Chapter 21:

IN THE ASHES

 

I had been so stressed out before the meeting that a sense of relief had followed its conclusion. But this relief turned out to be very short-lived. The three-hour drive back to Poulsbo seemed to take forever. What was I going to do? It wasn’t as though my situation had improved any. Only two things had changed: my credentials were gone, and my marriage was beyond saving. I still had no job; I had nothing. When I got back, all roads pointed to Kim. So I went back to her.

At that time, she was getting ready to move into a double-wide trailer across from her parents’ house. As you might imagine, I had not developed a relationship with Kim’s parents. Her mom struggled with the idea that Kim and I maintained a relationship. She’s a wonderful lady, but she had legitimate concerns. She even said to Kim, “Maybe he has a girl in every port. Maybe this isn’t a first-time event. Maybe there are others out there that we don’t know about.” But we were past caring what other people thought.

So I helped Kim move in there, but I didn’t move in with her at that point. My mom allowed me to stay at her place for a while, and I would visit Kim and her kids most evenings. She and I were so close that sometimes I even took her on visitations with my kids. We’d pick up Kenny and Douglas, a child Theresa and I had been fostering who was almost as close to me as my own kids, and we’d drive to the other side of Hood Canal—somewhere people didn’t know us. I tried to act like everything was okay, like it was all normal.

One day, we had Douglas with us, and we pulled into the driveway of Theresa’s house to find her very angry. She was upset that I had taken Douglas with me and Kim, like we were just a happy family. We had a heated verbal exchange, and then Jack showed up. It looked like he and I would even come to blows; I was that angry. Thankfully, we had no physical contact, and Kim and I soon left. Incidents like this were becoming more and more common, and I knew it was wrong. The anger, the verbal abuse—this wasn’t really me!

I left Kim’s house late one evening, headed toward my mom’s house. As I was leaving Poulsbo, I noticed flashing blue and red lights behind me. I pulled over, thinking this was no big deal, and the police officer came to my window and asked for my license, which I handed to him. He went back to his car, and when he came back, he said, “Could you step out of the car, please?”

Confused, I asked, “Why?”

“Just step out of the car,” he said.

So I got out, and he said, “Put your hands behind your back. I’m not going to have any problems with you, am I?”

“No. No, sir,” I said. “What did I do?”

“You have a suspended license,” he said.

“What? I had no idea.”

He said my license was suspended because of a ticket I hadn’t paid. Then he handcuffed me and put me in the back of his car. I was petrified.

Can it get any worse, I thought. Here I am, a moral failure, divorcing my wife; I’ve lost my church; now I’m being handcuffed and thrown into a police car on the side of the road. I could only wonder how many of those driving by knew me. I was in the darkest place of my life. Sure, I’d been pulled over for tickets, but I’d never been arrested before, never been handcuffed.

After awhile, the officer opened the door and said, “I’m going to go ahead and release you here, since you haven’t had any prior arrests.” I’d still have to go to court and everything, but I might not have to go to jail. So I got out, and he took the cuffs off and said, “I’ll let you walk from here.”

Of course, since my license was suspended, he wouldn’t let me drive. But I was a little concerned about walking in the dark along a well-traveled, curvy backroad, especially since I would have to walk five miles or more to get to my mom’s house.

“Let me walk?” I said. “It’s the middle of the night! Could you at least drive me back to Poulsbo so I can call someone for a ride?”

He said, “Okay, I’ll take you back to Poulsbo.”

So he drove me to Poulsbo, drove past a well-lit convenience store, and let me out at a pay phone outside a dark, closed convenience store.

“What am I supposed to do,” I asked. “I don’t have any money on me.”

Without responding, the officer left. So I called collect to my mom’s house, but they were asleep and didn’t hear the phone. All I could think to do was call Kim. So I called her collect as well. She heard the phone, got up and answered, and then came to get me. It was four in the morning, but she came to my rescue nonetheless. And I spent the rest of the night at her house.

The next morning, she drove me to my car, and I managed to drive it back to her house without being seen. Then I made the phone call to find out what was going on with my license. It turned out that I had paid the ticket, but the payment hadn’t been posted yet. I cleared up that mess, and they assured me that the arrest wouldn’t go on my record. Still, though, it felt like just one more thing stacking against me. Everything in my life seemed to be going wrong, and even when I tried to do something right—paying the ticket—it didn’t work out right. I felt even worse when I heard that Jack had heard what had happened and thought it was hilarious. I don’t really blame him, though. If another guy had stabbed me in the back like I had done to him, and I heard about a similar situation involving that guy, I’d have laughed too. I’m sure I would have thought, There, you jerk, it’s no more than you deserve!

Of course, at that point I wasn’t thinking about what my reaction would have been. This incident and his reaction just reinforced my feeling that I hadn’t a friend in the world. I honestly felt like the most hated man in Bremerton, like I couldn’t even go into a grocery store without everyone there knowing who I was and what I had done. Every day, I expected to see my story in the newspaper: “Another Fallen Minister.” We see it all the time; the media loves those kinds of stories.

Neighborhood Christian Center was a pretty well-known church, active in the community. I imagined that all the ministries associated with it would be tarnished or destroyed by a public scandal as a result of my sin. Fortunately, though, God did not allow that to happen. It did not become a public spectacle or destroy the reputation of the Church. I really thought it would, but God protected His bride.

While my sin hadn’t hurt the world’s view of the Church much, it had sorely hurt the Church’s view of me. At least, that’s how I felt. I felt like I couldn’t go to church at all. Admittedly, I didn’t much want to, but even if I tried, where could I go? If I went to any of the Pentecostal churches, I was sure someone would have known me. From time to time, I went to various non-Pentecostal churches in the area, but even that felt dry. I was a hypocrite. I couldn’t really worship, couldn’t raise my hands, couldn’t do anything. I felt like a spectacle, like everyone was judging and condemning me. So I just floated along spiritually, existing, not even really living.

 

Kim had gotten a job on Bainbridge Island, but I still hadn’t found a thing. My dad and I decided to find an apartment together, where we would share expenses. He had been living on the property where Theresa and I had lived, and he had stayed there for a while after I had left. But she had finally booted him out when they got into a big fight.

While Theresa and I were still married, Dad had co-signed on the van that we drove. We had been making the payments at the beginning, but he was making them now and his name was on the title. One day after I had left, he borrowed the van, which normally was no big deal, but he didn’t come back with it for several hours. He was taking care of personal matters, and he didn’t really care to inform Theresa. She got mad and called me, saying that he had stolen it and asking if I would help look for him.

Kim and I went out in her Suburban looking for my dad, with Kim’s eighteen-month-old son, Matthew, in the back seat. I drove, and we decided that I would go to my mom’s house and let Kim take the car back from there. On the way, we stopped at the Poulsbo waterfront so that she could go use the public restroom.

While I waited in the car, Jack drove up with a girl he had started dating soon after Kim moved out. Jack saw me sitting there, and he got angry. He opened the passenger door, climbed in, and started pushing me, saying, “Get out of the car!”

I held the steering wheel and shouted back at him until I realized, I have no control over this car. I don’t own this car; he and Kim own it. My name isn’t on the car. If the cops get called, I’m going to be the one in trouble here. It might look like I stole it! I don’t want to go to jail over this! So I got out. Jack jumped into the driver’s seat, not realizing that Matthew was in the back, and drove off.

Kim came out about that time, and I felt like even more of a loser. I hadn’t protected her—I couldn’t. I was not going to get into a fight with her ex-husband; that would have made the papers for sure. It would only have made our situation even worse.

So we walked to the police station, even though there wasn’t a lot they could do about the situation. Kim’s divorce was still being worked out, and even though it looked like she was going to get the car, Jack’s name was still on it for now. And Matthew was still his son.

Later that evening, Theresa called and said that she had Matthew and asked if we could come get him. She didn’t want to get into the middle of a custody battle, so Kim got him back without a fuss. The next morning, I called Jack from my mom’s house, and I tried to encourage him to give the car back. He said he wanted to meet me somewhere to give the stuff back, but that sounded a little sketchy to me, so I declined. Eventually, he did give the car back—in their divorce settlement, the car did go to Kim. But he never did return any of my belongings that had been in the car.

After we got the car back, the situation was still rocky; we had no idea how volatile Jack would become. We were never sure what he might do. He’d often drive by Kim’s house, which was going quite a bit out of his way, in his dump truck, and he would always turn the Jake brake on to make sure she heard him. Oftentimes, he would follow her to work, just to creep her out. His unpredictability put a constant stress on our lives.