Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing (13 page)

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Authors: Stormie Omartian

BOOK: Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing
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This didn’t excuse her actions, but it made them understandable. She locked me in a closet so she could better cope with life, and simply forgot how long I was left there. She was angry at her mother for dying, angry at her dad for not helping her when she needed it most, angry at the suicide, angry at her sisters (whom she thought were favored over her), and angry at God for the circumstances of her life. She was filled with repressed rage, which she vented on the most likely recipients—her younger sister Jean, me, and later my dad.
Many people realized that Mother was mentally unstable, but few knew how bad she was because of her ability to appear so normal at times. Even the ones who were aware of her bizarre behavior did not recognize the seriousness of her illness. Out of curiosity, I asked certain people when they first realized that my mother was different. I received a variety of answers.
“When she was in her late teens,” said her younger sister Jean, “right after she had scarlet fever.”
“She was always emotionally fragile,” said older sister Delores.
“After she had been married a short while,” said many.
“She was physically frail from the beginning,” said her father, “and her personality was always difficult. It’s hard to believe that her mind has deteriorated this badly... ” His sad voice trailed away.
The night before I was to leave, I lay in bed and thought about all I had heard. I recalled a rare conversation I’d had alone with my dad early one morning before Mother was awake. “When did you first realize there was something wrong with Mother?” I had boldly questioned him.
“I noticed it first on our honeymoon,” he said. “She thought someone was following us and refused to stop at the hotel where we had reservations. We traveled to four different places before she finally felt safe enough to stay in one. I could see that there was no one following us and couldn’t understand why she was so afraid.”
I was completely shocked that he had known about this from the day they were married. I silently questioned his sanity while marveling that he had put up with this for so long. He must have really loved her to overlook all that.
As I turned out the light and pulled the covers up to my chin, I felt deep unrest. There were no clear-cut answers about Mother. Was she born with a chemical imbalance? Did the trauma of childhood losses cripple her? Was she never called to account for her actions, and so she became unaccountable? Was her brain damaged by the high fever during her bout with scarlet fever? Did she have signs of mental illness way back in her teens which no one recognized? Was it all of these things? I couldn’t answer these questions, nor could anyone else.
After hearing everyone’s stories, I felt I knew Mother better. Yet all that information only stirred up my own pain even more. I thought that knowing the truth would make a difference, but it didn’t.
“What do I do with all this information?” I thought as I tried vainly to sleep. “I can see why Mother is the way she is, and I feel sorry for her, but it doesn’t change the way I feel inside. I still hurt. I still ache. I still feel like a prisoner of my past. I understand everything, yet I understand nothing.”
I cried into my pillow as despair overtook what little hope had been raised over the last few months. “What am I supposed to do now?” I sobbed to no one.
CHAPTER NINE
IT’S WHO YOU KNOW THAT COUNTS
I flew home from Nebraska more miserable than I was before I left. Rick had not lifted a finger to keep the house clean while I was gone so it was a mess when I arrived. I looked at my house and I looked at my life and I couldn’t cope with either of them anymore.
I stared into the bathroom mirror as I undressed for bed. I looked old. My skin was sallow, wrinkled, and broken out. The pores were large. My hair was dry and thinning. The gray hairs had steadily increased over the years with every new trauma. My mind was also gray. There were no bright colors in my life. My eyes were dull and lifeless, with dark circles under them that I could no longer hide with makeup. I was 28 years old but I looked over 40. My health was not responding to good nutrition and exercise as it had in the past. I had a sinus infection and constant low-grade nausea that had gone on for months. I felt unloved, undesirable, unattractive, and more locked up than ever. My emptiness knew no bounds. I saw only the hopelessness of my life. All my methods for survival had failed. The new season of the Glen Campbell Show was due to start in a few weeks, but this time I knew I could not pull it together again.
“God,” I said silently, “I don’t want to live anymore. Things will never get better and life makes no sense. Please let me die.”
Suicide was the answer. Only this time I wasn’t going to slip up. I knew the difference between a sleeping pill and an aspirin, and I would make no mistakes. It would be clean. I would arrange for all my money to go to Dad and Suzy and the death would look like an accidental overdose of drugs and booze. I would be out of my misery without inflicting pain on anyone else. I made plans to secure enough pills to do the job. I was dying everyday anyway, so why not end this torture.
The next night my Christian friend, Terry, called me to do a record session as a background singer. During a break she abruptly said, “I can see you’re not doing well, Stormie. Why don’t you come with me and meet my pastor? He’s a wonderful man and I know he can help you.”
I hesitated.
“What have you got to lose? I’ll pick you up and take you...okay?”
“Okay,” I said, acknowledging that I really didn’t have anything to lose.
Two days later Terry picked me up and drove me to a restaurant, where we met Pastor Jack Hayford from the Church On The Way in Van Nuys. He was a warm, effervescent man with a direct gaze and exuded a confidence that might have been intimidating had it not been tempered by an obvious loving and compassionate heart. He spoke with a remarkable balance of eloquence and down-to-earth vernacular. Although he was possibly ten years older than I was, everything about him was youthful. I kept looking for phoniness, shady motives, discrepancies, or manipulation, but I never found any of them. He was unlike anyone I’d ever met in my life.
Pastor Jack, as Terry called him, listened intently as I shared briefly about my depression and fear. I was still trying to keep up a good front even at this late hour in my life. I didn’t want either of them to know I was nauseated and fighting an infection that wasn’t responding to any method of treatment. I saw any admission of weakness as a sign of failure. I definitely didn’t want them to know the details of my mother and childhood.
He worked his way into a conversation about God with such ease that it was like he was talking about his best friend. He made God sound like a touchable person who cared about me.
“How much do you know about Jesus?” he inquired.
“Just a few details,” I said, recalling my past experience with church. “I know about His birth in a stable and that He was put to a cruel death on a cross for no reason. He was supposed to have been a good man. Other than that I really know nothing.”
“Have you ever heard of the term ‘born again’?”
I looked at him with a vague expression.
“Jesus said that He was the Son of God and that unless we are born again, we cannot see the kingdom of God. He said, ‘My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life.’ Looking to the Son means accepting Him as Savior and thereby being born again into God’s kingdom. It’s a spiritual birth, not a physical birth. It’s the opportunity to not only secure your eternal future, but your future in this life as well. You can begin life anew, and your past will be forgiven and buried.”
I was fascinated as he spoke about how the Holy Spirit would come into my life and transform my circumstances. Something inside of me thrilled over such a possibility.
“It happens in the spirit realm,” he explained, “but it also affects your physical life in practical ways.”
Pastor Jack never asked me if I wanted to identify with Jesus, but rather talked of Him as one would tell stories about a beloved father. This was different from the many times when people had walked up to me on the street, pushing a piece of paper in my face and talking harshly about repentance, sin, and salvation. They seemed to think of themselves as superior over those who weren’t like them, and because of that I wanted no part of their lifestyle. But this was different.
Two hours flew by, and near the end of our time together, Pastor Jack asked me, “Do you like to read?”
“I love to read!” I responded eagerly.
“If I give you some books, would you read them this week?”
“Sure,” I promised.
Terry and I followed him to his office at the church, where he carefully selected three books from his well-stocked shelves. Handing them to me, he said, “Let’s meet back at the restaurant in exactly one week. I want to hear what you think of these.”
“Great,” I said with enthusiasm. My new reading assignment gave me something to look forward to.
Talking with Pastor Jack and Terry had been a great reprieve from the immovable oppression in my life, but it ended when I returned home. As Terry drove off, the nausea returned and I couldn’t wait to climb into bed.
I began reading the books the next day, soaking in their contents like a sponge. It was as if I was transported out of my dreary life into another world.
The first book was
The Screwtape Letters,
by C.S. Lewis. It is a characterization about a devil who wrote letters of instruction to his nephew Wormwood. The letters spoke of how to destroy people and how to lay traps and wait for victims to fall into them. Of course, I was educated and sophisticated enough to not believe in a devil. All my Science of Mind teaching and other occult religions had taught that there was no evil force except what existed in your own mind. If you could control your mind, there would be no evil in your life. So the idea of a devil was amusing, yet fascinating. As certain real-life situations were presented in the story, C.S. Lewis seemed to have a logical, almost believable explanation for them.
The second book was about the work of the Holy Spirit. Again, even though I had heard about the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” I never thought of the Holy Spirit as a person with power to change lives, or that He could manifest Himself through someone by different spiritual gifts. This too was fascinating and seemed logical.
The third book was the Gospel of John, the fourth book of the New Testament in the Bible. Pastor Jack had given it to me in the form of a separate book, and I read it in one sitting. The words on each page came alive with meaning, and I felt the vitality of those words somehow entering me, bringing life to my life.
By the end of the week I was feeling a little better physically, and when I met Terry and Pastor Jack at the restaurant, I was eager to talk.
After we ordered lunch, Pastor Jack looked at me in his direct manner and said, “Well, what did you think of the books?”
“I believe they are the truth,” I replied.
He smiled and let me continue.
“I don’t know why, though. I don’t believe in the devil.”
He smiled again, unflinching at anything I said and calmly explained that the way I believed was exactly one of the traps that C.S. Lewis had written about.
“The devil wants you to believe he doesn’t exist, that Jesus isn’t the Son of God, and that there is no Holy Spirit with power working in lives today, for then he’s rendered you totally impotent,” he explained.
I began to see the wisdom in what he was saying. I was indeed caught in the trap. Pastor Jack talked about life and God in a way that made me hunger for more.
After we finished our lunch, Pastor Jack invited us back to his office to pray. Seated across from Terry and me, he looked directly at me and said, “Stormie, you said you believe the books I gave you were the truth. Does this mean that you want to receive Jesus today and be born again?”
“Yes, I do,” I said softly and without any hesitation.
He led me in a prayer and I repeated after him: “Jesus, I acknowledge You this day. I believe You are the Son of God as You say You are. Although it’s hard to comprehend love so great, I believe You laid down Your life for me so that I might have eternal life and abundant life now. I confess my failure and that I am a sinner. I confess that I can’t live life without You. Come into my life and fill me with Your Holy Spirit. Let all the death in my life be crowded out by the power of Your presence, and this day turn my life into a new beginning.”

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