Rich in Love: When God Rescues Messy People (6 page)

I tucked the boys in and then went to bed, partly because I had to work the next day.

The moment he walked through the door at 2:30 a.m., I prayed,
Lord, let him just go to bed. Please.

He marched into the bedroom, furious. My head pounded and my heart thumped. This was going to be a bad one. I pretended to be asleep, but he didn’t buy it. “So, Irene,” he yelled, “what were you doing tonight? Who were you with?” Accusations poured out of his mouth. It seemed as though every other word was a profanity. Often an ugly, degrading term for me and what he thought of me.

Fear began to swell within, taking over my entire body.

“What did you do today?” he demanded again. “Who were you with?”

You would think after all I’d been through that I’d be quiet. But
no
. I sat up in my bed and spewed out the most vile and wicked words back. “I was at work the whole day, Domingo. I’m with my kids. I’m where
I’m
supposed to be, but you weren’t where
you
were supposed to be, and you’re calling
me
vile things? Who do you think you are? You
know
I’m faithful.”

He turned on the light in the bathroom, and the glow lit his face. I saw a storm brewing inside him like I’d never seen before. His eyes didn’t look like his eyes. Fear poured through me. I feared for my life. I knew it was over. This was the last time he’d hurt me—because I was going to die.

“I’m going to teach you, Irene,” he said, seething. “I’m going to give you what you deserve.
I’ll
show you who I am.”

Silently I prayed,
Dear God, help me. Please protect me
. Just as I finished praying, Domingo turned slightly to come at me, and I heard a loud crack.

What was that?

He collapsed to the ground. My first thought was that it sounded like his leg had broken, but my second thought was that there was no way that could have happened.

I could tell he’d passed out, so I left him there on the floor, thankful he had been kept from hurting me. I knew I was safe for the rest of the night, so I fell asleep. How I was able to fall asleep so quickly, I don’t know. Was I exhausted after the surge of fear? Was God giving me grace?

When I woke early the next morning, he was still in the same place. As I stepped around him to get ready to go to work, he looked up and said, “I can’t walk, Irene. I’m in a lot of pain.”

My kind, compassionate self responded with “That’s what you get.” I was no longer afraid. Now I was just mad. I had no sympathy. All I could think about was getting to work on time, so I slipped around the wall that hid our bathroom from the main part of the bedroom to get ready.

“Irene,” his pathetic voice called. “Will you get the boys?”

“In a minute.”

I wrapped the cord around the blow-dryer and tucked it into the drawer of the cabinet. I took one last look in the mirror and stepped into the hallway, calling the boys, who came right away. I wasn’t the least bit concerned about the pain Domingo was in. I reveled in the fact he was hurting, so I took my time.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” the boys both asked.

“Mingo,” I said, not answering them, “your truck is blocking my car.”

He fished inside his pocket and handed over the keys.

Just to be mean and vindictive, I drove the truck down the street and left it there. I walked back to the house, dropped off his keys, got my purse and keys, and quickly left.

All the way to work a voice in the back of my mind kept saying,
His leg is broken, his leg is broken
. And another voice chanted back,
No, it’s not, no, it’s not
. How could it possibly be broken? He hadn’t
done
anything. He hadn’t even made an eighth of a turn. He hadn’t wheeled around. He’d barely turned to take a step toward me. There was no way it was broken.

But he was in so much pain. Why?

Nothing made sense, so I pushed it all out of my mind.

Later I learned he was in so much pain that the boys had to help him up. Because he couldn’t walk, he used each boy as a crutch to hobble all the way down the street to get his truck, his leg wobbling worthlessly. Domingo pulled himself up into the truck, put his leg on the seat next to him, and drove himself and the boys to the hospital with his left foot.

Sometime around noon, I got a call at work. “Irene,” Domingo said, “I’m at the hospital. My leg is broken in three places. There are two breaks in the tibia and one in the fibula.”

“Are you sure? You sure the doctors didn’t make a mistake?”

“No, Irene. There’s no mistake. I saw the X-rays. They’re clearly broken.”

Fear grabbed me, and I wondered if he’d be able to go to work. I’d become so distant from my husband that all I cared about was whether he could continue to support us.

When I got home, Domingo was lying on the couch, his leg in a full cast up to his thigh. He told me the doctors were running tests because they said it was impossible for his leg to break from such a slight turn. Later, when we told people what happened, no one really believed us. I think everyone thought I hit him with a baseball bat. Believe me, if I’d had a bat that night, I would have used it. But I never touched him, and he never touched me.

After he apologized for what he’d said to me, we never talked about the incident again.

Because he was laid up and couldn’t move around much, I had to wait on him. On the one hand, I was miserable every minute of it. I didn’t want to be kind. On the other hand, I enjoyed it, because it was hard on him to sit back and have a woman do what he should have been able to do for himself. I liked my new position and used every bit of it to my advantage.

After the long weekend, my uncomplaining husband was up and moving about. And he never missed a day of work. The cast slowed him down physically, but his drinking didn’t slow a bit.

This event sealed it for me. I was going to work harder at the salon so I could leave my husband for good. I could feel a big change rumbling in the distance. I could almost see it on the horizon. I knew what it would look like, and that knowledge gave me a quiet satisfaction. We would be divorced. And I would be done with him forever.

chapter 5

when God steps in

A beautiful woman of about forty years sat in my salon chair. She was extremely feminine—attractive but dressed modestly. She asked for a simple style and haircut. She wanted to look nice for her husband and sons.

From that first day, I knew she was different from any other woman I had ever met, radiating something I had never seen before. She reminded me of Mrs. Cleaver from
Leave It to Beaver
—soft-spoken, with a positive outlook on everyone and everything. She was confident about life and had strong moral convictions. Being brought up in a traditional Mexican Catholic home, I, too, had moral convictions. What I didn’t have—but wanted—was her joy and peace, the inner beauty that made her shine.

Her name was Mary Barshaw, and before long I was telling her things I had told no one else. I trusted her completely. She never judged me; she just kept on loving me, no matter what ugliness I revealed to her about myself. “It’s okay, honey,” she’d say in her sweet voice, patting my arm. “Jesus forgives you.” Usually clients confide in their hairdressers, but this time the hairdresser was confiding in her client. We talked about my marriage, or my children, and she helped me with parenting ideas. Or she shared wisdom about life. I looked forward to her weekly visits.

One day Mary invited me to her home for lunch. She had already invited me several times, and each time, at the last minute, I had canceled. This time I decided it would be rude not to show up and forced myself to go ahead with it.

When I got there, I found it odd that her husband, Fred, was there in the middle of the day. Mary explained, “I asked Fred if he could be here because you have so many questions about God.”

I smiled and shook his hand but felt uncomfortable with him there. I had hoped to be alone with Mary.

It didn’t take long to see how much they loved each other. Their interaction was genuine and loving. And I was also taken aback to hear the way they spoke so freely about God and his Son, Jesus. But as we sat at the table, eating the wonderful lunch she had lovingly prepared, I relaxed. They were kind and gentle with me, and I felt safe. And seemed like they could answer every question I could think to ask about God and the Bible. I was very impressed and became comfortable, and our conversation lasted for at least an hour.

Then Mary stood to clear the table, leaving me alone with Fred, who started asking me strange questions. By then I was okay being alone with him. Besides, I presumed Mary would return at any moment to sit with us.

“Do you believe in God?” he asked.

That question bewildered me. “Of course I do. I told you I’m Catholic.”

“Do you have a personal relationship with Christ?”

I had no idea what he meant. His words went right over my head. Probably noticing that I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, he asked me another question. “Do you want to be a follower of Christ?”

That’s what Mary had been talking to me about at the salon. But I was still confused. How was any of this different from everything I’d believed and done as a Catholic?

“Jesus died on the cross for every person,” Fred explained, “because we’re all sinners. God hates sin, and there must be a sacrifice for it.”

I got that. I went to confession all the time. I knew a lot about sin. I committed a lot of sins too. Especially with my mouth.

“Because Jesus was crucified on the cross, his blood can be the sacrifice so your sins can be cleansed and erased and you can receive eternal life.”

I nodded, not because I understood, because I didn’t—it was still over my head—but because that’s what you do when you’re listening to someone, even if you don’t get it.

“All you need to do, Irene, is to acknowledge that you’re a sinner, ask God for forgiveness, and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord of your life. This means you will obey and follow Jesus.”

I’ve never claimed to be an intellect. I’m a simple woman. So it was hard for me to understand what all his words meant. But I knew I wanted what the two of them had—that whatever it was was really good. Then Fred asked if he could pray.

I bowed my head, and as he prayed, I silently repeated the words he said in his prayer. When he said, “Amen,” I wasn’t sure what was supposed to have happened. I didn’t understand that he had presented the gospel. I didn’t understand that I had done, in my heart, the thing that would now make me a Christian—I made Jesus Lord of my life. I don’t think it was important that I clearly understood. What I
did
know was that I wanted, with all my heart, to have peace with God. To have a connection with God through Jesus. So if that’s what Fred was saying with all those words and concepts I couldn’t understand, then that’s truly what I wanted.

When we opened our eyes, I realized I had gotten so caught up with what Fred was telling me that I didn’t notice Mary had not come back. I never did ask her where she had been, but I can bet she was in the next room praying for my salvation.

I thanked them both for lunch and said I needed to leave. I didn’t even think to tell either of them that I’d repeated Fred’s prayer—and meant it.

Not long after that, I changed salons, and Mary could no longer afford to come to me to get her hair done. So she didn’t know I had become a Christian that day.

No one knew I was now a believer. I was trying to grow the best I could, but I was discouraged with all my fumbling. So I called Mary and told her that if she would come in every week to talk with me, I would do her hair for free. I didn’t know then about older women teaching younger women as the Bible talks about in the book of Titus; I just knew I needed help, and I knew she could give it. She agreed and discipled me for over thirty years.

hungry

I was eager to learn all I could about God, but it seemed that the more I tried to get close to God, the more Domingo drank. But he was traveling a lot on the racing circuit—one year he was gone forty-six weekends—so things got a little easier at home. This meant the boys and I were alone and did everything together. On Sundays we started going to church where the Barshaws went—Grace Community Church, where the pastor-teacher, John MacArthur, was teaching verse by verse through the New Testament book of Matthew. I was in awe that anyone could teach so much out of one verse. It was a great book for a beginner like me to study because it was filled with Jesus’s teachings and had great applications for my life.

Little by little, God also revealed his truths to me through Mary. She faithfully met with me week after week, gently showing me my faults. She taught me that as long as I focused on Domingo’s sin, I looked pretty good. It was not until I compared myself to Christ that I could see how filthy I really was.

As a Catholic, I hadn’t really opened my Bible much. But John MacArthur’s teaching inspired me to get mine out and look into it more deeply. As I did, it was clear that God wanted Christians to be married to Christians. And since I was now a Christian, I believed God wanted me to be with a Christian husband. So, in my naive thinking, I believed God was going to give me a new husband. I just had to keep praying for him—whoever he might be. I dreamed of having a family who went to church together like the families I saw sitting together in the Catholic church when I was a child.

By this time it was no secret how I felt about my husband. I knew he wasn’t faithful. My heart ached with this knowledge every time he was away. In my stupidity and ignorance, I prayed continually, “God, take this man. Let him drive over the cliff and die on the way home. And give me a Christian husband.” My foolish prayers are very hard for me to admit. How dare I pray God would take my husband’s life!

Boy, do I thank God for the Holy Spirit, who is the mediator of our prayers, perfecting them. Romans 8:26–27 says, “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.”

These verses tell me that there are times we might not know how to pray, but the Spirit perfects our prayers and aligns them with God’s will. So while I prayed fervently for my unbelieving husband’s death, I believe the Holy Spirit changed my words so God heard, “Please, Lord, save my husband and make him a new man in Christ.”

One day Domingo didn’t come home. No one knew where he was. I knew one of three things had happened: he was with another woman, he’d gone off a canyon cliff because he had been drinking, or he’d gotten a DUI. He’d already had one DUI, and I told him if he ever got a second, our marriage was over.

When Domingo called to tell me he’d been picked up on a DUI on the freeway off-ramp close to our house, I was so humiliated and so done. All I could think was,
Why is he still alive?
Then he told me he was going to be in jail for a few days.

I didn’t care. I was filing for divorce. I thought God wanted me to be free of this awful man who was drunk and angry much of the time. While he went to jail, I went on with my life and my plans for divorce, never visiting him in jail or even caring that he was there.

Domingo’s story in his own words

I could see our house from where the cops pulled me over—only one block away. After failing the sobriety test, I appealed to the police to let me leave the truck there and walk home. After all, I was so close. “Does it really matter?” I asked. “Look, see that house? I live there. You can impound my car, whatever you want, but please just let me walk home.”

“No, Mr. Garcia,” the cop said. “This isn’t your first DUI. We’re taking you in.”

I can’t believe it. It’s just my rotten luck that I get pulled over a block from my house
,
I thought as they handcuffed me, adding to my humiliation, then put me in the backseat of the police car.

I didn’t want to call Irene.

We had battled so long over my drinking, and as a result, our marriage had turned volatile. I knew Irene no longer wanted to live this way. I didn’t want to tell her about the DUI—I knew it would be the last straw and calling her would mean the end of our relationship. She had already been thinking about a divorce. But I had to call. And when I did, I could hear the disgust in her voice.

Wait until she hears I have to spend a week in jail.

When it was time to go to jail, I drove myself because I didn’t want to bother anyone or answer a bunch of questions. I parked across the street, hoping my truck would be okay since the jail wasn’t in a great neighborhood.

I hated jail. I hated being in a big room with my back against a wall. Then to be stuck with all those bums—losers who couldn’t even hold down a job. The first day I looked around and thought,
I don’t belong here.
There’s just a bunch of scum here. I’m a corporate vice president, while these guys are just a bunch of losers. I bet they don’t even work. I own my own home. A boat. Two new cars. What can they say about what they have achieved in life? Nothing. Plain old nothing.

About halfway through the second day I thought,
Well, some of these guys are okay
. But I still don’t belong here. These guys live in and out of this place. I just had a little bad luck. I’m only here because of the dirty cops who had it out for me.

I spent the next few hours thinking about that. I’d been raised in a culture where the cops were the bad guys, the enemy, the people who made our lives miserable and interrupted our fun with all their stupid rules. I had no respect for any cops—especially the cops who had arrested me.

There wasn’t anything to do in jail except sit and think, and I wasn’t used to that. Outside of jail I felt like I had to keep moving, always going a hundred miles an hour, busy accomplishing important things, while these guys were used to sitting around doing nothing. I had never stopped to think about what I was doing, or more importantly why. I probably hadn’t sat still like that since I was a kid sitting on the curb, watching the other kids play ball and deciding that God, like the cops, was unfair.

By the third day, I realized the cops had only been doing their job. They were only trying to keep the streets safe.
Since I don’t even remember driving that night before being pulled over, I must have been pretty bad off. But I still don’t deserve
this.

Then God humbled me to where I admitted to myself that it wasn’t really their fault—it was mine because I drink.

Why do I drink?

Well, that was obviously my brother’s and cousin’s fault. They got me started when I was eleven, putting a beer in my hand every opportunity they could. All the guys who came to the shop brought me beer too. Everyone I knew and worked with drank. It was just what we did.

On the fourth day, I thought about how it really wasn’t my brother’s or brother-in-law’s or cousin’s fault.
I
chose to drink.

Why?

The only time I really felt happy was when I drank. It was the only time I felt okay. I was free and at ease when I was drunk.