A One-Legged Sojourner's Tale, part 2

At this early stage in the life of the One-Legged Sojourner, I believe it’s crucial for you, the reader, to have a foundational understanding of the person to which you’re lending your ear. At the very core of “me” is my redemption story and the man-God who wrote it.

Don’t let anyone shame you out of telling your redemption story, by the way – especially yourself. Jesus went around doing miracles in the lives of sinning, suffering people, the esteemed and the outcast alike, for a purpose – so that the contrast of who they were against who they became because of him would be a distinct testimony of His goodness and God-ness.[1] Don’t tell your story as an undying memorial to your woundedness or as an excuse to remain unhealed.[2] Don’t be intimidated by people who seem more together than you or fear the potential consequences of sharing.[3] Definitely don’t throw it out for the pigs to trample on.[4] Tell it when the Spirit asks you to, and when it matters.[5]

If you bury the story of your past, you disfigure the testimony of today and disempower it to speak to people who struggle or suffer as you once did.[6] (Case in point: without my telling of this story, every entry hereafter will come across as cliché, hypocritical, disconnected – disempowered.) Tell your story as a witness to how Jesus changes lives and show them how he changed yours.[7] Your scars are part of the story.[8]

My story of redemption begins in a very common way – with two extremely young teens (ages 15 and 18!) getting married, having a child, and discovering that they had made a mistake. Their divorce created an unlikely fork in the road for me when I was almost 6 years old. On one side, my father left to go to college across state, surrendered his life to Jesus not long after, and remarried to a young woman with two daughters. After he finished college, they were called into ministry and founded a church in Billings, MT which continues to thrive today under the leadership of their successors.

On the other side, my mother, already laden with untended wounds from childhood, struggled to regain her footing after the split, was inadvertently shamed by the pastor of our church (it was the 60’s and she was now a divorced woman), put her full weight on alcohol to numb her pain and help her move forward, and made a devastating mistake just a few months later with another hasty marriage. This man turned out to be a violent alcoholic with his own undealt-with issues. They fought continually and passionately. He knocked the remaining life out of my mom and knocked the fight out of me, along with about 2 ½ years of memories. After a second divorce, my mom gave up on marriage and strove thereafter to improve her skills and standing in life by day while slowly killing herself with vodka by night. She died at age 48 from the effects of drinking and smoking but, thank you God, turned her life over to Jesus before she died!

After my parents’ separation, and my existential crisis which went undetected by the adults, I quickly learned how to make a safe, reliable, unchanging home inside myself. I created an internal space that was free from the dangers and complications of human connection, but with a “pleaser” mask on the outside to deflect any disruption of it. The most effective, accessible pain-relievers and people-substitutes at that age: sugar, caffeine, cartoons, and primetime family sitcoms. Once I had that handful of parlor tricks to rely on, no one was going to undo them. Not mom or dad. Not even my precious Grandma, who picked me up every Saturday night and took me to church every Sunday morning. Not even the Jesus I loved because of her. Not yet.

Growing up, I spent most of each given year with my mother as a latchkey kid in our tidy but structureless, parentless home, going where I wanted to go, doing what I wanted to do, and sticking out as an easy target for unscrupulous men. My mom worked 45 minutes away from home, which meant she had to leave before I got up and would come home late, retreating into her routinized safe place each night.

During the summers, I lived with my dad, bonus mom (she really was a bonus), and two stepsisters in a Christian setting – going to church biweekly and learning how to get along in a house full of people. Both dad and bonus mom worked full-time to pay the bills. There was a lot of fun had with my sisters. But I was, functionally, a walking anxiety attack between unblended sibling rivalry, chaffing under the unfamiliar structure, and strict limitations on sugar, caffeine, and television. Going back home to mom each fall was like throwing off the Sunday clothes, putting on grubbies, and running out to play.

Far too early, my G-rated painkillers and TV people-substitutes lost their kick. I went searching and found new go-to’s that were much harder, packed a bigger punch, and came at an extremely high cost. When those didn’t work, I ran – 5 or 6 times before they all gave up and cut me loose to go my way at 17. I had the opportunity to move to Billings with my dad and his family at 13 but could not find my way back to innocence. And would not walk away from my struggling mother. My father and I were estranged for many years after that.

I followed that deceiving and desolate road for about 15 years before being forced to acknowledge the futility of it. At some point, a dead-woman-walking either faces up to the end to the road ahead, or just numbly lays down on it and waits for death to catch up.

At age 27, working as bartender in Reno, NV – 9 months married, 6 months pregnant, and 3 months separated from my husband – I found myself living in a studio apartment next to a 24-hour drug dealer (pregnant, not partaking) with an air mattress, grandma-upholstered princess chair, and a ’62 Chevy pickup (mostly primer gray, “the lizard”). And, I had the sermon tapes my father had been sending to me stacked in a ‘70’s plastic sliding-door cabinet.

One night, having finally reached my moment of reckoning, I pulled out one of the tapes and listened. I don’t remember the message at all – just the recognition that God was present in the room. Laying on my air mattress in complete defeat and surrender, I called out for God to help me. And he did.

The awakening of my spiritual heart and the opening of my spiritual eyes was instantaneous, like someone had silently flipped on a light switch in some secret inner room. The hollow, driving hunger for love and connection that my emaciated soul had inflicted upon itself for so many years was thoroughly quenched. I never looked back, except to marvel at the goodness and grace of the God who picked me up out of my own muck and mess, washed me inside and out, and forgave it all – just as he had forgiven my father in his moment of surrender so many years before, and would one day forgive my mother in hers.

After a breathtaking “honeymoon” year back in my hometown (picture a 30’ by 30’ cracker box house with frost on the insides of the windows in winter and black widow spiders coming in through a hole under the sink in summer; then add a thriving baby and a well-worn Bible shining rose-colored light on it all), my dad and bonus mom invited me to come and live with them in Montana to get back on my feet. Thus began the hard work after the honeymoon.

Fast forward through a long season of sorting through the mess that was me when I showed up in my new setting; adjusting to my new family and church-family; sitting under my father’s teaching while constantly dodging the attention that comes with being the adult, misfit, long-lost daughter of a mega-pastor; going back to school and learning to provide for myself and my son… Six years later, marrying a fine, unsuspecting rancher man; years of healing from “sin done to me,” and more years of healing from “sin done by me.”

My redemption story is still being written and won’t be finished until it’s finished. But there are some clear redemption themes that have emerged out of the ashes of my past.

Where once, doing life alone was a self-imposed prison that both protected me and deprived me of critical, supportive relationships, God has made me the perfect candidate for living at the foot of a mountain, as the soulmate of a rancher man, in the best, most scantly but perfectly populated 30-mile neighborhood around – utterly content to wake up each morning in the solace and solitude, do my chores and then curl up in my favorite place, read, learn, listen for the Spirit’s voice, and writing down what I hear.

Where once I had a profound sense of outsider-ness and a paradoxical compulsion to run, God lit a fire in me to go, send, reach out, and take the message of the gospel to the outer edges of humanity, to invite every person languishing outside the kingdom of God to come inside – to be adopted as His children, to belong, and to live with Him forevermore.

Where once I lost my fight and my voice, God shaped in me an inner voice that expresses itself through pictures. And with those pictures, He uses with me to write, speak, and tell stories that will, God willing, will change lives and testify to His goodness.

[1] John 9:13-25

[2] John 5:1-9. This is not a statement about immediate healing, but a willingness to respond to Jesus’ desire to heal.

[3] Luke 8:40-56

[4] Matthew 7:6

[5] Mark 5:1-20

[6] 1 Timothy 1:15-17

[7] John 4:1-28

[8] John 20:27