Chapter Five - The Deck
Francie loved the outdoors. Some of the group was surprised that it was still cold out, but there was an unspoken feeling of it being fun to follow the farm girl outside. Francie said, “Ok, here we go. Bundle up if you need to and grab a blanket. It’s so beautiful; we’re going out.”
This was awesome for Brock with his farmer jeans, flannel shirt, and boots already on. It also sounded good to Lisa as she loved to curl up in a blanket at home and watch Netflix. Angela and Greg both were just needing to be told what to do, and it didn’t matter where they met. Nothing was going to change the fact they had to share their stories in front of people.
As Brock stepped out to the deck, he was excited but his head was spinning at the same time. Writing his story at the last minute and the fact he would be in a group with women, seemed to escape his mind until group members were announced. He felt great about everyone until the last name of his group was called...Angela. There was something about her that made him convinced she didn’t like him.
This was awesome for Brock with his farmer jeans, flannel shirt, and boots already on. It also sounded good to Lisa as she loved to curl up in a blanket at home and watch Netflix. Angela and Greg both were just needing to be told what to do, and it didn’t matter where they met. Nothing was going to change the fact they had to share their stories in front of people.
As Brock stepped out to the deck, he was excited but his head was spinning at the same time. Writing his story at the last minute and the fact he would be in a group with women, seemed to escape his mind until group members were announced. He felt great about everyone until the last name of his group was called...Angela. There was something about her that made him convinced she didn’t like him.
Brock
When he arrived on Friday, he climbed out of his dirt covered, squeaky door pick-up truck, had on worn-out jeans, a t-shirt, a go-tee, and was smoking a Marlboro Red. He had driven twelve hours to get here. Most people complain about driving across town. Where he lived, it was a twenty-minute drive to the next stop sign and an hour drive to go out to eat in Guymon, Oklahoma.
Being a farmer, Brock’s life had been seasonal for fifty years. After attending a men’s only retreat last year, he had hoped the weather would make a way for him to come to this one, and the rain came. Upon meeting Brock, no one would have guessed he farmed ten thousand acres, was a board member for two multi-billion dollar companies, and had just gotten off his cracked cell phone trading $75,000 of technology stock.
Being a farmer, Brock’s life had been seasonal for fifty years. After attending a men’s only retreat last year, he had hoped the weather would make a way for him to come to this one, and the rain came. Upon meeting Brock, no one would have guessed he farmed ten thousand acres, was a board member for two multi-billion dollar companies, and had just gotten off his cracked cell phone trading $75,000 of technology stock.
The first twenty years of marriage, Brock read dozens of Christian books, went to Promise Keepers twice, attended three men’s leadership conferences, and led The Purpose Driven Life series at church. But after his wife, Joanne, discovered his pornography addiction, she and the kids left him on the farm alone. Now, Joanne is remarried, he has weekend visitation with his kids, and his dad’s slow death has left him to run the farm by himself. Brock long ago boxed up his Christian books, and his quiet time he spent with a Bible was traded for quiet time with a bottle.
The first retreat, Brock had explored a story he called, “Asleep at the Wheel.” At the age of 12, he had been driving one of the combines for sixteen hours on a Saturday, fell asleep, and wrecked into the grain collection truck. His dad came and yelled at him for being so “stupid.” He had been beat down like that since he could remember and has lived with the daily anxiety of making mistakes. Six weeks after that retreat, he was doing better than he could ever remember. Then one wild night out cost him a DWI and has now left him a millionaire farmer with a restricted driver’s license.
From the age of six, besides two winter months and during school hours, Brock worked the farm with his dad, even into the night with lights on the tractors. Every year on the 4th of July, he would watch the fireworks twenty miles away from the cab of a tractor. His five sisters and all his friends would be in town having fun. His dad would say, “Son, this is a time provided by God for us to get ahead of everyone else. We need to get it while the gettin's good.”
With the urging of his mom and not his dad, he was allowed to go to college. He was shocked to find that he was quite intelligent and a good bit ahead of his class. His junior year, he and two professors worked on a research project that made him a patent holder and landed him in Washington, DC doing a presentation at the US Department of Agriculture. Several large technology firms made him job offers before his senior year even began.
It was the beginning of his senior year that he met Joanne while moving in to his apartment. By Christmas they were engaged, married in March, and pregnant in April. A week before final exams, Brock accepted a job in DC working for a contract technology firm for double the average starting pay of his peers.
It was the following Monday, just before his statistics final, that he got the long-distance call. “Brock, it’s your dad. I’m afraid that I am falling ill. A serious ill, maybe from the war, and won’t be able to farm anymore. The Schoffner legacy and family name is at risk. I really need you to come run the farm until I start feeling better, or we could lose everything.”
While they were engaged, Joanne made Brock promise they would never go back to the farm. With ten thousand acres and the family name on the line, he told Joanne that it would only be for one year. As his dad’s health, slowly improved, so did his dad's desire to build a bigger empire, and before long, he had Brock investing in the farm by signing loans to buy land and more equipment. His dad would often say at the end of a hard day’s work, “Brock, one day the farm will all be yours.” One year turned to three, three to seven. Then the markets dropped, and by the seventh year, Brock had accumulated $800,000 in debt. There was no way to get out but to keep farming and put in as many hours as possible. For Joanne, it was one broken promise after another. And every hope and dream that would come in the spring would soon die after every fall harvest on his dad’s farm.
His parents are both eighty-six and in a nursing home sixty miles away, Brock is still working the family farm, and his dad checks on him every day. Brock is now fifty-five.
The first retreat, Brock had explored a story he called, “Asleep at the Wheel.” At the age of 12, he had been driving one of the combines for sixteen hours on a Saturday, fell asleep, and wrecked into the grain collection truck. His dad came and yelled at him for being so “stupid.” He had been beat down like that since he could remember and has lived with the daily anxiety of making mistakes. Six weeks after that retreat, he was doing better than he could ever remember. Then one wild night out cost him a DWI and has now left him a millionaire farmer with a restricted driver’s license.
From the age of six, besides two winter months and during school hours, Brock worked the farm with his dad, even into the night with lights on the tractors. Every year on the 4th of July, he would watch the fireworks twenty miles away from the cab of a tractor. His five sisters and all his friends would be in town having fun. His dad would say, “Son, this is a time provided by God for us to get ahead of everyone else. We need to get it while the gettin's good.”
With the urging of his mom and not his dad, he was allowed to go to college. He was shocked to find that he was quite intelligent and a good bit ahead of his class. His junior year, he and two professors worked on a research project that made him a patent holder and landed him in Washington, DC doing a presentation at the US Department of Agriculture. Several large technology firms made him job offers before his senior year even began.
It was the beginning of his senior year that he met Joanne while moving in to his apartment. By Christmas they were engaged, married in March, and pregnant in April. A week before final exams, Brock accepted a job in DC working for a contract technology firm for double the average starting pay of his peers.
It was the following Monday, just before his statistics final, that he got the long-distance call. “Brock, it’s your dad. I’m afraid that I am falling ill. A serious ill, maybe from the war, and won’t be able to farm anymore. The Schoffner legacy and family name is at risk. I really need you to come run the farm until I start feeling better, or we could lose everything.”
While they were engaged, Joanne made Brock promise they would never go back to the farm. With ten thousand acres and the family name on the line, he told Joanne that it would only be for one year. As his dad’s health, slowly improved, so did his dad's desire to build a bigger empire, and before long, he had Brock investing in the farm by signing loans to buy land and more equipment. His dad would often say at the end of a hard day’s work, “Brock, one day the farm will all be yours.” One year turned to three, three to seven. Then the markets dropped, and by the seventh year, Brock had accumulated $800,000 in debt. There was no way to get out but to keep farming and put in as many hours as possible. For Joanne, it was one broken promise after another. And every hope and dream that would come in the spring would soon die after every fall harvest on his dad’s farm.
His parents are both eighty-six and in a nursing home sixty miles away, Brock is still working the family farm, and his dad checks on him every day. Brock is now fifty-five.
Lisa
It was not easy for Lisa to be the youngest of four and a PK, preacher's kid. Her dad was from Colorado, and her mom was from the Philippines. They had met on a mission trip and a year later were married. Lisa was born in Indiana, and new churches took her family to South Carolina, Ohio, then to Alabama, and finally Denver, Colorado. Growing up, Lisa had endless possibilities and options. Being the daughter of the lead pastor who was also the headmaster of the school, seven days a week, she could do anything she wanted…. as long as it was related to their church.
Lisa is twenty-six now and rents a small, remodeled home on the south side of the city. On Sunday mornings, as she gets in her car for church, she often sees her neighbors out on their front porches. She would shake her head as she got behind the wheel, unable to imagine what it might be like to miss church. For Lisa, ChristianMingle.com has been a source for her belief of not being compatible with any man and fuels her feelings of despair.
Two years ago, not sure what to do next with her life, she decided to get her MBA at nights while she worked as a wedding planner at a well-to-do boutique on the west side of town. It’s been a grueling struggle to see almost a hundred weddings pass through the doors of ‘Now and Forever.’ For herself, she refers to it as, “No Not Ever.” The woman who owns the place is sixty years old, bitter, and divorced. It also doesn’t help that her two male co-workers are privately dating each other. Lisa has had to hear the story a dozen times of how they met online last January and in March discovered they worked at the same place.
It is the dreams of her own wedding that makes her one of the most gifted and desired planners in town and the only one close to her age. She finished her master’s this past December, but no one seemed to notice and nothing changed except the amount of her college loan repayment plan.
Coming here was the first time she flew on a plane. Walking through Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, she felt the typical awareness of being unnoticed and insignificant. Lisa wakes up every morning, hoping the day will bring something different, very different. Especially today.
Two years ago, not sure what to do next with her life, she decided to get her MBA at nights while she worked as a wedding planner at a well-to-do boutique on the west side of town. It’s been a grueling struggle to see almost a hundred weddings pass through the doors of ‘Now and Forever.’ For herself, she refers to it as, “No Not Ever.” The woman who owns the place is sixty years old, bitter, and divorced. It also doesn’t help that her two male co-workers are privately dating each other. Lisa has had to hear the story a dozen times of how they met online last January and in March discovered they worked at the same place.
It is the dreams of her own wedding that makes her one of the most gifted and desired planners in town and the only one close to her age. She finished her master’s this past December, but no one seemed to notice and nothing changed except the amount of her college loan repayment plan.
Coming here was the first time she flew on a plane. Walking through Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, she felt the typical awareness of being unnoticed and insignificant. Lisa wakes up every morning, hoping the day will bring something different, very different. Especially today.
Greg
At the age of six, Greg was at school in the cafeteria. He was trying to make new friends, and a few of the other boys invited him to join their club. They eventually called him stupid for thinking he could be in their club and threw green beans in the cafeteria. Greg got in trouble for ‘horsing around,’ the lunch monitor called it. The school called his mom to come and pick him up at the end of the day from the principal’s office. Greg didn’t speak in the principal’s office or all the way home. When they arrived home, Greg went straight to his bedroom closet with a Piggly Wiggly paper sack and began packing it. One favorite shirt, jeans, five socks, two pairs of underwear, his pocket-knife, and $2.35. He decided he would carry his fishing pole from the garage in the other hand. He grabbed the paper handles of the paper sack, walked down the hall, out the front door, and stood on the front step. His mom saw him just as he walked out and went to him. “Greg, where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m running away from this town. No one likes me, so I am leaving here, and I’m not coming back,” he responded.
His mom continued, “But this is your home. You live here.”
Greg snapped, “This is not my home. This is not where I’m supposed to live. I’m supposed to live in Illinois.”
He was right. His parents had divorced in Illinois a year earlier, and his mom had married another man who lived in Iowa. This wouldn’t be the last time Greg felt homeless. Over the next twelve years, Greg’s mom would be divorced and married again, and his dad would move away from Illinois after marrying a woman in Nebraska.
Greg met Mary while he was in trade school in Chicago. They were smitten with each other and got married just after he got his electrical contractor’s license. Working for a union in Chicago, Greg still gets frustrated that he took a 50% cut in pay when they moved to Nashville. But Mary wanted to live close to family after her mom’s close call with cancer. About twice a year, Greg, Mary, and the kids go to holidays and family reunions of previous step-parents that were Greg’s favorites when he grew up.
Greg would never want Mary to know, but ‘home’ is the one place he feels most uncomfortable, as if he should be somewhere else. He often works late or takes projects out of town. Mary has concluded Greg’s distance is because of her.
His mom continued, “But this is your home. You live here.”
Greg snapped, “This is not my home. This is not where I’m supposed to live. I’m supposed to live in Illinois.”
He was right. His parents had divorced in Illinois a year earlier, and his mom had married another man who lived in Iowa. This wouldn’t be the last time Greg felt homeless. Over the next twelve years, Greg’s mom would be divorced and married again, and his dad would move away from Illinois after marrying a woman in Nebraska.
Greg met Mary while he was in trade school in Chicago. They were smitten with each other and got married just after he got his electrical contractor’s license. Working for a union in Chicago, Greg still gets frustrated that he took a 50% cut in pay when they moved to Nashville. But Mary wanted to live close to family after her mom’s close call with cancer. About twice a year, Greg, Mary, and the kids go to holidays and family reunions of previous step-parents that were Greg’s favorites when he grew up.
Greg would never want Mary to know, but ‘home’ is the one place he feels most uncomfortable, as if he should be somewhere else. He often works late or takes projects out of town. Mary has concluded Greg’s distance is because of her.
Angela
The past four years have been a blur for Angela. Even though she knew leaving her abusive husband was best, nothing could have prepared her for the grief, loneliness, and impossible role of a single mom left with three teenagers still at home. This weekend would have been her 20th anniversary. Their marriage was fairly empty and dry with her husband, Paul, daily focused on building his surgical device company, MGI. But the income, having a companion and a whole family, kept a spring in her step most days.
She has worked as a home caregiver, nurse for the elderly the past ten years. For too many years to count, Paul said his business was going to take off. Then the drinking started, periodically at first, but then it became every day. As Paul’s condition worsened, so did MGI’s. Angela confronted Paul several times and became frightened of him and his rage. The last year of their marriage, Paul continued to work every day and then began to work “remotely” with scotch at home. He would never speak of him having a drinking problem to Angela, the kids, or anyone. It was an unspoken rule that it would not be discussed. There had been many rules like that over the years, and finally, Angela took the girls to her mom’s and was divorced four months later.
Two years after the divorce, with the encouragement of her youngest daughter, Josie, she signed up for a speed dating night downtown. After two intense hours, she was interested in none of the twenty-five men but got back a sheet where seven of them were interested in her. She didn’t know how that was possible.
Then came Christmas. It was the second Christmas without a man, father, or husband. It seemed like a bigger hole in their home than ever before. On Christmas Eve while the family was making cookies in the kitchen,
Angela walked upstairs to her room, grabbed a pillow off her bed, walked into the closet, got down on the floor, and cried in her pillow. Then, Josie yelled upstairs for her. She stood up and went to the bathroom to wash her face. As she looked in the mirror, she said to herself, “Oh God, I can’t be alone anymore.”
With her eyes and heart open, she began to go to the gym, bought new clothes, and experimented with makeup her best friend, Jamie, bought for her. By February, she met James. They had met at the home of Ms. Hendry, who was 92. James was her grandson and would stop to visit on Wednesday’s during his lunch break whenever he could. He was divorced with no kids, and one day while they both were at Ms. Hendry’s, he gave Angela his business card and said with a soft smile, “If you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to give me a call.” Ten days later, they went on their first date.
Angela had a new spring in her step during those first few months. Talking about life with a man who was interesting and found her interesting was rich. The first movie date they had, after an hour, James put his left arm on top of the back of her seat and with his right, gently took hold of her hand. Her heart and mind raced with a deep breath as she had not been touched by a man in almost three years. After the movie, they even held hands down the sidewalk to the ice cream shop. Heading home that night, she felt a hope that was like a strong wind in her sails after being stranded in the middle of the ocean since she was small.
Six more months of dating and things began to change between them. A distance grew. Approaching one year, James seemed to pull away. It was Angela that would take his hand now. Angela also struggled with the physical part of their relationship. Anything heavier than kissing made her feel awkward. She had an overwhelming desire and, at the same time, felt dirty. She knew that getting married wasn’t the answer to this paradox as she had the same feelings in her marriage to Paul. Two weeks before their one-year anniversary, at the same restaurant as their first date, James let Angela know he’d decided it was best for them to be friends.
At forty-four now, her oldest son, Andy is getting married in two months, and she carries the burden of having no money for the rehearsal dinner. She has been fighting depression for a thousand days.
Angela’s life goals are to live out her days, be the best mom she can, serve people at work, and pay off her home before she dies. Being with Francie as her facilitator was a relief, but she really didn’t care who else was in her group. However, when Lisa stood up from the couch to prepare to go outside, Angela got discouraged because she was confident that Lisa was so young she simply wouldn’t be able to relate.
Two years after the divorce, with the encouragement of her youngest daughter, Josie, she signed up for a speed dating night downtown. After two intense hours, she was interested in none of the twenty-five men but got back a sheet where seven of them were interested in her. She didn’t know how that was possible.
Then came Christmas. It was the second Christmas without a man, father, or husband. It seemed like a bigger hole in their home than ever before. On Christmas Eve while the family was making cookies in the kitchen,
Angela walked upstairs to her room, grabbed a pillow off her bed, walked into the closet, got down on the floor, and cried in her pillow. Then, Josie yelled upstairs for her. She stood up and went to the bathroom to wash her face. As she looked in the mirror, she said to herself, “Oh God, I can’t be alone anymore.”
With her eyes and heart open, she began to go to the gym, bought new clothes, and experimented with makeup her best friend, Jamie, bought for her. By February, she met James. They had met at the home of Ms. Hendry, who was 92. James was her grandson and would stop to visit on Wednesday’s during his lunch break whenever he could. He was divorced with no kids, and one day while they both were at Ms. Hendry’s, he gave Angela his business card and said with a soft smile, “If you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to give me a call.” Ten days later, they went on their first date.
Angela had a new spring in her step during those first few months. Talking about life with a man who was interesting and found her interesting was rich. The first movie date they had, after an hour, James put his left arm on top of the back of her seat and with his right, gently took hold of her hand. Her heart and mind raced with a deep breath as she had not been touched by a man in almost three years. After the movie, they even held hands down the sidewalk to the ice cream shop. Heading home that night, she felt a hope that was like a strong wind in her sails after being stranded in the middle of the ocean since she was small.
Six more months of dating and things began to change between them. A distance grew. Approaching one year, James seemed to pull away. It was Angela that would take his hand now. Angela also struggled with the physical part of their relationship. Anything heavier than kissing made her feel awkward. She had an overwhelming desire and, at the same time, felt dirty. She knew that getting married wasn’t the answer to this paradox as she had the same feelings in her marriage to Paul. Two weeks before their one-year anniversary, at the same restaurant as their first date, James let Angela know he’d decided it was best for them to be friends.
At forty-four now, her oldest son, Andy is getting married in two months, and she carries the burden of having no money for the rehearsal dinner. She has been fighting depression for a thousand days.
Angela’s life goals are to live out her days, be the best mom she can, serve people at work, and pay off her home before she dies. Being with Francie as her facilitator was a relief, but she really didn’t care who else was in her group. However, when Lisa stood up from the couch to prepare to go outside, Angela got discouraged because she was confident that Lisa was so young she simply wouldn’t be able to relate.
