"...Because suffering makes your testimony irresistible"
So, like the birth stories of my children—two days which
also, rather obviously, changed my life forever—I have been meaning to write
this story for quite some time, but all the silly things like grocery shopping
and baby poop stuck to horrible things (“how
in the world did you get THAT there?!?”) and being silly for sanity's sake
and being still for a moment to gather myself so I don’t fall apart into
something heartbreaking, well… those things consume this time stuff. The time
that anyone who knows better wouldn't reasonably agree to partake in, it’s all too linear and
rude.
So this will be rather raw and graceless. But it’s what I
can do right now.
Kari, my sister, called. I had a two year old and a six month
old (July 2013), so I don’t remember if she called and I immediately answered
or if I returned her call (it was probably the latter… when she calls twice I
know it’s an emergency. We both have kids; we know that sometimes answering often
magically turns baby crevices into volcanoes of both noise and profound mess. Go ahead, test
it.) I don’t think she said “hi”. I don’t think she asked if I could sit or
whatever people in movies think to do because they have a dumb script.
“Mike died”.
Our dad.
I know she repeated it because I didn’t get it, I didn’t… I
don’t know. I just didn't get it.
I called Curtis. He knows me well enough. All I said was, “Please
come home”. He was home in seven minutes. I thank Jesus that the kids were
still napping.
That was the hardest thing I have ever said to my husband. It didn’t come out easily. He was sitting on the purple arm chair, I was sitting
on the floor, as I do. I was shaking. I was holding his hands. I couldn’t break
eye contact. I couldn’t say who. I couldn’t say anything. But he knew someone.
After twenty or so minutes just sitting like that, searching for… I don’t know… in
each other, he finally made sure. He knew our children were okay, that they
were upstairs napping, that I would be in a whole different way if it was them.
When he finally spoke, he just needed to know it wasn't Joshua or Kaia (he was
three, she was two months).We hit the road within hours. We were
going to drive through the night. We got an hour and a half from home, not even
to the Portland-California border before all the adrenaline ran out and our
bodies stopped. We didn't spend any time processing. We hadn't yet. We just went. We just
moved quickly. But it was late and we couldn't anymore. We pulled off and slept
at I don’t even remember where. In the morning we kept going. That drive with
two small children was a mistake. It was too hard on all of us, the being on
the road for so long, all in our own seats away from each other’s arms when
that’s where we needed to be most. It was too much. Stupid. Obvious. But you can’t
think. You can’t… you just can’t. You just get out and run because, well… fight
or flight, I guess.
Two months later, life was calming down on the outside of
the home-front slightly, a new normal, or whatever. One day though, I got sick
of the carpets downstairs being wet (that’s a whole other ordeal, but this is
not that story) and I probably threatened the management company somehow
because they finally sent a guy to
come look at the running list of stuff that was going wrong with their house
(our toilet overflowed gallons of water every “lucky” flush, our sink burst a
pipe rendering in the sink and dishwasher out of commission and our carpet was
soaked downstairs, among many other cruddy shenanigans). The maintenance guy came, did the “HOL-Y COW” thing, and called an air
quality testing guy, who then called restoration guys and within an hour or two
we learned that the air quality in our home was dangerous
and we needed to evacuate immediately, bringing as little as possible
(because all of our belongings were now
dangerous as they were riddled with unhealthy amounts of mold spores).
So I spent an hour getting things in the safe that needed to
be in there and grabbing whatever I would need to care for our two children in
diapers for God knows how long. We would have no home base. We drove around Hillsboro late at night, both
kids crying because their night had been upturned right when schedules were
getting back to normal. Intel was having a thing, a conference or who knows.
Don’t get me wrong, I am proud to be an Intel family, but when they have their things
Hillsboro fills up with nerdy folk (I love them, but they need beds at night
too, inconveniently clashing with our situation) and so the hotels filled up and the prices of the rooms exploded to somewhere between ick and outrageous. We finally, by the
grace of God, found a room for a price I won’t mention (because Curtis wouldn’t
let his family sleep in the car… or have to go through the stress of going to
the city to find a room). The following morning he got the kids and I on a
flight to California. Again. Okay, so now we don’t have a home. And we can’t touch our
things. Or are they all ruined now? What could I expect? We didn't know.
But we are roll with it people. We are look up, look onward people.
I held my kids close on that flight. I smelled their hair. I
cried in my sweater once they were asleep. I pulled it together. I got off the
plane. Mom and Dave were there to collect us. I cried again once the kids were
asleep for the night, bunking up in grandma’s house again. What more? I couldn’t
handle telling anyone we were there. I couldn’t process having to move again (third time in seven months).
And being in Livermore again, knowing that I couldn’t drive over to Nadine St. and show him his grandbabies or just... try again… I just… It just hit with a
force I didn’t expect.
But...we’ve got this. We are an outstandingly strong family.
We’d been there for a while, two weeks, maybe three. Curtis stayed in
a cheap, junky hotel back in Oregon. He worked his 55-65 hour weeks and also furiously
searched for another home for his family. Then, with the advice of several
respected people, and God’s blessing and peace, we decided to buy. Because of
Dad we could do this. He bought our home; this was his gift that he wouldn’t
see. This house, this house I am typing in right now, where his youngest son is playing
with his grandchildren downstairs as I am upstairs writing this story in the dark… this is
from him. This is my favorite house I have ever lived in. It’s gorgeous. It’s
home. It is SO home. So, Curtis amended his search. He prayed. He prayed. And
prayed. And here “she” was. Other offers fell through because this was the one. Curtis didn’t tell me
he’d found it. I was falling apart without him, away from him. He didn’t want
to get my hopes up. He found it, he put an offer in, he financed it, and,
finally…
I didn’t see pictures. I didn’t know anything about it. He
likes to surprise me. And I gotta admit, I like how everyone said I was nuts
for just letting him pick our home without me knowing anything about it or seeing it first.
But, I am a woman of fierce faith. In my Jesus. In my husband. In what we are
as a family. This home is incredible. It’s filled with God, with the brilliant light of
Christ. And you can only know what I mean once you walk through the door. Come.
I’ll show you.
But it wasn’t done yet. The story. It wouldn’t let up yet.
If you don’t know me very well, you might not know that I
have a migraine condition. They thought it was epilepsy at one point (and to
his credit, Curtis thought his new girlfriend had epilepsy when we first started
seeing each other…and you thought you know how good of a man he is…oh, it goes
way further than you might think). These migraines are terrible. Not post about it on Facebook terrible. Terrible, like, I actually am often sure that this time,
this time it will kill me. They come with an excruciatingly brutal cornucopia
of symptoms that I don’t even care mentioning (I will share these with you one
on one if you are hell bent on knowing). They are incapacitating. And I HAVE TO
GET THEM UNDER CONTROL when they start, it's up to my willpower (ugh! ha!). Any and all fear I allow through makes them
exponentially worse. They can get so bad I convulse, I forgot chunks of time,
forget people, lose feeling in half my body and become temporarily blind. Brain
civil war, I guess. Anyway, in the last ten years I’ve becoming relatively good
at maintaining these—controlling stress and learning to navigate my metabolism
and such, whatever it takes. So this particular day, the kids and I were at this park with the Gerharts
in Fremont (this park was rad!) when it hit me like a sack of bricks. I
was 700 miles from the person that keeps me together, the person that has
learned to do these with me for the last ten years. So I did what I do. I
prayed. I nursed Cedar. And prayed. My vision faded away, I started shaking. I
stayed upright, sitting on a picnic table. I prayed that God would not allow my
arms to release, that He would not allow me to drop my son. The Gerharts were
several hundred feet away, playing with Norah. That’s what I needed. I didn’t
tell them. I needed to do this alone, with God. Don’t allow my arms to release. Don’t allow Cedar to fall. Don’t allow
my body, whatever it does, to scare him.
He didn’t fall. I was blind, I was
shaking, I was terrified, but he didn’t fall. He fell asleep. Alseep. If you are a mom or dad you know
that children sense everything your body or brain is doing. If you are
stressed, they know and react ten fold. That’s why being human makes being a parent
insane. Because you can’t be human. I think his sleep was a gift. I needed that peace. I needed his steady breath. When the Gerharts finally came over with
Norah, all happy and exhausted from play, they knew something wasn’t right. Somehow I was
able to tell them not to call an ambulance, that this happens, that I will live
and we will all be fine. Somehow I was able to stay calm and tell them what I
needed. I needed food and water and to not have this be an ordeal and to keep staying
calm. Eventually, when I could kind of see the outlines of things a bit, each
of them carried one of my children and had their other arms wrapped around my
back and we, as lightheartedly as possible, made our way to the car to drive to
Sunol, to eat and rest. When we got to their house, I became sick, and held onto
that toilet like there was no tomorrow. Somehow I got a text to Curtis (there is
never any cell reception at their house so I’m not sure how it got to him) and
he called on their home phone, grandma brought it to me, all pale and miserable and terrified, and he walked me through
the second half of my brain’s assault on my body.
Of course, grandpa made sure I didn’t go anywhere that night, that the
kids and I stayed at their house instead of trying to make it back to mom’s in
town. They made up the couch for us to sleep on. I sang to the kids, as normally as I
could, I “read” them a few books from memory, and prayed, more deeply and
connectedly than I had in… well, it was so, exquisitely, deeply rich. The children fell
asleep on me, I prayed over them more, I smelled their heads as my body shook
and my stomach churned. I just thanked God though. I thanked him for safety.
For family. For my husband. For my children.
Hind sight: I know exactly why I
got that migraine...why I had to stay there that very particular night.
Why am I shaking writing this right now? I don’t know if I
can do it.
I don’t know…
At 3 am I heard the phone ring, but I was too messed up
still to process that it rang...
No. I can’t do this. I thought I could.
I thought I could write
this. I will try again when I am there.
Brother.
You are on my wall. You are with your son and your pregnant wife.
Your baby girl will be coming soon in this one. You are right in front of me.
Right here, in this picture. I love this one. You love them so much. Just two
evenings before this phone call, in the very living room, IN THE VERY SPOT I
WAS when my husband, your brother, told me, we had had the most wholesome,
incredible conversation we had ever had in ten years of being brother and
sister. You were amazing. You were a beacon of hope and perseverance that
night, like I had never seen.
I’m sorry. Maybe I will try to tell more of it all soon.
Just know.
Just know it’s not wasted. Nothing is wasted. Energy doesn’t
stop. We don’t just stop. It’s not just physics and clockwork. The physics are
a boundary and they go away and the clocks go away. We carry this inexplicable
beauty with us for something. A quilt we only can see one side of because we
are linear right now. Now we see the back, the stitches that all cross each
other and make a huge mess of things. But when it’s turned over, when the
pattern, the hard work, THE PLAN, is revealed…
I cannot imagine. I cannot dream anything close.
Peace be with you my family, my friends. Thank you for
taking your time on me. I love you.
And I’m not the only one.
