A Wretch Like Me. Chapter One.

     I am so tired of being much afraid.
        It says in revelation, "They triumphed over him (the enemy) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." 


        My life is simply not my own. I try to run it like it is a lot of times, but I truly do not love myself so much that I can keep what God has done for me quiet any longer.


        Like the woman that ran back from the well yelling, "Come! Meet the man who told me everything I ever did!" I simply want to tell everyone.


         I'm not perfect and do not have it all together. At all.
         But I'm moving forward, and walking into what God has planned for me & leaving this place new.
         I have shut my mouth and tried to keep quiet because I have daughters. I am a professional real estate broker. I am a children's author.
        And I am so tired of "being afraid" of what people might say.
        God is saying to me. "Tell your story. There is no condemnation in Christ." 
       Period.
       So here it is. Chapter one of my gory story that won no awards, or even an honorable mention when submitted to a Christian publishing contest last month. And that's okay. He will expand my territories in his own way, in his own time. 
     This is me, being brave and hoping that when it is said and done, I will hear God say, "Well Done".
        




I once heard that every great story has a tragic beginning. 
Mine is no different.

I’m trying to remember when I first knew that I had gotten so totally off track.
But, I can’t pinpoint it.
The process of self-destruction is much more subtle than that.
One bad thing leads to another and then another and another.
Before you know it, you are no longer the person you started out to be.

So here I am, living my double life.
Looking out the large picture window the view is uninspiring.
Depressing, really.
I watch the cars and their drivers pass along the freeway.
In a seemingly unconscious state of mind, they drive along, their wipers beating monotonously back and forth, back and forth.

Sometimes I participate in that same rat race, redundantly and passively participating in life.
Struggling to survive, I attempt to do the right thing, day in and day out, whether I feel like it or not.
Well, sometimes anyway.

I’m a 22 year old single mother of two preschool girls, and a top producing sales and circulation manager for the largest newspaper in the state.
 To me, it’s just a job. I desperately want to be in the newsroom telling a story.
However, this is a story I never thought I’d tell.
I’m also a call girl.
Actually, that’s just a nice way of saying, I am a whore.

Just like my dad said I would be.
I still can’t believe this is my life.
It seems surreal.


Growing up in a moderately sized Midwest town, I was a good girl.
Even in the midst of a lot of family dysfunction, I still always believed deep down that I was special and born to do great things.
Someday.
But, that was then, and this is now.
And I still can’t believe it.

Maybe it was a little melodramatic to say that my beginning was tragic.
Perhaps it was only so for my mother who found herself to be a 15 year old, pregnant prom queen. Or my father, a  high school football player with the boy next door smile and a personality that could light up a room. It was a “situation” to say the least for two Catholic families in 1967.
But courage trumped controversy.
She chose life.

It would seem unfair and ungrateful to say that my beginning was tragic, when in fact, it was brave.
Tears well up in my eyes as I remember being a young girl with long blonde hair, a contagious smile and a bright and favored future.
Just two short decades of dysfunction was all it took, to become this person, now sitting in a musty, cheap chain motel room.
I’m waiting on a regular named “John,” though there is nothing regular about him or this situation that on some days leaves me nearly suicidal.

Like I said before, I was a good girl.
I was a Girl Scout for God’s sake!

And I’d been a Junior Leader volunteer at the YMCA, played basketball, performed in band, flag guard, synchronized swimming and class plays. I participated in junior league bowling, mat maids, pep squad, served several consecutive years on student council including President, was a founding member of Students Against Drunk Driving and was co-editor and editor of my high school newspaper.

In my spare time, I took guitar lessons, wrote songs, read hundreds of books, spent weekends at the mall, roller skated every Friday night with friends and was still the number one babysitter pick for at least four families.

Of all those things, my most cherished and happiest memories were spent doing things with the Girl Scouts. We would camp, make crafts and volunteer for community service projects.
I’ve always had a heart that loves people.
My parents struggled in many ways and we were certainly not well off, but I always understood that there were people far less fortunate than myself.
I had high hopes of growing up and helping them any way I could.

High hopes.
“Just what makes that little old ant…think he can move that rubber tree plant?”
Much like the ant, I had high hopes, and felt certain I could move mountains.
Dr Seuss told me I would, “Kid, you’ll move mountains!”
And I believed him.

Everyone knew that I would be the first one in my family to ever finish college, and someday, I would be a famous writer.
Or a super hero. I always wanted to be a super hero too.
But, I’ve lived a life of compromise and contradictions and that of course, has cost me my cape.

Instead, I’m in sales.
At the office selling papers. Here, selling myself.



I credit my success in sales, back to Girl Scouts and my ability to hustle hundreds of boxes of Thin Mints in the middle of freezing Iowa winters.
“If you want to go to summer camp, you better sell those cookies!” my mom would threaten.

And camp I did. I spent several winter and summer vacations roasting marshmallows, making s’mores, singing silly songs by the campfire and learning what it meant to be kind, generous, careful, considerate, willing to help people at all times and becoming an independent and resourceful young lady.

 Girl Scouting taught me to be a leader.
 I never dreamed I’d lead myself into such a mess.
And then it hit me.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I heard my little girl voice reciting the important words that I had memorized long before I became jaded and cynical.
I recited it word for word.
“On my honor, I will try, to serve God and my country, to help people at all times..”
On my honor, I will try, to serve God…

On my honor, I will try, to serve God…

Serve God?
Tears welled in my eyes, my heart began to physically ache, and an enormous knot formed deep down in my chest.
I couldn’t breath.
I felt nauseous and thought I might seriously throw up.

Looking at the clock, I realized my next appointment would be here in just half an hour.
 Instinctively following the same pattern I’d formed for years when life got too real, I began to search for the joint that I had put in the nightstand drawer.
Odd.
“I know I put it in here,” talking out loud to myself as I frequently do.
“Where did it go?”

Frantically searching now as the digital clock clicked to the next number, I removed the phone book, the pad of paper and the book that comes standard in every motel room, the Gideon’s Bible.
 I could tell by the crackling noise of the hardcover that it wasn’t used often in this rat trap.
 I began to flip through the crisp, gold leaf lined pages.
“Did I put it in here for safe keeping?”

It has been medically documented that smoking marijuana can hinder short term memory. Without officially participating in a research study, I will vouch for that as I am constantly forgetting where I place things like my billfold, car keys….my car.
Funny that it doesn’t actually help you forget those things that you really wish you could.

Things like waking up from a drunken stupor only to realize that you had been sexually assaulted by a group of guys you thought were kind of your friends.
Or again after binge drinking at a frat party, when two thoughtful fraternity boys  walked you back to the dorm room and were caught in the act of rape by a friend who hurredly left. Later, she would explain that she just assumed you were a slut after all.

Wouldn’t it be nice to forget the inappropriate actions of  relatives, the man you babysat for, or even your babysitter?
 It would be helpful to forget about the band teacher you adored who touched you in not so teacher ways during your private clarinet lessons and then lied his way out of it and made you feel like an attention seeking, uncomfortable piece of crap for the remainder of junior high.
“She must have misunderstood.”
Yes, I suppose when learning to play a B flat, it is important to have a hand rubbing up and down your inner thigh.
Liar.
I’m not bitter, I’m just sayin.

Perhaps if I could forget about the time I hitchhiked across the country to get back to the Navy base and was picked up by a JB Hunt truck driver, who befriended me with his teddy bear disposition, and then later held a knife to my neck while he raped me in the back of his semi out in the middle of nowhere.
That time, I thought I’d truly end up dead in a ditch.
But I remember crying out to God in my head to save me.
And he did. Miraculously.
Thanks for that by the way Lord, just in case I forgot to say so then.

Somehow, in every situation, I always found a way to blame myself.
It was my fault.
I drank too much, flirted too much and wore the Madonna wanna be jeans with the tear in the thigh.

“Why do these things keep happening to me?” I often wondered.

 I thought about it all for just a minute, heard the next clock click, and then  remembered the hopscotch, the jacks, the hide and seek, the days on grandma and grandpa’s farm, the camping in the back yard and watching the stars and searching for UFO’s with my best friend Monica.

I remembered my beloved Barbie Dream House and the hours I spent creating my perfect life.
Oh, dear God.

 I thought about the endless rides on my purple banana seat bike with the flowered basket, and the wind blowing my hair while I rode like the wind, singing my favorite songs at the top of my lungs.
”Well I keep on thinking ‘bout you, sister golden hair so bright…”
“C’mon people now, smile on your brother, every body get together try to love one another right now…”

Two tears slid silently down my cheek, and opened the floodgate, for all the rest to follow.

On my honor…I will try….to serve God.
On my honor…I will try….to serve God.

I fell to the side of my bed, broken and sobbing with everything in me.
I cried out my apologies and asked for a chance of do-overs, to a God that I didn’t ever even consider, let alone serve.
A God, I wasn’t sure I really believed in anymore.

Every bad decision I made had brought me to this place.
The lies were sweet and convincing.
Deceptive and cunning.
That’s the thing about deception, it’s so deceiving.

All of the things that happened over time, hardened a once innocent, loving heart, and made me what I am now.
Dirty, used, trash.
Forever unforgiven.
Broken and ashamed.

I reached again for the bible on the bed.
I desperately needed to cleanse my mind from the constantly tormenting thoughts.

But, this time, when I opened it, the words seemed to leap off the page!
It was just like when you’re little, and someone reads you a story and the, “Once upon a time…” seems so super magnified. It was just like that, coming at me in 3D.

“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Tears so totally filled my eyes that I could barely see through the blurriness.
I read it again.

“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

“Oh, God!” I cried out.
“I am so sorry!”
“Please forgive me!”
Then I cried and cried, until I could cry no more.
An amazing and calming presence came over me.

Immediately empowered in a way that words cannot explain, I got up off the floor, got dressed and walked out.
I boldy strolled right past my next appointment, not really even noticing him until he called out, “Hey, where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“Home,” I said with a smile.