food concession stand, and then he started telling me that his goal in life was to have the government support him.

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Not long after my senior year had begun, I was shocked to find out that I was pregnant. I vividly remember the first moment the thought hit me that it was a possibility. I was completely distraught, repeating over and over in my head no, no, no, no, no – this CANNOT, CANNOT, CANNOT be happening! Telling my parents was absolutely unthinkable. I could not even imagine what my father would do. And so I shut it out – I just couldn’t even bear to think about it. I actually remember very little else that happened at that time because I managed to shut down my mind and just do what I thought I had to do. What I know happened, but remember very little of, was that the pregnancy was confirmed and that Marty decided that