Read Online Rich in Love: When God Rescues Messy People by Irene Garcia, Lissa Halls Johnson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Irene Garcia, Lissa Halls Johnson
Tags: Adoption
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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.
By the fifth day, I knew the real reason I drank was to try to forget my childhood. It was my only escape from those horrible memories. They haunted and tormented me. I could understand why my sister drank. There were memories she would never talk about. And my brother had been injured in a horrifying accident as a child. Because my father would not take him to the doctor, this young, energetic boy became paralyzed on the right side of his body for the rest of his life. He, too, drank excessively.
As I faced my childhood memories, I realized one of the things that hurt me so much was that my dad wasn’t there for me as a child—wasn’t there for any of us children. And there were so many things my family suffered.
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was doing the same thing to my boys that my dad had done to me. I was never there for them. I was always working, traveling, and drinking. They were watching me treat Irene the way I had watched my dad treat my mom, which I hated to see as a child. I was doing the same things my dad did and, to my best memory, his dad had done as well.
Funny thing was, sitting there stuck in that jail, I
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.
By the fifth day, I knew the real reason I drank was to try to forget my childhood. It was my only escape from those horrible memories. They haunted and tormented me. I could understand why my sister drank. There were memories she would never talk about. And my brother had been injured in a horrifying accident as a child. Because my father would not take him to the doctor, this young, energetic boy became paralyzed on the right side of his body for the rest of his life. He, too, drank excessively.
As I faced my childhood memories, I realized one of the things that hurt me so much was that my dad wasn’t there for me as a child—wasn’t there for any of us children. And there were so many things my family suffered.
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was doing the same thing to my boys that my dad had done to me. I was never there for them. I was always working, traveling, and drinking. They were watching me treat Irene the way I had watched my dad treat my mom, which I hated to see as a child. I was doing the same things my dad did and, to my best memory, his dad had done as well.
Funny thing was, sitting there stuck in that jail, I
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