Abby persuaded Jess to let her pray over her first because she had called them, and Jess finally relented. For the first time in years, Jess accepted that we both had to work out our issues for healing to take place and that it was not all my fault. This was due to the deep trust Jess had in Brad.
The prayer session slowly turned into a deliverance session once they felt some dark spiritual influence was involved with Jess. Both Brad and Abby told us they felt a strong “inheritance of anger” from Jess’s family’s pagan past and an “evil spirit of a high priestess.” This seemed like a bit out there to me at first and was more like a line from The Exorcist.
During the deliverance prayer, Jess started seeing images of a round white object with a black dot in the center. She said it was an evil eye and was staring at her and was angry. Further into the deliverance prayer, something within Jess screamed, “No!” very loudly when Brad and Abby were praying to drive out any evil spirits in the name of Christ. The force of this scream shocked us all. I was quite skeptical when this all started, but suspected something very dark and not of God was within Jess.
During this deliverance, Jess also said that the focus of the eye had shifted from her to Abby and that it was now looking at Abby in anger. She said the image slowly transformed into an old woman standing over her, who was trying to control her. Jess began shaking in fear and was greatly troubled. Both Brad and Abby were commanding the “high priestess” to leave in the name of Christ. Jess wanted to push their hands away from her. Everything that went on during this session involved deeply troubling spiritual issues, according to Brad. They thought a strong demonic influence was involved, and Jess was in great fear. There was much Jess did not remember, including screaming.
The next day, during Sunday service at St. Paul, Jess took notes on the sermon. At one point she drew multiple boxes over one another around the word God printed in the order of service pamphlet. After taking communion, she was very upset and troubled. When we got home, I asked her about this and tried to coax an answer out of her about why she had done this. She avoided this and tried to justify her feelings by bringing up examples of her past conduct and how she had previously taken notes during sermons. I attempted to have her to accept what caused her feelings and look into her heart. I told her I thought whatever was in her was attempting to put God in a box and separate her from Christ so that it could remain. I also said that her being upset with taking communion was not her; it was something else reacting to the Body and Blood of Christ, and this thing was in fear now that it had been identified and was being commanded out.
Jess asked if I was going to use her notes on the sermon against her. I told her that this thing within her was in great fear and was causing these feelings. It was not her, and I would never use anything against her. But I would use anything I could against any evil that was causing harm to her. She also told me not to tell anyone about what had happened with Brad and Abby and that she would do it in her own time. This session with Brad and Abby was the first big breakthrough. Jess saw some calm afterward, but she made no effort to follow up with them again.
Jess made no progress afterward, and her conflicts and arguing did not stop. I asked her a few times if she had called them to set up another session, but I only got excuses about why she had not. Jess now started saying that no one here cared about her or knew her. She wanted to drive to Missouri and talk with Leo. Jess said he was the only one she trusted.
During all the time that had passed since we were married, Leo had gone to seminary to become a pastor and now had his own congregation. Jess talked with him on the phone. I didn’t know what she said, and she did not go see him. I sent Pastor Leo Sturly an e-mail telling him what was going on and what had happened with the prayer team at St. Paul and with Brad and Abby. Pastor Sturly encouraged Jess and me to continue seeing Brad and asked Jess to see someone with me at St. Paul for marriage counseling.
In October 2010, we started seeing Pastor Timor every Monday evening at our church, because according to Jess, I was the main problem. One of the things that came up was her hoarding. Jess still refused to throw things out and continued to collect useless items. She was unstoppable. Jess would buy large quantities of stuff purely because it was a good deal. She also had the idea she could sell this stuff at a profit, but she never did. During one session with Pastor Timor, we agreed that we would both throw some things out, but Jess did not and refused to talk about it. After two months, pretty much the same results happened as before when we had talked with people over our issues: Jess said Pastor Timor was wrong and did not understand her. Jess refused to see him anymore, and we stopped.
Jess started finding different people to tell about how poorly the others and her doctors treated her. Instead of taking charge and making positive changes in her life, she sought out new people who would sympathize with her and reinforce her belief that she was the victim.
Jess began accusing me of “never” wanting to go to counseling with her, even after we had met with several groups of people together to talk about problems. She started telling other people that I refused to see anyone with her. She also began telling me I needed to see a counselor for my issues. When others found out what was really happening and started asking her questions, she got argumentative, accused them of not knowing what they were talking about, said they were taking my side, and felt they were insulting her. This cycle happened again and again.
Jess further descended into feeling that people were not helping her and were judging her, insulting her pride, and ruining her reputation. Her extremely low self-esteem with feelings of failure and guilt worsened. Many times she said she was sorry for insignificant things she felt may have upset others or me. I told her there was nothing to be sorry about and that these things didn’t matter, but she still beat herself up and couldn’t let go. It got very bad over the last few years with her not being able to handle the little problems in everyday life due to her feeling that people were personally attacking her. She was not able to forgive herself and others or to let go of her feelings of persecution and anger, but then she accused me of not letting go of issues.
Since I didn’t share her extreme outrage or believe that people were insulting and refusing to help her, I was accused of not standing by her, not helping her, not listening to her, not putting her first, and being wrong. Lately I had become numb to hearing her stories of how another person or group had insulted her, and I had to walk away—I didn’t want to hear more of it. A couple of times, I slammed the door and walked out in frustration after pleading with her to stop her verbal attacks. Now, in her eyes, I was violent and destructive and wouldn’t talk with her. There was no way to have a reasonable talk with Jess. What she wanted was to unload on me and expected me to take it, submit to her, and agree that she was right and I was wrong.
Many times, when she got into bed, she accused me of looking at her because I thought she was fat. Jess had gained about thirty pounds, but she was still a very beautiful woman. She had caused the weight gain through poor eating habits. She would eat a lot of sweets or junk food close to bedtime and had started trying to give this junk to me also. I asked her to stop giving junk food to me, but her response was that she was only trying to make me happy. She still wanted to feed me junk even though I told her it didn’t make me happy. When I told her it would make me happy if she gave me healthy food, she still would not relent. She was trying to emotionally justify her out-of-control eating by having me join her. When I didn’t join in, she ramped up her attack by starting accusing me of having a fat phobia; she claimed I had a bad psychological condition and then further accused me of hating fat people.
I had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes a few years earlier and kept a very strict low-carb diet. I had always been very lean, eaten right, and exercised, but genetics got me. It was very frustrating that my wife was willing to cause me harm by wanting me to eat junk food so that she could justify her own bad habits. We had many talks about this and my sp
ecial dietary needs, but she would not relent. I even told her that as my wife, she was supposed to be my best advocate for watching my health. One time Jess took it way too far and accused me of wanting to look good for other women, claiming I enjoyed admiring myself. I didn’t take too kindly to those remarks.
In late December 2010, we met with a team of surgeons who specialized in TMJ. Jess did have TMJ, and the doctors suspected it was causing her to have severe headaches. They had her try to open her mouth as wide as possible, but she could only open it about twenty-one millimeters. She should have been able to do double that amount. The doctors then injected her jaw muscle on one side to numb it. They had her open her mouth again, and she went right up to forty millimeters. The doctors told her that the jaw muscle tightening up and pulling on the jawbone and her head was the cause of the headaches. Surgery would not help the problem. Still, Jess argued with them and insisted that she needed surgery.
They told Jess she had to stretch her mouth open at least ten times a day for the next month to get the muscle back to normal in order to stop the pain. They gave her a bunch of tongue depressors to stick in her mouth to hold it open, but these were too bulky. I made her a small, light wooden device she could use, and she really appreciated this. However, she did not make a good effort to use it enough. I had to remind her very often, but after three days, she gave up. She tried telling me that I just did not see her use it. She later said the doctors were wrong; they were misdiagnosing and refusing to properly treat her by giving her the surgery she needed. Jess said she would take Vicodin for the pain. She then accused me of having to be right all the time because I asked her to try to follow the doctors’ advice. About two weeks later, she collapsed at church. I thought she was having another anxiety attack, but I found out it was a reaction to taking too much Vicodin and other drugs.
December 27, 2010, was a horrible day. Jess had another anxiety attack at home, but this one was far worse than most. She insisted that she was having a heart attack and would not think otherwise. I took her blood pressure and pulse twice, showed her nothing was wrong, and tried to calm her down. She would not relent and kept working herself up, making the anxiety worse. She demanded I look up heart attack symptoms so that I could see she was having a heart attack. I did, and then I showed her that these symptoms were caused by anxiety attacks and said we had been through this many times before.
She demanded I call the emergency room at the hospital and talk to the nurse. I tried explaining that they didn’t know her history with anxiety and didn’t know she’d had multiple heart tests that found nothing wrong, but she would not relent. I asked her to trust me and let me help, but she started verbally attacking me, accusing me of not helping her, not caring for her, and wanting her to die. She was vicious, and I’d had enough of it.
I yelled, “Here is your damn phone! Call the nurse yourself!”
Then I stormed out of the house. I shouldn’t have done this, but at that point, the frustration from all her attacks over the last few months was too much for me to put up with, and I had to get away.
Eight
More Trouble Is Brewing
In early 2011, our marriage was in a holding pattern for the next three years. It got a little better, and Jess’s emotional issues subsided a bit. The narcotics she took for pain were not working, and I was convinced this was partly due to her emotional state. She started getting steroid injections in her neck for pain management. These injections would last a few weeks, and then she would go back for another injection. Jess also had bunions removed from both feet, and she started getting steroid injections in her feet when the doctors thought her tarsal tunnel was causing foot pain. All these issues were a great stress on Jess, and she could find no relief from pain.
In 2011, we went to Thailand together and had a blast. Jess left a few weeks before I did in July so that she could take care of her mother, Suda. I stayed for two weeks, but Jess planned to stay until September. She ended up extending her trip until the end of November.
Normally Jess complained that her feet hurt constantly, and she walked more slowly than my seventy-six-year-old mother, who’d had one hip replaced and needed to replace the other. It was painfully slow to take a walk with Jess. I wondered if this was an unconscious attempt to exert control by forcing everyone to be at her pace.
When I was with her in Thailand, Jess’s pain levels were extremely low. She didn’t walk slowly, as she normally did. She walked around quickly, and I had a hard time keeping up with her as she wove through the crowds. She was a completely different person: happy, content, and driven. It was absolutely wonderful to see, and it gave me renewed hope for our marriage. Jess had acquired several properties she claimed were from her mother, and she had a lot to do to get the paperwork done. She sold one vacant property to help pay for her mother’s medical costs.
We went on a couple of day trips, including a zip-line tour of the rain forest. It was a blast. Jess showed no fear of heights and absolutely loved traveling down the cables. She didn’t have a care in the world and had an incredible sense of freedom zipping through the forest. She didn’t even hold on to her harness and instead swam through the air as she sped down the cable. I don’t have a great fear of heights, but I always kept a firm grip on the cable attachment and inspected all the cables and mounting hardware before taking off on the line.
After I left Thailand, I found out that Jess bought her mom a new Ford Fiesta from the sale of one of her properties. Why? Her mom couldn’t even drive. Jess said the car would be only for her mother and that members of the family would use it to take her places. I thought this was an incredibly foolish financial decision to make, and I told her we both had to talk and agree about major purchases like this. Jess ignored me and started complaining about buttons on the dashboard that did nothing and asked me to look into it since I worked at Ford.
Since Jess stayed in Thailand for a few extra months after I left, I did a lot of cleaning in the house with her gone. For the next couple of weeks, I maxed out the trash containers with junk she had hoarded over the years. Other than the store inventory, the house looked better than it had in years. I knew she would be extremely pissed off that I had thrown out her precious trash, but all this useless junk had to go. My mission was to take the house back from her hoarding and get it tidy and clean.
A few months later, on the day she came back from Thailand, she was shocked when she walked through the front door. Her reaction took me by complete surprise. I had expected that she would blow up again, because so much of the stuff she had hoarded was gone, but I didn’t care if she got mad. She looked around and exclaimed that the house looked very nice and that I had done a lot of work. This was weird. She had been very angry before when I had thrown out only piles of mango and cherry pits, but now, with such a massive amount gone, she was happy. It made no rational sense. This proved to me you couldn’t rationalize or bargain with hoarders. You had to find a time to act, and then maybe, just maybe, when they didn’t experience the emotions of seeing their precious bits of trash being thrown away one at a time, they would realize how much better the home was when the trash was gone.
With Jess recently back from Thailand, her pain levels were greatly reduced for a while. She was happy and back to her old self…especially with a clean home. I believe it was due to her mother and family needing her during the trip. Now at home, she soon fell into the same trap of not doing anything that gave her fulfillment. Instead of using her gifts and being active, she withdrew into herself and became depressed again. The sadder she became, the higher her pain levels were. I tried my best to motivate her to do something. Loving her and showing compassion were not enough. Jess had to make the choice to get off her butt, do something, and get meaning into her life, but she wouldn’t try.
On this latest trip, Jess brought some cash back from the sale of one of her properties. This cash also paid for our trip. She wanted me to use part of it to get a motorcycle. I’d always wanted to get one,
but Jess had been dead set against it. Her close friend had died in a motorcycle accident when she was only ten years old, and ever since then, she’d had a fear of them. She was especially fearful of me riding one. It had taken more than ten years, but she was finally OK with it. I found a great deal on a used 2008 Suzuki V-Strom DL650 and bought it for $4,400. I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) course at Washtenaw Community College and got a cycle endorsement on my driver’s license.
I really enjoyed riding the motorcycle and commuted to work on it, and I rode with a couple of different groups on the weekends. On one of the weekend rides, a Harley guy made a couple of negative remarks about my “Jap” bike. Then I pointed at his running engine, which was shaking and vibrating the entire bike. I said, “I think your bike has Parkinson’s.” He didn’t appreciate that remark, but I and the others thought it was really funny.
Jess saw how much I liked riding the bike and wanted to join me, so she got over her fears and took the MSF course the following year. We spent a lot of time going over the materials together to prep her for the final exam. She aced it, and I was really proud of her. Jess even got a better score than I had during the riding evaluation. With Jess being so tiny, she needed a small motorcycle but was capable of cruising on the highway. She bought a used Honda Shadow VT600 for $3,000. Jess was not very sure of herself and wouldn’t devote time to practice. The following year she dumped the motorcycle three different times at intersections. Even with me trying to encourage her to practice, she wouldn’t. After this, she never rode again, and the motorcycle sat unused.
Just as before, Jess soon fell into the same ways of not doing anything with her life, and her mood sank. She started talking of getting a job at a florist shop, since she had done that for a while in Thailand before we had met. She bought all the supplies and took a class on flower arranging to get certified as a florist at Washtenaw Community College. Jess really excelled and did amazing arrangements. I told her many times that she had an incredible talent for this and that a florist shop would be lucky to hire her. After she finished the classwork, she had to take only the final certification exam but never did. The exam that her class was taking was during the next Thailand trip she had scheduled, but she didn’t try to take the next certification test. It was one excuse after another about why she didn’t take the test or didn’t look for work at a florist after taking this class.
Tales of the Crazy Page 10
