Part 8

I was 20 this year.

It was the last year we went to Junior Rodeo.
I am not sure what happened, but my dad started yelling at my mom in the contestant
parking lot over something.

He was never asked to come back to judge the Junior Rodeo again.

I believe who he really was and how he treated his family was starting to come out.
I was too old for the Junior Rodeo, so I was no longer participating.
La Pine was having a jackpot rodeo series through the summer though that I participated in
instead.


My horse wasn't near ready, but he knew the barrels and we made a prime barrel run.
Everything that I had worked for for years came out in that run.
The timer had not been set, though, so my time was not clocked therefore I had to run again.


My dad actually stood up for me.
He told me that was a “hell of a run”.


I had to run again and did better the second time even,
but after that I really had nothing to prove.
I had proven myself.
My dad had to eat every mean thing he ever said to me
and that was that.


Fall was the Lake County Rodeo.
My dad roped there every year.
But again, it got ugly.


For whatever reason, my dad started yelling at my mom.
They sat in the suburban the majority of the day.
I knew he had hit her.


I knew my brother and I just made ourselves scarce.


Then my dad got drunk. He got real drunk.
He got so drunk he pretty much passed out.
Mom and I were left to get everything home which would be fine, but we had no lights.
I know we got pulled over by a cop on the way out of the rodeo grounds.
It was something about not having tail lights.
Mom lied about the lights, and somehow, we didn't get a ticket.

When we stopped and got gas, my dad puked.
He was so drunk, he didn't even know though.
My mom just kind of pushed him towards the door of the suburban.


He just kind of leaned against it, 
with puke running out of his mouth,
down his chin, and over his clothes.
It was pitiful and disgusting all at the same time.
His eyes were glassy and unseeing.
The suburban reeked of puke.


Somehow, we made our way home
without any headlights, pulling a horse trailer.


If it had been me, I would have just dumped the SOB alongside the road 
and drove off, but we brought him home.


Dad was getting more vocal and open about attacking my mother in public.
One day he had verbally attacked her while she was working in her flower bed.
A friend later told me that she had heard “rumors” before and had never believed them,
but after that day she did.


A new game started to transpire between my dad and mom
as she was not able to get a restraining order again.


He would start attacking her
 and she would just leave for the day usually staying the night in a
motel somewhere until my dad left,
 and then she would come home again.


I call it a game because, really, that is what it was.
She found another way to control her husband without
either of them having to take ownership for their actions or life.


She would leave,
he would play how sorry he was 
and be civil for a few days or months,
and then it would begin all over again.


One day my dad started attacking my mother.
She got in the vehicle and left.


She left, but my brother and I were still at home.


Now, I could fully run the restaurant, so that wasn't the issue,
and someone would have to keep things running while they were “playing” their little game.


For the most part, my brother and I had always been “safe” from my dad's abuse.
We had to live through his ranting and raving.
My mom had taken the physical abuse.
There was only once that my dad hit me.


Mom had asked me to go to bed,

I was busy working on a mosaic project and was stalling.

My dad came in, slapped me across the face 

and threw me into the back of my headboard.

My mother told me that “I deserved it” and that was it.


She was not there this time though and he turned his rage on me.
I was sitting at the table in the restaurant, 
not really realizing what was going on
although knowing my dad was in a rage.


As he came through, he knelt down in front of me and spewed in my face
“I hate her. Hate her.”
He was seething.
He left the restaurant but would be back.


And he started in on me.
We were in the restaurant
and there was a customer there.


The customer had ordered a sandwich.
He chewed very slowly.
I would really have liked to know what he was thinking.
The poor guy probably had a really hard time digesting that sandwich.


My dad started in on me.
 I picked the knife up off the sandwich table
and informed him that if he laid a hand me I would run him through.


I worked through the restaurant that day.
I was bawling and taking care of customers.


To a degree, I was hating my mom too.


Hating what she was putting us through.


I slept in my clothes that night and I rolled myself in my blankets.
I was scared, very scared.
He came in my room that night.
He put his hand on me.
He told me he “loved” me.
He kept saying it over and over.
I just kept telling him to get out of my room.
He did eventually leave.
I may have gone to sleep that night.
I am not sure.
The next day was Sunday and he had to get back on the road.

Of course, he told my brother and I that he “loved” us,
that I was his “little girl”.
At this point though, one knows the lies,
the game and I wasn't going to play.

Mom came home.


The next time around, wasn't so cool.


My dad went after my mother again.
We sat through the afternoon of his ranting and raving.
And then, he was going to march my mother out 
and send her on her way.


I went for the gun.
I really thought shooting the bastard was the best thing to do,
To end the stupidity that kept happening in our lives.
Someone else wasn't getting the picture, 
and she just continued to play his stupid game.
Of course, it was little me and big him, and I lost the fight.


I fled to a friend’s house.


The poor people.
They had lived through so much of my family’s drama.
We had gone there when dad had been on the rampage as a “safe” place till Dad left.
They had tried to be mediators between my dad and mom...
but nothing had come of it and .
eventually just backing out of the whole situation.


Really, they had just been played.
They really didn't “get it” either.
None of us did really.


They tried to give me the religious speech of “Christian aren't supposed to kill people.”
Now, years later, I could give them the Biblical speech of “Love always protects”.
My mother wasn't protecting us. She wasn't even protecting herself.


At this point, it was just a crazy game going on between
my dad and mom; us kids were just having to live through it.


I went to Texas after that and worked at the Mercy Ship headquarters in Lindale, Texas.


I went right before Thanksgiving and was there through Christmas.
They tried to convince me to come after Christmas as the base would be
closed for two weeks and nobody was going to be there.

That wasn't an issue for me though. 
I just wanted to be out of my home life.
I got on a plane and headed to Texas.
It was an awesome time in my life.
God really ministered to me there.


It was my introduction to YWAM or Youth With A Mission.


It was there that I realized that I had no real memory of what had happened in my life
before nine years old.


It was there that the memory of being a little girl, standing in that little hallway
in the teacherage, crying, as my dad was choking my mother came to me.

The other memory that I didn't have was when I actually believed in

 Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

I asked God to bring that memory to me and He did.


There was a program called Bible Release time that happened once a week 
during the school year.


The kids were released from school for an hour to listen to a Bible story.


I don't exactly remember my age, but I remember the lady who was teaching the class,
I remember we were in a building that they had used for Sunday school that was part of the
little white church that was in Silver Lake,
I remembered telling her that I wanted to believe too.


I remembered walking home from school that night,
so full of joy, thinking that if I died right then, 
I would be in heaven with Jesus Christ.
I remembered walking through the restaurant doors.


I know I went straight to my mom to tell her.


She was cooking French fries in the deep fryer for a customer.


I know my dad was sitting at the table next to the freezer.
I went up to her and told her that I had accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.
I remember her telling me to be quiet and not to tell my dad.


I remember us looking over at him fearfully, afraid that he may have heard us.
As usual, I disappeared.