Storm Tossed: A troubled woman finds peace with herself and God in the midst of life's storms. (2 page)

Rachel longed to hold Faith tight. She missed her with every fiber of her being. Sometimes it hurt so bad that she was so far away from her. Five months away had seemed an eternity.

What if she could never hug her again? But Faith had never liked anyone to touch her very much, even as a child. As a baby, she’d pull off her socks, throwing them over the crib, apparently because she had the sensory processing disorder, tactile sensitivity.
It hurt Rachel deeply that Faith would pull away if she tried to hug her and rarely said, “I love you.” But she knew she did anyway.
Didn’t she?
Doubts and worries gnawed at her as she cut open the packages of batteries and put them in the flashlight.

In her head, as she hurriedly got ready, Rachel could hear her mother Stacy, who died of a heart attack in Rachel’s teens, saying, “Have you lost your mind?” Stacy was a fearful woman, superstitious, and Rachel had fought her whole life to be nothing like her. Mama who had stayed married 29 years until her death to her alcoholic father, because she loved him and was too scared to leave and be a single mom. She tried to tell herself, “I’m not like scaredy-cat mama! I’m not afraid of this storm! God will protect me and get me through it!”

Her ailing father Stewart, recently put in a nursing home in Alabama by her older brother Jerry and her sister Faye, despite his protests, would have told Rachel to leave, too. She didn’t dare call him to tell him she was staying, but ached at the thought that if something--God forbid--did happen, she wouldn’t have called him to say goodbye and tell him one last time that she loved him. Of course she had called him a couple of weeks ago.

Her sister Faye knew she was staying. Rachel had sworn her to secrecy not to tell their dad or brother, or her kids who blabbed everything to everyone, bless their hearts. Faye had cried, telling her to leave. “Don’t you remember Hurricane Ike? Don’t you remember Katrina and Andrew? What in the hell is wrong with you? Are you nuts? Get in the car and go home!”

“I love you! I’ll call you as soon as I can when it’s blown over! I don’t know how soon phone, power, or internet service will be restored!” Rachel said, hanging up, crying again. She missed her sister, too. She even missed her ornery brother Jerry, who rarely spoke to her, too busy with his law career, his girlfriends who would fall in love with him and then he’d dump them, his insatiable need for more, more, more success. Success in everything except relationships.

She knew it was really his fear of failure, failure like their alcoholic dad had experienced his entire career, which drove Jerry so hard. Miraculously, being away from everyone and everything had shifted her perspective.

Suddenly she was seeing things much clearer. Her heart was expanding with compassion and understanding, swelling like the waves on the beach now. She forgave Jerry, again, for always keeping her at arm’s length, keeping his distance from everyone who got too close.
Don’t we all do that? Aren’t we afraid of people seeing who we really are, and rejecting us,
she wondered.

She could hear the wind getting stronger outside. She turned and listened.
What if the hurricane was as bad as they said?
She suddenly envisioned a tidal wave rushing toward her beach house, and her screaming for help, with no one to hear her, the salt water pulling her under and filling her mouth and lungs. She’d always had a fear of drowning, so why was she doing this?

Ben’s voice at the door shook the morbid thoughts away. “Hey, Rach, did you get everything you needed at the store? Enough batteries? Ready to eat?” They had ordered pizza earlier, planning a Hurricane Ana pizza party with their neighbors. It would be cold by now, but Rachel’s mouth watered at the thought of a thick slice of pepperoni/anchovy pizza, extra sauce.

“Oh, Ben, thanks.” Rachel felt so scattered. “I think I’ll pass this time. It’s one of my weaknesses, you know.”

“Batteries or pizza?” Ben grinned at her, running his big, tan hand through wind-whipped black, short, spiked hair, his wry humor reminding her again how young he was and how young she did
not
feel now.
He is just too good-looking
, she thought.
He’s like walking testosterone. Good grief
, she chastised herself,
you could be his mother! And you’re married.
If it could be called that anymore.

Blushing and suddenly thinking about Jackson’s hairy chest and bulging biceps, she looked down at her supplies that seemed so meager against such a raging force of nature. “I appreciate the invite. And all your help. You just don’t know how much it means to me.”

Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and she dabbed at them, embarrassed.
She realized she missed Jackson. Not just his biceps, but his voice. His hazel eyes. His freeing laugh, when he rarely laughed anymore. His corny jokes to try to make her laugh, because when she smiled, he smiled. Her smile lit up a room, he’d always said. Because she often looked so sad and hopeless
, he often cracked dumb jokes to try to get her to laugh. Yes, she missed her husband. It shocked her.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay, Rach! Don’t worry. Might be rough for awhile, but we’re all going to make it! You’ll see.” Ben misunderstood her tears, but she let it go. Let him think she was afraid. Yet wasn’t she, deep down inside? Of everything, despite her best intentions not to be? Her worst fear was of turning into her mother.

Was she already her? Rachel remembered the quote she’d penned in her journal last week by Mitch Albom: “But behind all your stories is your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin.”

I’m not my mother
, Rachel thought with angry disgust and her feelings of revolt surprised her. “Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Y’all ready over there?”

“Yep, yep. Well, just checking on ya. And if you change your mind about the opportunity of a lifetime Hurricane Ana party
, just come on over. Best pizza in town.” They both laughed.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Andy so excited,” Ben said, pausing at the front, blood-red door with the circular, stained glass window and laughing, but this time the laugh was different, uncomfortable almost. Rachel looked quickly into his dark brown eyes, and she saw it. There it was. Fear. Then he shook it off, and she oddly remembered Judges 16:20 when Samson woke up and tried to shake himself free of the Philistines, not realizing that the Spirit of God had left him.
Now why did I think that
, she thought.

“Okay, later,” Ben said. Rachel smiled and waved, busying herself with neatly organizing the supplies she’d just bought.
A place for everything, and everything in its place
, she mused, hearing her mother’s voice again.
Before all Hades breaks loose.

Most people didn’t want to take the chance to stay behind in East Destin and the surrounding areas. Traffic for people evacuating was backed up for miles, glutted on the Mid-Bay Bridge over Choctawhatchee Bay, who were heading for Highway 20 to get to Highway 85 and the heck out of dodge. The huge jam on the bridge resembled ants stuck in Terro sticky pesticide. When Rachel watched the news on her iPhone, she was so relieved she hadn’t left a
fter all.
What a mess!

She ate her salad hurriedly, just to get it done so she could get to the ice cream. She’d lost 35 pounds since last year, radically changing her diet and exercising, but she still binged at times, especially under stress or when she was depressed, on Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream. Her guilty secret.

The storm would soon be here. She ate her ice cream slowly, as if to pause time and to keep the devil away as long as possible, savoring every sugary bite, licking the spoon like a lollipop. If she didn’t stop this habit, she would gain all her weight right back. But OMgosh, it was so good.

She remembered the day that Jackson looked at her,
really
looked at her, when she walked in their house after running errands. It was like he suddenly realized she’d lost weight. Maybe she should go to the post office more often! He looked her up and down, his eyes caressing her curves mentally. He stared at her stomach. Or rather, the lack of it. She’d had belly fat for years and was finally losing it.

He was smart enough not to say anything, of course, because she was hypersensitive about her weight anyway, but she could tell he was surprised. And, yes,
pleased. Interested
. The way he used to look at her when they were first married. Looking at her like he wanted a grilled steak, a devouring, hungry look.

She had smiled a little at him then, and walked off, feeling happy. Who knew that her husband looking at her with desire could give her such joy? But of course, nothing had happened after that. It hadn’t for a year.

An entire year.
How did they get there? She didn’t know. It didn’t happen fast. Just little compromise by compromise. They stopped talking except small talk about the bills, Faith, the weather, his construction job, how her writing was going. He was exhausted from working a lot, and she was exhausted, from who knows what.

Stress about finances. Perimenopause. Writing 3 books in six months. Her stepdaughter Autumn, who only visited in the summer when she was growing up, and just occasionally now, but whose visits left her emotions tangled and raw. When she left to go back to her mom’s as she was growing up, Rachel was totally depleted and felt guilty for being relieved for peace and quiet finally.

Autumn Rain. What a beautiful name. She was beautiful, too. Long silky blonde hair, like Faith’s. A slender French nose (her mother was half-French and had been married six times) and very thin lips which she made Angeline Jolie-full with lip liner and bright, almost purple lipstick. Her eyes were a pale sky blue, and she magnified them and lined them with Goth-black eyeliner and fake, thick, long, black eyelashes. She took them off every night and glued them on every morning. It took her 30 minutes (an hour to put on her whole “face”), but she got so many compliments on the lashes. They were her trademark. She plucked her blonde eyebrows way too thin, and they had a high arch. She had a pierced nose and lip. Her face was arresting; her manner intolerable at times.

“I don’t have to obey you because you’re
not
my mother,” she had said to Rachel once. And Jackson had defended her. She’s just a hurting kid, he’d told Rachel. And anyways, Rachel was to blame, he said. If she would just really love her….

Everything was all her fault. Jackson said she was the problem. Rachel sighed deeply, her heart perplexed.
Was it true?
Was she the problem in their family?

And yet there were characteristics about Autumn that Rachel greatly admired and desired to emulate. Her beauty. Her ease with people (except her). Her sparkling personality, emanating a light that couldn’t be denied. Her sudden laugh, freeing like Jackson’s. The way strangers and children were drawn to her like a magnet and trusted her immediately. She had such a heart and love for children.

Autumn was now attending the University of Colorado, majoring in psychology to become a psychiatrist for troubled children. She was excelling, making Dean’s List each semester, while working full-time as the receptionist at a mental health center and interning at the hospital as a therapist. A very full plate, but it fulfilled her.

Maybe her college major was her way of figuring out her life. Why her dad was always too freaking busy for her and worked so much. Why her mother had time for everyone but her, but bought her material things to alleviate her guilt and to appease Autumn. Why her stepsister Faith wouldn’t go to college or get a job or do anything but go to her friends’ houses and play stupid video games, wasting her brilliant mind, and never called Autumn.

Or why she and her stepmother clashed so much. She actually really loved Rachel, and admired her solid faith in Christ and her published books, but she didn’t dare tell her to protect her own heart. She couldn’t take any more rejection. So she painted her feelings with a defensive, defiant attitude and biting remarks, the way she painted her eyeliner, sharp, dark, exactly executed.

When Jackson was around, she was genuinely sweet, ecstatically happy to have her daddy around, and looked at Rachel out of the side of her eyes, brooding and silently jealous about any affectionate displays between them. Which lately was extremely rare. For the most part, Jackson and Rachel didn’t talk anymore.

Rachel tried her best to love Autumn unconditionally, like she loved Faith. But Faith—even though she was undemonstrative in her expressions of love toward Rachel—never spoke to Rachel the way Autumn did. It cut her heart deeply.

Jackson only saw when Rachel ran out of patience and yelled, and said she needed to act like the Christian woman of God she pretended to be to everyone.

Tears stung her eyes again. She studied the chunk of peanut butter and fudge on her spoon, and it dissolved in her mouth. She closed her eyes, giving into the pleasure and pushing away the memory of Jackson’s angry, hurtful words. This was as near as possible to heaven on earth. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream might not be the answer to life, but it sure was close.

Why couldn’t she and Autumn just get along? Maybe they were too much alike.
At least that is what Jackson had suggested once.
Rachel was startled to realize that Autumn’s rejection of her caused her the same pain that she felt about her father’s rejection. And Jackson’s.

Why can’t Jackson just love me? Why am I so hard for him to love? What happened to us? Where’s the man I married, who couldn’t get enough of me and talked to me for hours in the night?

Reading
Bring Me a Unicorn by Anne Morrow Lindbergh,
Rachel wrote in her journal her words that seemed so timely now:

“It is cold—a penetrating, damp, pervading cold. We stop at little stations; mud-built houses, sticks and stones; standing outside, a man, dark, savage-looking, a blanket around his nose and mouth, showing just those sullen dark eyes…A woman in the door—a great blanket around her, too—her eyes only showing above the rim. It’s so cold. There is nowhere any color. It is all just the same, this dull gray green: the sand, the bushes, the sky even—cold and cloudy—seemed washed with the same color; no reds, no yellows or tans, just this cold enveloping dry gray. It is terribly depressing. We have traveled three days seeing nothing lovely: flat fields first of cornstalks, then of cotton, now today
nothing
but this gray cactus.”