Broken Covenant A Family in Crisis

By Joy Robertson

March 3, 1999 is a day I'll not likely forget. The events of that day are forever chiseled in my memory: it was my D-Day. My husband Ros had been going through a series of tests for reoccurring pain on his right side. There were numerous tests: X-rays, CAT scans, blood work, and several biopsies that came back either negative or inconclusive. He had a request from his physician to do one last test, which is what brings me to this day. (The day the covenant was broken.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781682898628

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BROKEN COVENANT:

A Family in Crisis

Joy Robertson

Copyright © 2016 Joy Robertson

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2016

ISBN 978-1-68289-861-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-68289-862-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgement

Iwould like to thank the family of Calvary Life Center, for their love and encouragement over the years. You have played such a vital part in my growth as a Christian. My children and I could not have made it through those difficult times without your love. Thanks also to my friends Jerry and Louise Pietrorazio for showing me daily what it means to be Christ like.

To my Bishop, the Reverend Fredrick Dibble Sr., words cannot express my gratitude for your guidance over the years. Only when we get to Heaven will you know the difference you have made in my life and the lives of my children.

To my children, Nicole and Jordan, thank you for encouraging me to complete this project. Nicole, thank you for working tirelessly in the editing of this book. I am most proud to be called your mother. Know that the promise of God’s word was more than enough to see us through.

Joy

March 3, 1999 is a day I’ll not likely forget. The events of that day are forever chiseled in my memory: it was my D-Day. My husband Ros had been going through a series of tests for reoccurring pain on his right side. There were numerous tests: X-rays, CAT scans, blood work, and several biopsies that came back either negative or inconclusive. He had a request from his physician to do one last test, which is what brings me to this day.

* * * * *

March 3, 1999 was a Wednesday: my day off from the bank where I worked. It was a day for laundry, house cleaning, and various other tasks that come with being a wife and mother. A typical day off from work consisted of getting breakfast and lunch ready for Ros in order to get him off to work then driving our eighteen-year-old daughter Nicole to school in another town since there was no bus she could take as a result of where we lived. Afterwards, I’d rush home to wait for my eight-year-old son’s bus to arrive… it was only after Jordan’s bus drove off that my day really began with the household chores and preparation of meals that needed to be finished before everyone came back home in the evening so we could get ready for the weekly Wednesday night bible study at the church we attended.

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To say I loved my family would be an understatement: I had two beautiful children, and even though there was quite a disparity in their ages, Jordan clearly adored his big sister who, at the time, was applying to college. We were all looking forward to the college tours and seeing where she would spend the next four years of her life. If that weren’t enough, I had a wonderful husband who loved me in a way that I had never experienced love before. I came from a single parent household, so to have that family unit was an amazing accomplishment to me, and I cherished every moment of it.

In the midst of going up the stairs from the laundry room with a load I had just completed, I heard the garage door open. I found it unusual that Ros would be home in the middle of the afternoon: he normally got up at three or four o’clock in the morning to study for the ministry. He was getting a degree in theology from Christian Life College, and it was his custom to be up at 3:00 a.m. to study before leaving for his engineering job at Exmet Corporation. He found it difficult to study after work, so this routine worked well for him. Since he would leave the house at about six o’clock in the morning, and work until seven or eight in the evening, it was quite unusual for him to be home at 2:30 in the afternoon.

As I continued up the stairs, I asked the question aloud, Why are you home so early? There was no response. I assumed he hadn’t heard me, so I repeated the question. I kept asking with no response. Since I thought he just did not hear me, I went on folding clothes. When Ros finally made his way up the stairs from the garage, I heard him calling for me to come into the living room. I told him I would be there in a minute, but he insisted, Honey, come to the living room now. His tone was more abrupt than usual. I walked into the living room, asking again how it was that he was home so early, but the face I saw when I entered the living room was not the face of my husband. The very life had gone out of him as if someone had given him a death sentence… and so it was.

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My husband had a wonderful smile. I believe I fell in love with him because of that smile. Whenever he smiled, the room took on a different appearance, and that smile always seemed to make everything better so that no matter how angry I was with him, he would smile his way through as if nothing happened, making me forget why I was mad with him in the first place. But on that day in March, there was no smile. The room grew darker as the moments passed… then after what seemed like an eternity, he declared that the doctor had called him at work to tell him the results had come back from the last set of tests: they were positive. Cancer was the word of the day, and I believe he called it the Big C. I had no concept of what the Big C was, so I had to ask… and in that moment, I was so sorry that I had. I don’t recall much more of that moment, but I do remember holding him very tightly, as if by holding him tightly it would all go away.

After recovering from the initial shock, I put on my fixable hat. This was big, but in my mind, it was fixable. In my mind, if there was a problem, there had to be a solution; and once we found the solution, we could fix the problem and move on. I remember putting dinner on the table later that day and saying to him, This is going to be fine. We went to Wednesday night Bible study and told our pastor because we wanted him to pray with us and believe for a miracle.

Thus began the ten-month journey of the covenant that would be broken. It is amazing how quickly one’s world can shatter and how very fragile this life that we hold so tightly to can be. Only six months before that life-changing day, Ros had been given a clean bill of health from his yearly physical. I recall that apart from the small cyst on his butt cheek which the doctor removed right there in the office, he was in excellent health. According to him, he would be around for a very long time, and so I took that as confirmation that we would have a long life together as man and wife. So how do we go from perfect health to a death sentence in only six months? That must have been the question of the decade.

Now, there we were