Out of the Night

By Carolyn Elaine Hill

This is a true story of how "difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations." After eating her heart out over things she had not caused, could not control, and would never be able to change, a high school teacher introduced her class to a poem called "The Heart." It painted an ugly picture in her mind...it was a picture of her! She decided then and there to get up off that desert floor and head for the "Diamond Fields."

Diamonds she knew had to be discovered, mined, processed, and cut before they could shine in their innate glory. She was willing to make that investment and shares how she accomplished this through God's love, her faith in Him, and her God-given need to forgive.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886855296

Book preview

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Out of the Night

Carolyn Elaine Hill

ISBN 979-8-88685-528-9 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88685-529-6 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Carolyn Elaine Hill

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.

In a House of Mirrors

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Living with the Pain

Dirty Little Secrets… Life's Choices

Here Comes the Sun!

The Silence of a Falling Star

The Moment… My Look… His Feelings

Watercolors

Faith

Epilogue

About the Author

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.

In a House of Mirrors

The Enticement

The carnival lights were shining

Along the Great Midway.

The Barkers' voices were calling

Hoping we would come their way.

They chanted:

"It only cost a nickel,

It only cost a dime!

Come try out your luck

For there's a winner every time!"

With nearly empty pockets

We risked winning one more time.

We walked into a House of Mirrors

With distortions all around.

When we bumped into each other

Up

Suddenly seemed to be

Down!

Reflections of grotesque figures

Looked us in the eye.

We didn't even recognize ourselves

For every mirror

Was good at telling little lies.

The clues and cues were Dead Ends.

We stumbled and we fell,

Deceived by false corridors

And the reversal of exit signs.

What seemed so near was far away,

Weighty tricks played upon our minds.

Then

suddenly

A doorway opened up,

A thread of Faith and Hope combined.

I found myself following it…

I was on the outside one more time!

I no longer walk The Midway.

I no longer hear the Barkers' cries.

I don't throw away my nickels.

I hold on to my spare dimes.

No longer seduced by strange grotesque mirrors,

I have learned to walk life's finer line.

At one time or another, everyone in my family suffered from what can only be called a host of honest illusions. It was as though we were living our lives in a carnival, like a house of mirrors. While we entered the house with a natural sense of wonder and curiosity, it was not long before we found ourselves confronted with the dilemma of having to find our way out through a maze of continual distortions. There was a growing need for us to separate mere reflections of the truth from the haze of what was real. As one might imagine, sometimes it proved to be a daunting task.

In a house of mirrors, one grapples with the dilemma of being taken in by the effects of the preposterous and the inane. Looks are deceiving. The way out is not easy. As for my family, sometimes we stumbled. Sometimes we fell. Sometimes we chose to close doors better left open and opened doors better left closed. Sometimes we found reality to be more disturbing than dealing with the distortions. It truly was only by the grace of God that any one of us ever found our way out.

When did it all begin? I really do not know, but what I do know is this: the house of mirrors in which we lived had been built and was up and running long before my parents were married. How can I be sure? Because dealing with the mirrored images, which haunted our young family, also meant dealing with deeply embedded shadows, shadows that had come into play back in our parents' childhood days and beyond. Troubled lives painted past horizons and were destined to reappear out of masked obscurity only to reduplicate themselves in the skyline of the coming years.

Years ago, I had the opportunity to ask one of my father's aunts about his early life. She told me the story of how our father's mother had to plot and plan in order to escape the cruel, controlling hand of an abusive husband and the father of her three young children. It seems my father and his brother, at ages five and six, enraged by their father's beatings, hated him so much that they actually tried to fix his car so it would roll down the hill and hopefully kill him.

Imbedded dark shadows ran deep. However, in the midst of the darkness, the beautiful dreamer was born. Hope for a better future became my father's only significant ray of light. The problem was, somewhere along the way, that hope became badly tarnished, and the glow of his light dimmed.

Our mother also came from a strongly patriarchal home. She once told me, While my family did not display their affection for me openly, I always felt loved and protected. She was used to a father who was in control of his family, and therefore, she said she never thought to question the role of partnership in marriage. She grew up learning not to make waves.

My sisters and I have long believed that, as a child, our mother learned to protect herself from unwanted feelings by blocking them out. Our mother told me she was educated from a book on self-control and self-discipline by one of her well-meaning aunts. Her aunt lived down the hill from her family. Because her younger brother was often ill, she was sent down the hill to spend some time with her aunt who, at times, was also her teacher. Mother said, I took a lot for granted and was not one to engage in deep thinking.

While learning to stifle her emotions, Mother grew up on a small ranch and attended a one-room schoolhouse until she reached junior high. She was naive and hungry for life beyond the family farm. The small town of Brownsville did not meet those needs. Unfortunately, what she saw in the house of mirrors when she was seventeen turned out to be only an imitation of the life she had envisioned.

Uninformed and underestimated choices led to illusions and sheer confusion. Mother did not know where they would lead on the rocky road ahead. Sidestepping them became a daunting task. The mines had hair triggers so fragile they would blow up in her face with little or no warning. The shrapnel of lifetime scars made her adept at ignoring and concealing them.

As it was, high school graduation could not have come soon enough for our mother. It was 1942. Mother was seventeen, naïve, pregnant with my oldest sister and married. With the stars in her eyes starting to fail her, Mother still did not realize she had walked into a clandestine relationship with someone she loved too much, and he, with someone he loved too little. Unfortunately, life's pendulum had swung. She had not planned on a child, but it was too late to turn back the clock.

My father had an affinity for sports. He built his hopes and dreams around them and succeeded early on. In high school, a recruiter spotted him and asked him to sign with the Boston Red Sox. He wanted to play first base. The manager wanted him to play third. When he saw he was not going to get his way, he decided to leave the Red Sox and pursue his dreams elsewhere.

When my father found he was going to be a father, marriage and WWII soon changed the direction of his life. My parents married in May while Mother was still in school. JoAn was born in November. WWII had broken out. My father, like so many other young men of his time, enlisted. When his athletic abilities surfaced, he found himself recruited once again. In addition to his military duties, he was to play basketball for the Marines and a fading dream found new life.

Meanwhile, Mother moved to Seattle where she lived with my dad's family members. My dad's grandmother rented out a room to her and to others in the family as well. She babysat for my oldest sister while Mother got a job and lived out a few dreams of her own. Life in the big city was quite different from the life she had known on a small farm in the foothills of the Cascades. She loved it!

Up until the war ended, Mother not only had the advantage of living in a big city but also enjoyed the constant company of a large, gregarious, extended family. When my dad came home on leave, he left Mother pregnant once again. My sister, Gloria, was born in 1944. When the war ended, so did Mother's adventure.

Now it was time to move back to Oregon where, later that year, I was born. Here my father would complete four years of college in three with the aid of part-time jobs, the GI Bill, and Mother finding a hospital job as a dietitian's assistant. It all meant juggling and struggling, but the promise of a better tomorrow made the prize worth the effort. Both sets of grandparents also helped as they could.

I was a happy child, but something happened when I was three. We were taken to my grandparents for a brief stay. Before my parents left, I overheard my dad talking to my grandfather. He was showing Grandpa his college fraternity board. He said, I will show you how it works. He called the three of us girls over and said we would each receive one swat. I do not remember what Grandpa said; I do remember my response. I said, But, Daddy, we weren't doing anything wrong.

He said, Just line up at the fencepost. JoAn, you are first.

Unresolved tears filled our eyes! I thought, if being good was not good enough where did our boundaries begin and end. Maybe I could be invisible? I would try.

I turned four in October. Now December was upon us. My mother and my grandmother got us ready to go into town to watch the basketball game our dad was coaching. Once they had us bathed, dressed, and hair combed, they sent us out on the back porch to sing Christmas songs while they took their turn at getting ready for the occasion.

JoAn, being the oldest, was our song leader. She and Gloria knew more songs than I did, but I was ready to sing what I could. After a number of songs were sung, some I knew parts of and some I did not, I remember saying, Can't we please sing something I know?

JoAn said we could, but first she wanted to sing a pretty song she had learned at school. The song she sang was The First Noel. Why do I remember this? Because the most amazing thing happened to me that night!

When JoAn finished her song, she said we could sing Silent Night. As we sang, I felt the most amazing force field come upon me and pass through my whole body! I knew it was God! He left me with the very essence of not just to believe in Him, but to know Him! I remember this experience as if it had happened yesterday! It was absolutely amazing!

I ran into the house to tell my mother and grandmother what I had experienced. Unfortunately, they were too busy to hear what I was saying and shushed me back outside. When everyone was in the car and we were driving away, I climbed up on my knees, looked out the back window into that cold, starry night, and said to myself, I wonder where He went and when He is coming back?

Why did this happen? The impact of my Grandmother Kirk made a dramatic impact on the three of us. She did not preach to us. Instead, she would let us go to bed with her at night. She would tell us Bible stories and stories of her youth. She would teach us songs of faith and play Twenty Questions with us. Then she would teach us a prayer. We all thought she was wonderful. Grandma also often took us on walks to gather wild flowers and learn their names. She was interested in rocks so she taught us to look for some pretty ones by the Creekside.

This picture was taken by our grandparents. Our dresses were an Easter gift from them. The fact that this picture had been creased came to me as a telltale sign of what was to become of my life—badly fractured, yet by God's great love, repairable!

Circumstances change people for better or for worse. Either they grow together, or they grow apart. They have life-altering choices to make. They have vows to keep or break. There is work to do or to be avoided. Dreams will be kept alive or suffer a slow death. In the end, who pays, and at what price? Who is accountable? Is there anyone who is not?

With a college degree in one hand, a wife and three young children trying to hold on to the other, the lure of carnival lights and barkers' voices cast a magnetic spell. Our whole family was taken in. As we wandered inside the house of mirrors, we consequently walked farther away from reality and deeper into a world clouded with illusions.

Yes, in a house of mirrors, the capacity for self-delusion is endless. We all fell into a mental trap. We fantasized, rationalized, and hypnotized ourselves into believing in things that really were not there. Our reality was often nothing but a host of reversed images. We walked in dark shadows. It was easy to believe in the illusion that we were moving forward, only to find out later that we were not. In a house of mirrors, we know the play of light and space/time relationships can dramatically affect what we see, and so it was with us. What each one of us saw depended upon where we were standing at the time.

When dealing with life's distortions, we often take unexpected twists and turns. Sometimes it means dealing with an abrupt, dead end. The only thing you can do…back up and try to find another way out.

I remember times when I had this awful sense of muffled panic. Just when I thought there was a hand to guide me, it would then seem to disappear. There was little comfort. Fears became a tangled combination of the real and the imagined. It took the test of time to unravel the mounting confusion.

My mother was not one to share her thoughts with her children. The distortions visited upon our parents eventually led them to an alienation of affection on our father's part. For our mother, there was the fear of being left with three young children and two small towns gossiping about them and their divorce. It was a grim and somber time.

Unlike today, in 1952, scandals and divorce were rare. The only legal grounds for a divorce were adultery and/or abandonment. If you did not want the divorce, and you had not committed either one of these acts, the party who wanted out of the marriage had to manipulate the situation and/or lie. In my parents' divorce case, lying and manipulation were key to the core. Unfortunately, for all of us, they became an important part of our lives.

Now do not misunderstand me. Adultery is a good reason for a divorce. If it can be worked out between the people involved, that's great; however, if not, I would hope they would sit down and talk to their children and not leave them to think they are responsible. Otherwise, they inevitably will think it has to do with them.

Our parents did not talk to us about their entanglements, and that was a mistake. While young children were not meant to understand adult situations in full, their questions should be answered on their level. Children were not meant to understand all the details. Here is what happened in my family. You will find it is written in prose because that is the way it came to me. It is very easy to understand. It speaks to the problems both of our parents fell into and the effect it had on the three of us girls. Remember, my dad had passed away when I was thirty. I read or gave what I had written to my mother. She was definitely in favor of me finishing my book.

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Crimes and misdemeanors,

Inner workings of the heart,

Begin when falsehood laces it

With its never-ending art.

Form and precision,

More than meets the eye of any fool,

Lethal tools of deception,

Lies become the thread which fills the spool.

Through the eye of the needle

The thread so smoothly goes

Revealing patterns of deception

As the needle rapidly pricks and sews.

Crimes and misdemeanors,

Explosions in the heart,

Did they forget the children were watching?

Did they forget

Little lives

Often copy

Adult art?

God must have been pacing the Heavens

With thunder in his feet,

Lightning must have been flashing

As He revealed

The great deceit!

Someone had lost that loving feeling.

They had broken every rule.

Somehow, they forgot they taught their children

To be nothing less than true.

Crimes and misdemeanors,

Played out in once more noble hearts,

Transparent to the children

Though they tried to convince Themselves that they were not.

The children should have been bathed in beauty,

They should have been bathed in light.

The children should not have been bathed in the depths

Of their parents ever deepening night.

Behind closed doors,

In places far away,

Annoying r-e-p-e-t-i-t-i-o-n-s.

Try to block them out

But a lasting imprint stays.

Why are you walking out the door?

Why are you going to work at night?

"Why are you talking on the phone so long?

Why can't you just hang it up and say, ‘Good night'?"

Why do adults' hushed conversations

Fall on waiting wings in the stagnate nighttime air,

Carrying forbidden secrets

Up the empty wooden stairs?

Put a pillow over your ears!

It's placed there in vain!

Nothing,

Even sleep,

Can keep out the growing pain!

Children live in silent consternation,

As they question in their heads,

All the things they are learning from their parents' actions

Which seem to oppose everything they've ever said!

Tomorrow one of your parents takes you to church,

But they will not stay.

Is it just one more adaptation of,

"Don't do as I do,

Just do as I say?"

What were the absent parents' doing

While their children learned to hope and pray? What were all of those, Important Things,

Which kept their parents busy

And away from church these days?

While The Ninety and Nine sat safely listening

As the minister told the familiar story once again,

Were their parents the symbolic

Lost One?

Would, The Good Shepherd, go out looking everywhere for them?

Would