Leaving Cloud 9

by Ericka Andersen

  Sylvia’s isolation is also typical of the parts of the country where she raised her kids. The small Arizona town where Rick grew up is currently one of the five fastest shrinking cities in the United States. Such decline leaves little incentive for new businesses or opportunities to open up for its lifelong residents. Violence, low income, and chronic unemployment contribute both to the high exit rate and the lack of social support for those who can’t get out.3

  Studies show, additionally, that low-income Americans are more likely to divorce4 and that women typically end up worse off economically than men on the other side of it.5 And here, too, where people live may contribute to the issue. Arizona, for instance, has one of the highest divorce rates in the country.6 But no matter where people live, divorce has a long-term effect on a family’s possibilities. Those who are divorced are more likely to divorce again if they remarry, and so the pattern continues, pushing women like Sylvia farther down the ladder of opportunity. And their children are more than likely to follow the same pathways in their own lives.

  This was definitely true for Rick, who learned patterns of dysfunctional relationships at his mother’s knee. From her he picked up a faulty understanding that only one human after another can get you through to the next phase of life. You can be barely skating by, but if you’ve got someone to validate you, you might just survive long enough to find the next source of validation.

  This view of relationships reinforced Rick’s unhealthy behaviors and reactions as he grew older, often finding himself in unhealthy relationships with the wrong people—anyone who would put up with his wild mood swings and irrational reactions. It would eventually lead him to marry and divorce twice by his early thirties, in addition to having countless girlfriends.

  Later in life, relationships with women would become like breathing for Rick—in his mind, necessary for his very survival. Periods of singleness would be enclosed in a dark depression as he grasped anywhere and everywhere for someone with light and warmth to drag him out for a little bit at a time.

  The girls who attracted him were kind and perky and came from decent families. In a way, they were holograms of what he had always wanted, but he was too damaged to keep them around. Once they got past his sob stories, they realized he wasn’t what they wanted. In the end, he was sucking the life out of them just as his mom had sucked the life out of the men in her life.

  Rick didn’t want to be anything like Sylvia, but he had inherited some of her traits and picked up elements of her dysfunction. Though he thankfully didn’t fall into the same kind of substance-abuse trap, he easily could have. His undiagnosed mental health condition played out for years before he realized something was different about his emotional state. He was well into adulthood before he recognized that his quick, boiling anger, over-the-top reactions to being challenged, and inability to have normal disagreements were neither normal nor appropriate. With no scale by which to compare, he had no way of recognizing that his emotions were becoming more and more out of control as years went by, escalated by a mental illness fueled by his traumatic upbringing.

  Without opportunity or a real faith to get them through, people who grow up like Rick have very little to stand on. Coming from such abusive backgrounds, embroiled in their own stereotypes, they are slow to trust anyone and quick to judge other people based on their appearance or way of speaking. It’s very easy for the Ricks of this world to think of other people as “rich” or “snobby” and to assume they are being judged— especially during rare church appearances when they feel like their sins and their poverty are glaring tattoos all over their bodies. It’s likely Sylvia felt this way, too, and masked her feeling of inadequacy by running full speed in the opposite direction.

  This only added to the family’s isolation, of course, because the strongest relationships are often built on a religious foundation— something we’ve already established was mostly absent from this family. And yet God was there all along, waiting patiently to be invited in. God doesn’t force His way into anyone’s life, but He had a plan to change Rick’s for the better, despite the human sinfulness and brokenness stalling the process—as it does for all of us in one way or another.

  At the time he was surviving his early life, Rick had no understanding or knowledge that God was with him. Only when he looked back as an adult, when the Holy Spirit opened his eyes and changed his heart, could he see that God had been present in every moment.

  It took a very long time for Rick to have the clarity and vision to understand that. It also took him awhile to get past his sense of being judged by churches and religious folks and feeling uncomfortable in worship services. But it helps that in the past couple of decades the American church—at least in some denominations—has made a lot of strides toward being more inclusive and more welcoming to the obviously damaged. (Of course, we are all damaged; some of the damage is just more visible.) Today it’s fine to wear jeans or even basketball shorts to many Sunday morning services. Pastors often have tattoos and long hair or even wear football jerseys on game days.

  For a certain segment of people—Rick included—these changes in church dynamics have made a difference. When Rick started thinking about attending church as an adult, he assumed he wouldn’t fit in because he had tattoos. When he finally visited a church and learned that the worship leader was a long-haired, tattoo-sporting former American Idol contestant and the pastor was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, his first excuse was out the window.

  And having access to all kinds of different sermons and speakers online—and a broader definition of what church and Christianity can be— has helped as well. For instance, author and speaker Jefferson Bethke’s viral video, “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus,”7 was one early influence on Rick’s baby spiritual life. His ministry is just one example of how reaching out to folks through different media and with a new kind of message—one that still houses the truth about Jesus—can make a difference.

  And while some have criticized the rise of hipster megachurches and rowdy rock-band music in worship, they seem to serve many of their intended patrons well. As one such pastor said, “If you don’t like it, I don’t care. It’s not for you. It’s for them,” referring to the unsaved and those who might not otherwise have an interest in traditional church.

  People just like Rick and others facing broken homes, wounded hearts, and dysfunction must be welcomed with open and loving arms into the church.

  CHAPTER 6

  STEVEN

  Rick remembers one significant father figure in his life—his first stepfather, Steven. Steven was a military man, of course. And Rick thinks his life might have been different if Steven hadn’t been killed in a car accident at the age of twenty-four. That was not the first blow in Rick’s young life, but it was one of the most painful—and it began hardening his little heart against God as Someone who regularly brought disappointment and heartbreak.

  Rick has some memories of Steven’s coming into their life when Rick was five and his sister, Jenny, was only three. Sylvia was still married to Donald when she started seeing him. In some ways their relationship was a disaster waiting to happen. But for Rick, at the time, it was a godsend.

  Steven was far from perfect. Like Sylvia, he drank heavily and did drugs. He had gone AWOL as a soldier and quit working for no reason, and he’d gone to military jail as a result. But none of those things are necessarily the measure of a man. We are all fallen, with good and bad encapsulated in the totality of our characters and souls. As Rick remembers him, Steven had some good radiating out of the internal mess. One instance stands out poignantly in his memory.

  It took place on a hillside in Colorado, where they were living at the time. Steven and Sylvia had built a crackling campfire and settled down to drink in front of it. Rick and Jenny were playing nearby. Beer bottles were strewn across the scene. Suddenly an argument between Steven and Sylvia erupted. Rick had heard plenty of these before, but for some reason this one made his ears perk up.

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sp; First, Steven accused Sylvia of sleeping with his best friend. Rick wasn’t bothered by that. He pictured his mom having a sleepover with someone, sharing the covers and watching movies—obviously not the reality of what “sleeping together” means to an adult. But Rick really started to pay attention when he heard the name Donald mentioned. His daddy.

  “Are you gonna go back to him?” Steven accused.

  “No,” Sylvia answered. “I don’t love him. I love you.”

  By this time, Rick had inched closer to his mom, trying to get an understanding of the conversation, and Jenny followed close behind him.

  Sylvia suddenly grabbed Jenny’s hand and pulled her abruptly between her and Steven. Rick saw fear wash over Jenny’s face. Then Sylvia pulled Rick over, too, and spoke intensely to Steven: “They aren’t yours, but you have to love them like they are. These kids—you have to love them, and you have to raise them. I’ll be with you, but you have to take them and raise them. They need you.” It was as if she recognized her own inability to parent and was desperate to take the load off somehow. She loved her children but felt incapable of doing it on her own. The years to come would prove her right.

  “Yeah,” Steven replied. “You know I will.”

  At that point the memory fades away. Whatever drunken episodes finished off the night are lost in the sea of so many others. But hearing those words meant something to Rick, even at so young an age.

  Sure enough, Sylvia did divorce Donald, and soon after, she married Steven. Their wedding stands out in Rick’s mind for reasons hard to pinpoint. They married at Rick’s grandparents’ house, a small ceremony beneath a sparkling chandelier in the dining room. The fixture must have been cheap, but to a little boy it was glorious, and the crystals quivered anytime someone moved about the room. The effect was enchanting, and Rick’s eyes followed the reflection of the stones around the room during what was otherwise a boring ceremony to a little boy. He wasn’t even quite sure what it was all about, but something about the chandelier made the day feel special and magical, a good omen to what Steven might bring to their lives.

  It’s that beautiful image of the chandelier, the happiness that felt almost real that day, that made Rick dare to hope things would be better with Steven. So few moments in his life were happy that those little ones stuck with him, instilling in him the belief that human relationships could bring the fulfillment he craved.

  It was a faulty belief, of course. Human relationships are meant to stoke the fires of our souls, but we aren’t made for other people or for this world. Nobody can fill the hole in our hearts like Jesus. But no one was there to tell Rick about that back then. Instead, even at age five, he was learning that the answers to everyone’s problems were alcohol, relationships, and any money you could get your hands on.

  Steven and Sylvia would be married for several years. And during that time Rick got to play the son to a father figure. Steven would take Rick to baseball games and sit with him in the bleachers, take him on rides, and treat him like the little boy always wanted to be treated. Steven took the kids to a local amusement park sometimes, which Rick loved for the rides, cotton candy, and toy trains.

  Finally a little normalcy began to take hold for Rick’s family. Steven may have had problems, but he could still maintain a normal facade in public without attracting much attention. A real attachment began to form between this man and this fatherless little boy.

  Then tragedy struck. The family was about to move to Utah, where Steven’s parents resided. On a trip to check out new homes for the family, Steven and his father were struck by a drunk driver and killed instantly.

  The police showed up at two in the morning to tell Sylvia the news. The memory is crystal clear in Rick’s mind. Jenny says it is her very first memory, the raw reality of life cutting her close even at the age of three.

  Rick was accustomed to noise in the middle of the night, but that night is particularly seared into his memory because of the gravity of the situation. Like a scene from a movie, it began with a pounding at the door. All three were sleeping in Sylvia’s bed, and Sylvia was slow to arouse from her drunken sleep. But Rick was lying there wide awake the whole time, scared of whoever might be behind the pounding. He peeked around the corner as his mom stumbled to the door and opened it, taken aback by the sight of uniformed officers.

  “I hate to inform you, ma’am,” one of the officers began, “but your husband is dead.”

  It took a few seconds for Sylvia to process the news. Then she dropped onto the ground, crying uncontrollably. Rick heard what the officers said, but “dead” was such a foreign concept to him that he wasn’t sure how to react. He thought of heaven and of being gone forever.

  He would never see Steven again? How could that be possible? The enormity of the sentence was almost impossible for a five-year-old to comprehend. But when your mom is crying, it doesn’t take long to start crying as well.

  He ran to Sylvia, clinging to her legs and sobbing. He was used to his mom being a disaster. It was all he knew. But he wasn’t used to this kind of crying, this panicked kind of disbelief. It was scary, and he could do nothing but hold on to her for the next several hours.

  Rick believes Steven would have been a good dad if he had lived—that he would have taught him how to play baseball and how to be a man. But he admits that Sylvia and Steven probably wouldn’t have stayed together because, as Rick puts it, his mom always “sucked people in, used them for validation, and once she got bored, moved on to the next.”

  Of course, Rick’s perspective on Steven could be more rooted in whimsical memory than reality. With his drinking, drugging, and relationship problems, Steven might well have been a disappointment in the end. It seemed no one could stand to stick around Sylvia for longer than a few years anyway. The only ones that had to stay were her children, and they could do nothing but love her as she was and try to make it from day to day.

  As it turned out, Steven’s death actually helped a little in that respect. He had a life insurance policy, and Sylvia was the beneficiary. Rick doesn’t know exactly what it was worth—but he does know that Sylvia bought a new red Camaro with it and then drank away much of the remainder.

  CHAPTER 7

  AURORA, COLORADO

  Soon after Steven’s death, Sylvia moved the kids to Aurora, Colorado, to be near her parents. Once again she was lost and alone, running back to the only kind of foundation she knew—and where she hoped her parents would pick up the slack with the kids. It’s weird how instinctive this was for her.

  As Sylvia continued building her figurative house on sand, Rick learned that you can’t really count on anyone. If Sylvia’s parents were her only safety net, then he didn’t really have one at all—a theme that would be drummed into his head for many years. Later, when he allowed God to become a part of his life, this mentality would make it hard for Rick to trust in the Lord’s provision and love.

  Moving in with his grandparents was never good or bad to Rick—it just was. Things weren’t great at home, wherever that was, and things weren’t great at his grandparents’ either. Life was just about transportation, moving from point A to point B with little to look forward to or get excited about.

  It was calmer at his grandparents, though, with no midnight eruptions of drunkenness, domestic violence, or screaming in the kitchen. But then again, Rick’s grandpa was usually grumpy or simply absent, and his grandma was often cross or even cruel. The tradeoffs were paltry, though there were a few good memories mixed in.

  With a little money in the bank, Sylvia now had the ability to do minimum work and maximum drinking, to neglect her children more and more as she pursued a lifestyle more entrenched in irresponsibility and further mental instability.

  When Steven’s insurance money ran out, the family began receiving a Survivor’s Pension, a monthly tax-free benefit available to low-income, unremarried, surviving spouses of deceased veterans with wartime service. Sylvia might have been sad that Steven was dead, but she wasn’t
sad that she was now set for life with this income as long as she didn’t remarry. After three short marriages already, that wouldn’t be a problem.

  With two small children, the pension was more than it would have been if she’d been alone, but it wasn’t enough to cover hundreds of dollars a week spent on alcohol and going out to bars. Before they knew it, they were evicted, and “home” became an endless trail of motel rooms paid for in cash on a daily or weekly basis. While they did live near Sylvia’s parents, she went through long periods of time when she was angry at them and, out of pride, refused to communicate with them. She knew they would be there to take the kids if she were arrested or children’s services came, but she inexplicably wanted to manage on her own much of the time. They were like a security blanket.

  Paying for motels day in and day out was expensive in the long run. But it was cheaper in the short term—and people like Sylvia have a hard time thinking past the short term. With a motel there were no credit checks or down payments. Utility costs were covered. And the lack of background checks was a plus because Sylvia already had some arrests at this point, the first few in a long line of them to come—not exactly helpful in securing a job or a place to live.

  Budget motels, the ones you see on the side of the highway that you’d never even consider staying in, weren’t lacking for families like Sylvia’s. And things haven’t changed much today, as wages stagnate for the working poor and housing prices just go up and up. In fact the number of children living this way in the state of Colorado has more than tripled since the turn of the twenty-first century.1 They are essentially homeless, and they experience the same chronic stress as other homeless kids—stress that impacts their physical, emotional, and mental development. Studies show that homeless children have twice as many learning disabilities, are four times more likely to show developmental delays, and are three times more likely to develop emotional and behavioral disorders.2