Hornet’s Nest

The Story of Bear and Kae Frances

Written by Marty Minchin

 

 

My dad first noticed her sitting at the other end of the bar, a tiny thing wearing a white nurse’s uniform.

“Look at that girl over there,” he said, nudging my shoulder. I turned my head to get a look, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

I was wearing my dress blues, recently out of the Navy on medical discharge after a mine exploded under our ship in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion hurt my back, an injury that would haunt me for years. It was 1970, and back home on Long Island, New York, I hadn’t found much else to do other than drive my dad to and from the bars at night.

Tonight, Dad was right about the girl. She was really fine, and I wanted to get to know her.

“I’ll buy you a drink,” I told her, “but first I have to follow my dad home and make sure he gets there safe. I’ll be right back.”

I was thrilled that she was still at the bar when I returned. She told me she had a beautiful baby girl and was a war widow. We talked for hours. She whooped the tar out of me in a game of pool, but I blame it on all the alcohol I drank that night.

The next morning, I woke up at home with a terrible headache and a piece of paper in my pocket. All that was written on it was “Kae Frances” and a phone number. I had no memory of meeting a Kae Frances, but I was game for finding out who she was.

Three days later, I met the husband she had lied about not having.

I ran him off. Then moved with her and her bright-eyed 1-year-old daughter, Shei Lyn, into a hotel room that was so small, we had to climb over the playpen to get to the bathroom.

I had a stable job, and I desperately wanted my own family. Now I had one.

 

***

 

My dad came from a very large Polish family of mean alcoholics, and he was no exception. We lived on a dead-end street on Long Island cut in half by a major highway, and everybody on my end knew everybody else. The kids played outside, and nobody locked the  doors. The neighbors knew how mean my dad was. They could hear him screaming, and our front yard was the battleground for his yelling fights with my mom.

I was the oldest boy among six children, and my dad beat me every chance he could. If I was in bed when he came home at night, he’d call me downstairs, beat me and send me back to my room. He had hands like iron, and when he hit me, it felt like a hammer slamming into my flesh.

He never smiled. He never once told me he loved me. He mostly ranted and yelled, and my mother stayed out of his way.

The pages of my schoolbooks were sometimes splattered with blood because he hit me on the back of the head so many times, he opened wounds, angry that I couldn’t remember the words on the pages. He didn’t know it, but the reason I had trouble was because I was dyslexic and couldn’t read.

 

***

 

When I was 9 years old, I found our German across-the-street neighbor, Mr. Muller, sitting in his red Chevrolet pickup truck outside my house. He was wearing his typical baseball cap, work shirt and green khakis, and his leathery skin curved into a smile when he saw me.

“Can I help you?” I asked through the open passenger window.

“Climb in,” he said, motioning for me to open the door. “I need some help. Go tell your mom you’re going to work.”

So I did, and that was the beginning of the happiest part of my childhood.

Mr. Muller owned a dairy farm, and his 36 cows needed to be milked twice daily. He paid me $1 a day, and I worked for him from early in the morning until 10 or 11 at night, seven days a week whenever I could. I’d rather be anywhere than at home with my dad.

At the farm, I learned how to take care of cows, clean stalls and slaughter animals for meat. I operated tractors and balers, discs and plows, and Mr. Muller taught me how to drive that red truck I loved. At Christmas, he and his wife would give me shoes and clothes for work and school.

Best of all, he told me all the time that I was doing a good job. I soaked up the compliments, because I sure wasn’t going to get any at home.

Sometimes Ada, the Mullers’ daughter, would take me to the Methodist church on Sundays. I wanted to know God, but it seemed like I could never get to know him personally like she did.

 

***

 

My dad had a big garden, and he expected all of us to work in it. We never worked side by side in peace because my dad spent most of the time barking orders at us.

After one day of enduring his nonstop hollering and screaming in the garden, I had all I could take.

He raised his hand to strike me, but this time, at 14, I stood up to him.

“If you hit me again, I’m going to take you out,” I growled, my fists clenched into balls. I didn’t want to hit my dad, but I didn’t want to get beat anymore. We both dropped our arms, and I packed a bag and ran away from home.

I lived under a bridge for a while and then stayed with some friends. Dad finally said he’d change his ways, so I moved back home. But he just channeled his abuse into words instead of beatings.

During that time, Dad did the one good thing he ever did for me. He taught me to be a carpenter, and I had the skills to later build my own house and a lifelong career for myself.

When I got the letter from the Army saying I would be drafted for the Vietnam War, I went straight to the Navy recruiting office and signed up there instead. I was stationed in Panama City, Florida, working on mine sweeps in the Gulf of Mexico.

The explosion under my ship that fateful day threw me to the ground, and the blow was so hard that I couldn’t walk for days. The Navy gave me shots of morphine to ease the pain, but the day I was discharged was the day I got my last shot.

I took all kinds of painkillers when I got out, but they didn’t seem to work. My personal pain management plan progressed to the point where I easily justified a little reefer here, a little snort there, telling myself it never hurt anybody. It numbed the searing pain in my back, and that’s all that mattered.

 

***

 

When Kae Frances and I married — 24 hours after she divorced her sorry husband and less than two years after we met — I was a drug addict. But she didn’t know it. We moved into a house around the corner from Kae Frances’ grandmother, a spiritual woman who encouraged us to get involved in church. We gave it a half-hearted try, but we rarely attended a Sunday service.

A year later, on Valentine’s Day, we had our son, Trey. I had already convinced Kae Frances’ ex, who never had any interest in Shei Lyn, to sign papers to let me adopt her. I adored Shei Lyn, who became my sidekick. Kae Frances worked nights, so Shei Lyn and I did everything together. We stayed up late and watched movies, then went out for breakfast in the morning. I loved this life with my family.

The rare times we did go to the church that Kae Frances grew up in, I worried that I was so bad that the huge pipe organ would fall through the floor when I walked through the door. Besides, I was doing well enough on my own, and I didn’t feel like I needed God in my life.

Kae Frances finally convinced me to go one Easter Sunday, and I hesitantly took a seat on the pew. When the congregation stood to sing one of the hymns, accompanied by that big pipe organ pounding out the melody, the booming sounds suddenly faded away. I could see people’s mouths moving, but there was no noise in that church.

My eyes were drawn to a huge stained-glass window in the front of the church, which seemed to be shining with an unnaturally bright light. The window was a picture of Jesus, who was now filled with light and surrounded by silence except for one clear sound. Jesus’ voice was saying, “Look for …”

It freaked me out. The sound swelled around me again as I looked around the church, but I had no idea what those words meant. I spent years trying to figure out what I was supposed to be looking for.

 

***

 

A few years later, my wife’s grandmother and uncle moved to New Mexico. We jumped at the opportunity to move into Grandma’s house, not knowing that the house was targeted for previous drug activity. I was readily mistaken for Kae Frances’ distant cousin.

“You don’t have to do anything,” the stranger said. “I need to get this package to Smithtown, and I know Kae Frances works there. Just put it in the backseat, and make sure she leaves the car doors open.”

I happily obliged. The drug run was surprisingly easy, as all I had to do was stash the package in Kae Frances’ car and convince her not to lock the car doors. She unknowingly became my accomplice. When she went to work the nightshift at Smithtown General Hospital, I’d put the drugs in her car and remind her to leave the car doors unlocked.

When bunches of cash wrapped in newspaper periodically landed on my front lawn in payment, I knew I had found an easy way to support my own expensive drug habit. Even though this cousin was bad news — he and his buddies were in the Mafia — it was a well-paying gig that was easy to hide from my wife.

We did argue pretty often about why she shouldn’t lock the car doors, and I’d blow up at her sometimes when she’d done the laundry without telling me. She washed thousands of dollars of drugs that I’d stashed in my pants cuffs, secret pockets and hemlines.

Construction was slow in the winter months, so I stayed home with the kids and dealt drugs while they napped and Kae Frances worked. But the easy money came to an end when I walked outside one Sunday morning with my cup of coffee. My blood ran cold when I saw Kae Frances’ car. The hood was open, and wires jutted out where they had been ripped from the motor.

The “boys,” I found out, were very, very upset that Kae Frances had locked her car doors before going into the hospital, and they couldn’t get into the car without breaking the windows.

“If this happens again,” one of the boys told me, “you won’t like what happens to you.”

 

***

 

When my boss suggested that our construction crew move to Texas, I saw a great opportunity to get out of town where nobody — especially my friends in the Mafia — would know where I was.

“Let’s go!” I called out toward my boss’ house, the sun rising behind me over Long Island. The boys and I had packed up all of our stuff the night before, and we were there to load him up and get out of town. Kae Frances had quit her job, and we had rented our house out; we were ready to go.

The boss cracked open his front door and stuck his head out.

“Uh, I forgot to tell you boys, I’m not going after all.”

I slowly turned around to face the five guys in my crew, all looking right back at me.

“What are you going to do, Bear?” one of them asked. “Me and the guys don’t have jobs anymore.”

I didn’t have to think twice about an answer. “I’m going to Texas. You boys coming?”

I knew I was going to get myself into a lot of trouble if I stayed.

 

***

 

We drove out of New York pulling a 22-foot travel trailer with a line of vehicles trailing behind us. We’d park that trailer at night, and Kae Frances and her best friend, who was moving with us, would cook breakfast each morning for all of the guys and hand it to us out the door.

Four days later, our caravan motored through Houston before we found a campground in Magnolia, a town just north of the big city. The girls stayed there during the day while the guys looked for work.

We had a hard time finding a footing in Texas. Sometimes contractors would rip us off, and my crew would end up with $5 for a day’s work.

Finally, a general contractor saw my crew’s talent. We became known as the “Hit and Run Crew” because we could put up all the 2-inch woodwork for a 1,600-square-foot house in eight hours. A bare lot in the morning — when we left at night, a house frame would be standing.

I soon got a job as a general contractor myself, working for a company. I directed a 53-man crew, and Kae Frances handled the paperwork. Being in charge meant I didn’t have to work as much, giving me plenty of time to buy and sell drugs. Making up excuses to Kae Frances became a major past time. When I had to explain why yet another weirdo was sitting on our front porch when we came home from the movies, I always told her it was something about a job.

My appearances at home became rare. My kids would make snide remarks like, “Is that our daddy?” when I did grace the doorway.

I was turning into my father, mean and aggressive. I carried a shotgun named Davy, after Davy Crockett, and I readily used it to threaten anyone who owed me money. The arguments with Kae Frances about the laundry escalated, but she just figured it was because I came from an angry home.

 

***

 

Drugs make you do stupid things, even using your own children to support your habit.

In 1980, I had made enough money to buy a little ranch in Magnolia and stock it with animals. Shei Lyn loved animals, and we filled our ranch with cows, chickens, horses and pigs.

Shei Lyn helped me grow plants from seed, and together we planted a crop of healthy marijuana trees in the backyard. She would water those plants every night, and when I asked, she would till a little cow manure in the ground around them.

When she wondered what they were, I told her they were odd-looking plants, and I liked them.

 

***

 

Kae Frances had mostly stayed away from drugs, and by now she knew I was selling and using. She never smoked herself, but if a bunch of us were in the van, she couldn’t help getting high from the smoke from everybody else’s joints. But one night on the porch swing, her curiosity got the best of her.

“I’d like to take a toke of something myself,” she said.

Now, I didn’t ever force Kae Frances into anything. Drugs take you somewhere you don’t want to go and will make you do things you’re not proud of. But that night, I rolled a joint just for her.

She got a little hazy after a couple of tokes, so I helped her to bed, stretched her arms down by her side and tucked the blankets around her really tight. I thought she was going to sleep, so I never did loosen those blankets.

Kae Frances, though, woke up feeling paralyzed, and she couldn’t move or talk. She said she felt like she was in a coffin, and she was so scared that after that night she stayed away from drugs for good.

 

***

 

Afraid that the people I worked with knew a little too much about my using and dealing drugs, I took a new job with a cabinet company that was five hours away.

“I’m fixin’ to leave,” I called out to Kae Frances one morning after I’d packed my truck. I kissed her and my two sweet children goodbye, told Kae Frances I loved her and drove off into the dry Texas landscape. My weekday home would now be a barren motel room.

Usually after work, I’d do some drugs in my room and go to sleep. One night, though, the guys gathered in the parking lot and asked me to come out and have some barbecue.

We stood around outside smoking weed, the tiny lights from the ends of our joints shining in the twilight. The conversation went round and round, always about drugs. And when I met a woman at the party that night, drugs were all that were on my mind. She had a sizeable stash, she promised, and I readily followed her back to her place around the corner to check it out.

She pushed the door open, motioning to a trunk in the living room.

“This is what you wanted to see,” she said, clicking on the lights before slowly opening the lid. My eyes widened as I took in the trunk’s contents. It was unbelievable. Color after color, packages, pills, needles, bottles, every kind of drug imaginable. There was cocaine, crack, pills and at least 10 pounds of weed. I felt like a fat kid in a candy store.

This was life changing. It only took a moment for me to decide that this was what I wanted. These drugs. And this woman who would give them to me.

I didn’t want my family anymore, or at least that’s what I told them. Kae Frances’ heart broke when I announced that I didn’t love her and never had, the lies flowing off my lips before I had a chance to think about what I was saying. I did tell my children that I loved them but that I had to go. I abandoned Kae Frances, our ranch, our family and our life to move in with a stranger and her smorgasbord of drugs.

The woman gave me full access to the trunk, and I stayed in a stupor for days and days, drifting along in such a haze that I couldn’t even figure out what day it was, much less what I had done to my wife and children.

 

***

 

While I was gone, Kae Frances came to one of the lowest points in her life and cried out to God for help. She accepted Jesus in her heart and became a Christian.

She had cried and cried after I left, so much that when she was finally empty of tears, she was filled up with God. If a church in town was holding a service, she and the kids were there. The Bible stories she’d heard all her life came alive, and Kae Frances was suddenly so passionate about God that she was freaking out her patients and co-workers. When it was suggested that she quit her job, she did. She was so high on her relationship with God that she didn’t care.

And when Trey had a vision during a Peewee football game, it didn’t much surprise Kae Frances.

The kids were squared up on the line of scrimmage, helmet to helmet, staring each other down before the snap. Suddenly, Trey jumped up and ran off the field in tears, crying out for his mom. “Daddy’s going to die,” he sobbed. “I saw Daddy, and he was in the hospital. He had a heart attack, and he’s going to die.”

Kae Frances had no idea what was happening, but she believed that God had given Trey the vision as a warning of what was about to happen. She and Trey prayed right there, and when they said “amen,” they knew in their hearts that I may be in the hospital, but that I was okay.

The next day a phone call confirmed the vision, so Trey and Kae Frances drove the three hours to the hospital.

 

***

 

I saw Kae Frances and Trey in the hospital room, but I wasn’t in my right mind. I had done so many drugs that I had suffered a nervous breakdown.

The room seemed to be under water, with everyone moving and talking in slow motion. The woman was there, and for some reason, Kae Frances hugged her. “Take care of him,” she said and then added under her breath, “until I get him back.”

I felt tears on my face as I thought about the mess I had gotten myself into. I wanted to go home with Kae Frances and Trey, but I was shaky and scared at the ugliness of what I had done to her and afraid to talk to her about coming back. I was so, so sorry, and if my wife had just asked me to come home with her, I would have jumped up and went.

She didn’t ask.

Kae Frances and Trey walked out, leaving me there with the woman. They didn’t know what the future would hold other than, with certainty from God, I wasn’t going to die.

 

***

 

When I recovered, the woman and I moved to California. I got a part-time job and fell right back into buying and selling drugs. Work wasn’t that appealing, so we organized a huge bash on a mountainside near San Bernardino. This epic party would last for days, fueled by drugs and alcohol.

When Kae Frances got home, she and her friend started to pray for me. Specifically, they prayed that I’d come home. Instead of things getting better, I had moved even farther away … all the way up Kimbark Mountain in California. Eventually the Bible verse Exodus 23:28 seemed to fit, and they prayed to God about it: “I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.”

Kae Frances saw those tribe names in that verse as representing the enemy that had taken me away. She knew for sure that God had given me to her, and she was going to pray me back home.

She wanted me off the mountain and in Magnolia, even if it took a swarm of Biblical hornets to get me back!

 

***

 

We set up camp on the mountain on a cool California morning, and car after car followed behind us, full of people who filled our campsite. Someone lit a huge bonfire in the center of the party, and all around us people drank, smoked and did drugs. Alcohol was my choice that day.

I stored part of my stock in my truck, and at one point I wandered over to fetch the fifth of Old Grand-Dad out of my glove compartment and the case of beer that was on ice in the toolbox. Not too eager to rejoin the party, I settled into the driver’s seat, took a swig out of my bottle and reached over for a beer, feeling satisfied with the massive bash outside.

A weird buzzing sound outside interrupted my drunken relaxation.

Through the windshield I saw that the air was thick with black swarming insects that looked like bees. A huge cloud of buzzing bugs was headed right for me, and my truck windows were open. A few slipped into the cab as I frantically rolled up the windows and jammed the key into the ignition.

I took off down the mountain, driving through a screaming, hollering crowd running in the same direction. They grabbed the door handles, trying to get into the safety of the cab, but I pushed the accelerator a little harder and locked the doors. No way was I going to stop for any of these people.

I left everyone there, including the woman. All I wanted was to get off that mountain and away from those bees.

When I got to the base, far ahead of the runners and the insects, I felt like a lot of things had been lifted off my mind. Life, for the moment, seemed a little clearer.

Maybe, I thought, I’ll call home and see how the kids are doing.

“I’m getting tired,” I told Kae Frances. “I just want to come home and see the kids for a little bit.”

I got in my truck and drove for three days, working through most of the beer, the Old Grand-Dad and the three packs of reefers in my truck along the way. As I neared Magnolia, the sun rising over the horizon, I hummed along to one of my favorite songs, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree,” when it came on the radio.

I pulled up at the ranch early Easter Sunday morning. Wouldn’t you know, anticipating my return, Kae Frances had tied yellow ribbons around at least 40 oak trees in our front yard!

When she and the kids walked outside to meet me, it felt like nothing had changed, like I was coming up the driveway after a day at work.

 

***

 

It felt good to be home, so good that Kae Frances easily talked me into going to church with her that morning; I would have done anything to stick around a little longer. I was now seeing Kae Frances and the kids with a clear head, and I realized what I was losing.

My old life seemed to be waiting for me inside the house. My place at the table was set, and my clothes in my dresser drawers. Trey and Shei Lyn jumped around in excitement because we were going to church as a family of four.

Church didn’t do much for me that morning. Everywhere I looked, I felt bad. Five or six boys I used to sell drugs to sat in pews ahead of us with their wives, and I thought about how I ruined all of these lives. I felt so dirty that I couldn’t even look at Kae Frances half the time.

“Why don’t you stay for a couple of days?” Kae Frances asked when we got home. I agreed to it.

“Let’s get whatever you have out of the truck and clean it out,” she said. “You’ve had a long trip.”

I headed straight to the glove compartment to finish off the last of the bourbon. My reefer was gone, and I had only a couple of beers left in the toolbox. I needed to get to a store to replenish my supply, but I couldn’t leave. My kids danced around, saying, “Daddy’s home!” over and over, and I didn’t want to leave them quite yet, even for a few minutes.

“What is this?” Kae Frances demanded, backing out of the cab of the truck and holding out her hand, palm up.

I grabbed her hand and examined the dead bug on it.

“That’s a hornet,” I told her.

“Where did it come from?” Her voice pitched higher and louder. “Are you sure it’s a hornet?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, wondering why she was making such a big deal over a dead bug in a truck. “I know hornets, wasps, bees, yellow jackets. It’s a hornet all right. I just don’t know how it got in the truck because I thought I got rid of them all.”

“What do you mean?” Kae Frances asked slowly, her eyes boring into me.

“We were having a party, and it seemed like this herd of bees came from nowhere …”

Any more details of my story were lost because Kae Frances had turned into a screaming, dancing fool. I know even the neighbors heard her yelling and praising the Lord, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on.

I finally got her calmed down enough to explain.

She told me she and our neighbor had been praying that God would send a swarm of hornets to run me off a mountain and right back home.

“I knew that God was going to bring you back. Period. End of story,” she said, tears shining in her eyes. “I just didn’t know when or how it would happen.”

“You really believe that stuff, huh?” I asked her. She nodded enthusiastically. “Well, God hasn’t made a believer out of me because I don’t see it myself.”

 

***

 

I woke up at 2 a.m. sweating and shaking like a leaf. The sheets were soaked. Kae Frances had invited me to sleep in our bed, and I had found some pajamas right where they belonged in the dresser.

The pain was sweeping through my back. I hadn’t drunk or smoked anything since the afternoon before.

“Kae Frances, I’ve got to have something now,” I whispered.

“I’ll go to the kitchen and see what I have.” She returned with a water glass filled with bourbon.

“I don’t even know where this came from,” she said, putting the glass into my trembling hands. Her willingness to serve me alcohol surprised me, but I was so happy to see that drink that I didn’t care where it had come from.

“Do you mind if I pray for you?” Kae Frances asked.

“As long as you don’t stop me from drinking.”

She started praying, and I tipped that glass to my mouth and started drinking. With that first mouthful of fiery liquid, I could feel my body relax.

I drank and drank while Kae Frances prayed, and when the glass was empty, I looked over at Kae Frances and hardly recognized her.

She was standing on the bed, an angel in white, praying in a language I didn’t understand.

Maybe I’m really messed up tonight, but I don’t care. I got what I wanted.

 

***

 

On a normal morning, I would wake up, hit the alarm off and unscrew the bottle by my bed. I’d usually take a few drinks before my feet were firm on the floor, and then I’d go outside to cough.

My lungs were terrible from the years of smoking cigarettes, and it was exhausting to start every day practically hacking up a lung. Every winter, without fail, I got at least one case of pneumonia.

The day after Kae Frances prayed, I woke up to a rich coffee smell floating through the house. Instead of reaching for a bottle, I walked into the kitchen and enjoyed a cup of coffee with my wife.

Kae Frances’ prayers had delivered me from alcohol. That day, I started a new life, and I never touched alcohol again. God was trying to show himself to me.

Yet, I wasn’t quite ready for him.

 

***

 

My few days at home stretched out into months. The neighbors who had prayed the hornet prayer with Kae Frances invited us to their church for a remarriage ceremony, and we renewed our vows.

An altar call followed, and Kae Frances went forward because she wanted the pastor to pray for her eyes. She was born cross-eyed; doctors overcorrected during surgery, and one eye looked up and one out. It had been a lifelong insecurity for her.

I wanted God to help Kae Frances with her eyes, so I slid out of the pew and followed her to the front of the church. I prayed so hard, begging God to do whatever he could for her. My prayers were so intense that I slipped into another language; a special prayer language that I didn’t even know was possible. God filled me with the Holy Spirit that night, and I prayed for almost an hour, even though it seemed like only 30 seconds to me.

After that night, I started to get serious about God. He’d delivered me from alcohol and filled me with his Spirit, but I hadn’t let go of the drugs and cigarettes.

It was time for me to give up smoking, but I needed God’s help.

 

***

 

Kae Frances and I had decided to move back to New York so that our children could get to know their grandparents. When the girl who offered to buy our house in Magnolia backed out at the last minute, we ended up spending our last days in Texas in a freezing, empty house with hardly any furniture.

We pushed blankets against the doors and windows to keep out the cold and camped out in the living room. We cooked on a Ben Franklin stove and listened to the radio, our only form of entertainment. One day, that radio delivered the message that would be the answer to my prayers about cigarettes.

A country church was holding a healing and deliverance service that night. I decided that I needed to go, and I needed to be the first in line for prayer.

“If I don’t go and get prayed for first, it’s not going to happen,” I told my family as we wrestled around on the living room floor. “I need all the power that boy’s got.”

Trey jumped on the back of my neck. “Dad, you don’t have to be first.”

I pulled him around to face me. “Yes, I do.” I was a big man, and it was going to take a lot of power to pray the desire for cigarettes out of me.

That evening, I set my cigarettes and 24-karat gold Zippo lighter on the coffee table in the living room, because if I was going to be delivered, I wouldn’t need them anymore. Kae Frances and I climbed into the truck and headed out to pick up my buddy, who also smoked and who wanted to attend the service.

It was chaos at his house. He wasn’t ready, his kids were running around everywhere and we were very late. He was sure he knew where the church was, but we ended up in a cow pasture. Luckily the church was just around the corner in another cow pasture; we had to pick our way around cow patties to get to the door.

My heart sank when we reached the building. The church was so packed that the only seats left were chairs lined up along the back wall. I could hardly see the stage, which was at least 50 feet wide. The pastor looked like an ant standing on it.

This is no way to treat somebody who’s here to get his healing first, I fumed to myself. I folded my arms, and between my attitude and the big chip on my shoulder, my frustration was clear.

Somehow the pastor got onto a tirade about versions of the Bible.

“Anybody who reads a Living Bible isn’t reading a REAL Bible,” he preached. Well, I had a Living Bible translation right there in my lap. (It was actually the first book I was able to read.) I threw that Bible on the concrete floor. Thwack! It echoed through the building.

“I ain’t reading this no more,” I announced.

The service went on in spite of my temper tantrum, which the pastor probably didn’t notice, and before he could even begin the altar call, people were tossing cigarettes and lighters at him. My anger burned hotter because I had left mine at home. How am I supposed to be delivered from stuff I didn’t even have with me?

When I looked up, the pastor had walked into the crowd and was engulfed in the hundreds of people wanting to be near him. I couldn’t even see the stage anymore.

“It’s not my time,” I told Kae Frances. “I’m not going to go. If I can’t be first, I’m not going.”

“Oh, yes, you are.” Kae Frances had no intention of leaving.

“Oh, no, I’m not.”

The music stopped, the sudden silence ending our squabble. It was so quiet I thought someone had gotten hurt.

The pastor climbed back on stage and grabbed his microphone.

“When God tells you to do something, you just got to do it,” he announced. “God told me just now, standing right down there in the crowd, that I got to pray for some man first.”

That got my attention.

“I don’t know who this guy is, but God told me you and him got a lot in common. You’re both carpenters. I don’t have enough power to deliver you from what it is you need deliverance from. There’s something to do with wood, and that’s your bond.

“I need some wood!” he called out, and the drummer from the praise band leapt up and offered the pastor his wooden drumsticks.

“I’m going to break them.” The pastor held the drumsticks above his head and somehow snapped them in two. Then he pointed at me, way back in the crowd.

“Sir, God wants me to pray for you first.”

That’s when I knew God was real. My wife saw all of this happen. She heard me telling everybody I had to be first. I couldn’t see that pastor, yet he picked me out of a crowd.

We wove through the crowd to the front, and when that pastor laid his hand on me and started praying, a warmth came over me that seemed to rub me all over inside, scrubbing my lungs and my heart. I was so thankful, and I felt certain I was healed that night.

We had a great discussion with the pastor after the service, and I got a new Bible. I never coughed again or got pneumonia, and that lighter and cigarettes sat on the coffee table until we moved.

We threw it all away on the way out the door.

 

***

 

We lasted three months in New York.

We had become laidback Texans, which didn’t mesh well with our New York family. Everything was expensive, and when a deal to buy a piece of property fell through, we headed back west, stopping in Louisiana where some old drug buddies of mine lived. We stayed for three years.

While God had delivered me from cigarettes and alcohol, I still had back pain and took drugs to alleviate it.

After two years, I found a job back in Texas. Kae Frances decided to stay in Louisiana for one more year so that Shei Lyn could finish high school. The day after Shei Lyn’s graduation, Kae Frances and the kids packed the car to join me in Texas.

I had moved back into the same mobile home where my weird drug acquaintances used to wait on the front porch, and after a year as a bachelor, I had become accustomed to living by myself. My old friends had stirred up all kinds of lies and trouble, and when Kae Frances arrived, it was like she had stepped on another hornet’s nest. It put a terrible strain on our marriage.

Finally, Kae Frances had enough.

“Devil!” she screamed one afternoon, looking straight at me. “Get out of this house!”

Apparently, she was actually tired of the devil wreaking havoc in our home, but at the time, I didn’t know that. I thought she wanted me to move out. So I did. I moved in with my sister, who lived by the beach in Florida.

It was so easy to slip back into the drug scene there. I was unhappy and depressed, not doing much of anything. On most nights, I sat out by the water by myself, looking out into the black of night and thinking about what had happened to my life. The steady sounds of the ocean’s waves were somehow soothing.

God? Why would you bring me all this way to let me fall all the way into it again?

A calm voice rolled in with the waves. I didn’t bring you anywhere. I’m still right here by your side. You’re the one who walked away.

Tears poured from my eyes, and I cried and carried on all by myself on that beach.

Take me back, I begged God.

I never let you go.

By the time I got up off the sand and brushed off my clothes, I had a different relationship with God, a new understanding of what he expects from us. It had been several months since I’d left Kae Frances for the second time, and I wanted to go home.

She let me move back in, saying there was something different about me. And there was a lot different about our lives.

While I was gone, Shei Lyn had gotten pregnant by her girlfriend’s brother, and I was about to become a grandfather.

 

***

 

This time, I stayed out of the drug scene. I had been healed of back pain at a miraculous prayer service in Louisiana, and now I spent my time working and volunteering in the community garden. When people and pastors stopped to talk to me, it felt good that people paid attention to me for something other than drugs. We joined Upper Room Fellowship in 2006, quickly connecting with our pastor, PK, and his wife, Virginia.

When that call came at work one morning, it changed everything. I needed our church family more than ever.

My teenage granddaughter was screaming so hysterically that I could hardly understand her.

“Papaw, she’s dead, she’s dead!”

“Now, don’t be playing with me like that.” Why would my granddaughter call me like this at work?

“Papaw, she’s cold. She won’t wake up.”

I believed her then. I called 911 and drove over to Shei Lyn’s house as fast as I could, where I found two skinny kids crying because they’d lost their mother due to two prescribed medications that didn’t mix. Shei Lyn had gone to sleep the night before. She never woke up.

I had lost my precious daughter, who I’d loved since I met her on my first date with Kae Frances. We found Shei Lyn on the sofa with her Bible next to her. She had rededicated her life to Christ just a week before, and she died as a child of God.

PK and Virginia stayed with us almost constantly for the next few days as we sorted through our own devastation and the logistics of Shei Lyn’s life. PK is a former Houston police officer, and he arrived at Shei Lyn’s house not long after I did, knowing what questions to ask and how to handle the situation. The church showered us with food, gifts and cards, treating us better than I’ve treated people I’ve known for years and years. It’s just amazing that our church family supported us the way they did.

 

***

 

The blow of Shei Lyn’s death was followed by another round of troubled times, and for the first few years, the life we had gotten on track was stirred up again like a nest of hornets. The grandkids, Mariah Nicole and her brother, Eddie, moved in with us. Kae Frances and I were suddenly parents to two young, undisciplined teenagers.

The kids slept in donated bunk beds in our small guest room, and eventually I added onto my house and built them each their own bedroom. Mariah Nicole’s room is decked out in everything cheerleading, and Eddie has a football room. Neither had ever had a room to themselves.

The grandkids’ rebellious activities were stressful. Previous to Shei Lyn’s death, Mariah Nicole had been in trouble at school for drugs, and soon after Eddie was hauled out of school for drug involvement as well. Both spent time in juvenile detention. Sam, Shei Lyn’s oldest, has also served jail time. But this time served as a turning point for each of them, and God ministered and answered prayers.

These days, when I move to get out of my chair, Eddie often appears in front of me and grabs my hands.

“Let me help you, Papaw,” and I let him pull me up. If I’m working in the yard, he’ll take over, telling me he likes to sweat and wants to do the work.

By that time, I may have gotten a whiff of something baking in the kitchen, where Mariah Nicole’s probably cooking a dessert for me.

These two children are now more thankful and take better care of me and Kae Frances than I could have ever imagined. God asked us to take care of these children, and because of our obedience, God has brought peace to our family.

Those hornets have flown away.