Leaving Cloud 9

by Ericka Andersen

  From Rick I felt unconditional love—the same kind of love I know God has for me. I began to get a taste of why marriage is a symbol of God’s love and union with us as individuals. So even though things weren’t easy in our relationship, something felt right about it.

  To be with a man who seemed to love me fiercely and might even want to marry me was something I’d thought might never happen. It was exhilarating and scary and something I had no intention of letting go.

  It would have taken something really drastic for me to walk away from this relationship.

  And to be honest, that almost happened more than once.

  CHAPTER 32

  A ROUGH START

  Dating a twice-divorced guy in his early thirties wasn’t exactly comforting to me at first. In the past, if you’d asked me if that were a possibility, I’d have told you, “No way.” The divorce rate for people in third marriages is undeniably high. People always think it will be different for them. I feared people would think I was naïve and stupid for being that person.

  But this relationship—tough and hard and gritty as it was—was not orchestrated by Rick or me. It was planned by God, and that makes all the difference because we are set apart. The rules of the world do not apply when you are walking by God’s instruction.

  Now, I’m not sure Rick knew at the time that’s what was happening, but I did. I didn’t believe I would meet this smart, sensitive, broken man and fall in love with him—truly in love with someone for the first time in my life—unless it was from God.

  I had thought I’d been in love before. But looking back, I can see that those times were more about unrequited, superficial love—bouts of strong infatuation with people I never thought I would or could actually marry. If anything, those relationships bruised my heart in ways that still leave faint scars today.

  There is nearly always shame and sadness from past relationships that affect a new one. Without these scars, we are not who we are, and so we learn to live with them and be better because of them. Besides, my scars were light compared to the ones Rick came into our relationship with.

  But Rick wasn’t a man a girl should marry within a few months. A prospective wife needed to get to know him and his complexities, his fears, his rough spots. That’s the main reason his second marriage was a mistake. The truth is, Rick and Sabrina never would have married if they’d spent time getting to know each other better first.

  Learning how to navigate holidays and gatherings was a big challenge for us, and it’s still difficult. Not only do we need to make time for both families—my parents and siblings and his sister—but we have to manage the social anxiety that groups of people bring out in him. When I tell him, “It’s my family; you can’t skip Christmas,” it doesn’t help much. Forced to interact, he regresses back to being that six-year-old who doesn’t understand what’s happening or why he has to be a part of it. And so it’s hard, those thirty-year-old memories seeping into everyday conversation, paralyzing relationships with in-laws and coworkers, keeping him from making friends, and putting strain on his marriage.

  I remember so clearly our first big fight. We were driving from Virginia to Indiana for Thanksgiving, and he was going to meet my family for the first time. I accidentally knocked my coffee onto his phone, and he got irrationally angry with me. His rage and anxiety levels were a “code red” at that point. But I didn’t know him that well at the time, so I wasn’t aware of the cues.

  He berated me for the coffee spill, and we spent the next four hours in near silence. Finally he told me that he didn’t want to meet my family, that I was putting too much pressure on him, that maybe this—us—was all a terrible idea.

  I panicked, thanks to my own insecurities and wanting everything to be perfect. I was twenty-nine years old and finally—finally—had a serious relationship, so serious I was bringing my significant other to meet my parents. I didn’t want our plans to crumble before we reached Indiana, so I tried to put a Band-Aid over this gaping wound of his soul and pressed on.

  Obviously, Band-Aids don’t do so great on grievous wounds.

  It was only later that I realized that the problem wasn’t the coffee on the phone. It was everything else pressing his buttons and causing his responses to be so extreme. Rick’s anxiety spilled into everything else, causing thoughts, words, and emotions to topple over into places they didn’t belong.

  That wasn’t the first time I realized something wasn’t right—that this raging Rick wasn’t the real him. But it was the beginning of understanding how Rick’s past seeped into every moment of his present. Those pinpricks of memory floating around in his mind acted like a time machine, sucking him back into the kitchens and living rooms of the past. It was only after he began seeking God that these kinds of incidents began to decrease—and eventually became almost nonexistent.

  For two-and-a-half years we loved and fought, brushed our opposite personalities against each other, came apart, and got back together. Our relationship was sometimes tumultuous, but it was real—love played out in real time, under real circumstances. Somehow we managed to embrace each other’s differences and to love each other fiercely. And slowly, with God’s guidance and with Rick working diligently to understand his own internal issues and relationship with the Lord, that healing he had already begun to experience continued in a powerful way. He began to turn around habits that had defined him and stop the destruction in its tracks.

  He wondered how a woman could see past all the hardships—and his very rough edges—but I did and he knew, he just knew, this relationship would stick. This one was sent by God. This woman was different from all the other people who had come and gone in his life.

  As Rick continued his transformation, there were some very low points—points when he reverted back to the rage and anger or drinking too much. And though he was enjoying church, he remained skeptical of “church people” for a couple of years, always using the word hypocrite to describe them.

  It was a process, in other words. But we were getting there.

  We got engaged on Christmas Day. Amazingly, Rick proposed at my family’s home in the presence of my entire family. Family being something that makes him very uncomfortable, lots of people being something that gives him severe anxiety, Christmas being a holiday he doesn’t particularly enjoy—the meaning of his proposing in a place so special and important to me wasn’t lost. This was hard, and this meant everything, and though I had known the proposal was coming and had even picked out my own ring, the moment was perfect.

  He’d had a panic attack on Christmas Eve, the night before. He realized he was in an unfamiliar house with a family he didn’t feel comfortable around and was about to propose for the third time to someone, and the reality of all that suddenly came crashing down on him. I remember sitting next to him, telling him it was going to be okay (not knowing he was proposing the next day), ensuring that he felt okay, trying to get him to relax and go to sleep.

  In the morning he was still feeling the panic in some ways. He almost bolted at one point, when the morning wasn’t progressing quickly. He had planned out when and where he would propose—in the room with the tree and presents. But there we were leisurely eating breakfast with no sign of moving to that room.

  Marriage to me was what he wanted, but his fears told him it couldn’t possibly last. He thought I might see through him or get sick of putting up with him. Like the other women he’d loved, I would end it one day. And then he’d be alone again, with one more failure to his name. There was a small part of him, I think, that already believed a failure was coming. It was easier to let that possibility float around in his mind than to hold out hope that it would never happen.

  Despite all those fears and insecurities, something propelled Rick forward. He didn’t run away. He stomped on those lies, which I believe to be from Satan, and chose to believe in a God who put me in his life for a reason.

  God showed me who this man was—the man he created Rick to be— and I saw him through
the web of worldly scars that bound his life in so many ways. God told him, This is good. And with a courage that I commend him for, he let himself be led by the Lord in a way he never had before.

  As we gathered around the tree to open Christmas morning gifts, he handed me his present, a wrapped package that felt like clothing. I opened it to find a pair of my own jeans, packed up and taken for the Christmas trip to Indiana. Despite his seriousness, Rick is a jokester. He started laughing, and I was a little confused.

  But within seconds, he was down on one knee holding out a ring, with a roomful of people watching.

  “Ericka, you have made me a better person. You’ve made me happier than I’ve ever been, and I love you. Will you marry me?”

  I unconsciously put my hand over my mouth, and tears sprang from my eyes. Of course I said yes.

  We were married five months later, just the two of us and a judge in Jamaica. It was the perfect ceremony, one that made Rick exquisitely happy. It was just us. And it was all about this love we created that would endure and that was continuing to help him heal every single day.

  It was just the beginning of a long road of healing. Little did we know, the next year would be one of incredible redemption.

  CHAPTER 33

  LIVING LIFE

  Getting married was not only important for our life together but especially for Rick’s personal journey toward healing. He was beginning to fully trust his life to the Lord, though the process still felt slow in real time. Today, looking back at the time line, it doesn’t seem that way at all. He was still drinking to excess at times, drowning in his own sorrows, or saying hurtful things to me in those moments of weakness.

  One Saturday night we went out to dinner, and Rick started drinking. We were trying to enjoy ourselves, but he was on the verge of having too many. This was not an everyday occurrence, but it wasn’t a rarity, either. And once he got started he wouldn’t listen to me, even when I would beg him to stop.

  “Please don’t have another one, Rick,” I’d say before the waiter came back, and Rick would blatantly ignore me. Then I’d prepare myself for what could happen. I didn’t trust him not to say something obnoxious or, worse, to think someone was insulting him and respond with a threat.

  I hated those times, because they made me feel as if Rick had left the building. He seemed like a totally different man.

  On this particular night, the worst happened. We had finished our dinner and were walking down the street toward our car when we passed the exit of a parking garage and saw that a car was blocking our way. My heart began pounding. I could see that Rick was irritated, and I feared he was going to tap the car or say something to the driver about moving.

  And that’s exactly what happened. Rick hit the back of the car, and the driver—a cocky looking, beefy twenty-something—poked his head out and aggressively asked, “Is there a problem?”

  Rick responded in kind that yes, there was a problem—he was in our way. I began freaking out.

  Panic set in. Oh no, oh no, oh no, I thought. I was picturing the worst— that the guy in the car might pull out a gun and use it. I was pleading with Rick—“Stop, stop, stop, stop!”—and pleading with the driver of the car, “Ignore him. Please ignore him. He’s had too much to drink.”

  Both of them ignored me. The driver stopped the car and got out, and somehow one or both of them started going at the other.

  I don’t know exactly what happened next because I couldn’t bear to watch. I ran around the corner. I couldn’t stop what was happening, and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I couldn’t believe I was married to someone who would behave this way. I couldn’t believe I had committed to this for life. My heart hurt and I began sobbing, still having no idea what was happening between the two guys.

  After ten minutes or so, I peeked back around the corner, and I couldn’t see either Rick or the other man. I thought maybe they had moved a little way down the street, which was not well lit. So I walked in that direction. I had no idea what I would find, but I knew I had to find Rick.

  I walked slowly down the dark street, scanning the scene, feeling both mortified and terrified. After about a quarter of a mile, I saw Rick with a couple of police officers. The other guy was gone, and Rick was just standing there with the cops. Apparently they were waiting for me.

  “Does he belong to you?” one of the officers asked me.

  Embarrassed and angry, I rolled my eyes and just said, “Yes.”

  The cops let him go, telling me to take him home and warning him that he’d better watch himself.

  Apparently, when the cops stopped the fight, Rick had immediately become compliant. He had dealt with authority figures plenty of times and knew his best shot at staying out of jail was to behave and be respectful. Even in his drunken state, he could control this part of himself, which revealed a lot about what he chose to control and what he didn’t.

  We finally made it back to our car, and I drove us home in silence. I felt sick to my stomach, wondering how I was supposed to handle this kind of behavior. This is not okay. This cannot happen, I thought. What am I supposed to do? How is this my life? It was one of the worst nights of my life, and all I could do was pray.

  The next day, the morning light was welcome. It was Sunday, so we went to church. And something wonderful happened while we were there.

  The night before, it seemed, had opened his eyes. In the past, before he had this newfound relationship with God, it wouldn’t have felt like that big of a deal. But the guilt and conviction now weighed on him as never before.

  He recognized that he could never, ever let himself get into a situation like that again. He could lose his marriage, his job, his freedom, even his life—everything he’d been working so hard to rebuild.

  He was also coming to realize that praying and going to church weren’t enough. His behavior would have to change. And because he was in relationship with God, it was within his power—or God’s power, that is—for him to do that.

  Rick knew he couldn’t live in his own prison of rage anymore. But he couldn’t control it alone. He couldn’t prevent himself from being in that situation again. He needed God to help him.

  He’d been living life on his own for so long. The past couple of years, he’d finally let God in little by little. But he hadn’t fully let Him take control. He had still been holding back. So now God took hold of Rick and shook him right to the core. The message was clear: You cannot do this on your own. Only the saving grace and power of Jesus Christ can save you. And all you have to do is accept it.

  He didn’t raise his hand to become officially saved the next day. He didn’t get baptized or have a miracle moment sitting in the pew. At the time he didn’t even share with me what happened. But that day something changed. The night before had truly put the fear of God in him, and he decided that he didn’t want to go it on his own anymore.

  That morning he said yes to Jesus as he never had—and immediately felt a weight lifted from his chest. He knew Jesus had forgiven him for the events of the night before and set him free. When he told me, I forgave him too. That was five years ago, and nothing like that has ever happened to him again.

  Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean your problems disappear. You still have to deal with the consequences of your actions and all the crazy stuff life is made of. But wonder of wonders, now you’re no longer doing it alone.

  CHAPTER 34

  THEY MEET AGAIN

  So many nights he would still think about his mom. He’d put on those sad old country songs she used to listen to in the darkest of her drunken days, and he’d cry. He’d cry because he didn’t know where she was and because he wasn’t taking care of her. Because he loved her but she was still breaking his heart every day.

  Ten years after seeing his mother, her rejection and neglect kept chipping away at his heart, still so fragile even this far down the road. It really was like an infection that had never been treated.

  Yes, God was changing him, but th
is mother-wound was the hardest thing to overcome.

  Every time Rick would cry, I would cry. My heart broke in a thousand pieces for him over and over as we conducted interviews for this book. I could feel the hurt running through him and it hurt me too.

  But there was a larger plan brewing, one that would be a salve to this wound. We just had to be still and let it appear.

  Rick was consistent in checking for Sylvia’s name on Google, always checking for an obituary. Nothing ever came up—until one day . . .

  I came home after work, and he said he had found his mom’s name listed as deceased. He’d checked into it, and the information was all there—the right location, the arrest record filled with charges of public drunkenness, theft, indecent exposure, and more. It was quite clearly the right person.

  That night Rick sobbed on the couch for the woman who had given him life, but who, he believed, had died all alone with nothing. He was insistent that he should have gone to find her, and shame crawled over his mind for not having tried hard enough. He mourned for his mother—not just for her life, but for the life she didn’t have, and for the life she had taken away from him.

  But something felt off to both of us. That death listing somehow didn’t feel final. He had to find out for sure if she was really dead. He had long lost connections with most people he knew in his Arizona hometown but did have one Facebook friend there—an old friend he knew could confirm this for him.

  After sending the friend a message, Rick waited. The friend got back to him quickly and said he knew where Sylvia lived. He offered to go knock on the door to see if she was there. The next day Rick got a call. This friend had found Sylvia’s trailer, knocked on the door, and was now standing face-to-face with her—she was most definitely not dead.