A New Kind of Normal - Women of Faith Book Club

Prologue

FACING SHATTERED DREAMS

The day was swelteringly hot. Humidity lurked in the house like an unwanted guest that refused to leave. The air-conditioning couldn’t keep the temperature down with so many doors open to the outside. Sweat dripped down our faces in dirty little streams as my husband and I directed the movers to place furniture and boxes in the appropriate rooms in the house we had just purchased in Florida.

I found myself speaking out loud to no one in particular: “Anyone who moves to this state has definitely not visited here in the month of July. I have been here less than a day, and I miss the Great Lakes. I miss changing seasons. I miss my friends. I miss my beautiful home along the St. Clair River. I do not want to be here. I hate this weather! I hate this stinking humidity! I hate the reason I had to move here! I want my old life back. I want my peaceful, comfortable, convenient, normal life back!”

“Hey, lady,” the mover shouted, “where does this table go?” Wiping away a stray tear, I suddenly realized that the people who were assisting with this move didn’t know the difference between a tear and another stream of perspiration. Ah! Something to be thankful for! I didn’t want pity. I didn’t want compassion. I didn’t want to be vulnerable in front of strangers or with anybody else, for that matter, including some relatives who had come to assist with the move. I wanted to be alone in my misery. But that wasn’t possible on moving day. So I did what I had done so often before. I sucked in my grief, turned up the “denial” dial on my emotions, wiped my grimy face with a dishtowel, and started directing traffic.

After several interminable hours, the last piece of furniture was off the moving van, and the final box had been piled in the kitchen. What a disgusting mess! Kind of like my life, I thought. I was teetering on all-out morbid. Moving across the country was not my idea of fun. I was especially unhappy about being within driving distance of Disney World—that undesirable place where smiling parents brought their perfect families to see Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Snow White. I certainly didn’t want to be reminded of fairy tales and happily-ever-after endings.

My life was no longer tidy and unfettered. It was messy, sad, difficult, and unwanted. No one would be selling tickets to advertise my idyllic life. Those days were over. Another chapter of my life had begun, and there was nothing I could do to change it, alter the direction, or manipulate more favorable circumstances. Life as I had known and enjoyed it had turned upside down. My disappointments were gigantic. My hopes were buried in the rubble of recent developments that were so shocking that I was still trying to find any meaning in the fractured pieces of reality that remained.

In one moment in time, everything about the future changed.

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If you have read When I Lay My Isaac Down, you know about the startling event that shaped my reaction to this move. Gene and I are the parents of an only child—a son named Jason Paul. While still in the womb, we called him Thumper because his activity was constant and his prebirth antics were a precursor of the black belt he earned in karate at the age of eighteen. I was the eldest of six siblings, and as the firstborn grandchild, our son had a personal cheerleading squad surrounding him from earliest days—three sets of grandparents, along with aunts and uncles in abundance. Eighteen first cousins would join us after J.P. was born, and they all adored him. He was as close as a brother to some of them. Our expectations for our son’s future were high, and Jason did not disappoint.

He was a witty, high-energy child who endeared himself to anyone who took the time to know him. While in high school, he became president of the National Honor Society and tutored younger students. Jason went on mission trips with his church youth group and volunteered for Habitat for Humanity.
Long before graduating in the top twenty in his class, he set his sights on getting into the United States Naval Academy. He received an early invitation to become a cadet at West Point but held out for his heart’s desire—becoming a midshipman at the USNA in Annapolis.

The next four years flew by—blood, sweat, tears, exercise, military drills, focus, discipline, more exercise, mental challenges, Commandant Sailing Training Squadron, U.S. Army Airborne Jump School, Midshipmen Leadership Training, U.S. Air Force Combat Survival Training, an Israeli internship program, Search and Rescue Swimmer School, and MINI/BUDS SEAL training on Coronado Island, California. Our son’s schedule made my head swim.

Then came the week of graduation in May 1997—complete with color parades, a formal ball, multiple course dinners, and all of the pomp and pageantry a USNA celebration of this magnitude could contain. The fanfare was euphoric. The graduating midshipmen tossed their hats in the air on national television. The diploma was earned, and Jason received a bachelor of science degree in political science while being commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy.

The next year and a half flew by as Jason began nuclear engineering school in Orlando, Florida. Navy Scuba School, U.S. Navy Nuclear Power School, and a lateral transfer to Special Operations—all were accompanied by academic and physical training to become the best defender of freedom the U.S. had in its military human resources arsenal.

There was little time to think of dating. However, J.P.’s involvement in a local church introduced him to the love of his life—and along with this charming woman came two precious and precocious children, aged six and three. Jason and his future wife fell in love over a six-month period of time, and when his orders changed abruptly, sending him to Surface Warfare Officers School in Newport, Rhode Island, they wanted to go together.

We helped plan a wedding that took place in a picturesque suburb of our hometown of Port Huron, Michigan, three weeks later. On the day of our son’s marriage celebration in September 1999, Gene and I become grandparents on the same day we became in-laws—and our joy was effusive. The ceremony and reception were followed by a one-night honeymoon before this new family packed up and drove to the East Coast.

Within a short time, there were challenges. The biological father of Jason’s stepdaughters was seeking unsupervised visitation, despite allegations of abuse against him that had led the judge during divorce proceedings to require another adult to be present during his visits with his daughters. Jason and his wife sought legal counsel, but they left the attorney’s office feeling helpless after being told they might not have enough provable evidence of abuse to keep the court-ordered supervision arrangement intact.

In retrospect, we began to see our son unravel mentally. His fear for the safety of his young stepdaughters consumed his thoughts. Later, our daughter-in-law told us she found him curled up in the embryo position on their bed, pounding his fist into the mattress, repeating, “I don’t know how to protect the girls! I don’t know how to protect the girls!”

On the morning of October 25, 1999, a phone call shook our life to its foundation. Our son had been arrested for the murder of his wife’s first husband—and he was being held in the county jail in Orlando, Florida.

In that one shocking moment, everything changed. That phone call became a defining moment in time—a marker that has forever divided our past “normal” life from a life we never expected and certainly didn’t want. This book is for anyone, like us, who has ever faced an uncertain future because one of those “marker moments” will not let you return to your former definition of “normal.”

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