Children in the Closet...Chapter 21

 Chapter 21

 

In the fall of 1972, Jesse became concerned about me. Before this, he seemed not even to notice my depression. He took me to our family doctor, the one who had delivered both of our children. Dr. McIver was an OB/GYN but he also took care of the family. While not a therapist, he did his best to help me. He prescribed some powerful tranquilizers – Milltown 100. I became addicted to them and abused them by trying to overdose. I was now extremely self-destructive.

Christmas 1973 was a dark one. To handle the energy crisis, President Richard Nixon banned using Christmas lights. We put up a tree but I was so lethargic and depressed, I did little to decorate and make it special. It was as if I were almost an invalid.

On Christmas Eve morning, I was standing at the kitchen sink prepping food for Christmas Day when I fainted. Every time I stood back up, I had just a couple of minutes before I would faint again. I had to go back to bed and stayed there throughout the next week.

Now Jesse was alarmed and, once again, I went back to see Dr. McIver. He realized then that he could not help me. I was deeply depressed, anorexic, addicted to tranquillizers and suicidal.  He sent me to a psychiatrist. 

I had so many unresolved issues to deal with and I had no idea how to go about getting healthy in my mind. In truth, I had not been mentally and emotionally healthy since I was 8 years old.

I went to see him on a regular basis for about 6 months. I remember he said I was a big bundle of feelings that had twisted myself up so badly I was no longer thinking or living – only feeling. In the end, the doctor recommended shock therapy. 

This scared me because of the possible side effects of memory loss and the very thought of messing with my brain seemed extreme. I realized I was mentally ill and I also realized something needed to be done and that it was up to me to do it.

This was the beginning of me getting better. It would be another 30 years before I would be able to claim good mental health – but it was a start.

I would make a little progress and then slide back down in the familiar dark hole, feeling like I was hanging by a thread over a deep black abyss. The knowledge that God was holding that thin thread gave me hope. I was not alone.  Still, one black day I was so overcome with such extreme sadness that I swallowed a handful of pills and curled up on the couch. I was surprised when I woke up; I had not expected to. When I stood up, I knew in my heart this was the last time God would spare my life and if I tried to commit suicide again, I would succeed.

Over the next year, I slowly pulled out of the deep depression I had been in for so long. I threw myself into church service by teaching Sunday School, working in the nursery and going on church visitation. We had learned how important it was to be a witness and tell others about the plan of salvation. When the church started a bus ministry, Jesse quickly volunteered to be a bus captain.

On Saturdays, we would visit large apartment complexes – mostly in the lower income area of the city. We looked for places where there were a lot of children and invited them to ride the bus with us to church on Sunday mornings. 

This was a ministry I could identify with and wished this had been available when I was a little girl. I taught the kids Bible songs and activities on the bus route every Sunday morning using flashcards and playing games as we drove.

Jesse seemed to have a bigger heart for the bus kids than he did for his own flesh and blood. There would be contests as to who could bring the most visitors and they would win a prize. He went down to the animal shelter and brought home a red beagle to use as the grand prize. Summer and Jesse, Jr. had long wanted a dog but Jesse kept telling them no.

They worked together to get more visitors to ride the bus to church during that contest and won it fair and square. That’s how we came to have our first dog and they named him Brownie.

He was a good dog but he kept escaping. That’s what beagles do. And he could jump! He would jump the fence in our back yard. We would go out looking for him and he would jump up where we could see him like he was on a pogo stick.

Once he got out and I roamed the neighborhood with a box of dog biscuits calling for him and asking if anyone had seen him. By this time even I was in love with that little dog.

Jesse Jr. had a skateboard and he would put the leash on Brownie, hop on his skateboard and off they would go up what Jr. called ‘Big Brenton.’ The street was slightly uphill from our house and Brownie was so strong he could pull Jr. all the way to the top.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Brownie escaped and was hit by a car. We were all devastated – even Jesse.

In the summer of 1974, Jesse and I went to San Francisco on our very first vacation with just the two of us. We made arrangements with Jesse’s sister to keep Summer and Jesse, Jr. for us and we drove them over to East Texas where she and her husband and their two sons lived. We drove back home and packed our bags and caught the ‘red eye’ flight out of Dallas. It was our first plane trip and I got so excited on take off that Jesse had to pull me away from the window and tell me to breathe!

We were gone nearly a week and, with just the two of us, it was a good experience. There was not the usual tension normally present as I tried to run interference between my children and their father. We did all the tourist things from crossing the Golden Gate to touring Muir Woods to China Town and riding the cable cars. We ate a fancy farewell dinner in one of the famous restaurants on Fisherman’s Wharf and bought souvenirs for the kids and family. Jesse and I even had a couple of good conversations while we were there. He was never one to compliment me or say positive things, but, on this trip, I remember him telling me he was glad I didn’t dress in a provocative manner. I seldom wore pants and when I did, they were never tight. I never wore see through clothing and next to no white garments since you could possibly ‘see through them.’ I thought it strange that this would be the one thing that pleased him.

As soon as we arrived home, we went off to pick up the kids and thanked his sister and husband for taking such good care of them. I thought I had made an excellent choice that summer in leaving them in East Texas where they had gardens and fields and lots of outdoor activities plus, they could play with their younger cousins. Back when his sister and brother-in-law were having marital problems, she and the boys had come to stay with us for weeks at a time.

Summer was a grown woman before I learned what else happened that week in East Texas. Summer’s uncle had sexually abused her and, once again, she kept the ‘secret’ for fear of what would happen if she told. She thought her dad would think it was her fault, and when, as an adult she finally told me of these abuses, her dad, indeed, became violently angry and accused her of causing the ‘trouble.’

We continued to go to church and I tried my best to live a normal life while continuing to battle depression. Jesse wanted me to go to counseling but our pastor at Northgate Baptist Church didn’t do counseling. I was still taking tranquillizers.  I was still an emotional and mental mess. And I was still extremely thin as I continued my struggle alone. While I no longer thought of suicide, I was still a long way from being healthy.

I had trusted Christ as my Savior when I was very young and felt the Lord’s presence in my heart and life through all the dark valleys and scary times. It was a natural thing for me to want to share Christ with others and I have never regretted one moment of sharing the plan of salvation. It is so simple. We, each and every one of us, is born a sinner. God sent his only son into the world. He lived a perfect life, died on the cross as atonement for our sins, was buried and rose again in three days. All who confess that they are sinners, and put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, believing that he is the living eternal Son of God, shall be saved.

However, in my current emotional situation, I became somewhat of a zealot. Jesse had totally embraced all of the teachings of fundamentalists leaders such as Jack Hyles and others who taught that wives and children were under total authority of the husband and father, which pretty much left a wife subject to her husband and without a will of her own. In 1975, we attended the first of many seminars conducted by Bill Gothard who founded the organization Institute in Basic Life Principles. I began to see a glimmer of connection in my childhood experiences to the way I was handling life as an adult.

I so wanted my children to have ‘normal’ lives and we took them with us to the children’s seminars and later they attended the regular ones with us. Everything hinged on the head of the family.

We learned a great many truths about life and our response to difficulties and how our thinking affects our behavior. However, the teachings we were to follow gave Jesse even more power and authority over us and made our lives even more miserable. We were far from ‘normal.’

In 1976, we decided to leave our small fundamental Missionary Baptist church and joined an Independent Baptist Church. Summer was now 13 and Jesse, Jr. 10 and they wanted, and we felt they needed, a youth group. Crestview Baptist Church had one of the largest bus ministries in the city as well as an active thriving youth group with a dynamic youth minister and a gifted senior pastor so this was just what we had been looking for. While still being very fundamental and Bible based, this was a church I could invite people I had led to the Lord to come and worship with us.

At Northgate, people were very narrow in their views on many things. Ladies were not to wear slacks or ‘pants’ to church. Only men wore the pants in this church congregation. Once a black lady and her two sons visited. She had on a pair of slacks and I watched a deacon go down to where she sat in a pew and start to whisper something to her. I followed him down the isle and slipped around him and slid in beside the lady and said, “I would like to sit with you today.” She was a gracious lady named Grace and she had a beautiful spirit. The deacon was miffed at me but he didn’t make a scene.

On another occasion I had led a dear friend to the Lord by explaining the plan of salvation as given in the book of Romans. She joyfully accepted Christ as her savior. However, I advised her to join a large Southern Baptist church in town instead of ours. I knew it would be a better fit and it was. She loved that church and continued to grown in the grace of God there.

Jesse took on a bus route and I continued to help him plus I worked in the church nursery. We were faithful as a family to Sunday morning Sunday School and worship services, Sunday night service, Tuesday night visitation, Wednesday night prayer meetings and Saturday morning bus visitation.

The church was growing by leaps and bounds and was now ready for a full-time youth pastor. They had interviewed several men for the position, but one stood out from all the others.  Everyone loved Brother John. Kids loved him. Parents loved him. Everyone did. And everyone caled everyone ‘Brother’ there. Sometimes the ladies are called Sister so-and-so but the men are nearly always called Brother this or Brother that.

I remember the Sunday morning Brother John preached and accepted the position as full time Youth Pastor. He said he had never seen such a supporting group of parents for their young teenagers and he singled out the Davis family, in particular. Summer had a great sense of humor and she had strung Brother John on about a number of things. We lived in a neighborhood where the streets are laid out in a serpentine pattern. You can drive in a series of figure S’s all the way to the end of the neighborhood – or simply drive straight up the center street. So, whenever Brother John had brought Summer and Jesse home, it was along the long curving S route. 

Another tale she told him and his wife was about how self-sacrificing her family was to her. She had been treated for cancer and her family had seen that she got a complete scalp and hair replacement. She said that explains why she could raise her eyebrows and move her scalp around!!

The entire congregation started to laugh and most everyone turned around to look at us. Brother John got a big kick of being hoodwinked like that but her dad was not the least bit happy about it. John went on to be the youth pastor all through my children’s teenage years and was loved by everyone. The church had its secrets and scandals over the time we were there – sadly our family was involved in some of them - but Brother John was never anything but good and decent to me and my children.