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    Against the Grain
    Against the Grain
    Against the Grain
    Ebook111 pages1 hour

    Against the Grain

    By Teresa Jordan

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    About this ebook

    My life was rich. It began with a loving Christian mother with five children. Its wealth continued as our father was abusive, but when he took our car away, my mother made certain we continued to attend church. Our church provided bus service. I couldn't remember how many times I silently got saved in front of the TV watching Billy Graham. Luckily, the Sunday bus ride picked up several cute, eye-candy boys. I made my salvation public as I followed one of them down front to profess my salvation. Playing hopscotch, red rover, baseball, badminton, and many other games with brothers, sisters, and neighbors made older memories precious.

    Visiting grandparents and other family in Asheville was the highlight of many holidays and summer. Grandmother's homemade apple butter, red velvet cake, and biscuits made your stomach growl. Watching her make the biscuits so I could learn to one day serve them to my own family was a goal of mine for years. My success in making them was a loud laugh at the dinner table. No matter how many times I tried, it failed. They ended up outside for bird food, but the birds would never eat them. Several attempts broke the lawn mower as it ran over the biscuit rock. Rolling down the hill by their house proved to be great fun till you rolled too fast and knocked down some freshly planted corn in Granddaddy's garden. Watching Grandmother ring a chicken neck then pluck the feathers off was scary till I found out it was supper.

    This book contains powerful testimony of the life I was privileged to have because of a loving savior named Jesus. His protection, promise to provide, and love made it easy for me to do the same thing for others.

    If you have not accepted himself as your savior, please look out your window. The earth is full of God's love--trees, grass, and flowers all grow upward. Tree limbs raise their arms to him. If we could hear this as it praises him, it would make humanity worship a risen savior. God is real. He really died on that cross for each of us. Believe and ask him into your life. His blood dripped to save you to meet him in heaven. His stripes he took heal us. He's waiting with his loving arms open. Don't wait!

    2

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChristian Faith Publishing, Inc.
    Release dateNov 1, 2024
    ISBN9798893457902
    Against the Grain

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      Book preview

      Against the Grain - Teresa Jordan

      cover.jpg

      Against the Grain

      Teresa Jordan

      ISBN 979-8-89345-789-6 (paperback)

      ISBN 979-8-89345-790-2 (digital)

      Copyright © 2024 by Teresa Jordan

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

      Christian Faith Publishing

      832 Park Avenue

      Meadville, PA 16335

      www.christianfaithpublishing.com

      Printed in the United States of America

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1

      Against the Grain

      Chapter 2

      A Good Man

      Chapter 3

      Everybody Has a Story

      Chapter 4

      Decisions Have Consequences

      Chapter 5

      The Other Side of Abortion

      Chapter 6

      Our Battle Gear

      Chapter 7

      Light into Darkness

      Love One Another; Hate Evil

      Chapter 8

      True Forgiveness

      Chapter 9

      Poems and Artwork

      Chapter 10

      Look Back to See Forward

      Chapter 11

      Judge Not, That Ye Be Not Judged

      About the Author

      Chapter 1

      Against the Grain

      Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land. Which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

      —Ephesians 6:2–3

      Shivering, I quietly told my sister, Shut up, or he will hear us. Did you see where he put the gun?

      No, she whispered.

      I have to find it.

      Why? she asked as we both cowered behind our bedroom door.

      I snapped back, I'm going to kill him, that's why!

      My father died but not that day.

      As my husband and our family traveled to Georgia to his funeral, memories still haunted me.

      I was three. I remember it distinctly. I was sporting a new dress. Back then, it was still cute to be a girl and wear the frilliest dress you could find. My outfit would not have the designer flavor unless you included a matching hat and shoes. I was also wrapped in a fake mink stole and a hand muff. For anyone reading this who has no idea what that is, just google it. My new crinoline puffed my dress out like an umbrella. I was so proud as I pranced and twirled. If three-year-old little girls could strut their stuff, this was my day. I do not remember if it was an Easter holiday that prompted the purchase of such a dress, but when my daddy took my hand and walked me around the yard, things could not have been better.

      I fell a few times and scraped my new shoes. We stood by the road and spoke to some passing neighbors. We walked toward the newly plowed vegetable garden. I loved the smell of the fresh dirt. He led me back toward the road. I could not keep up with his pace and continued to fall down. Daddy began to jerk me back up by my arm. We walked onto the road, and I fell again. This time, there was no jerk, not of my arm. He walked back to the curb. I saw him laughing.

      I had skinned my knee and was sitting in the road crying. He continued to laugh from the curb, leaving me on the road.

      A car approached. He continued to laugh by the curb. The car blew its horn. He continued to laugh at the curb. The man in the car got out and began yelling at Daddy, then left after helping me up and to the side of the road. My daddy still had the laugh on his lips.

      There is no way to describe the emotional tug my heart felt. That was my daddy. At the age of three, I still knew that there was supposed to be tenderness and love as a part of our relationship. That day began and changed the rest of my life.

      His reign of terror had finally ended. I had four hours to either learn to love or pretend to love someone I had hated all my life. I was not good at pretending so I had already decided that would not work. I was certain that his family could see through any pretense I might try. I barely knew these people. There had been a few warm and toasty moments with that side of the family, but the bad memories with their spawn always overshadowed any good ones I had of them.

      My stomach was burning. I had a blood-curdling scream just on the tip of my tongue.

      I looked toward my husband several times, ready to tell him to stop and turn around. To be honest, the only reason that we drove down this road was because of an email from his attorney that said he had left us some money. I had seen his drawers full of money with my own eyes. Money—the only other tool to hold back from his family in order to control them.

      His death did not matter. You cannot mourn the loss of someone you never love. Did that make me bad? Was I the one to blame? Were the other four kids in this family to blame?

      Where could I put this guilt?

      This trip would be one of the hardest things I had ever done. I remembered how many times I had watched a child sit on their dad's lap and found myself jealous.

      I became confused as a flood of thoughts and emotions torpedoed my brain. It had been years since I had deliberately trashed these memories. As hard as I tried, I could not find a reason for the guilt I felt from my lack of love. I could not find one ounce of sorrow in attending my own father's funeral. Unable to force a tear, I questioned my own heart, How was I going to do this? People cry at their parents' funerals. The only thing this day did for me was to bring back a paralyzing rage of childhood confusion.

      The knowledge that his family never took much stock in the fact that he was a vicious, unruly, terrifying wife-beater only added to my contempt. He had always been a master of deception. What he did behind the closed doors of our home was quite the opposite of how he acted in public. His demons seemed to drop off as he left the threshold of our home and jumped on him as he entered. Our close neighbors knew. The midnight screams they heard, followed by the knocks on their doors from me, seeking their help, became a tiresome routine to them.

      I stood, shouting through their door because they would no longer open it to me, Please call the police. My dad has a gun to my mother's head.

      The police arrived only to stand outside the fence, having what appeared to me as a social gathering. If they only knew how much courage it took for me to run to their house. They did not know that I had to overcome deep-seated fears just to get up the never-to-go-out on that dark night. There were endless nights I would lie awake watching for him to come down the hall. I watched so hard that the shadows took on an appearance of their own, and running through shadows of him with monkeys on his back never got any easier.

      My plea to

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