Storm Tossed: A troubled woman finds peace with herself and God in the midst of life's storms. (3 page)

Nothing lovely. So cold. No color. It’s all the same.
That is how her life felt.
Colorless and cold. Empty.

Unbidden, the memory of Jackson’s texts came in like the surging tide. The wind was picking up, and with it, her anxiety was growing. Maybe she should go next door before it got bad. But resolve like steel rose up within her.
No
, she rebuked herself,
I’m not going to be like mama, afraid. I can do this. It will all be okay.

She didn’t know what she was trying to prove, being here alone, conquering a hurricane. Maybe she really was insane.

At least that’s what Jackson tried to tell her when she discovered the texts. She’d known that they were having problems. But…this. This woman, this slutty, ho woman, texting him. And Jackson responding. That is what hurt the most.

Some “floozy” at his work as her mother would call her, texting him inappropriate things. Sexting, they called it now. Suggesting them meeting for lunch, and then her doing things to him at a hotel that Rachel hadn’t done for years. This floozy
knew
he was married. She didn’t care.

And Jackson eating it up, like bacon and eggs on a Sunday morning.
Easy like Sunday morning
, the Commodores song played in her head. When was the last time she’d fixed Jackson bacon and eggs? When was the last time she’d done anything for him, really?

Maybe this was her fault, too. This emotional affair that had been going on for months. Yeah, she’d sensed it. She just couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong. Women’s intuition, they say.

Rachel was devastated. He said he wasn’t in love with the floozy. Yes, they’d kissed once. But that was as far as it went, he swore. They hadn’t acted out on the sexting—yet.

He’d kissed her in his Silverado pickup truck once after work just to see if he was really in love with Rachel any more. And he realized when he kissed the floozy that he was.

Rachel was the love of his life. Rachel was the woman for him, ‘til death do us part. In fact, he was planning to tell the floozy next week that he didn’t want her to text him anymore or vice versa, he claimed. But one night Rachel happened to look at his phone before he had the chance to end it, a strong feeling coming over her that he was hiding something. She couldn’t shake it.

She was in her pink and blue Hello Kitty pj’s, her face washed clean with no makeup, her hair pulled tight in a ponytail and drinking a glass of chocolate milk, and suddenly her world crashed to pieces. She’d never looked at his phone before. It was God prompting her to pick it up and look at it, exposing the sin.

She gasped when she saw the sensual texts, then furiously confronted him when he walked unsuspectingly into their bedroom in his royal blue briefs and long white, tube socks, taken by surprise like a deer shot on a November snowy morning.

“Who the heck is Ashley? Ashley, is that her name, really? Is she a 25 year old with big boobs? Let me guess, she was a blonde cheerleader in high school!” she screamed at him, her mouth contorted with rage. How dare he do this to her!

Rachel thought her mind was going to snap from the truth. She was afraid she was going to lose it, and have a nervous breakdown. Or psychotically kill him.

“She’s a woman at work! It’s nothing! Nothing’s going on, I swear to God, honey! I’m sorry. I—I guess I just wasn’t thinking. We didn’t have sex! It’s a flirtation, that’s it! She means nothing to me. I won’t do it again.” Jackson
said
he was sorry. He apologized profusely to her and their pastor.

But Rachel didn’t feel there was true, deep repentance. Only that he was sorry he had gotten caught. Their pastor told her to just trust him, trust God and to repent for her part in why this may have happened. Implying, subtly, she might be somehow to blame for this. Was she?

Jackson was true to his word, and broke it off with the floozy. Removed all temptation. Never saw her again. She never texted him again, either. He left the company, quitting without notice for the first time in his life, and he never looked back. Started his own construction business and succeeded. It was like the worst thing that had happened in their marriage was the best thing for him.

The amount of money he made in his own company was good, and he was pleased. Felt good about himself as a man. Although there never seemed to be enough money and they lived paycheck to paycheck. Now instead of them arguing loudly over the floozy, they fought about money.

Now that Autumn was in college and rarely visited any more, they didn’t argue about her anymore. When they didn’t fight, their house was quiet. Too quiet. Like the ancient cathedrals in Paris, France that they’d visited on their honeymoon, beautiful, but cold, desolate, lifeless.

This was probably the main reason Faith was depressed. It was either feast or famine, with them joking around about dumb things or loud screaming matches, ending in stone cold silence and everyone miserable. A dysfunctional cycle they desperately wanted to end, but didn’t know how. They’d been to marriage counselor after counselor, pastor to pastor, to no avail. Faith so desperately wanted her parents to be happy and to laugh together, the way they used to when she was little. It made her happy to see them happy.

She often withdrew into her turtle shell, drawing on her art pad in her bedroom or going to her friends’ houses to drink too much Pepsi, eat tons of junk food which Rachel forbid in the house, and to play violent video games, shooting bad guys with machine guns.

When she was home, she practiced playing the piano: Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin. She played the piano violently too at times, as if taking out her anger at her ridiculous parents on the instrument. At other times, she played softly, beautifully, performing magnificently as if channeling Mozart. It was balm to Rachel’s soul, and tears would ooze from her eyes at the beauty and pain of her daughter. Rachel could see Faith’s unhappiness from her parents’ marriage, and it broke her heart.

“O afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted,” she remembered from Isaiah 54:11. Yes, that is how she’d always felt. Storm-tossed. Afflicted. Not comforted.

All her life it seemed like God had Rachel waiting.

Waiting to graduate from high school, which she had hated because she’d never really fit in with the pretty cheerleader types, the brains, the athletes. She was shy then, her nose always in a book, journaling her secret thoughts about boys she liked and writing dark, emo poems.

Waiting to grow up to get away from her alcoholic father and her physically abusive mom, a woman whose anger and fear were intertwined and which manifested in superstitions and rage taken out on her daughter, of whom she was jealous and seemed to hate.

Waiting to meet Prince Charming and have lots of babies. All Rachel ever wanted to do when she grew up was to marry and have babies. She wanted 12 kids until she had the one, and went through a high-risk, difficult pregnancy in which she gained 5
0 pounds, developed pre-eclampsia and was assigned to bed rest for seven months until delivery, and winded up having an emergency C-section, because the baby was lodged up too high in her womb and was in distress during labor.

Very shortly after that, she became pregnant again (so much for breast-feeding being a good form of birth control!) and had a miscarriage at five months pregnant--a perfectly formed, little boy. Jackson seemed to think she’d miscarried on purpose and was bitter toward her, because he’d always wanted a son. He never comforted her for her loss, and she grieved silently for her little boy, whom she would have named Isaac—which means “laughter.” She often thought and dreamed of Isaac—what he would have looked like, what his voice and laugh would have sounded like, what he would have been when he grew up?

She seemed to be in the waiting room for her marriage to be healed.
So much water under the bridge
, she thought ironically as the heavy rains began falling and the news reported the beginning of storm surges. The hurricane-proof house, on 10 foot stilts, had two stories and a small attic, and in the event of a storm surge, she’d go up to the second floor or even the attic. She was praying fervently against a storm surge; she’d seen videos of them on YouTube and it terrified her. Her worst fears were of burning and drowning to death.

She shook her head as if to ward off evil. Her mind wandered to Jackson again. He wanted her to give to him constantly, when she always felt so empty. Jackson often said that he didn’t think Rachel knew how to love, other than their child Faith. She pondered that, as she sipped slowly through a curvy straw on a green smoothie in a clear glass: fresh spinach, blueberries, strawberries, a touch of raw honey, almond milk, chia seeds, blended together and oh, so good.

If this hurricane was happening several years ago, she knew she would have been stress-eating: finishing off two or three bowls of ice cream, eating half a package of crackers and sliced cheese, binge eating on cokes, chocolate, and Nutter Butter cookies, her fave. Now she made better choices to become fit and healthy—in her diet, as well as in her personal life. Yet the thought of chocolate cake made her mouth water. She loved chocolate.

Yet what else was there to do but eat?
Pray
, she heard the Holy Spirit whisper in His still, small voice to her heart.
Pray for your marriage.

She sighed deeply, frustrated with God. She knew that God hated divorce, that He wanted their marriage to work, and now He was asking her to pray for her husband, even in the middle of this storm. But she didn’t want to. A lot of times she just wanted to run away—or file for divorce. She hadn’t yet, because of Faith.

Or was Faith the only reason? Did Rachel really love Jackson, deep down inside? Was she just too stubborn and prideful—and scared—to let him know how she really felt about him? That she was terrified he’d leave her and no longer love her?

The other reason she didn’t want to divorce Jackson was because Rachel didn’t want to give the devil his victory and his satisfaction that he’d won at last.

He’d been after her marriage from day one. He knew that Jackson and Rachel had a ministry calling on their lives. The few times they’d ministered together at church and in home churches, the power and fire of God fell. People were saved, healed, and delivered, and gave God the glory. For that reason, the enemy tried all he could to destroy their marriage…and it was working. She didn’t know if their marriage was going to survive. The thought broke her heart.

Satan’s onslaught with Jackson’s emotional infidelity, severe financial crises, Jackson’s career struggles, Jackson’s and Autumn’s health issues, the foreclosure of their only home, and near bankruptcy had left Jackson and Rachel both weary—and eyeing each other as the enemy instead of the devil. They were depleted and tired, having nothing to give each other. They needed soul rest and their joy restored.

Somehow deep inside, Rachel knew Jackson loved her, even if he didn’t know how to show it. At times she would catch him staring at her with a longing, hurt look in his hazel eyes. Eyes that had black pupils the size of the ocean. How did his eyes always look that way? Her pupils were always pin-point size. Maybe it was anxiety. His eyes were one of the things she loved about him. Loved. Did she love him?

Lightning and thunder outside boomed, startling her. It was almost as if God were asking the question.
Do you love him?

She faltered. Did she? It struck again, this time so loudly she jumped in fright. It sounded like it was going to hit the house. What if the house caught on fire? Her cell phone service wasn’t working right now with the weather. The landlord who had rented her the beach house, for her time away from everyone and everything, didn’t install a land line. It wouldn’t work right anyway with the power flickering on and off from the storm.

She had a weather radio and a CB radio in the house for emergencies, but there was so much confusion on the CB channels and it had limited range—not to mention all the cussing and perverts on there. Not exactly family friendly! She’d be afraid to ask for help on it! Who knows who’d show up to “help” her? Sort of like selling furniture or giving away a pet on Craig’s List; no telling who would show up at your front door. Scary.

Rachel knew that her neighbors were next door, but would they dare to venture outside in this frightening, raging weather? Would she? She’d never been in a hurricane before. She wished so much that she had a hand crank radio, as well as many other supplies. Despite her neighbors’ amazing help and continual reassurance that everything was going to be just fine, she still felt unprepared for the worst. She knew only God could keep her safe and alive in this dangerous storm. Would she make it? Or was she being a complete, lunatic fool?

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust,’” she prayed, quoting Psalm 91:1-3.

Trust. Yes, that was it. Jackson didn’t trust her and she didn’t trust him. Trust was essential to a marriage. The floozy he’d gotten entangled with. Her spending too much money and telling her family and her friends about the floozy and other intimate details of their bad marriage, uncovering and embarrassing him.

They viewed each other as the giant Goliath, the Philistine enemy to the Israelites, sneering at and mocking them. Their conversations, which used to be long, deep, and intimate for hours at his house when they dated, were now laced with contempt, anger, and totally void of affection and love.

So many issues. Jackson used the Biblical concept of submission over her head like a whip.
If he had his way
, she thought,
I’d
be rolling out the red carpet for him every night, belly dancing, and feeding him grapes. Ugh.

What was really wrong in their marriage,
she wondered
.

Men need and want respect, and women desire love,
she thought
,
remembering marriage book after marriage book that she’d read through the years in desperation for an answer, which outlined principles for success in marital relationships
.
She knew both love and respect were sorely lacking in their marriage. Jackson may love her, but he wasn’t very good at showing her!