The Con Man's Daughter

by Candice Curry

  It would take more courage and faith than we had anticipated, and it was a taller order than we had ever dreamed. We knew God could and would redeem our marriage and rebuild our family with God as our solid foundation. That doesn’t always make things look perfect or pretty, but it makes thing right with God. And we were at peace with that because God’s plans are always perfect. We decided to rest in that.

  We started by tearing our house down and rebuilding with God as the center of our home. There was no actual deconstruction of our home, but there was a rebuilding in our hearts. We made daily careful and conscious choices to choose differently than we had in the past. For the first time, when faced with life decisions, we paused and consulted our heavenly Father first. For the first time in our marriage, we prayed together. For the first time in our lives, we prayed for God’s will to be done and the courage to accept it.

  We never thought that the first blessing in submitting to God would be the gift of a precious baby boy. In 2013, a pregnancy test showed a plus sign. We would be adding another child to our home that already had four sweet girls in it.

  My husband was sitting in his recliner after work, relaxing from a hard day, and even though we wanted another child and had given the plan to God, I was still nervous about telling him.

  “You know how we said we would give everything to God?”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, I’m pregnant.”

  “That’s awesome.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Not at all. Why would I be mad?”

  I wish I could capture in words the look on people’s faces when we told them we were pregnant again. But we had no doubt it was a perfect gift and exactly what God had planned for us all along. It’s funny how when we make the kind of life change that we had, everything seems to make sense and not make sense all at the same time.

  A month before our son was born, my stepdad, the man who filled the gaps left by my father and garnished my neck with three diamonds and a single pearl, fell severely ill from the flu. I wasn’t allowed to visit him because I was pregnant, so we prayed while mom sat by his hospital bed day in and day out.

  On January 20, 2014, my heavenly Father welcomed home the father I cherished on earth. For the second time in my life, I lost a father without getting to say good-bye.

  While the loss of the man I considered my dad was devastating, I had a peace that I had never known before, a peace that can only come from knowing God. We mourned him deeply, but I never doubted God’s hand in the situation. I cried for my mom and the changes she would face, but I was at peace with his passing.

  As we were leaving his funeral, my husband took my hand and asked if I would be okay with changing our son’s name from what we had already selected to my stepdad’s name. Exactly a month later we welcomed baby James Emory into our family. He was like a perfectly wrapped gift that God gave us to celebrate our renewed marriage and to let us know that our family was now whole. He was the gift of new life after mourning the loss of my stepdad. While we were hurt that my stepdad would never meet his little namesake, we were happy that my husband’s dad got to hold him. Just once, my husband’s dad held his grandson in the crook of his arm and got to look him in the eyes, and then the Lord called him home. We said good-bye to him in May of 2014. Within a matter of months, our children were without any grandfathers.

  Rolling Redemption

  God whispered again, “Share your story and I will redeem it all.”

  It takes extreme faith to open our hands to the Lord, knowing he will take things out of them that we hold dear. For many years we held a tight grip on things in our lives that were separating us from God. We needed to have faith that whatever God removed, he would replace with blessings that would nurture our relationship with him. He began to fill our hands with unexpected gifts.

  Neither my husband nor I had a solid childhood home. It was always a dream of ours to raise our children in the same house their entire lives. I moved seventeen times before I graduated from high school and many times since. My husband grew up much the same way, bouncing from house to house. We desperately wanted our children to have a childhood home filled with the memories of the best hiding spots, the loss of a first tooth, slumber parties, birthday celebrations, a first kiss, and so many other milestones. We wanted them to have a home they could return to year after year and bring their children to.

  My favorite place growing up was my best friend’s house. We met when we were six years old and became instant friends. She’s my safe place, my comfort zone, and I spent a good part of my childhood hanging out at her house.

  When Brandon and I first got married we drove by the house, and I told him that it was my dream home. It wasn’t a mansion set back among rows of trees. It wasn’t a ranch with acres of land to roam. But it was like home to me. The kitchen smelled of fresh brewed tea and the living room had a family feel. The door was always opened for me, welcoming me in to eat dinner and play for hours on end. The walls contained my giggles. My best friend’s bedroom held countless secrets that we had whispered to each other over the years. Her home was deep in my heart.

  When we started to look for a new home for our ever-growing family, nothing satisfied my need to truly call a house our home. None of the houses we looked at begged me to raise a family there.

  One sunny afternoon I met my best friend for lunch, and we went over the houses we had looked at. None of them felt like they were the right fit for my family.

  My best friend had lost her dad the year before and had been faithfully keeping up his home, which had sat empty since his passing. The home she grew up in, the home that I had spent countless nights in as a child, the one that had been my safe place so many times growing up, was sitting empty.

  “Why don’t you move into my parents’ house?”

  “I don’t want you to feel weird with us living there.”

  “I would rather you live there than anyone else. I would rather have someone who loves it living there.”

  When she handed me the keys to her old home and my new home, another piece of my heart was healed. She handed me the keys to the home I had my first sleepover in when I was only eight years old, where we brushed each other’s hair long into the night and swam for hours on end every summer. It was where I got ready for prom and had my first kiss. She handed me the keys to her childhood home and gave us the perfect place to raise our children and, God willing, a place where our grandchildren will feel at home too. She blessed us with the opportunity to raise our children in the one place that had always given me complete peace.

  Houses Become Our Homes

  God whispered again, “Share your story and I will redeem it all.”

  On a beautiful March day shortly after my stepdad passed away, my phone rang. On the other end was my mother, sobbing. Her heart was broken, and she was emotionally lost inside the very home that they had vowed to live out the rest of their lives in. They had picked the perfect place for just the two of them and filled the many acres with horses, dogs, and beautiful landscape. My mom would sit in the kitchen and watch my stepdad through the window as he cooked dinner on the grill or warmed his hands by the fire pit. Together they spent many hours planting a garden and watching together as the fruits of their hard work made their way above the carefully placed soil. They were never supposed to leave the place they lovingly made their home.

  I could hear the desperation in my mom’s voice that day. I knew that the home she had once loved had now become a place of mixed emotions. She clenched it tight in her fist, not wanting to let go, but she could no longer stay. Not only was the land too much to care for but the places inside that had once been safe were now places of pain.

  We reluctantly agreed that she should sell and move closer to me so that she could be near family and have extra hands to help when needed.

  A neighbor at our new home had lived in the same house for almost thirty-six years. He remembered me from all those years ago playing i
n the cul-de-sac with my best friend, running around the yard, and jumping into the pool, squealing at the cold temperature. He was excited to see life back in the house and smiled from ear to ear as a new generation filled up the cul-de-sac. Every day he sat in his driveway and watched my husband work in the yard while the kids played. Every once in a while he would move his chair closer to where my husband was working and say, “I’m not much help with the work, but I can keep you company.” When ice cream was on sale he would always buy two, one for him and one for our kids. Our first Christmas in our new home he bought all of our children a new blanket and let them come pick out a special figurine from his collection. He made our kids feel important and special, and they made him feel young again. He would take our trash to the curb on trash day because “pretty girls shouldn’t have to deal with the trash.”

  One day as I pulled into the garage I saw him slowly approaching the car. He patiently waited for me to unload all the kids and then asked to speak with my oldest daughter. He sweetly asked her if it would be okay if he went to her high school volleyball games and cheered her on. She gladly told him that she would love it, and as she headed into the house he reached out for my hand.

  “Your husband told me that you both lost your dads this year. I would like to go to her games as a grandfather figure and cheer her on since she no longer has her grandfathers.”

  I fought the lump in my throat and smiled. It was all I could do; my words were completely lost. He faithfully attended every game and let everyone in the stands know that he was there to cheer for all the girls, but #13 was his special girl. He didn’t get around easily, and I know by the time he got from the car to the stands, his knees ached more than he would admit. I told him many times that he didn’t have to go to the games if he wasn’t feeling well, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He made his way to the gym for every home game and stood in the gap for her grandfathers in heaven.

  God whispered again, “Share your story and I will redeem it all.”

  There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that God had orchestrated every detail of our lives to bring us to this moment. He showed us that redemption is always around the corner and his grace is always present, even when we are stuck knee-deep in the mud.

  One night, I woke in the middle of the night to make the baby a bottle. When I reached the kitchen, I could see emergency vehicle lights pulsing through the window of our front door. I pressed my face to the glass, saw an ambulance at our neighbor’s house, and rushed to wake my husband. Before either of us could get to his house, the ambulance was already on the road with him in the back. He had suffered a heart attack in the middle of the night and was never able to come back to his home after that. His presence outside, sitting in his driveway and making sure the cul-de-sac was safe, had become a fixture for us. It was hard to accept the fact that he would no longer be there. His wife had passed away in that home, and he found immense peace in being in the place where she left him to go to the Lord. Together they had taken great pride in their home, and every detail in the house had their own special touch. I knew the decision for him to move was out of necessity and not want. He had no choice but to abandon the home he thought he would live out the rest of his life in. He needed to be closer to family and have extra hands to help when needed. While he recovered in the hospital, he sent his daughter to the house to start tying up loose ends and find a way to move him to his new home states away. I made my way over to introduce myself and tell her what her dad had done for my little girl. We exchanged stories of how amazing and selfless he was and what kind of man it took to faithfully attend my daughter’s games so that she would have the memories of a grandfather watching her play. She had no idea that her dad had been loving on the children next door and treating them as if they were his own grandchildren. She had no idea that he had sat in the stands of my daughter’s volleyball games and cheered her on. In the middle of her stress and worry for her dad, she caught a glimpse of how happy he had been and how he had become an honorary member of my family.

  As we both stood there in tears, she told me that he just wanted to walk out of his house with his clothes and be done. Picking through the many years of memories that he had made in the house was too much to handle, and he needed to make a clean cut. She had a look of panic on her face, wondering how she was going to move her dad several states away to live near her and sell his home at the same time. She was tired and defeated. I watched her open her mom’s jewelry box, the one that had been sitting for years collecting dust after her passing. She picked up a handful of costume jewelry necklaces and asked if any of my daughters would want to have them. My heart broke for everything she was about to let go of. I grabbed her hand and reminded her of our awesome God and how he always has a plan.

  I could hear God’s sweet voice whisper in my ear, “Tell her. Tell her your story.”

  My story began to pour out of me, completely out of my control, and I watched her face as she listened intently. We talked about God’s plan being so much bigger than our own and how her dad got to watch me go from the little friend next door to the mom of the little girl for whom he subbed as a grandfather. In the absence of my father, her father stepped in. There was something so beautiful in that and we connected instantly. She learned that in the midst of her struggles to find her dad a new home, I struggled to find a home for my mom. We had come to the same place in our lives at the exact same time, and neither of us could deny the works of our heavenly Father in orchestrating it all. Her eyes began to soften and the corners of her mouth went from turning down on each side to a slight but obvious smile. She gently reached over and put her hand on my arm in a way that let me know everything was going to be okay, for both of us, and she asked me if my mom would want to buy her dad’s home.

  This moment equally blessed both of our families. While my mom was packing up her house to move next door to her family, our old neighbor was packing his suitcase to move closer to his. Because of God’s perfect timing and the heart of the amazing man who loved my family like his own, my mom became my neighbor and the weight of her worries were lifted. She no longer sees my stepdad when she looks out her kitchen window. I know that she would give anything to see him standing by the grill, getting her dinner ready, but now her view is her grandkids running through her yard, giggling uncontrollably. I get to look out my kitchen window and watch her throw a ball to them as they carefully swing at it with a bat. My husband spent many hours planting a garden between our homes, and we all watched together as the fruits of his hard work began to make their way above the carefully placed soil. She often says how thankful she is that she gets to eat dinner with us most nights. She truly doesn’t know how thankful we are to have her so close. She still tears up over the loss of her husband and the loss of the home she thought she’d grow old in, but she clearly sees the gift that God gave our family through the pain. God redeems our saddest moments and makes them our biggest blessings.

  Discovering the Little Girl in My Father’s Pocket

  On one of the most gorgeous days of the year in March of 2015, my sixteen-year-old sister climbed into the backseat of a car with her best friend sitting shotgun and another friend behind the wheel. It was the start of their spring break. They had plans to simply be teenagers and enjoy the beautiful outdoors. Maybe a hike was ahead or exploring back roads in the Texas hill country. They turned onto an old country road and felt the joy of being young and free as the wind blew into the windows and the sun danced on their faces. With what seemed like all the freedom in the world, the driver pushed the gas pedal as far as it could go, speeding through the twists and turns. Within a matter of minutes the car met with an old, sturdy, deeply rooted tree. The car and its passengers didn’t stand a chance, and the car burst into flames.

  I was in the middle of preparing dinner for my family when I got the call from my stepmom.

  “Everything’s okay but Victoria has been in a car wreck.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’
s been airlifted to the hospital and is already in surgery.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  My little sister was in surgery for a punctured lung, four broken vertebrae, and stitches in her head almost completely from ear to ear.

  I had known deep in my heart that this day was coming. She had been struggling with our dad’s suicide for years and internalizing her pain because it was easier to hide it than to deal with it. She had built up a tough exterior and lived her life pretending that she didn’t need anyone’s help or sympathy. I knew her battle all too well but was completely helpless in trying to save her. A year after our dad died she began self-medicating with whatever she could get her hands on. The pain was so evident in her eyes that it was almost painful to look at her.

  I hung up the phone and turned to my husband who was sitting at the dinner table with knowing eyes. He could tell by my tone of voice and the short conversation that something was terribly wrong.

  “It’s my sister.”

  “Go, I got this.”