Storm Tossed: A troubled woman finds peace with herself and God in the midst of life's storms. (7 page)

All Jackson knew is that if something happened to her, God forbid, he didn’t think he could take it. His eyes watered and he sobbed, the growing fear of something happening to her making him feel sick to his stomach.
Why in the heck doesn’t she listen to me?

He prayed again, this time getting on his knees, begging God to spare her life and protect her. His body wracked with frightened sobs, but he muffled them to not disturb Faith.

He redialed Lance’s number. Lance worked all kind of crazy hours, so he wasn’t worried about waking him. He didn’t have a wife and kids, so even if he was home asleep, he wouldn’t care that Jackson called. He was always glad to talk to his best friend.

They’d been buds since high school, kept in touch sporadically, but always picked up just where they’d left off. Those kind of friends were few and far between, but Jackson knew he could trust Lance with his very life and his family’s.

He was also one of the best expert shots he’d ever met. The guy could knock ‘em dead with his pistol at 50 feet away with his Glock. He was even more accurate with his rifle. This thought oddly comforted Jackson right now, for some reason. He knew in disasters, there was a higher incident rate of people looting and committing crimes.

God, please protect my wife,
he prayed, impatiently waiting for Lance to pick up the phone, his leg jiggling. Restless leg syndrome, the doctors called it. Autumn and Faith had it, too. Drove Rachel crazy. But he couldn’t control it. It was just nervous energy, he’d tell her.

“Hey there, I ain’t able to pick up right now, but you know the drill so do it!” Lance’s amused, thick southern voice on the recording said loudly. Jackson sighed in irritation, and slammed the phone down. How was he supposed to find out if Rachel was okay?

He knew cell phones weren’t working and wouldn’t be for a while, even a week or two from now, and that she didn’t have a ham radio. He’d warned her she was just asking for trouble going there.

He told her how important it was to have a ham radio or some other effective communication device, in the event of a storm. She’d assured him the weather radio and the CB radio would work fine if there were any storms, the house was hurricane proof, and that she didn’t think anything was going to happen, anyway.

But when she said it, she wouldn’t look at him, as if she sensed something ahead of time, and knew that she might not ever be coming back. She was packing like mad, avoiding his penetrating, hurt eyes, just wishing he’d go away. It hurt too much to be around him.

He hovered in their bedroom practically on top of her, his body seeming to grow big as the Hulk’s, his voice getting louder and angrier, as she rolled jeans into the suitcase, and picked out which necklace to wear, which for some reason maddened him. How could she so carefully pick out jewelry, and so easily discard their marriage?

She didn’t think he even cared that she was leaving; it was just the money she was spending, wasn’t it? “I did this with my money,” she reminded him. He ignored her all the time anyway, so what difference did it make?

She also knew it pricked his pride. People at work and at the church were talking about them possibly divorcing with them “separating” and Jackson was embarrassed.

Even though they both told people it wasn’t actually a separation, Rachel was just going away to a beach house to get some serious writing done, nobody believed them. Too many had witnessed their years of “intense domestic fellowship,” as Autumn dubbed it.

He wanted some intense domestic fellowship now. He’d welcome even an argument, just to have her there. He wanted her home, safe. He decided to wait until the morning to tell Faith about the storm surge. He didn’t want her up all night, worried about her mom. He let her sleep, although he heard her stir restlessly and talk in her sleep a couple of times. He sensed her anxiety about her mom, even in her sleep. He’d seen the scared look in her eyes today when she saw the news and asked him if mom was going to be okay.

He sat in the living room on his thick, soft royal blue, sectional sofa, watching the news updates, reading the Bible and praying for hours. He kept trying to call Rachel and Lance all night, to no avail. But He knew it was all in God’s hands. Ultimately Jackson trusted Jesus, no matter what happened.

*******

As the water slammed against the steel stilts, Rachel knew she had to act fast to get everything up to the second floor. She thought she’d be safe on the first floor with how high the stilts were. She raced up and down the stairs with a pin light like a crazed woman, praying out loud the blood of Jesus and in the Spirit. With it being night time and there being no power, the task was even more arduous.

Is this it?
She thought.
Am I about to drown and die?

Rachel had just finished hauling everything up to the second story, when she felt the house swaying a little.
God, is the house going to collapse?
Will the foundation hold?
She wondered.

She remembered the parable in the Bible that Jesus had told in Matthew 7:24-27 of the man who built his house on the rocks and the man who built his on sand.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built the house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who build his house on the sand, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

She’d memorized this passage one summer, working with Faith years ago on her memory verses for Bible Vacation School at their church, and had never forgotten the verse. How timely these words were now! Was she wise or foolish? Would her beach house stand?

She grabbed the thick cord of rope and the axe, her purse and the plastic bag filled with important papers. She knew the papers were some of the most difficult things to attain after a natural disaster, and how important they were.

Her purse contained her wallet, which held pictures of her family. Quickly she got out the last family picture they’d taken several years ago. It was too dark to see it now, but she knew that picture by heart. She’d looked at it so many times through the years, praying about their family, for God to do healing love miracles in Jesus’ name.

Everyone was older now than they were in the picture, but they were all smiling, genuinely. They’d gone out to eat and to a movie just before having Rachel’s friend Tara professionally photograph their family pic, and so they were all in a good mood. Rachel and Autumn had even joked around together about Channing Tatum in the movie, voted one of 2014’s Sexiest Men Alive. Even though Jackson felt slightly jealous about them admiring Channing, their laughter together warmed his heart.

In the picture, Faith was in the middle of everyone, sandwiched between her parents, as if she held them together as a family by iron will. Rachel knew it was God, though, who kept them intact and held them in the palms of His Loving Potter’s hands. Rachel held the picture close to her heart, crying and praying. Would she ever seen her loved ones again?

God,
she prayed,
please let me live. I want to live! I don’t want to die yet! Please forgive me of any unconfessed sin! Please protect me and get me safely back home to my family. God, please give me a second chance to love again! God, have mercy and help me!

As Rachel prayed, her body shivered hard in fear.
Get a grip! The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, yea though I walk down the valley of the shadow death, I will fear no evil
, she prayed. She couldn’t even think straight of how the scripture really went because she was so scared.

She could hear the raging waters downstairs in the first story, and was terrified the waters would rise to the second story any time now. Recently she’d read in the news that in an unusually heavy thunderstorm in Texas, following the severe drought since October 2010, eight inches of rain had fallen. Flash flood waters from the Blanco River in Wimberley, TX, had risen 12 to 14 feet in 30 minutes. Twenty-two people had died from the Texas storm. The thought made her very uneasy.

The 12-foot storm surge here in Florida had not only gone over the top of the steel stilts, but was up to the first story of Rachel’s beach house. The rushing, gurgling water downstairs seemed to have a sinister voice, to pull her under its cold darkness at any moment.

She felt the enemy laughing in glee at her and rebuked him in Jesus’ name. Her life was in God’s hands. He couldn’t take her out before God said so!

She remembered her friend Tiffany, who had almost died 12 times from her different heart surgeries since childhood. She was nicknamed “Cat Woman,” because she seemed to have nine lives like a cat.
We are the potter and He is the clay
, Rachel thought.

Almost every house in Rachel’s neighborhood was instantly demolished by the surge. She was lucky to be alive…no, not lucky, but divinely protected. Rachel’s eyes did not spiritually see the army of angels encamped all around her and the house, but they were very present, fighting on her behalf in response to the saints’ prayers, a pleasing aroma to God. She had many family members and friends praying for her and all of Florida.

She wondered about her neighbors. Surely they were all dead by now. Their house was nowhere near as tall as hers, or as solidly constructed. They didn’t have a Topsider home, although their home had survived hurricanes in the past.

She didn’t know how on earth she’d find out how they fared, or how long it would be before she could even attempt to go over there. How long did it take for storm surge waters to recede? She could be here days, or even weeks. Horror stories about families trapped in flooded homes without food or water dying came to her mind, and she shook them away determinedly, like Scarlett O’Hara telling herself she’d think about that tomorrow, for after all tomorrow is another day.

We’re all crazy
, she thought.
We should have all evacuated with the others! Why did we stay? Why did I listen to my neighbors? Why didn’t I listen to Jackson? I was wrong!

She could hear doors breaking violently and windows shattering, despite the “hurricane proof” construction, and knew that the furniture by now must be floating around downstairs, ruined, or demolished by the storm’s force. She remembered the scripture in Matthew 6:20 about storing up heavenly treasures that couldn’t be destroyed by moth or rust.
Or hurricanes
, she thought.

She’d brought many of her favorite little things with her on this trip, in case she decided to divorce Jackson, but they were now probably all ruined. She had been so rash and stupid!

What good would all those things do her now, if she was about to die—Premiere jewelry, books galore, special little souvenirs from places she’d traveled, wall art, stuffed animals, magazines, cute shoes, some photograph albums of their family (one of her most prized possessions, besides her Bible), scrapbooks, scrapbook materials and tools, collections of Faith’s school papers throughout the years (why did she keep it all this stuff?), a music box with a ballerina on top of it that Jackson had given her when they dated, her gymnastic trophies, boxes of letters from her sister (her favorite pen pal in the world; they drew stick figure cartoons to each other), a giant plastic Tupperware dish of Sharpies, colored markers and pencils, pastel-colored sticky notes, their tax returns (Jackson let her handle the finances because she was better at it), bank statements.

Just stuff. So much stuff. Now gone in an instant. And now the only thing that mattered was God and the ones she loved. She realized, deep down, she really didn’t want to divorce Jackson. She just wanted their marriage healed and the pain to stop.
 

She started crying, berating herself for being so stupid to come here, and now all these things were gone, irreplaceable. Thank God she’d had the sense to upload most of the family pictures online before she’d left for Florida, as well as scan their important papers. But the other things were gone forever.

Did this stuff matter? Wasn’t all that mattered God, love, family, friends, and fulfilling your purpose?

She reflected back on her life. All the ridiculous, over the top arguments with Jackson about such dumb stuff. Where to eat dinner. He’d ask her, she’d say I don’t know, and when she finally decided where to eat, he’d try to change her mind to go somewhere that he really wanted to eat and then they’d fight—and not go anywhere.

His dirty clothes constantly thrown on the floor instead of the laundry basket. Was she a maid, she’d ask him. Her buying new clothes, with him yelling at her that he wasn’t a work horse and he was tired of working his butt off all the time, just for her blow it and leave him nothing for work lunches except tuna or ham sandwiches.

Him never asking for directions when they traveled and getting them lost for an hour, or him not putting enough gas in the car, making her crazy with stress or worry that they’d run out of gas.

The last time they went out of town, he forgot his wallet and they had no money to eat dinner, so Autumn had to PayPal money to them for food. How embarrassing to have their daughter pay for their nice dinner out!

Fights over her and Autumn not getting along. Arguments over exactly how to motivate Faith to get a job or go to college or take some kind of action step of faith, for crying out loud.

Loud fights over sex with Jackson (or the lack of it), never having enough money despite his good pay, family members, his uncertain seasonal career, his long work hours, him working too much, him not working enough, her books not paying enough royalties to make a difference, her eating out Mexican all the time, him hinting for her to exercise and then saying he wasn’t hinting and that she was just too sensitive, him gambling away $200 of his paycheck which was supposed to go for the electric bill. Round and round the mountain they always went.