by Mary May
Sherrilyn laughed. “Honey, that’s not exactly a revelation to me. What I want to know is why you’re upset.”
Sabrina groaned and laid her head back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. “I’m kinda mad at you, actually,” she finally admitted.
Sherrilyn nodded. “Ok, good start; why are you kinda mad at me?”
Sabrina thought carefully about what to say. “I’m angry at you because you’re okay with dying and leaving all of us!” she blurted out. Sabrina clamped her hand over her mouth. That’s not what she meant to say at all. “I’m so sorry, Sherrilyn. I didn’t mean to say that!” Sabrina was near tears, she was so afraid she had hurt Sherrilyn’s feelings.
Sherrilyn just smiled. “Now where did you get the idea that I was okay with leaving you and never be sorry for being honest, Sabrina. If that’s what you’re angry about, then that’s what you’re angry about… no shame in that.”
Sabrina drew in a shaky breath. “When you talk about the possibility of dying, you just seem so…so… I don’t know, nonchalant about it. I know you’re ready to be with the Lord, but I’m not ready for you to be with Him yet! I still need you here…on this side of heaven!” Sherrilyn struggled to sit up, so Sabrina got up and helped her into a sitting position. Once she was settled and had caught her breath she turned to face Sabrina.
“Sugar, don’t you think I understand your feelings? Better yet, don’t you think God understands your feelings, too? He understands grief and pain and loss, more so than anyone one else on earth. Every time a soul turns away from Him, He feels it like a death. Imagine how many times He has felt that. As far as my own death, I’ve very little choice about anything except how I choose accept it.” She drew Sabrina into her embrace. “Baby, there is nothing that I want more than to stay right here with you and everyone else…but this is what I know…and I know this deep in my heart and my soul…whatever happens I will be okay, and you will be okay. The Lord held you and kept you during the loss of Luke and He will do no less for you if I go home. Sweetheart, it’s okay to hurt and to not like it; those are natural emotions that should not ever be held inside…God knows exactly how you’re feeling anyway, so you might as well be honest with Him about it.”
Sabrina pulled back and looked at Sherrilyn, a flood of tears cascading down her face. “I know all of this, I really do! But I just cannot accept the idea of losing you! I want to be strong and not be selfish and want you here when you may be better off in heaven. I get mad every time I even think about it. I try to tell God that I trust Him and I want His will to be done, but I’m really thinking He better not dare take you from me! So, how do I handle that? I feel like I’m defeating the purpose of trusting in God and His word when I feel the way I do on the inside!”
She laid her head back on Sherrilyn’s shoulder and wept like her heart was breaking, and Sherrilyn knew that it really was. This would be hard enough on its own, but being so soon after Luke’s death made it even harder for her to cope. “Sabrina, don’t confuse trust with understanding. I know that you trust God, but I get the feeling that you think you need to understand something in order to be able to trust. Baby, that’s where the rubber meets the road; true faith is trusting and believing in God when all the signs tell you not to. Do you believe that God loves us?” Sabrina nodded and because she was lying on Sherrilyn’s shoulder, she knew she could feel it. “Then know that whatever God’s will is, it is out of His love for us and it will be what’s best for us, even though we may not be able to see it at the time. When you can’t understand what is happening and you find yourself losing that faith, then go back to what you KNOW, that He loves us and has only good things for us. Baby, you need to understand something else, too; we may not get all the answers that we want on this side of heaven. But the Bible promises that one day all of our questions will be answered.”
Sherrilyn held her and softly starting singing a lullaby her mother used to sing to her. She rocked her as she sang and after a few minutes her sobbing eased up. Sherrilyn wiped Sabrina’s cheeks and kissed her forehead then pulled her back into her arms, held her and sang to her.
Sabrina closed her eyes as she listened to Sherrilyn sing. She had the most beautiful voice. It was rich and velvet smooth; it sounded pitch perfect to Sabrina’s ears. “I didn’t know you could sing, Sherrilyn!” Sherrilyn laughed and Sabrina could feel the rumble against her ear as she lay in her arms.
“Most anyone who can speak can sing. The question is how well?”
Sabrina smiled. “Well, you sing very,very well; I had no idea. You could record albums.”
Sherrilyn shifted, so Sabrina sat up. “Go look in the cabinet on the right side of the fireplace.”
Sabrina got up and went to the cabinet she had indicated. She opened it and found it full of music CDs. “There is a lot of music in here.” Sabrina started looking through the CDs; apparently Sherrilyn listened to a lot of different artists and styles of music. At the end of the row she found three CDs by Sherry Lane. The woman on the cover was shockingly beautiful, long blonde hair that curled down to her waist, and smiling light blue/gray eyes looked at the camera. It took Sabrina a full minute to recognize who she was looking at. “This is you! You did record an album!”
Sherrilyn smiled. “That seems like a thousand years ago. I don’t even feel like the same person that recorded those.” Sabrina carried the CDs over to the couch and sat back down. It looked like it was a mix of old-school jazz and some new material. She ran her fingers over the face that smiled out at her from the cover. When she looked closer she noticed that her eyes looked sad.
“Lonnie was my manager when I was barely eighteen years old. By the time I was twenty, he was my husband. He was a handsome man and he knew his stuff in the music industry. I was very much smitten by him, so it didn’t take much effort on his part to get me where he wanted me, in his bed and in his studio recording what he wanted me to sing. I was raised in Texas, so I was bottle-fed country and bluegrass music. From the time I was old enough to understand what I was hearing, I knew what I wanted to do. I taught myself to play the piano and I would babysit and do odd jobs here and there to pay for actual vocal lessons. I was singing in places I had no business being in by the time I was fifteen. One night I was singing in a club in Beaumont when Lonnie came in and heard me. After my set he came over to where I was sitting with a couple of my friends and introduced himself. I reached and shook his hand… and that was the last voluntary decision I would make until after the accident.” Sherrilyn stopped there… She seemed lost in her past.
Sabrina waited and didn’t say anything, hoping she would continue.
“Everything was good for the first six months or so, and then little things I did would set him off. The way I wore my hair, made the bed or walked across the floor. Stupid things like that would earn me a slap here and a punch there. I was madder than hell the first time he hit me. I came up off the floor ready to kick his sorry butt from here to hell and back, but I learned real quick that as feisty as I was, I wasn’t any match against Lonnie. His first solid punch laid me out cold. When I came to, I was still on the floor and he was sitting on the couch watching T.V. like nothing had happened. When I finally struggled to my feet, he just looked at me and told me he was hungry and I needed to start supper.”
Sabrina couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What did you do?” she asked her.
Sherrilyn shook her head. “I cooked supper, that’s what I did! I never felt so ashamed and embarrassed in my life. I wasn’t raised like that. Men did not hit women for any reason. We were respected as the weaker sex and my daddy and my brother would whip the dog out of any man they heard was smacking around a lady. So how could I tell them I was being abused?”
Sabrina reached and took her hand. “Why didn’t you leave? Go home to where your family could protect you?”
Sherrilyn shook her head. “They all thought the sun rose and set above Lonnie. He was a hero in their eyes for taking me and making all my dreams
come true.” She had lifted her hands and made air quotes around dreams. “I just couldn’t break their hearts, so I determined I was going to be so perfect he would never be angry with me again. I kept the house spotless; I learned how to cook like a gourmet chef. I would hostess his parties for all his snooty friends and I worked out and dieted like a woman possessed. That worked pretty well until I agreed to do a jazz album.
“I respected the music, but jazz wasn’t what I wanted to sing; I couldn’t connect with it and that came across as we recorded. Lonnie would swear I was doing it on purpose and he would say I was just wasting his money and studio time, so I would try it again and again until I was so hoarse that I sounded like crap. That earned me the second beating. This time I needed medical attention. He took me to the E.R. screaming at me the whole way that I better keep my mouth shut and if he even thought I was going to tell someone that he hit me, that I would get it again even worse. So I was the good little wife and said I tripped and fell down the back staircase.” Sherrilyn laughed bitterly. “I was still trying to defy him by my little story… I didn’t even try to be convincing and isn’t that the story every battered woman uses?” She stopped again and took in a deep breath.
“It was that night that I found out I was pregnant, and it was three days later that I miscarried.” Sherrilyn had tears falling down her face but she didn’t seem to notice; they flowed unchecked down her face. “Of course, Lonnie blamed me for losing his child…his child … not mine. He said a real woman would have been able to carry the baby to full term; I couldn’t even do what my body was designed to do. After that night I just started to die on the inside; he actually had me believing all the garbage he was spewing out. I got pregnant two more times, but I couldn’t carry the baby to full term. When he started dating the other girl, I couldn’t even blame him. I felt like he deserved someone better than me, someone who could carry a baby to full term.”
Sabrina listened to the tragedy in Sherrilyn’s voice and had a hard time imagining the strong self- assured woman that she knew was the same woman that she was speaking about; it seemed impossible. “What made you change? How did you become the strong woman that I know today?”
Sherrilyn gave a low sigh. “It wasn’t overnight and it wasn’t easy; I promise you that much. I started believing in myself again when a woman at the studio where I recorded pulled me to the side one day and told me she knew what was going on and that I didn’t have to live like that. I denied it at first, told her she was crazy, that everything was fine at home and between me and Lonnie. I didn’t want another human soul to know the shame and degradation that I lived with on a daily basis. She just looked at me and said her door was always open and gave me her phone number. I looked at the number then tore it up and the left the pieces lying at her feet on the floor and walked away.
I’m guessing it must have been an act of my subconscious, because a week later I picked up a phone and dialed that number like I had been dialing it for years. When she answered, I couldn’t even speak to tell her who I was. She finally said “Sherry…is that you?” I still didn’t have the nerve to reply, so she started talking to me, not about anything in particular just everyday mundane things. I listened and soaked up the peace and the calm I could hear in her voice. She spoke to me for close to an hour. When she asked if I wanted to speak to her again sometime, I finally spoke; I said one word…just one… I said, ‘Yes.’”
After that I would call her when Lonnie was at work or out with his girl. Kendall would just talk to me, not about my situation -- she never asked about that at all. We talked about whatever came up. She was my line to my sanity. Somehow just being able to speak freely to someone had me starting to feel like my old self. I was smiling more and I was less fearful. Lonnie was too wrapped up in his latest fling to even notice, and as long as I was home when he got there and I had supper waiting on him he barely even noticed my existence.”
“Did Kendall lead you to the Lord? I can’t imagine going through such abuse and not having Him to lean on.”
“Not exactly, Kendall was a strong Christian, but she didn’t bring the Lord into it. I think she knew I wasn’t ready, not yet. What she did mostly was just talk to me. I know that sounds strange. You would think she would be trying to get me to leave or offer to come get me, but she didn’t do any of those things. She just talked and she let me talk. That was something that had been denied to me for so long, the chance to speak my opinion about whatever we were discussing. Lonnie told me once that if he wanted me to have an opinion, he would give it to me.” She laughed. “And he wondered why my music wasn’t going anywhere! All singing truly is is a vocal opinion that is put to a melody. When you’re told every time you open your mouth to shut it that no one cares what you think, how are you supposed to put out a convincing album? That was why he told me he was leaving me and he wanted a divorce because I couldn’t put out anything anyone wanted and he had found a brand new fool to believe his lies and promises. But something in me just stood up and screamed, ‘NO!’ I didn’t deny his divorce to keep Lonnie to myself; it was more to try and protect the new girl he had singled out. I wanted Lonnie gone in the worst way, but I was afraid if he hurt the other girl like he did me, I would be partly responsible. So I stalled as much as I could. As it turned out, Mr. Foster had met his match in Darah Simone. She wasn’t really after his help in her career. She wanted a sugar daddy and his fancy cars, homes and his name. I foolishly stood between her and what she wanted, and that’s where I made my mistake. Darah refused to see Lonnie again until I agreed to the divorce.
“Lonnie came home the night of the accident madder than I have ever seen him! He was desperate and he was willing to do whatever it took to give her what she wanted! I was in bed reading when he came into the bedroom. I could tell by the ugly look in his eyes that things were going to be bad. He didn’t say a word; he just walked over and straddled me on the bed then just went to wailing on me. He hit me over and over until I lost consciousness, then dragged me to the shower and turned on the cold water until I came to again. I knew then that if I didn’t fight back he was going to kill me. That was his plan, to just get rid of his problem. When got me up on my feet, he had bent down enough that I head- butted him and knocked him down and then I ran. I didn’t make it to the bedroom door before he tackled me to the floor and was right back to beating me again!
“I wondered why he just didn’t strangle me. That would have been quicker and easier for him, but he seemed to enjoy the act of pounding my brains in. After he knocked me out again, he tied up my hands and feet; then he left. I was awake when he came back with the gas can and started pouring the fuel over my body. I started begging him not to do this, and I would give him the divorce… whatever he wanted. He could have everything and I wouldn’t tell a soul… just please don’t do this!! The last thing I heard Lonnie say to me was, ‘I WILL have everything!’ Then he threw the lit match…”
Sabrina gasped. “Sherrilyn… please, you don’t have to talk about this. I can’t stand to hear it!”
Sherrilyn took her hand. “Baby, I’m not telling you this to frighten you but to show what God can bring you through! I was burned over sixty percent of my body, I lost my sight and the use of my legs, but he didn’t touch my spirit or my soul! That belongs to God! What Lonnie lost was so much worse than the damage done to my body; his soul is lost forever, and as hard as it may be to believe, I regret that… Jesus died for him, too. Lonnie needed help; he needed something that no one but Christ could give him and that was peace of soul and spirit.
“I said all of that to say this in answer to your question about if Kendall led me to Christ. I believe that she prayed God’s protection over me; the doctors told me later that an anonymous person called and told them where to find me and they needed to come quickly. They found me in the front lawn still tied up, but I wasn’t on fire any longer. The house was engulfed in flames and it was days later that they found Lonnie’s body. I was told he was dead before the fire go
t to him; he died from blunt force trauma to his head. To this day I don’t know who called the fire department or who carried me out of that burning house…but I have my suspicions!”
Sherrilyn stopped and thought about what she was going to say next for a moment. “Sabrina, I don’t want to leave this world yet; let me just throw that out there. I feel like God saved me from that death for a higher purpose that I don’t think I have fulfilled yet. I don’t know if it’s Lost Haven or something else.” She smiled at Sabrina. “Maybe it was just to meet you and Charlie and leave this estate and Edgar in the care of your loving heart. Baby, if this is the time that the Lord chooses to call me home, know that you will be okay, more than okay… He does better than okay. You will be better than you ever would have thought possible, and when you get to missing me and feeling sad, just imagine me in heaven with a completely restored body and running around talking to all the saints and talking the ears off the Lord and know that when it’s your time to come home I will be right there waiting for you.”
Sabrina closed her eyes and held her dear friend tight. She felt so much better after talking to Sherrilyn. She knew that if she did go home to be with Jesus it would still be hard but that it would truly only be for little while… until it was her turn to join her.
Chapter 23
Christmas Eve found the family and friends gathered around Sherrilyn’s table once more. This time the weather cooperated and it was a bright and sunny albeit a cold afternoon when the couples arrived. Sabrina had gone nuts with the decorations, and the house was fully flocked with garland and lights and everything else you could imagine. The life-size nativity scene took center stage in the front yard with beautiful flood lights to showcase it at night. Charlie was having a grand time playing with all of the other yard ornaments, and Catherine had to chase her down to get hugs and kisses from her. Catherine swooped her up high in the air then rained kisses all over her face. At least the part that wasn’t covered up in the scarf and toboggan she was wearing.
