God Does Answer Prayer - Val's story, Chap 14

I had been praying for Val for years. Praying that she quit drinking, that she quit doing drugs, that she quit letting losers move in with her.

I thought of all the good she had done in her short life. The mission trips to Mexico and Kenya. The nonprofit she spent hours and hours building only to watch it fail. The dogs she rescued. The two different houses she had bought and worked so hard to renovate.

          But through it all, she kept drinking. And driving while intoxicated. Even though she got two OWIs within a few years, she somehow never had an accident.

And I kept praying. Praying that her guardian angel wouldn’t give up on her. I believed that because she was such a caring person deep inside and she wanted so much to help others, the devil felt threatened by her. He made sure that bad things kept happening to her – the failed nonprofit, the OWIs, even all the illnesses and injuries from her childhood – as a way of trying to knock her down.

And I kept praying. Praying that Jesus would hold her in His hands, even though at times she denied Him.

In addition to her day job working from home, she started bartending a few nights a week. She said that she needed the money and also needed to get out of the house to socialize. In reality, it gave her a couple of nights to get drunk for free.

Until Thursday, January 26, 2023.

Years and years before, both my kids set me up on Google Maps so that I could see their location – or at least the location of their phones. They knew that I spied on them, but they never turned off the notification. Once, when my husband and I were on vacation, we were riding on a ferry across a canal in Virginia when Val texted me.

“Where are you?” she wrote.

It immediately dawned on me that she had been spying on me and saw that my location was in the middle of a body of water! So this worked both ways.

That Thursday night in January, like many nights before, I checked her location when I went to bed. She was at the bar.

          I had a bad feeling and started praying.

I woke up at two a.m. and checked her location again. Still at the bar. It was “bar time,” which probably meant that she was closing up and then driving clear across town to get home.

I lay awake praying for her through the night.

God, please watch over my baby girl. Please get her home safely. Please let her figure out that she needs help and that she needs to quit drinking. I am so sorry, Lord, that I failed her, that I didn’t shelter her more or come down on her harder when she messed up. If her drinking in any way is my fault, punish me, but please save her.

Or something like that.

          Early the next morning, as I dragged myself out of bed, I checked her location and saw she'd at least made it home. As I was groggily getting ready for work, one of her friends called me.

“Momma,” she said, “Val hit rock bottom last night; she wants to quit drinking and needs our help.”

Oh, dear God, heavenly Father. How can I ever thank You enough.         

~~~

I was scheduled to work all day, but I found a co-worker to cover for me in the afternoon. I texted Val as I was leaving the clinic around noon and asked what she was up to, totally playing dumb.

She texted me right back and asked me to call her.

She told me that she was done drinking, that she had finally realized how it was ruining her life, that she had so many things she wanted to do, but that with her drinking, she would never be able to do them. She said one of her friends was with her then, and another was coming over after work, and asked if I could come down too.

“Of course, Baby Girl,” I answered through tears.

I got home, told her step-dad what was going on, packed a bag, and drove the 45 miles to her house.

Her friends and I spent the weekend watching over her, keeping her hydrated and rested. We all knew that detoxing on your own could have serious consequences, even death, but she refused to go to the ER.

We cleaned her house from top to bottom, played with her dogs, and watched sappy movies. She looked up AA meetings in the area and called around to rehab centers. She made lists of things she wanted to do and things she needed to do to get sober and stay that way.

By Monday morning, she was still tired, but her headache and stomachache were gone. She finally felt like eating a little bit. She had found a women’s AA group and was excited to go to her first meeting.

God always answers prayer, and sometimes He even answers in the exact way we hoped. 

On the Final Trip to Kenya - Val's Story, Chap 13, part 2

All our previous trips to Kenya involved at least some volunteer work. We ambitiously built a chicken coop, taught about the life cycle of chickens and rabbits at one of the schools, or cleaned storage rooms at the volunteer house. Other times, we talked with our partners in Nairobi about how to proceed with current and future projects to help various schools, orphanages, or villages. With Val’s nonprofit no longer viable, we told our Kenyan friends this trip would be just our vacation.

Our flights into Nairobi always arrive late at night, usually around midnight. Again, just like on all the other trips, we got to our accommodation in the wee hours of the morning, slept for a couple of hours, got up by noon, and started our day. We spent the first day shopping for supplies (mostly snacks) and visiting with our friends who run their own nonprofit there.

          Early the next morning, we piled into the safari van for the long ride out to the Maasai Mara. We weren’t going on safari this time; we’d all done that enough times. We just wanted to be out on the African plains, relaxing at the safari camp and enjoying the views. And for Val, drinking Tusker, the Kenyan beer.

          One night we sat outside watching the beautiful sunset, the crepuscular rays of light reaching to heaven. Val told us that when she was a little kid and saw those glowing yellow-orange rays in the sky, she thought they were people’s souls in Manila envelopes ascending to heaven.    

          At the time, we laughed, thinking it was pretty silly. But three years later, I would never look at a sunset the same way.

~~~

 The entire time we were in Africa, Val continued to drink every chance she got. Whether we were going out for dinner or stopping for a snack at a place with Wi-Fi we could use, she ordered a drink or two. A few times she was out until late at night with our friends.

          After a few days in Nairobi, we took the short plane flight to the coastal city of Mombasa, where Val had rented us an Airbnb for a few days. The view of the Indian Ocean outside of our door was breathtaking. Unfortunately, we couldn’t leave that door open as the neighborhood monkeys would run inside to scavenge any food we had laid out. We thought they were cute at first, but their boldness soon got on our nerves.

          Our first afternoon there, we walked to a beachside bar for drinks, then on to a store for groceries. Val bought a liter bottle of gin and a bottle of wine. Denise may have had a drink or two, while I only had sips, but all of the alcohol was gone within two days.

          It seemed like such a waste to me. We had such a good time – walking along the beach, meeting a group of boys who showed us starfish, sea anemones, and other sea creatures, taking a glass-bottomed boat ride out to a sand bar. So much to take in and enjoy. Why did Val feel she needed to be drunk the entire time?

          She told me that this was her vacation and she wanted to enjoy herself. When I looked at her disheveled hair and puffy face every morning, I couldn’t believe that this was what fun meant to her.    

         On our last night at the beach, we went out to eat at a nice restaurant and had a delicious meal. Denise and I each had a glass of wine, while Val powered through an entire arsenal of whatever she was drinking.

When we got back to the rental, it was already late, but Val insisted on walking to the bar a block away. Even though I had already gotten ready for bed, I threw my clothes back on and went with her, much to her wrath.

I sat quietly at the bar, nursing a glass of pineapple juice, while she shot pool and did shots with the three young men there. They were respectful, even when Val practically threw herself at them. They would look my way, understanding that Momma Bear was on duty.

When it was time for the bar to shut down, someone offered to get us a taxi. I told him we were staying only a block away and would make it just fine. I managed to trip on the sill of the doorway as we were leaving, while somehow Val walked just fine. That is, until we were halfway to the cottage, and she looked up to gaze at the carpet of stars in the black sky above us.

          She laughed as she lost her balance, and I caught her.

          We flew back to Nairobi the next day and back home two days later. I was so thankful my friend Denise had come on the trip for support, and I'd never been happier to get my feet back on American soil. At least once a day while we were in Kenya, a horrible question ran through my brain. How would we get my daughter’s body home if she dies of alcohol poisoning while halfway around the world?

Before the Final Trip to Kenya-Val's Story, Chap 13, part 1

In early 2020, the COVID pandemic hit us all like a ton of bricks. At the time, Val was employed in the accounting department of a local business, so working on her laptop from home was doable. Her husband’s job as a chef in a local restaurant, however, didn’t allow for such a smooth transition. His employer offered customers meals to-go, but the pandemic still tore into business, as it did for many places.

          He worked when he could, but with Val working from home, the stress piled up. And their answer for coping was to drink more. She found she could now drink all day, plugging away on the computer, assuming no one would know. Somehow, she managed, and her mistakes were either overlooked or swept under the rug.

          In January 2021, she and her husband filed for divorce, and it was finalized July 15.           

          A year later, she started to get the itch to return to Kenya. My friend Denise, who had gone on several trips with us, and I were also ready to return. Of all the trips we had taken to Africa, this one would always stand out.

At least we had a good time during our long layover in Istanbul.

~~~

When I picked up Val for the drive to Denise’s house, clothes were strewn across her living room sofa, loveseat, and floor. An empty suitcase and backpack sat off to the side, and she was asleep in the middle of the mess. I roused her and asked if she was ready to go, already knowing the answer.

          “No,” she answered groggily. “I’m not even packed. Can you pack for me? All my stuff is laid out.” She gestured around the room.

          “You gotta get up. I can help, but I’m not packing for you.” I had arrived an hour earlier than needed, aware that anything was possible from my daughter. 

          She rose from the couch and pointed to her cheek. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary – just a face that was red and puffy from sleep and hangover.

          I stuffed her clothes and other necessities into her bags while she showered and poured herself into comfortable travel attire. I made her give me her passport so I knew we had it, then tossed everything else in the trunk of my car. She gave her two dogs tearful kisses goodbye, and we were on our way.

          She had been living with a guy at the time. Of all her boyfriends over the years, he was the biggest loser in my eyes, but I won’t get into that. I think she told me he was asleep in the spare bedroom when we left, but she never went in to say good-bye.

          She slept for the first hour of our drive, but when I stopped to grab us something to eat, she finally rallied and was ready to talk.

          She and the useless boyfriend had been at the bar the night before. They were both drunk and had a disagreement when it came time to leave. He pushed her into the car, smacking her cheek into the door frame. For our entire time in Africa, her face was painful and swollen, turning shades of pink, blue, green, and yellow as the days passed.

No pictures of her bruised cheek, not that I would post them anyway. 

Kenya - Her Second Home - Val's Story, Chapter 11

No matter what adventures in employment, living arrangements, or relationships she became embroiled in, Val held onto her love of Kenya from that first trip in 2006.

A year after she flunked out of college, the African continent began calling her. She found an organization online which would set her up to volunteer in various places throughout Kenya for as long as she wanted.

          I was apprehensive. Reviews on this outfit were generally positive, but who knew how reliable they were. I found a number for this place, and they sounded reputable enough on the phone. But again, lies can flow as smoothly as a river in the springtime.

March 29, 2010, her stepfather and I watched Val’s plane take off from a local airport. I studied that plane until it was less than a speck in the sky, my heart filled with such a mix of emotions that I felt frozen in place. And time. She’d be gone for six months.

          We stayed connected mostly through random texts. For years, I had watched with an evil eye as co-workers constantly checked their cell phones throughout their workday. Now I was one of them. Living seven time zones away, Val could text me at one in the afternoon to tell me how her day had been.

          She worked at an orphanage in Thika and a clinic in Saikeri. She learned about the camps for internally displaced persons, where hundreds of families had to relocate after losing their homes due to post-election violence. While there, she met a young Kenyan who was starting his own non-profit organization to help these people. She stayed in touch with him for nearly fifteen years.

          But she felt most at home in the tiny Maasai village of Saikeri. The local people she cared for at the clinic were kind and good-natured. 

         The scenery was magnificent. Wide open spaces where bony cattle grazed and skittish gazelles warily watched for predators. Even herds of zebra or occasional giraffes would wander across the plain near the small brick room she called home.

          Towards the end of her six-month stay, Val rode a crowded bus to the coast of the Indian Ocean. She volunteered for a while at an even more crowded orphanage, and then she and another volunteer took a break to stay at a house on Diani Beach, with its white sand and laid-back atmosphere.

          She came home in October, safe, sound and tan. Three years later, she talked me into returning to Kenya with her.

~~~

As I write this, I’ve been to Africa eight times, each time for about two weeks. Val? I think she’s taken seven trips, but if you total her time there, it’s much longer, close to a year altogether.

          When Val and I traveled to Kenya in 2013, we planned to start our own non-profit organization to work with schools and orphanages, improving the lives and futures of those children and their families.

          It was an uphill battle from the start, but Val dug in her heels, spending hours researching how to apply for tax-exempt status, how to host fundraisers and recruit volunteers, and what projects would work best in the country she loved.

          I took a friend of mine to Kenya a few times, and Val took her husband, her brother, and several friends on different trips. Every time either one of us came home, we were filled with stories and memories. And dreams of when we could go back.

          Unfortunately, after ten years of working on our own nonprofit, we had to let it go. All the time, money, and effort we put into it wasn’t paying off. Prospective donors preferred to give their money to an organization that helped local people, and we ran out of people willing to make the trip themselves to work on one of our projects.

          But Val never stopped loving Kenya. The chaos of the streets of Nairobi, filled with motorbikes, matatus, and trucks carrying loads piled unbelievably high, hearing shouts of mzungu when anyone saw us pasty white foreigners. The combined smells of diesel fuel, sweat, and burning charcoal that filled our nostrils daily. The children with their faces and clothes covered in dirt, but with toothy smiles and waving hands whenever we looked their way.

Those children! Whenever any of the boys or girls at the schools, orphanages, and villages we visited spied Val, they would gravitate towards her, grabbing her hands. She would pick up the littlest one, and the child’s fingers would run through Val’s long hair. Val would make a goofy face, and they would all laugh.

She loved them all and loved their home. She carried them on her back and in her heart. If she could make the life of just one of them better, she would cherish that.

Landing on her Feet - Val's Story, Chapter 10

The one activity Val embraced during high school was the drama department. In Middle School, she tried band, choir, and basketball. Before that, she had been in dance for one year. None of those things were her niche, though, but freshman year she tried out for the one-act play. She made the cast and continued being involved in the three plays the school put on each year. Until her senior year, when she started walking down a slippery slope. 

          I’m not naive enough to think that she hadn’t been drinking alcohol at parties with her friends. Maybe that’s why the shrink said I shouldn’t be her best friend; what could I say to make her stop without breaking our friendship?

          When I discovered she was smoking pot on a regular basis and even skipping school, I had to lower the boom. I convinced her to go in for counseling. She grudgingly went, but as I had learned years before while attending Al-Anon meetings because of her father’s addiction, you can’t force someone to quit if they aren’t ready. 

          On the day of her graduation, we had a huge argument. She was going to go to the house of one of her new and sketchy friends to get ready for the day. I went berserk, telling her the only reason I was going to graduation was for the foreign exchange student she had convinced me to let live with us the past fall. The party afterward would be for that girl from Portugal, not for her. I felt betrayed – so much for being best friends.

          Somehow, we got through the day, and no one was the wiser. We got through the summer, too. Val managed to hold down a job, but only so she could use the money to support her drug use.

          She had been accepted to a college a two-hour drive from where we lived, wanting to get a degree in social work so she could work with disadvantaged kids. Kids who were more messed up than she was.

          Halfway through her first semester, we received a letter that she wasn’t attending class and her grades were barely passing. We had a long talk. She said she hadn’t realized the freedom she would have at college, no one dragging her out of bed in the morning and forcing her to go to class, no one checking what time she went to bed. She had formed a friendship with one of the maintenance men in her dorm, who sold her whatever drugs she could afford.

          Needless to say, when she came home for winter break, she carried the letter that said she'd been kicked out. She got a D in one of her classes, but she failed the rest completely.

          We moved her things home after Christmas. 

~~~

 To say those first few weeks that Val was home were tense would be an understatement. She spent a lot of time in her room, sullen. Most of her friends from high school were either away at college or had moved on. I told her I was disappointed in her, but that she had to do something with her life.

          One morning, before I left for work, I told her she had to get a job before the end of the week or look for somewhere else to live. She could no longer be a freeloader. Through some of her craziest years in high school, she had managed to keep a part-time, after-school or summer job. She’d cleaned cabins, bussed tables, and bagged groceries. She could do whatever she wanted to do; she just needed a kick in the pants.

          She stuck out her jaw and did what she was told, for a change.

Later that same day, she showed up at the clinic where I was working. She was there to gloat.

          “I got a job,” she announced, and I thought she might sassily add, “nah, nah, nah, nah, nah,” next.

          A woman from our church hired her to be a waitress at her restaurant. Val had no experience, but her new boss told her that was what she looked for in new hires. That way they could be trained from scratch.

          It was the first in a long line of waitressing jobs she held. And being a people-person, she did well in all of them.

          Before long, she moved out of the house and into an apartment with a girl she knew from high school. Over the next few years, she moved to different living arrangements as often as she switched jobs. But somehow, always landed on her feet. 

The Hospital Stay - Val's story, chapter 8

The next morning, I took Val to see her provider at the clinic where I worked. She curled up on one of the tables in an unused exam room and slept while I tried to work and her provider made phone calls. Finally, Bellin Hospital in Green Bay agreed to accept her for depression and said they had a room. Then we waited to get approval from our insurance company.

          Hours later, I loaded her into the car and drove home to pick up a few changes of clothes, her toiletries, and other essentials. It was dark by the time Jim met us halfway there to drive with us the rest of the way to the hospital.

After the long admitting process, we said our goodbyes. It was a Thursday night, and we assured her we’d be back on Saturday for a visit.

          “I don’t want to stay here,” she said, holding back the tears, a stricken look on her face.

          “Baby Girl, it’s only for a couple of days,” I reassured her, hugging her tight. “We all just want you to feel better.”

          ~~~

Over the next few days, I had phone calls from the psychiatrist who was seeing her, asking about family history, antidepressants she had been on, and other questions of that nature. Our visit with her on Saturday was quiet and awkward, but she said she was doing okay, anxious to get home.

          On Tuesday, we met with Val and her psychiatrist before they discharged her. He had two concerns.

          First, she had a hard time concentrating on getting herself better. Instead, she was more committed to helping the other patients, delving into their issues, supporting their treatment. Naturally, the staff reinforced to Val that she was there to help herself and that the other girls in her group were not her problem.

          I totally could see that happening. That was my Gal Val. Always helping others. I remembered her on that trip to Kenya, taking the thin hands of the girls at the orphanage, writing letters with them, encouraging them to smile for pictures. She had a heart of gold and would do anything for someone else, whether a friend or stranger.

          And about those friends.

          The second thing the shrink wasn't happy about was that Val claimed I was her best friend. I was taken aback, touched actually, that she would say that, but angry that he felt that was a problem.

          “A teenage girl needs best friends who are her own age. It’s great that she can count on you, but you’re her mother and not her friend.”

          I didn’t care how many years of education he had at whatever fancy university he attended; I just wanted to punch him.

          Yes, Val had friends, good friends who she could count on, who would bail her out of any bad situation, who would make her laugh and engage in ice cream eating contests. But what more honor could a mother have than for her teenage daughter to declare that the woman who gave birth to her was her best friend. And to be honest, she was my best friend too.

          We didn’t argue with this supposed expert; we just wanted to go home.

          After signing some papers and packing up her few things, Jim and I loaded her into the backseat and asked if she wanted to stop for lunch.

          She agreed without much enthusiasm, and we found a pizza place.

          Once seated at a booth by the window, she looked around and found a cute boy waiting on a table across the room. She kicked me under the table and pointed his way. “Isn’t he hot?” she whispered.

          That was my girl. Couldn't keep her down for long.

Spreading Her WIngs - Val's Story, Chapter 7

 Last April, I started sharing stories of my daughter Val's young life. It turns out that now is the time to jump back into it. And today's topic sure does tie in with my last post. As usaul, that's not because I have it together; that's God at work.   

In July 2002, I packed up Nick, Val, and one of her friends, and drove us and our old pop-up camper to Lifest Christian Music Festival in Oshkosh.

I had never heard of it until a flyer arrived in the mail earlier that year, addressed to Nicholas. He was excited and seemed to know all about it, even said he had some friends who were going.

It didn’t take long for Val to become equally excited. It would be three nights and four days of Christian music and speakers on several different stages, with food vendors, lines for the showers, and safe partying late into the night.

The dream of every teenager and pre-teen.

I never imagined how it would change our lives. 

 Val and I continued attending the event for the next several years, with an ever-growing number of girls in tow. The rest of the year, she was involved in a puppet ministry and the youth group at our church, as well as the youth group at another church in town. When she started high school, she joined the drama department and acted in three plays a year. She was busy and seemed to have discovered her place in the world.

While at Lifest in 2005 we both learned of – at different times – a mission trip planned for the following year to Kenya, Africa. It was something I had dreamed about doing as a kid, but by then I felt I was too old for an adventure like that.

Val had her heart set on the trip from the moment she heard about it. She had gone on a mission trip to Mexico earlier that summer and felt called to spread her wings even further. It took a little convincing and a few phone calls to the people in charge of the trip for me to decide.

We were both going to go.

Those two weeks turned out to indeed be the trip of a lifetime. I struggled with being so far out of my comfort zone, but Val’s star shone brightly. She embraced everything about Kenya – the food, the culture, the people we traveled with, the people we met there. She vowed she’d return one day.

The only cloud in her life was that her boyfriend had broken up with her the night before we left. When she wasn’t busy with the kids on the trip or doing work for someone, she would withdraw and break down in tears. Her emotions were a constant roller coaster.

And it didn’t improve when we got home.

I finally took her to the clinic to get her started on an antidepressant and look into counseling. I became so worried about her that I slept on the floor outside her bedroom door at night.

Until the evening she came out of her room and said she had talked to her church’s youth pastor on the phone and told her she was thinking about hurting herself. The young woman was responsible for contacting the authorities, so the police were on the way to our house to check on my daughter. 

They took her to the police station to wait for a county social worker to arrive to talk to her. My husband and I followed in our car.

After what felt like hours, we took Val back home. She promised she wouldn’t harm herself, and I promised I’d take her back to the clinic in the morning.