Ruth is my younger sister. I love her profoundly.      George Caywood

I was born on Easter Sunday, April 14, 1946. The story is that I interrupted my father’s Easter dinner. I was the 6^th of 6, four girls and two boys. My parents met when they were nest door neighbors in Tucson, Arizona.

My mother came from a church family, Baptists, and my father from an unchurhed family, whom I never met until 2000. They were involved in cults, spiritualism and psychic powers. My father was saved at 19. My parents were older (38 and 43) when I was born, and most of my siblings already teenagers. I received a lot of affirmation, attention and unsolicited parenting. And often felt as if I had 7 parents instead of two. Our home was noisy, disorganized and occasionally contentious. I remember huge fights, occasionally physical. This would typically be followed by a weeping, emotional apology session at some point which was as upsetting to me as the contention. I dreaded this emotional scene at least as much as the screaming and hitting. I was a very anxious child, longing for stability, security, peace and order.

Our family was a church family, attending 3 to 5 times a week. I am forever grateful for this early and continuous input of truth. Our love for the Lord was genuine, dysfunctional as we were. I was torn and miserable over my sometimes uncharitable and UnChristlike heart, which I seemed unable to do anything about, though my outward walk had the appearance of righteousness. My father and mother loved the word and were soul winners. My first Bible memory verse was from Psalms, “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. ” Legalism was rampant in that setting, though grace was the byword of the day. Whether it was said, or more likely implied, I don’t know, but family and personal problems like those of my family were a sure sign of a flawed faith or secret sin, so I kept them secret…we all did. Subtly, oddly, my religion took a turn from love of Christ and worship of God to love of “church” and worship of “righteous behavior’. Only later sorrow and failure would redirect my heart back to right focus.

My salvation experience was at 8 years old. Several years earlier I had been pressured by my well-meaning mother into a “sinner’s prayer”, but I will never forget that Sunday night service when God called me. I knew I was a sinner needing a savior. I knew my family’s churchiness was no help – this was between God and I. I remember my salvation experience in great detail, what I was wearing, where I was sitting in church. I also felt a call to vocational ministry at age 8.

Somehow, however, I missed the truth about the fullness of the spirit, the keeping power of God, the sweetness of undiluted grace that would bring me such joy later on. I was surrounded by sweet and loving examples of humanity for the most part. Youth were highly valued in that church culture and I have such happy memories of activities and friends. My unsaved friends never seemed to have as much fun and joy as we did.

Backtracking, at about 6 years old, I contracted strept throat, which deteriorated quickly into rheumatic fever, an inflammation of the heart muscle with strept, often fatal in those days. I was hospitalized near death and can recall whispered discussions as to whether I would live or not. As our family was extremely poor, I was in the hospital charity ward, meaning my parents could only visit for two hours on Sundays, my siblings not at all. I had never been separated from my family, even overnight. I remained in the hospital for eight long weeks, frightened, lonely, with critically ill children sharing my room for four, and cared for by bitter, surly, overworked nurses. Nights were particularly agonizing, and lonely, with sleep problems that would recur the rest of my life. Ultimately my life was spared and I was sent home for bed rest for 9 months for my heart to heal from its damage, which it did. Miraculously, I have only the slightest murmur. I attended only two weeks of first grade, with a state provided home tutor the rest of the year. I had to learn to walk again the following summer when I was let out of bed, as my muscles had atrophied from disuse. I was filled with gratitude for my returned health and normalcy which remains to this day.

The summer of 1953 was a traumatic one.

About a month after my returned health, my father came home from work in the middle of the day. My mother was stressed, crying and agitated. He silently took to his bed, refusing to talk, and basically remained there for the rest of his life. This malady, for which I had no name at the time, was clinical depression.

That same summer, my siblings and I traveled to Tucson, Arizona, for a favorite uncle’s wedding. We were all to participate as attendants, me as the flower girl. We cheerfully traveled by Greyhound bus to be fitted for outfits, spoiled by doting aunts and grandparents, welcoming the respite from the sad stress at home. Parents were to join us just before the wedding. On a hot August Arizona day, I became aware of a kuffufel and weeping voices. My brother, 15 and sister, 18 and I seven, were sent from the room to the porch. We tried to listen at the door. My brother George went around to the open window to listen and returned sobbing. My father had taken my brothers’ gun and shot himself in our parent’s room. I was consumed with horror at this mental image. At seven years of age I knew nothing of funerals or burial and assumed his body would remain somewhere in the house. It was a terrifying time with the adults hysterical and life spinning out of control.

Our family would be marked permanently by this tragedy. The wedding was cancelled; we rushed home for the emotionally devastating funeral. My self-esteem, already low, plummeted as I translated the act as willing rejection of me by my father. I was shamed and humiliated, and felt my family and myself were forever marked as weird. The shame stayed with me and I would not speak of this to anyone for decades. The mere mention of the word suicide would cause me to have trouble breathing. Only in 2000 I learned that anxiety and emotional problems were prevalent in my father’s family, none of whom I met until recently. His brother suicided over a failed romance only two years later. Clinical depression was common in both sides of the family.

God and our church life were crucial during this painful time. I sometimes felt singled out for troubles, poverty and problems. I was frequently insecure and anxious. I was greatly loved and told so often, however. I was obsessed with appearing normal and fitting in. My troubled mother’s parenting was inconsistent and confusing. At times she would overlook serous character flaws and bad behavior entirely, at other times flying into terrifying rages, yelling spanking and hitting me over minor infractions or perceived disrespect. I could not and did not respect her; tough I loved her dearly and believed she loved me. I felt hatred for my father for his final act and great guilt over my sinful attitude toward both my parents. My family was largely non-smokers and teetotalers, as ardent Baptists, but often medicated emotional pain with food. Interestingly, there is at least one alcoholic “black sheep” in each family unit. In retrospect can I see that I developed a pattern of outward compliance with commensurate inward anger and rebellion, which I contend with to this day. The payoff for this behavior was that it minimized the explosions and overemotional resolutions, which I so dreaded.

In my Christian family, morals were very important. I was protected from the hurts of premarital sex, drugs, tobacco and alcohol by these taboos that were so destructive in the lives of my unbelieving friends. Though I couldn’t get it all right, I thank god for all the truth that was coming in from our church culture lifestyle. I purposed in my heart to stay pure, marry a Christian, and have a happy and normal Christian family someday. I studied other couples and parents and cataloged in my mind how things should be.

In my junior year I met a boy at my sister’s church who was to become my husband. We dated for four years, both attending Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles) College for a time. He was interested in full time Christian service with campus crusade for Christ, and we actually double dated with Josh McDowell one time. But he became increasingly bitter against God and his own dysfunctional home and drifted from the Lord. He remained in Church, knowing that dropping out would be a deal breaker as far as our relationship however. My heart became so heavy. I lacked the courage to break it off, though I was increasingly certain this was not God’s will. I was in the strange situation of an unequal yoke with a Christian…a badly backslidden one.

After we married, he went into the Army. Our mutual baggage was a problem, as his indifference increased to open bitterness at God, me and other Christians. He received orders to Viet Nam, which were mysteriously changed to Korea at the last moment. I became pregnant with our first child just before he left. During 13 months of separation, patterns that were to destroy our marriage deepened – communication difficulties, disrespect, and unfaithfulness. He returned in the summer of 1969 and we commenced with a decade of misery, including a miscarriage and two more children. and an ever deepening rift between us.

Thankfully, my children and I stayed in church and became ever closer to the Lord. There were several separations as pornography and unfaithfulness, though unknown to me, became part of our destructive patterns. I became aware of the fullness of the Spirit around this time in the mid to late 70’s in the early days of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa and CCSD, later Horizon. I clung tightly to the Lord. My personal season of Grace, or a new understanding of it, had begun during this painful time. My former husband and I separated finally and for good in 1978 and divorced in 1981.

I was a single parent of three for five years. In 1982 I met Ed Nutter, single and an only child. This brave man and I and my three kids became a family in 1983. Our 25^th anniversary will be in 2008. That is a long story for another time. We were both 36 at the time of our marriage and have learned by God’s grace how to live together in peace through struggles.

In 1985 my older brother David had a massive stroke and we moved to Mira Mesa and to care for him. We attended Maranatha Chapel for the next 11 years.

In 1986 we had Jacqui. I was 40 years old. She brought our blended family together in a way. She gave us all someone we loved deeply together.

One day at Von’s in Mira Mesa, a blond lady and I struck up a conversation. I began to realize I was being witnessed to! The woman invited me to church at (then) Gateway Chapel. We had been looking for a new church home knowing that Maranatha was moving north, farther from home than we wanted to worship. I felt at home the very first time I attended a service.

In 1999 I was teaching second grade at Mira Mesa Christian School. There was a particularly stressful time, with the marriage of my son, the beginning of a school year and the sudden death of my nephew in a few short weeks. I stopped sleeping, was experiencing female problems and hormone imbalance and anxiety attacks that made me feel sure I was losing my mind. I collapsed in November of 1999 and commenced a season of intense depression nearly resulting in my hospitalization. I was not suicidal, but obcessed about “disappearing”, I guess that meant leaving earth without hurting any of my loved ones on the way out. The loving people of MMCC brought in food, prayed, visited, I went through dozens of medical tests to see what was wrong. Several body systems were compromised by a complicated combination of things. Several treatments helped the anemia, depression, and anxiety. I still struggle periodically with these things but have never gone back to the severity of those dark months. I was humbled and restored to a new level of maturity.

A common theme of Pastor Bernie Sloan and his wife Janice was that God is in charge of the events of a Christian’s life. I believe that my blessings as well as my losses and past struggles give me a point of contact with people God brings into my life to comfort, pray for, and love. God works in themes in my life and the most recent one is definitely TRUST. I am blessed with examples in scripture and around me of people who trust God in painful times. God mixes the sweetest blessings with the deepest sorrows in his own way to produce increasing Christ likeness us. I am thankful to live less and less by feelings and more and more by faith. I look forward to growth as long as God gives me life.

Remember that as a young woman I felt “singled out for troubles, poverty and misery”?? Well, since God has changed my heart so that it is not “all about me”, these days I am more likely to feel singled out for provision, blessing and joy…and THAT is the miracle of Grace, when it becomes ALL ABOUT GOD!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 19th, 2010 at 7:35 am and is filed under Twisted Sisters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.