Memories (installment 21)

**This section and one coming at a later date are very difficult for me to revisit, for obvious reasons. However, this is part of the path I've been down, and some of the things God is currently using in my life to minister to others, and so I share.

Early in the year 2000, soon after our baby #4 was born, hubby's company transferred him to their location in Greenville, SC, where he was doing much the same job as the one in Columbia.

I was home with our children in our cute little house, and he was commuting, until it was decided in February that it would be better for him to have an apartment in Greenville, and just come home on weekends.

(Background...in November, 1999, Jason was able to fulfill a life-long dream and was sworn into the Navy Reserves by his father.)

Some weekends, he had to go to Charlotte, NC for his drill weekends, so those weeks were LONG...I would end up not seeing him for several weeks at a time.

I was working again by this time, through a temporary service, at an accounting firm, hectically running around taking care of my 4 children, one of which was in kindergarten, and the other 3 were staying during the day with Jason's mother. Each day I would leave for lunch and run to my mother-in-law's home to nurse my not-so-little baby, and then hurry back to work. My mother-in-law would take all of the children home in time to meet the school bus, and I hurried home as quickly as I could.

Jason started coming home less frequently. He did come home in May, because he was flying out to Great Lakes, Illinois, for boot camp. The night before he left, I started developing a suspicion that something was dreadfully wrong.

While Jason was gone to boot camp, I got one phone call...indirectly...from him. I say indirectly because he called the friend he had reconnected with while I was in the hospital...the GIRL friend. She called me, and let me know that Jason was doing okay. I got more uneasy about where things were headed.

After Jason came back from boot camp, things went back to our new normal...him living in his apartment in Greenville, me living and working in Columbia...and growing further and further apart. Jason was not paying bills. He was spending money on big meals out, while I was struggling to keep my children fed on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and macaroni and cheese. The house payments were getting further and further behind. We started getting letters about the car being repossessed. We had no car insurance.

I was getting more and more depressed. I couldn't get through to Jason any more. He wouldn't talk to me. He wouldn't talk to his parents. The kids missed their daddy.

Finally, in September, 2000, I had all I could take. The car WAS going to be repossessed. I even had a date for them to pick it up. The house was going into foreclosure. I couldn't talk to Jason about it, because he didn't care any more. I was suicidal. Every afternoon, on my drive home from work, I contemplated bridge abuttments, and how quickly it would be over with if I just ran my little car into one. I always stopped short, because I didn't want my children to be parentless.

I went to my in-laws, and told them all I knew. I told them about the bills. The foreclosure. The reposession. The fact that Jason wouldn't talk to me. My suspicions about his living situation in Greenville...the girl's underwear that he had mistakenly brought home with him one weekend. I asked for help.

My father-in-law was the head elder of our little church, and he set a huge chain of events in motion. He and two other elders drove to Greenville one day to confront Jason. That was on a Wednesday. They went to his apartment and tried to get him to talk to them. He had nothing to say. Not one word. (Later he told me that he physically couldn't say anything.) They didn't see the girl, but her mail was sitting on the table, and her things around the room.

I was waiting at the in-law's home, dreading what I knew was coming. When my father-in-law called, and let us know how things went, all I could do was cry.

I was already severely depressed.

I could barely function.

Oh, I managed, somehow.

I kept going because my children needed me...and because we needed the little income I was bringing in.

But I thought my life had come to an end.