Lost and Found: Finding Hope in the Detours of Life (14 page)

———

Despite our drama, Robert was more focused on school and football than he had ever been. It was his senior year, and if he didn’t stand out academically and athletically, life after college would be hard. His dream of playing in the NFL was drawing closer, soon to be within his grasp. Being drafted by a professional football team not only would improve our finances dramatically,
but it would be a huge personal validation for Robert as an athlete and as a man.

Although I was still working with the air force contractor, I no longer had the passion I once did. Most of the planes had been sent to Iraq, and we weren’t expecting a new fleet for quite some time. Still, I continued to work on improving the filing system, organization, and procedures for our contracts. When any of the guys were scheduled to fly out, I made their travel arrangements, created itineraries, and endeavored to make sure they didn’t return to unnecessary work. After my first evaluation, I received a raise. I called Robert first and then my parents and told them the news.

The next day my dad offered me a job. I turned in my notice immediately.

I had spent most of my life wanting to work for my father and almost two years accepting that I would never get the opportunity. Then, when I least expected, the door opened. My dad saw something in me that I was just learning to see myself.

In the moment, it felt like God was honoring our commitment to at least try to become better. Robert was excelling on the football field. I was finally helping my father in a field more interesting than accounting. I was brought on to help structure grassroots marketing for our first film with Sony Pictures.

As with most lessons in life, I know now that working with my father wasn’t only a validation of my test of faith. It was God getting
me closer to the people I would need more than ever in due time. There are no coincidences with God. At the time I reveled at the grace He showed me even though I had strayed so far from Him.

When God chooses to trust us with grace, it’s because He believes that we’re capable of doing things better than we did before.

Merciful God that He is, He doesn’t just leave us in our misery to suffer. When we learn to find peace in trial, He knows that our season of suffering can come to an end. So often we look for Him to calm the storms of our lives. But there are times when the storm can’t go away because we need the rain.

Can you stop being afraid of the thunder long enough to feel the rain?

———

With certain struggles, when you get the lesson, the struggle is no longer necessary. If the struggle continues, the lesson has not been learned. God doesn’t need us to have perfect lives, just willing ones. Are you willing to move your pride out of the way?

I was trying. As much as my trust with Robert had eroded, I made a commitment to do better. I wanted to believe that he was holding up his end of the bargain, but I could no longer focus on him. I needed to heal. If I wanted to have a healthy marriage, my healing was the only thing I had control over.

We get so caught up in trying to nurse our loved ones back to health that we forget about ourselves. You can be everything to everyone and nothing to yourself. Or you can choose to teach others how to take care of themselves by leading by example. When your love doesn’t seem to be enough for them, try using it to love on yourself. Every once in a while, you have to remind yourself that you’re important, too. You can’t depend on those around you to know when you’re running low on hope, or to recognize that you can’t give what you don’t have.

As much as I wanted Robert to believe in our love, if I’m completely honest, I never truly believed in the love we had either, just the love we were capable of achieving. I didn’t want to live like that any longer. I accepted that I couldn’t change him, but I could use the drop of hope I had left to become better myself.

It seemed like the more I worked on myself, the closer he and I became. I wasn’t playing detective or snooping in his stuff. I treated him like the husband I wanted him to become, not the one who had hurt me. When Thanksgiving came around, we were stronger than we had ever been, period. Despite our troubles, we had so much for which to be grateful. We were growing and making progress.

We were excited because my parents were taking us to Mexico for the holiday. Since Robert had practice, we wouldn’t leave until Wednesday, but my son went ahead with my parents earlier in the week. Then the day we were scheduled to leave, we got a call. Robert couldn’t get a passport. Evidently, when you are in arrears on child support, you can’t leave the country. I was devastated. I’d never been away from my family during the holidays.

When my mother heard the news, she strongly suggested I come anyway. I could tell she had finally had enough of the lies and disappointment. I knew she was just upset that we wouldn’t all be together, so I let her finish her speech. When she was done, I asked her what she would do if it were Daddy. That ended our conversation.

A month later I learned I was pregnant.

———

I was concerned over the way Robert related, or didn’t, with his children back in east Texas. Still, I had a life inside of me, I was married, and I was working. We would have to deal with everything else as it came.

And boy did it come. Robert didn’t pass enough classes to play in the bowl game for TCU. We watched the news of his class failure scroll
across the screen. No game meant no exposure at the time NFL scouts and agents were looking the most. This was their chance to see how the players performed under pressure and outside of their own environment. The only thing they would know about Robert was that he didn’t do what was necessary to make his way onto the field. He had worked so hard, and now the dream seemed to be slipping through his fingers.

We were devastated, but a part of me was secretly glad. Maybe without football he would become more focused on maturing. I wanted his dream to come true, but I knew Robert had a problem. The celebrity lifestyle that came with college ball would only intensify when you added big money and even more national exposure to the equation. Still, I knew that so much of his self-esteem was riding on whether or not he could play football at the next level. In the end, I prayed that God’s will would be done. I just wish I had asked Him for the strength to handle whatever it was.

We had to wait over three months between the bowl game Robert missed and the NFL draft in April. During that time he talked to several scouts, a couple of agents, and friends who had turned pro, and they all thought he still had a chance. But even if chosen by a professional team, Robert would still have a lot to prove. Getting drafted was just the first step in a whole new system where he would be required to start over and prove himself once again.

Draft week finally arrived, and it felt like we were all holding our breath. There are seven rounds in the NFL draft. Each team receives seven opportunities to add talent to their team. We were hoping Robert would be drafted, but we knew it was more likely he would get the chance to walk on a team as a free agent. At the time, the draft was held over two days: Saturday (rounds 1–4) and Sunday (rounds 5–7). We knew that if Robert got drafted it would be on Sunday afternoon, so we went to church in the morning, then came home to wait for news.

I was five months pregnant at the time. I’m powerless against a good Sunday nap, even without a child in my womb. I don’t even know when I fell asleep, but I remember waking up to Robert busting into the family room.

“Yes, sir. I’m ready to play ball!”

ROBERT WAS
OFFICIALLY
going to get his shot at the next level. I was happy for him. His dream had finally come true, but would mine?

Life in the NFL scared me.

It offered the next level of achievement for Robert, but I suspected it would also bring new, unexpected challenges. Or maybe they weren’t so unexpected, but I tried to bury them in the end zone under the stadium lights. My biggest fear was that the safety we had created over the last few months would be shattered. We were finally drama free. No women, no issues, just us. I prayed and prayed that the promotion wouldn’t change him back to the person who had made me build the walls.

After the draft, the text messages flooded our phones for days. People congratulated Robert and asked how long we’d be in Texas so that they could see us off before we headed to Virginia, where the team’s training facility was located, to join the Redskins. Gratefully,
I gave God credit for it all. But when I laid my head down at night, I couldn’t find the words to silence my insecurities. How do you handle the tension when God’s blessing makes you afraid?

Proverbs 10:22 tells us, “The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it” (
NKJV
). Here I was married to an official NFL player, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was on the edge of a cliff. I was pregnant and would have to leave my entire family to stand by my man in D.C.—the same man I wasn’t sure would be standing beside me. We knew all along that this could be a possibility, moving away to play for a pro team, having a baby together, but when the moment actually arrived, it felt different.

Be careful what you ask for.

———

I was being plucked from my roots and being trusted to establish new ones. In early May Robert had to start rookie camp and begin competing for a spot as a middle linebacker and special teams member on the final roster. Even though he had been drafted, it didn’t guarantee that he would make the team’s final cut of only fifty-three players. Given how unlikely we thought his being drafted would be, I knew that we’d both have to be strong and secure enough for him to focus.

When he left for Virginia, I moved into my parents’ home but continued to pay rent on the apartment so as not to break the lease. The plan was for Robert to fly back to Dallas on weekends when possible, and then toward the end of the summer, once we had a better idea whether he would make the team, I would join him in Virginia. In the meantime, I wanted to soak up as much of my parents’ wisdom
as possible. I just wish I had known that there would be a day when even it would not be enough to console me.

If I could travel back in time and leave a note for myself, I would simply say this:
Despite how
it feels, you’ll be okay
. It probably wouldn’t have made much sense to anyone on the outside to whisper that to me. After all, I was living the dream. I should just step up and do the right thing, enjoy all that we were being given, and stop worrying about all that could go wrong.

Knowing what I had to do didn’t provide any comfort. There’s this old wives’ tale we hear and start believing at a young age, that doing the right thing will make you feel good. The truth is, doing the right thing will make you better, but it doesn’t make life any easier. If I had done only what felt good, I would’ve stayed in my parents’ house, where I would have help with the baby and support for when I felt like I was breaking.

But my husband told me he wanted me to be with him. He was my family now. So I put on my big girl shoes and rose to the occasion not knowing how difficult the next steps on our journey would be.

So whenever I would feel the chill of fear surround my heart, I tried to break it down. It reminded me of my bad habit of eating ice. I wouldn’t even wait for the drink to be gone before I started digging for the ice. When I heard somewhere that eating ice helps you burn calories, I vowed to never stop. My addiction became so bad, I would sit in my car during the summer and blast the heat while I ate ice. It didn’t happen all at once, but once the ice started melting from being in my mouth, it became soft enough for me to use my teeth. Before I knew it, one piece was gone and I was working on the next one.

If I could melt my fears little by little the same way, maybe I would survive. Maybe by joining my husband, despite the fear, I would be able to melt a little bit of the anxiety. When I worried about my
pregnancy, I reminded myself to pray and trust God with our future. Little by little, I began to release some of the stress generated by my imagination.

It was a kind of turning point for me. I realized that maturity requires learning enough about yourself to identify the emotions you feel and why. I had to dig deeper than just whether I was doing okay in the moment or having a bad day. I couldn’t just walk around always on the verge of an emotional explosion without knowing the ingredients generating such combustion.

I learned we have to be able to connect the dots that create the image of who we are in order to pinpoint exactly what’s wrong and fix it. Surgeons rarely operate blindly, if they can help it. Sometimes they get several different angles of the same area, just to be sure they know exactly what’s going on. You have to know how something was broken before you can determine the best way to fix it. I was determined to keep facing down my fears.

Once I realized why I was afraid, the only thing I could do to outrun the feeling was to do the opposite. I tried to be courageous when I felt the most afraid, but I wasn’t sure if that actually made me brave or just foolish. Still, I thought pretending would give my heart the CPR it needed to believe again.

During those weeks Robert and I were apart, I made the most of the time with my parents. On the weekends, Mom and I cooked, shopped, or indulged in our favorite pastime of taking naps. She and I had become friends, drawing closer through these new chapters in
my married life. Leaving them would be so hard, especially since we were developing such a deeper, stronger relationship.

But I was comforted knowing that my mother and close family friend—we call her Aunt April—would accompany me on my first visit to see Robert, since it was definitely looking like he would make the team. The training facility for the Redskins was in Ashburn, Virginia, about thirty-five minutes from Washington, D.C. We were going to tour the hospital, look for doctors, and find a home Robert and I could rent until we knew for sure whether the area would be home. Then we would all return so I could finish up loose ends back in Texas before returning to Virginia indefinitely.

A few days before my trip, my father took me into my parents’ room. I crawled onto their bed to get off my feet with my swollen stomach. He kneeled beside me with tears in his eyes.

“I don’t want you to go,” he whispered, “but I know you’re doing the right thing.”

“I’m scared, Daddy,” I said. “But you’re right, it is the right thing for me.”

“I’m scared, too,” he said. “But God will take care of you.”

I appreciated that he was respecting me as an adult woman, not his little girl anymore. But I also understood something about how powerless he must’ve felt. What do you do when you’re incapable of protecting your child anymore? How do you pacify someone when you’re afraid yourself?

We want solutions, but the older you get, the more you realize that some choices aren’t win or lose. As a matter of fact, they become some twisted version of both joy and pressure. You buy a house, but you also get a mortgage. You get into school, but how will you afford it?

So often life gives us the chance to be happy on one end and completely afraid on the other. Those are the struggles that come
with being blessed. The blessing itself adds no sorrow, but the way it creates your new normal changes everything.

I wished for a crystal ball and a YouTube video on how to use it, because I wanted so badly to prepare for the road ahead. Everything was so uncertain before me, but I didn’t have the time to waver in my decision. If I waited too long, I would be too far into my pregnancy to travel.

All I could do was ask God for the strength and wisdom to handle whatever waited around the corner.

———

Once in D.C., we toured the hospital and met my new doctor. The Redskins’ Realtor showed us a few homes that were available for rent. While my mother and Aunt April stayed at a nearby hotel, I opted to stay with Robert in the housing the team provided for us so I could see him when his training day was over. His training camp roommate and his girlfriend, Simone, were both from Texas, and she happened to come up at the same time I was there. So the two of us went to dinner and watched TV together in the apartment.

Simone and I instantly connected. Their college was known for churning out professional football players, so they had an idea of what the lifestyle would be like. Most of the players Robert and I knew were league veterans, on their way toward or already in retirement. It was nice to have someone who understood the nerves and excitement of transitioning to this new stage.

The night I was scheduled to return to Dallas and finish packing before returning to D.C. for good, my back began aching. Initially, I thought it was due to the traveling and running around town. When I started having cold sweats and a fever, I told my mom I needed to go to the hospital. They admitted me immediately. I had a kidney infection, a common but serious complication in pregnancy.

I had been treated for the same thing in Texas twice before coming to Virginia, although I’d never had to be admitted to the hospital. Robert was still training and couldn’t afford to be by my side for every moment, so my mom stayed with me. I was there for five days before the doctors released me. There was one stipulation, though: I could not fly back home as planned.

We had only looked at potential homes on our visit. I wasn’t prepared to move so suddenly. My mom changed her flight. She was going to help me figure everything out. My dad was on his way, too.

My income wouldn’t cover our rent back home in addition to the unexpected costs of moving into our new home. Robert had been drafted, but he didn’t actually have a check yet. So once we found a place, my parents loaned us the money and helped us move in. My dad and Robert spent the day hanging window blinds in the new house.

Mom, Aunt April, and I went shopping for necessities: cleaning supplies, towels, bed frame, and mattress. They tried to make me as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. When everything was set up, Robert had to leave for practice and my family had to catch their flight. No matter how short we tried to make our good-byes, there was no denying that it felt like my family and I were being ripped from one another.

I closed the door and accessed a new level on my journey of becoming a wife. I was going to have to do this without my mom and dad there to save me. Sure, they were just a flight away, but they had their own lives. When I wanted to call them for support, I would have to reserve it for when I needed them the most.

Which felt like only a few hours after they had flown out of D.C. That first night in our newly set up home, I got a text from Robert saying that he was going to stay at his dorm-style apartment near the training facility. Since cable had not been installed in our house yet, he was going to remain in his room there. I didn’t have a car,
and the trip was too far for him to come and get me, especially given my condition.

So I spent the first night in our new house alone. It would not be my last.

———

At my follow-up appointment with the doctor a few days later, I begged her to let me go home once my body could handle it. It was still only May, and I wasn’t due until August. I hadn’t even had my baby shower yet. I needed to get back to Dallas. My doctor saw the desperation in my eyes. She obliged and told me as long as I didn’t have any further incidents I would be fine. But she wanted me to wait at least another week or two before flying to make sure I remained stabilized.

The following week, when Robert received his signing bonus and the cable was finally installed, I went shopping to finish furnishing the house. I wanted to make our home somewhere he’d be proud to come. I knew how he had grown up, and I remembered our days in our old apartment. There was clearly more going on with him than he was letting on, and I knew it was bigger than having ESPN on all the time. I felt like he wanted to be a bachelor again and that his pregnant wife had cramped his style. But when rookie camp ended and the player housing was no longer available, he finally seemed grateful to come home.

Robert was never selfish with money. When our anniversary came around, he went all out: designer purse, weekend getaway, diamonds, romantic dinner, and horse and carriage rides. I held on to my hope that maybe he was maturing and settling into married life. Before he bought anything for himself, he showered me with gifts. He told me that I had taken care of us for so long, now it was his time.

We settled into Virginia life and flew back to Texas only once. Robert’s break between camps came in early July, and my doctor
had given the okay for me to travel for my baby shower back home. At my last doctor’s appointment before training camp began—when Robert would have to leave again—the doctor told me that I was definitely going to have the baby early. I called my mom excited, because I knew she’d come. Robert left for camp, and my mom and youngest brother, Dexter, came up.

Those were the best weeks of my life. I imagined that it was a taste of what a normal life would have been. No one was coming by the house to see if it was where the Jakes family lived. A few people recognized my mom, but for the most part we got to be regular people. I gained more weight during the time my mom was there than in my whole pregnancy. We took turns cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. We barbecued and met the neighbors. Malachi even made new friends at a summer camp around the corner.

It was the calm before the storm.

———

Robert had very few off days during training camp, so we asked the doctor to induce my labor when he could be there for the birth. After over twelve hours in labor, I welcomed our daughter, Makenzie, on August 14, 2009. She shared her middle name with my mother and her birthday with Dexter.