Lost Are Found (A Prairie Heritage, Book 6)

by Vikki Kestell

  “Hi, Kari; I’m Ruth.”

  Kari stared at the hand extended toward her. The therapist or counselor or whatever she called herself was maybe in her late fifties, plump and pleasingly rounded. Her shock of silver-streaked hair was tied in a loose ponytail and she grinned, her black eyes crinkling and her cheeks dimpling as her mouth curved.

  Her greeting didn’t come off, Kari decided, as one of those false, put-on things, but as a pleasant, authentic welcome.

  Kari took Ruth’s hand and the woman drew her toward a chair. “Here—sit here. It’s the best chair in the place. What do you think of that view? Lovely, isn’t it?”

  Kari glanced where Ruth pointed: The window framed Sandia Crest, and the late afternoon sun was painting the mountain a brilliant magenta.

  “It’s perfect,” Kari admitted, sinking into the offered chair. Like the view out our back door.

  “Things of beauty help us realize that life isn’t over,” Ruth murmured, “even when life has beaten us up pretty good.”

  Kari looked up and Ruth’s smile had faded. In its place was calm compassion and acceptance.

  “Us? Has life beaten you up ‘pretty good’?” Kari couldn’t help the sarcasm that crept into her words.

  “Oh, yes. I spent two weeks in the hospital the last time my ex-husband beat me up. And that was just the last time he beat me.”

  She pointed to the left side of her head. “That was fifteen years ago, but I still wear my hair in a ponytail or chignon to hide a bald patch I have right here. My husband hit me with a bottle—six times, I think—cutting up a couple of inches of scalp. The ponytail covers the spot where my hair wouldn’t grow back.

  “The doctors say it’s possible that I lost that piece of scalp when he beat my head against the window until it shattered, but I don’t remember any of that. The next thing I knew was when I woke up in the hospital a couple of days later.”

  Kari stared in horror as the older woman delivered those lines without self-pity or anger. She didn’t know what to say in response.

  Ruth took a seat opposite Kari and filled in the silence. “Kari, you’ve just come through some similar difficulties, I believe. I want you to know that I am here to listen to you and to accept you just as you are as you work through the aftermath.”

  “The aftermath? It’s over now.”

  “Yes, but . . . abuse, whether it is verbal or physical, has well-documented aftereffects. We can talk about abuse and how it affects a person so that you will be able to recognize those feelings if you have them.”

  Ruth’s mouth smiled although her eyes did not. “I’ve experienced the aftermath of abuse myself, so I’m not likely to spout senseless platitudes about something I’m unfamiliar with. I just want you to know, first of all, that you are not alone.”

  Kari’s mouth twisted. Not alone? Right. I’ve been alone my whole life.

  But Ruth either didn’t see her reaction or chose not to respond to it. She just kept chatting, occasionally asking for simple responses from Kari. An hour later, Kari realized that she and Ruth had covered a lot of ground.

  “So, what do you think, Kari? Can we do this again?” Ruth asked, flashing that engaging, eye-crinkling grin.

  Kari shrugged. She didn’t want to admit it, but she did feel a little better, a little less isolated. “All right.”

  “Well, I’m glad. And I’ve enjoyed getting to know you a bit. How about next week at the same time?”

  Kari nodded; Ruth scribbled on and then handed her another appointment card. Then Ruth sat back and studied Kari.

  She saw a tall woman in her late thirties—a little thin for her height—unaware of how striking she was and unconscious of her appeal. Even in jeans, wrinkled t-shirt, and scuffed ropers, her honey-colored hair hanging free down her back, Kari Hillyer was oblivious to the effect she had on others—particularly the effect her eyes had. They were a startling blue, a deep, penetrating blue. But her eyes were also haunted. Damaged.

  She is broken, Ruth observed. And not, I wager, by only this failed marriage and her husband’s abuse and infidelity. Something much more . . . elemental has been wounded.

  “Kari, I’m a counselor, and I specialize in helping battered women, but I want to be up-front with you about my counseling approach.”

  Kari looked at Ruth with suspicion. “Which is?”

  “The thing is, I’m a counselor, but I’m also a Christian. I don’t separate my faith from my function as a counselor because I believe that many of our struggles are spiritual in nature and can be addressed from a spiritual perspective.

  “When I observe a spiritual truth during a session, I will present it to you. You are free to listen and think about it or you are free to tell me to go fly a kite—I will never, of course, try to cram my faith down your throat. Please do tell me to go fly a kite if ever I come on too strong.”

  Kari turned Ruth’s words over in her mind, recalling her first year in foster care. Maybe at one time I believed that God was good and that Jesus loved me, she reflected, because I have memories of praying . . .

  I remember begging God to bring Daddy and Mommy back. I remember crying and pleading with God to rescue me from the awful loneliness. After a while when God didn’t answer my prayers, I asked him to just kill me so that I could go wherever Daddy and Mommy were. He didn’t answer that prayer, either.

  Kari closed her eyes. I don’t know where my childhood belief in God came from, but all those unanswered prayers—and the hopelessness of my messy life—have taught me the futility of religion.

  Ruth leaned forward. “Kari, I want you to know, ahead of time, that I will frequently bring spiritual facets into our conversations. Can you accept that?”

  “I suppose. But you’d better be prepared to fly a lot of kites,” Kari sniffed. She kept her thoughts on God to herself.

  Ruth chuckled. “Fair enough. Until next week then.”

  As Kari stood, Ruth reached out her hand again. When Kari took it, Ruth gently tugged her into a light embrace.

  Kari was surprised and a little flustered, but Ruth just squeezed her and gave her back a few light pats. “It’s going to be all right, Kari,” Ruth whispered.

  It was as though an artery burst somewhere deep in Kari’s heart, spurting grief and hopelessness. Without intending to, she found herself sobbing on Ruth’s shoulder.

  Ruth gently rubbed Kari’s back while she cried and, once, smoothed her hair. “Don’t you worry, Kari,” she murmured. “God will get you through this and get you to a better place. I know he will.”

  At the mention of God Kari’s tears dried up as though a spigot had been cranked off.

  God? God will get me through this? Kari frowned. If he’s so “great” and so “almighty,” isn’t all this his fault in the first place?

  Kari met with Ruth regularly over the following weeks. The most valuable thing Kari began to recognize during their sessions had to do with why—why she had, not once but twice, chosen poor marriage partners, and why she had tolerated their lies, infidelities, and abuse as long as she had.

  “It seems that your ‘picker’ is broken, Kari, and so you choose the wrong type of spouse. Why don’t you tell me about your family, and we’ll try to figure out why you do that?” Ruth asked during their third session.

  “My family?” Kari shivered.

  “Yes; tell me about your parents, growing up, siblings, and so on,” Ruth coaxed.

  “Well, my parents died when I was six,” Kari answered, “and I have no siblings.” A familiar stab of pain accompanied that simple statement.

  “I am so sorry,” Ruth whispered. “How did they die?”

  “I was told it was a car crash,” Kari answered. “I don’t remember it happening. In fact, I don’t really remember anything before they died.”

  “Nothing?” Ruth was surprised.

  “Not really. When I try to remember, it’s like I have my eyes closed. I can’t see anything. I remember what Mommy and Daddy were like—what they sme
lled like and felt like and sometimes I remember their voices, but . . . but I can’t see them. I don’t recall where we lived or much of anything else.”

  “Considering the age you were when they passed, that is unusual, Kari.” And concerning, Ruth added, to herself.

  Kari shrugged. “They are buried here in Albuquerque, but I—they—had no relatives, so I was first put into foster care. Later, when I was nine, I was adopted by a couple, Nell and Bill Friedman. They fought all the time and got a divorce when I was twelve.”

  Ruth’s lips parted and she frowned. “What happened after they divorced?”

  Now it was Kari’s turn to frown. “Well, for a while I lived with Nell’s mom while Nell tried to get a job and a place for us to live.”

  “I notice that you don’t call Nell and Bill ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ or Nell’s mom ‘Grandma.’”

  It wasn’t a question, so Kari simply nodded and thought about it. “Even though they legally adopted me, I don’t think I ever got close to them. As far as I was concerned, I already had a mom and dad, but . . . they were gone. And I remember Nell and Bill arguing and bickering every day, from the first day I was with them until they split. The situation wasn’t very conducive to affection.”

  Kari described how, later, she moved from place to place with Nell, some places better than others, some much worse. She talked about the men Nell allowed to live with them and how, when Kari was seventeen, Nell came down with TB.

  “The state sent Nell to a sanitarium and sent me back to foster care. Bill didn’t want me—he was remarried—and that was all right with me. I got out of foster care when I turned eighteen. I heard Nell died a year later. I’d worked in the library my senior year in high school, so I started taking a few classes at the junior college and then at the university, working my way along in the library sciences.”

  “You mentioned that sometimes Nell allowed men to live with you. Did they ever . . .”

  “Ever try anything? Once, but I told Nell and she threw the guy out. No, I was not molested or sexually abused.”

  Ruth started to ask another question but noticed that Kari had lapsed into silence, staring into space. Ruth waited for a full five minutes before interrupting Kari’s reverie.

  “Kari.”

  Kari turned unseeing eyes toward Ruth.

  “Kari, what are you thinking about?” Ruth asked.

  Kari blinked and looked down at her hands; they were twisted into the fabric of her shirt. “I . . . I was thinking about the nightmares.”

  Ruth sat up straight and peered at Kari. “You haven’t said anything about nightmares.”

  “No, I don’t suppose I have.”

  “Can you tell me about them?” Ruth probed, her voice gentle.

  “I think they started . . . when I was in foster care,” Kari whispered.

  “In foster care. The first time or the second time?”

  “The first time. It seems like I’ve had them my entire life, really.”

  “What can you tell me about them?”

  “I can tell you they really bothered Bill! He hated when I would wake up screaming,” Kari said in a dreamy tone. “So I started waking myself up when it came. Or I’d stop myself from having it.”

  “When it came? It?” Ruth leaned toward Kari.

  “The dream.”

  “You had the same dream? The same nightmare?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s always the same place but I can’t remember much about it. It’s . . . frustrating.” Kari’s words trickled to a stop.

  “Hmm. Maybe we should talk more about the nightmares later,” Ruth suggested, sensing that Kari was closing up, “but how about if right now I make an observation and you tell me what you think?”

  “Okay,” Kari said, shrugging.

  “All right. Here it is: You’ve never had a home, Kari.”

  Kari snorted. “Big revelation, Ruth.”

  “Think about what that means for a minute? Maybe think about what has motivated you in life? In marriage?”

  Kari pondered what Ruth said. “I think at this point I’ve given up on having a home. It’s one of the things that most discourages me . . . looking ahead.”

  “It discourages you because you have given up on marriage?”

  “Because I’m too old to start over, to get married, to have kids. I turn thirty-nine next month. Forty feels like it is lurking around the corner, waiting to pounce on me.”

  “Forty is a sobering milestone.” Ruth’s smile was wan. “Fifty isn’t any better, trust me. But back to what has motivated you. Can you articulate what you looked forward to when you, say, married David? What drove you? What did you look forward to?”

  Kari frowned. She didn’t like talking about David, but . . . “We were both working when we got married. Then we bought our house. I’d never owned a house before! And David wanted me to quit working so that I could be a homemaker, so we could start a family. We planned to have a baby right away . . . and I was so happy . . .”

  “Because you were making a home? A family?”

  “Oh, yes. It was like a dream come true. I thought it was going to be perfect . . . for the first time, perfect.”

  Ruth didn’t say anything. Kari finally looked at her. “That’s it, right? Why I put up with all of his . . . bad behavior?”

  “It is certainly part of it, Kari, but I think it likely that there is more. I think you have what I term ‘a thorn of rejection’ buried in your heart. Rejection is a tricky thing. If it becomes part of your identity, it can make a person a little passive-aggressive.”

  Kari wasn’t buying it. “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is, rejection can color all of a person’s interactions. When a person feels rejected, they often beat everyone to the punch by sabotaging themselves.

  “To put it into your context, I think—and this is my observation—that in your mind your sense of rejection justified David’s abuse. Yes, you were afraid he would leave you—but at the same time you made sure he would.”

  “What?” Kari was outraged. “How dare you put David’s actions on me! I—”

  “Kari, I didn’t say you were responsible for his infidelities or his abuse. Nor did I say that they were excusable.

  “What I am saying is that you, by being afraid of being rejected and by being passive toward his abuse, waved a big, yellow flag that shouted, Go right ahead and treat me like dirt, because I’m too afraid you will leave to give you any grief about it!”

  Kari sat still, stung by Ruth’s words but electrified by them at the same time. “You’re saying . . . I expected him to be unfaithful and controlling?”

  Ruth nodded. “When, in our innermost beings, we don’t feel that we have value, we project that sense of worthlessness to others. In subtle ways—and perhaps not-so-subtle ways—we advertise our lack of worth. If that other person is selfish, he or she will treat you as the worthless person you consider yourself to be.”

  Ruth changed directions. “Tell me more about what you were thinking when you married David.”

  Kari sighed and thought. “Well, I wanted . . . I needed a home so bad. Permanence. A place, a husband, children . . . who would always be there and would never leave me, never . . . abandon me. David promised all of that.”

  Ruth nodded. “Can you talk about the word abandon and how it makes you feel?”

  Kari started shaking her head. “‘Abandon’ means being alone. It is always there, always there. No one wants me and I’m always alone, always . . .”

  Kari was trembling and tears clogged her throat. “No one stays with me! They all leave! Why can’t I keep them from leaving!” Her shaking increased and then she couldn’t breathe.

  It took Ruth a moment to realize that Kari was experiencing a panic attack. When she did, she jumped to Kari’s side and wrapped her arms around her.

  “It’s all right, Kari. I’m here; I’m not leaving,” Ruth crooned. “You are all right. Just take steady breaths until it goes. Even if you pass out
, I will still hold you. You will wake up all right. Steady breaths, now. Steady breaths.”

  Ten minutes later, an exhausted Kari lay limp against Ruth. The panic had passed, leaving her wrung out.

  “How often does this happen, Kari?” Ruth inquired.

  A weary Kari shook her head. “Whenever the nightmares come, either while I’m sleeping or when I wake myself up. When I started waking myself up to stop the dream and stop myself from screaming—that’s when the attacks started. Sometimes they happen during the day. When I think too much about certain things.”

  Kari gathered herself and sat back in her chair, her chin dropping to her chest. Ruth resumed her seat also. She watched Kari and waited.

  “What should I do?” Kari whispered. “How do I fix this?”

  Ruth nodded but thought for several minutes.

  “Kari, this is where I would like to bring in a spiritual truth. I want to read something to you from the Bible. It’s about Jesus.” Ruth tugged a well-used book from her desk drawer and thumbed through it. “Here it is.

  He is despised

  and rejected of men;

  a man of sorrows,

  and acquainted with grief:

  and we hid as it were

  our faces from him;

  he was despised,

  and we esteemed him not.”

  Kari wrinkled her nose. “They said that about Jesus? But I thought he was, you know, supposed to be revered and worshipped. And stuff.”

  Ruth’s eyes were sad. “And little children are supposed to be loved and cherished and never abandoned or rejected, Kari. What they did to Jesus was wrong and should never have happened. Just like what happened to you was wrong and should never have happened.”

  She turned back to her Bible. “This is how the next line reads.

  Surely he hath borne our griefs,

  and carried our sorrows”

  She closed her Bible. “I just want to say, Kari, that when wrong things happen—things that should not happen—Jesus understands. When we feel rejected, he understands, because those he loved rejected him. When we feel abandoned, he understands, because when he needed his friends and family the very most, they all left him.