After this incredible miracle, I thought everything was going to change. I mean, I could now have true intimacy with my husband. That’s what he always wanted, and actually we both desired it. But something really strange happened that just didn’t make any sense. James pushed me away even more. It turned out that he had a fear of intimacy and it wasn’t just all my baggage that was keeping us apart. When I was finally ready to have what he called a normal marriage, we couldn’t because he was so hurtful that I couldn’t stand to be that close to him. Believe it or not it got worse, not better. He got more abusive and argumentative.
I got to the point where I just couldn’t handle it any longer. I wasn’t ready for a complete end, but I needed a break from him. I could see that no one should ever have to live a life and marriage that I was living. No more was I going to go through his ridiculing, depressions, guilt trips, sarcasm and worst of all his silent treatments. I had my fill and I kicked him out.
This was sometime in the spring of 1998. The kids were four and five, and I was scared. I still wanted to be married, but I couldn’t take the abuse from him anymore. He left and went to my dad’s house. Just at the right time in my life, God brought me this wonderful neighbor who became my friend and mentor. She taught me how to do so many things. She taught me how to do laundry, how to go shopping. She taught me how to make a grocery list, what to look for, how to do it. She was such a blessing to me. During this training session, James demanded to come home after one week. I knew we weren’t ready, but he demanded it and he supposedly was the head of the house. Plus, I couldn’t do it all myself, and I knew it. It was so overwhelming to me. It was a week of total confusion, total fear and total frustration; thank God for my friend helping me. I just didn’t feel that I could make it on my own, and I knew I wasn’t ready yet. I also had just been diagnosed with very severe ADHD. No wonder everything overwhelmed me. I had another therapist who wanted me so badly to get on Ritalin. I wouldn’t do it, because of being a recovering cocaine addict; I didn’t want to take a stimulant. Instead I just learned to cope with my inadequacies and struggled with every day life demands. So when he had demanded to come home after our short separation, I agreed, not out of fear of him and definitely not because I missed him, but out of fear of all the duties that would be all mine. I just wasn’t ready yet.
When he came back, I tried even harder. I learned more about how I could be a good wife, and how I could love my husband. And at first he really changed, I guess we both did. He began to communicate with me and started treating me the way I was supposed to be treated, even our intimacy got better. But then no matter how much independence I tried to have, no matter what effort I put into learning how to be a wife, it was never good enough. He wouldn’t give up the control. So I just let him take care of everything all over again. It was better than arguing about everything and feeling like I had to explain my every move to him. I just accepted that he needed to control things, so I let him. I felt a little insecure about my role as a wife, but since our communication was getting better, this was just one of those things that I would just have to live with.
During that same spring I had been applying to different schools for their external learning programs. One day I got a letter from a Bible Institute, which offered free tuition. Since I’m not really a detailed person, I didn’t read the whole thing. I just read “free,” so I told James that I really wanted to enroll in this program. He read the brochure and realized that we would have to move to Lynchburg, Virginia. I was ready for any change in my life, so we did. We moved, but not for me to go to school, for him to go. I told him that I would put my dreams aside for him to have his, although I couldn’t believe that I was saying that. We began packing our things. First we had to figure out which school the kids would go to. So one day we drove to Lynchburg and signed the kids up for school. The twins got into kindergarten early.
Then on the 4th of July weekend, we went to Lynchburg to find a place to live. I didn’t know if we were going to live in an apartment, a trailer or a house. It didn’t matter, whatever God wanted. We ended up going to this beautiful four bedroom house with a walk in closet and a garden tub on ¾ of an acre. It was my dream home. The rent was $600 a month and we got a housemate who paid $200 a month.
I was a stay-at-home mom again with no career and my husband was a full time student. I put my dreams on hold for him to go to school. The problems started when that was all he was going to do. He wouldn’t get a job. How did he think we were going to eat? How were we going to pay the rent, which was going to turn into a mortgage in four months because we had an agreement to lease purchase the house by December. Our townhouse in Maryland still hadn’t sold. I was undeniably freaking out. How were the kids going to go to school? We had to pay $1,500 per year for tuition since we lived in the city and they went to a county school. How were we going to get health insurance for them? How? How were we going to pay our bills, car insurance, life insurance, and utilities? What was going to happen to us? He had never not worked before. We didn’t quite make it in Maryland, but we had always had people around to help us. Now, we were truly poor. He wouldn’t work and he didn’t want me to work because who would take care of the kids when they were home from school or holidays, or if they were sick? What was going to happen to us? I couldn’t stop thinking about this. I couldn’t stop worrying about how we were even going to have gas for our vehicles. And every time I would ask him, all he said was, “God will provide, you need to trust Him. You need to have more faith.”
It was terrible. I had to go to the health department when the kids got sick or when I got sick. I’ll never forget the day I had to humbly fill out the paper work. They asked me how we are living with no income and I said, “God is providing.” I felt like a big fat looser. And James never thought about, or at least he never discussed with me any of the things that I was concerned about.
People did help; they gave us food, clothes, and even money after we had spent all our savings. I knew I couldn’t live like this. Once again people were helping us. Why? Because the head of our household wouldn’t do anything to provide for his family. If we needed anything, I would ask him, and he would get angry with me. He was stressed out constantly, angry all the time. He was worse than ever because he was so worried about his grades. He didn’t care whether we had food on the table as long as he made straight A’s.
I thought I would have a nervous breakdown, so I begged him. I got on my knees and begged him to get a job. In the meantime our housemate, Tyler, who was so much like me, started sharing ideas with me about a business. The entrepreneur in me was yearning for something; a way to be home for the kids and make a lot of money at the same time. I couldn’t go on like this and not get some kind of stress-related problem. I already had irritable bowel and it was getting worse with all the stress. So Tyler, James, and myself formed a business called JSR Advertising. We started out selling pizza box top advertising. I say we, but it was Tyler and myself who did all the work. James was too busy stressing and studying for that A. So I made the phone calls, booked appointments and Tyler met with the clients. It went well and sales were great. Then we started selling fundraisers. Again, I made the entire initial and follow up calls, and Tyler would kickoff the fundraisers. The money really started coming in. Plus, James finally got a part time job delivering pizzas. He hated it and complained about it constantly.
I was doing what I love to do, sales and actually making money, but we still had this huge mortgage in Maryland, and we were definitely not making enough to qualify for our house. I would have moved but the move itself would be so overwhelming for me, trying to unpack with untreated ADHD would have put me into hysterics at that point. I was miserable. So I kept praying and asking God to show me a sign if we weren’t supposed to buy this house. There was no sign, so we stayed. Our townhouse in Maryland finally sold after we brought the price down so low that we had to come to the table with $1,600 just to get it off our hands. It was better than dishing out $1,200 a month.
Once we sold the townhouse, it was a great relief, but then how would we buy our house? James was delivering pizzas, and I had just started a business. It was looking really bad. What were we going to do? Where were we going to live? Why couldn’t he see reality? He wouldn’t get a full time job. He wouldn’t quit school. He would say that the reason we moved to Lynchburg was for him to go to school. But I never imagined that he wouldn’t provide, at least the necessities, for our family. I didn’t know he was capable of being that selfish. But I was wrong. He was that selfish. All he cared about was his grades. All he wanted from me, as he would say, was to support him and be on his side and not against him. I needed to be his helpmate as the Bible says. It was all about his needs; who cared that we were going to lose our house? Who cared that we would have no place to go, as long as I supported him and his needs—then I would be behaving like the good little submissive wife. It was crazy! He made me feel so guilty, and he said, “You need to trust God, He knows our situation.”
Our realtor called me up and said that the owner of the house was putting this house on the market. He was kicking us out and she was going to be putting a for-sale sign up and that the next weekend, and she was going to have an open house. The owner said that we didn’t even have first right of refusal. That was too much for anyone to handle. I got off the phone and just started crying. I was so scared for my kids. What was going to happen to us? I have never felt so hopeless, and all James could say was that we needed to trust God. Give me a break. What we needed was for him to get off his lazy butt and get a full time job.
Again I cried and begged and told him that I couldn’t take this and our marriage couldn’t take it either. Finally, finally he decided to not go back to school the next semester and he got a job. He finally, after I almost had a nervous breakdown, got a job that week. He got hired on a Friday and he was to start the next Monday. He was really angry about quitting school and begrudgingly took the job. He got hired as a sales representative for a telecommunications company. It was a great job making pretty good money. We were able to qualify and buy our house. Even though our monthly payment went from $600 to $900 we were doing ok. I could finally relax emotionally and let him take care of us. I continued to work selling fundraisers, and we continued to grow JSR Advertising.
Things were good, and there seemed to be some normalcy. Well, for me there was, but not for my husband, he was miserable; he hated his job because he’s not the sales type. I taught him everything I knew. He would come home for lunch, and I would give him pointers on how to do things like how to talk to people. I guess you would call it coaching. When he followed my advice from my experience, he usually got the sale. I know a lot of sales techniques, and it was great to be a part of his life like that. It was finally something we had in common. He did really well, selling approximately $30,000 in a three to four month period, but he never had confidence. He was always in a bad mood and angry because he never felt comfortable at what he was doing. His fears made him very unpleasant to be around. He became extremely moody as usual, and dinnertime continued to be miserable as well.
My life, on the other hand, was getting better because I found an herb that really helped my ADHD, a real godsend. That’s how I was able to run my business. But our marriage was the same: miserable. He was ridiculing and harsh with the kids. He picked on all of us. During the day, I would have a great day. I worked all day with my business, and then James would come home in a bad mood and pick on us some more. Day in and day out this is the way things went because he was insecure with his job. Then he got interested in a multi-level marketing company. “This is my ticket out of my job,” he said. He talked about how he wanted to do this thing full time and quit his job, because he hated it anyway. I told him he needed to keep working. He would again tell me how I needed to support him. I knew once he said that, we were doomed. His selfish, “I don’t care what my family needs, I only care what I want and need,” attitude, was coming back, and I got scared. We fought and fought as usual. He told me how insecure he was, and he told me how I didn’t care as long as he was paying the bills. So of course, I would feel guilty and just let him sabotage his job and our marriage as usual (you see the pattern here). He did, sure enough; he sabotaged it to the point of getting fired. This was in the end of May of 1999 and the kids were getting ready to get out of school for the summer, so I knew I couldn’t go get a job.
Then the kids and I all got this really bizarre bug called Shigella, an intestinal virus that is kind of like salmonella. It is extremely contagious. The health department quarantined us. So now there was definitely no way that I could get a job. I tried to work my business, but with three kids home every minute, I couldn’t get anything done. James was home and kept saying how he would help. I decided, at that time, since Tyler had moved out, that I would begin an advertising specialty company, which consisted of screen printing and embroidery as well and any other promotional item needed. I had to do something. James wouldn’t get a job. We decided to really make a go of this new business. So I tried to work everyday, but with the kids so sick, I really couldn’t and every time I asked him to help, he had some excuse as to why he couldn’t help. So there we were, five people stuck in the house all day long for five long weeks. We couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t work, he wouldn’t work, his 401K was gone and again the bills weren’t getting paid. It was the same craziness all over again. We would argue all over again about him getting a job. He would tell me, again, that he wanted to build JSR and isn’t that what I wanted? And yes, I did, but he did nothing to build the business. As a matter of fact, because I had to take care of the kids and he wouldn’t take care of business, I lost one of the biggest accounts that I could have ever had. I had the job, but he wouldn’t follow through with the research. He wouldn’t work outside the home, he wouldn’t work inside the home, and he really wouldn’t take care of the rest so that I could do either. It was nuts.
He said that he didn’t want to work, and I needed to support him and quit always being against him. So of course, I felt guilty and felt that somehow I must not be being supportive enough, so dumb me told him he should go back to school. I guess I felt the impact of his emotional abuse. He started school again, but for some reason I thought it would be different this time. I thought that he really had learned from the last experience. Not so, and yet again we were getting ready to lose our house. Yet again, he said, “I need to trust God.” So there he was, back in school, not working and expecting me to make enough money to provide for our family with my business. It didn’t work.
I decided to get a real job, but when we talked about the arrangements for when the kids were off school for holidays or if they get sick, he said that I couldn’t expect him to take off school, since he was only allowed three absences. After arguing over and over about it, I realized that I would just lose whatever job I got because he wasn’t going to help at all. It was useless to even try with his mind made up so I worked really hard on my business. I did all that I could, but I couldn’t make it. I begged him, on my knees again with tears in my eyes, to please get a job and don’t make me go through this again.
This time he got a job stuffing envelopes and then he got a job working the night shift assembling cell phones. That’s all we needed, to be around someone who had total sleep deprivation. He worked from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m., and then went to school until 12:00 p.m. He came home and slept until 4:30 p.m. How was I supposed to keep the kids quiet when they got home from school? He slept down stairs, but noise traveled and he would get on my case about how he needed his sleep, and he needed this and he needed that. And then on his days off, while he was depressed he started his old guilt trip, manipulation, and emotional abuse. He told me all the things that I was doing wrong, and how I wasn’t being intimate with him. He had put me through so much hell the first year that we moved to Lynchburg, that all I was trying to do was survive, and that didn’t mean sleeping with the man that put me through all that hell. I hated him. I just wanted him to quit school, get a real job and take care of his family (sound familiar?) But he wouldn’t. He was a miserable, depressed, abusive, selfish jerk. And I wanted out. No more, no more abuse.
One day I left church, dropped off the kids, and headed for Maryland. It was time to separate and I knew it. The day I was going to leave, I asked God to stop me if He didn’t want me to leave. He did, he sent me straight to my pastor, who convinced me of an in house separation, and he said he would counsel us. Now this would have been our sixth marriage counselor over the years, but I was willing, so I said I would stay and work it out. But nobody could convince my husband to quit school. I kept telling him that he would graduate, become a pastor, but have no wife and family, but it didn’t matter. He was going to do what he was going to do no matter what I wanted. His selfishness just took over. Because once again, he said that’s why we came to Lynchburg, for him to go to school and to school he went.
Then my best friend, Angela and her husband knew I couldn’t take anymore, so her husband, kindly, told her to take me to the beach. We went, and it was just awesome. They spared no expense. We ate the best food and talked and talked and prayed and prayed. And through our praying, we both decided that I would just accept that my husband was going back to school the next semester. I was just going to submit to whatever he was going to do, and I was going to stop arguing with him. If he started an argument, then I would just put my finger over my mouth and not respond. I was sick of arguing and I was sick of my kids hearing it all the time, which caused them to argue and have nightmares. So I did, I stopped arguing back.
When I got back from the beach, James had written me this absolutely beautiful note telling me how much he loved me and how I was so important to him and our marriage and how he was not going to go back to school the next semester and how he was going to quit his night job and get a full-time day job. It was amazing, music to my ears. He did get a full time day job, in the telecommunications industry, only this time not in sales, but as a senior technician, the same job he had done in Maryland. It wasn’t the same kind of salary as the sales job, but hopefully we would be alright. It was tight.