When the Scorpion Stings by Russell Gasero

When the Scorpion Stings

Laurinda McLean

ISBN: 978-1-7360489-0-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020949572

The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not a reflection of any entity other than the author.

“Anguish too excruciating to murmur through parched lips… Searing ache ripping at your tender heart. Would that I could… Meet you in it….” L. McLean

My humble attempt to meet you in it…

Contents

Preface

Dear Trespasser...and You know who you are

The Sting

Aftershocks

Lessons

Final Note

Preface

There are untold reasons for writing down what has transpired in the past. Sometimes the specifics are retold in a factual manner or the details may be metamorphosed into a story. The telling can be to soothe the writer as they finally grasp that it is at last in the past (isn’t that where we want to leave our dragons?) or to communicate what we can’t find the words for by ourselves, to offer us another chapter of perhaps a familiar story, to comfort us when we feel alone and when we question if we are alone in feeling whatever it is that is hitting us, to strengthen us for each day and to empty our hearts of what has happened, at least, for the moment. Stories allow us to get away from loneliness by hiding between the pages, entertain us with intrigue, introduce perspective into our own ugly situations, express anger that we are too afraid to breathe and, maybe, even offer a freedom to the person reading to get outside of their world for a moment, to step 1

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into someone else’s footprints and the shadows of their path. Stories are what brings the past to light, possibly makes it easier to face the future, and what often validates us where we are at the moment. Stories may be sign-posts, guides back to freedom, illumination in an empty place and may provide closure. Learn from them, emulate the good, and pray for a “happy ever-after”. You have, in front of you, a gilded invitation to listen in on a story of sadness and heartbreak expressed here in the form of a letter. Not a gentle story. It is actually a one-sided conversation where the writer is often angry. If you find a fragment you can relate to, or an emotion you have sensed burning in you but at last find articulated on these pages, then I’ll be glad. Above all, I anticipate you will find bravery, strength and the joy of unearthing answers for yourself. I can, however, promise you that it is ugly. Yet telling it is very crucial, as critical as it is to scrape away the lifeless surface from a wound in order to allow sun and wind and healing to enter. I must tell it. Unsealing my lips will be my healing! The memories locked in my mind sometimes threaten my own sanity. Once they are voiced, I’ll be finished with them, I hope. I’ve already been held back in my personal growth of who I was meant to be, it has handicapped me in various areas of emotional maturity, occupied my dreams with the agony of betrayal and strangled the vision in me. Like a drowning person gasping for breath, I am straining towards the surface of this ocean of hurt, straining towards a haven of life. I am covered with scars, some fragile wounds remain, bitterness rages in my mind at times and I have had counseling and prayer. I know that I know that I am being re-fashioned into much, much more, moment by moment, as I wait in this place. The years of abuse, mentally and emotionally, can be miraculously mended at once but the Lord knows that I won’t believe in the healing unless time goes by as I daily learn to walk it out. But, for this moment…as the memories empty out, listen. 

Dear Trespasser . . . and You know who you are,

Believe me when I say that I don’t miss you. I don’t miss anything about you! I don’t even miss the moments that I thought were good. I don’t miss the supposed exhilaration of your life that swept me along. I don’t miss the way you only thought of yourself 100% of the time—your endless exaggeration, or should we just be honest—the lies and stories you constantly told. Then there was how you bought the most expensive things for yourself ($250.00 sweaters and $1,000.00 fishing poles!) and doled out bits of money for me to grocery shop with or to buy for the kids. I don’t miss your irrational, red-hot, anger and unbelievable self-centeredness or the embarrassment of your uncaring and callousness. I don’t miss your eyes trailing after other women that crossed your line of sight or your verbal abuse over my weight and the close scrutinizing of every bite I took, nor the criticism of the way I dressed and styled my hair. It was all outward appearance 3

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with you. I don’t miss being hungry. So hungry on many levels to the point of starvation, physically and emotionally. I don’t miss the cover-up game we all had to play to keep your sin hidden over and over again and to make us appear normal as a family and an ever-loving couple, smiling and smiling. As a matter of fact, one that many looked up to wishing they could be like us in their marriage! The inspiring sermons you bestowed in the pulpit on all who would listen in rapt silence or the enthralling Bible studies yet the opposite side of you that would come out when the crowds went home. The mooning over mindless love songs and withdrawal from me when you were having your allconsuming affairs. Your deceit, cunning tears, and cowardice are now behind a bolted door but the bruises echo in my memories and surface when I least want or expect them. I long for closure, I want a Finale score to play, a culmination, I want the curtain to fall and the words “THE END” to play across the multi-faceted screen of my mind. I want a beginning to that ending for me. Cue the orchestra! 

The Sting

I was born to love and love passionately, to value others above myself and I believed that when I was fortunate enough to fall in-love that I would be loved in return with a matching devotion. I waited my whole life to find the One and I was so sure that, conversely, I would be the answer to Someone’s dreams and hopes for a Love that would last till eternity. When I met you, I believed I heard the voice of God saying that I should marry you. It “seemed” like a very clear message. Now, I am not sure, however. I recognize that the Lord often takes our blunders and redeems them, if we ask Him. My life is a witness to that truth being born out over and over. A constant redemption of blindness. I was a simple young woman who had fallen for a young man and believed that you would be my knight in shining armor. After 21 years of marriage, I had come to find out that you truly 5

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were a “night” of a very different kind and meaning, a very long and often a shadowy, tempestuous night. As early as I can remember, my thoughts were only of being a wife and mother; that is all I ever yearned for! It was my focus which grew stronger as I matured. My dreams and hopes were centered around a home with little ones playing and a marriage that would stay true into old age. Quite ideal but I had plenty of examples of my dream lived out in reality and knew it was possible. By graduation time from my boarding school, I was not one of the ones playing with decks of college applications, agonizing over which one to shoot for, no, I was the one who was wondering who I would marry one day and with whom I would have a family. I never did well in school and maybe it is because my mind was not on it but my heart’s cry was for something else. I didn’t see the point in pursuing a degree or a broader education. I knew I had all I needed for devotion to a family. I did take a year after high school for Bible school in England which is a separate story. Following my time at Bible school and still not sure which direction my life would take, I made the decision to go back home for a year with the intent and anticipation of helping in the work to which my parents had dedicated their lives. Truthfully, I would have been content to stay in my childhood home for the remainder of my life but that was not going to be. Perhaps I hoped it would turn out that way and that is part of the reason I returned. Going home, I was startled by your presence there! A young, fervent, single man on his first mission. You were so devoted to the Lord’s work and you were burning bright. Our romance progressed rapidly and we were married six months later. On our wedding day, it was pouring rain and a few things went wrong but that didn’t matter to two love-birds. We stood in front of a Pastor, my father, encircled by loved ones we had known all our lives, in a church with vibrant stained glass windows and vowed to each other, our commitment and fidelity.

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Fast forward to twenty-one years later, in comparison to the day of our wedding, this, for me, was a true beginning and a final ending. You and I had just stood in front of a judge to divide what was not meant to be divided unless death took one of us. You observed the process as you smiled and chit-chatted with your lawyer and I sat frozen while it all unfolded. The cold eyes of the judge and your lawyer smiling pierced into my soul along with the half-smirk on your face. You later tried to tell me that you “just didn’t know how to act”! No, you never did, not properly! Our wedding day it had rained, wet with rice…this day, groups of clouds danced across a crystal clear sky of blue, a blinding brightness enveloped me and a weight was gently lifted from my shoulders as I stepped out of the court house doors into the sunshine. I could finally breathe freely and I gulped the air in through my tears. It was all almost too much for me to handle. Looking back over the years, I find I am amazed—although I don’t know why I should be—at all the astounding ways you came up with to deceive. Even when you were in a situation that didn’t require deception! I was not entirely innocent of the world but innocent enough to not question or doubt, innocent enough to take you at your word, to hope that I was as precious to you as you were to me. Furthermore, I trusted you! I grew up outside the borders of the United States and, having grown up in a place where the roles of men and women were very clearly defined, had defined me as well on many levels. A man planted the corn, patched the thatched roof on the house, hunted and gathered. The wife bore the numerous children and bore the death of some of those babies, arose very early to stir the coals and bring to life a fire to boil the black beans, then make the corn tortillas, prepare food for the man to take with him when he went to the fields, sweep the dirt floor of the hut, fitting in time to carry water from the river in a clay jug on her back or firewood

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from scouring the forest, bundled neatly on her back. Some jobs were shared but most were very gender specific with the wife’s place firmly under the thumb of the man, eyes averted, ten paces behind, and not an equal partner but subject to the man and, above all, obedient. When we met, I know that was one side of me that truly intrigued you. Would I stay that servant-like? What did that mean for you in the coming years? Oh, I know, my thin legs, long hair and shyness attracted you and the fact that I did not fawn all over you, as other women had and still did, peaked your curiosity. I was something to be dominated and taken, to be possessed and used, this far outweighed anything else in your mind. You didn’t have to work too hard at it because of your magnetism. I was quite content with my role until reality hit me! I fell in love with you because I believed you were what I had hoped for and that you felt the same for me. I assumed that the way I would be treated would prove your love for me as a well-chosen help-mate. In reality, what you felt was a reinforced appreciation for yourself mirrored in my eyes as I, figuratively, walked my ten paces behind. Our courtship was too short, six months from first date to walking down the aisle—something I would never encourage any one to do. How can you know a person in that amount of time? There are vital things one should learn about a perspective mate before getting involved in extensively planning a life together. I neglected to be concerned about how you acted in varying situations and surroundings. I had not seen you interact with your family or others outside of our small mission group, had not seen what you were like for any length of time to see what kind of respect you demonstrated to others, whether in action or verbally. Could you be civil, self-controlled no matter your emotions, were you aware of when you did wrong and did you realize it and apologize, could you be vulnerable and open or did

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you hide behind a mask? You could keep the real you hidden for quite a while, I learned. Your mother and uncle visited for a short time during which you spent much of the time showing them the tourist sites. She was pleasant enough to me, but we weren’t as certain of where our relationship was headed at that point, so there was no reason for her to feel threatened by me. Threatened by someone who might take her son away as she would, six months later, scream angrily. Your father also visited, on his own, as your parents had been divorced. He made my skin crawl. Overly attentive to the opposite sex and overly eager to welcome me as your new girlfriend but not averse to talking about your “old” girlfriends. Bringing up sub jects that I was uncomfortable with were just some of the traits that made me guarded and insecure around him. You tolerated the one parent and idolized this one and you walked in the footsteps of the one you idolized. Your best-friend and my mother felt we were rushing into things. They did all they could to dissuade us. Typical of two young people who feel they have a “deeper” understanding of their relationship, we pooed-pooed them, asserting that they didn’t comprehend the depth of the love we shared. I know now that they understood very well and with much more wisdom than either of us thought or imagined. Would I have not married you had I been given time to see you in your element? Perhaps. I would like to think I would have been more perceptive but obviously I wasn’t. If I had only correlated the way your father acted towards me and his attitudes towards women in general with the deep admiration you held for him, I would have run in the other direction. Had I had eyes to perceive your veiled contempt for your mother, I might have wondered what your attitude was towards all women. Or had I had eyes to see the blind admiration mirrored in every woman’s eyes that had known you or even met you for the first time, old

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and young, I might have questioned the reason. I might have decided it was not anything of which I wanted to be a part. And had I given weight to your speech, I would have listened closer to the voice in my own head. Leading up to the wedding, we stayed some of the time with your dad and some with your mom. What an education that was and I failed it miserably! No one tells you that it is okay to leave a relationship that is stripping your soul and consuming you with fear. I remember, like it was yesterday, your dad’s colorful de scrip tion of how “stacked” one of your old girlfriends was, “Remember…?”, during a conversation the two of you were having one evening. So unfamiliar with slang like that, I had to ask you what he meant. I was shocked that this was commonplace to talk in this way! You never stopped him or reminded him that you were now engaged and would rather show respect for me by NOT discussing past relationships in that crude way. No, you entered in with gusto and made me feel like I was in a shadow-boxing match with old loves. But, my choice was, even then, to stay. I was sure that I could change anything in you that could be a concern. No one should ever think they can change another person! Never rest on that idea! There were many flags and signs along the way—some bla tant and others more insidious. The other side of loyalty is that you can have a hard time realizing when it is time to let go. Loyalty is a two-sided coin. I’ve been learning along the way that the most precious thing in my life is me because, without knowing who I am in Christ and valuing myself, I can’t love or prize anyone else. I kept pushing away those things that should have made me stop in my tracks. Things that were horrific but how stubborn I can be in the name of loyalty. Your mother’s deep aversion for me and your reaction to her should have been a signal. Instead you kept insisting that