Beginning Again--Again

As the long days at Mike Rowland’s bedside wore on, and the doctors’ prognosis’ gave Tammy no hope at all, eventually she was forced to make the most difficult decision anyone can have to make.

Mike’s memorial service was well attended. Friends, family and his racetrack “family” filled the space provided by Turfway Park. After the service, as Tammy was being comforted by hugs and condolences she was approached by the trainer of the horse that broken down, causing the spill. He pressed into her hand a check in the amount of $5,000 and moved on.

Tammy stared at the check in disbelief. Disbelief turned to anger. What exactly was this check supposed to represent? The price of her husband’s life? What a ridiculously inappropriate thing to do. She disposed of the check as if it was contaminated.

Weeks passed and turned to months. Every once in awhile Mark, still dealing with his own demons, would drop by to check on Tammy, and they would talk. Tammy would open up about her now up-ended life, and Mark would tell her of his efforts to regain control of his. They helped each other through this very difficult time.

Eventually, friendship turned to love and they married. They briefly left the racetrack—the scene of so much pain—and proceeded to make a living out in the “real world.”

But as happens more often than not with racetrackers, the world of racing soon sucked them right back in. That was right about the time that Jerry and I met them, as their horse transport business was getting underway.

DAILY NOTES: Why does God allow bad things happen to good people? I was first hit squarely between the eyes with this question by an old friend of mine from high school. This inherently good person (who was at that very moment in the middle of doing a wonderful thing for me) asked the aforementioned with what I can only describe as venom in her voice. This friend looks to most people like someone who has the world by the tail, but in truth throughout her life she’s dealt with some tough stuff.

“I mean really, Shon,” she practically sneered, “if God is so good, if there even is a God, why would he let people suffer? Why doesn’t he just stop all the bad stuff from happening?”

This is the same old dusty refrain sung by virtually every atheist or agnostic that I’ve crossed paths with over the years. Funny thing about atheists, in my experience—as sure as they are that God doesn’t exist, they can never seem to argue their position very convincingly. But I digress.

I wanted so desperately to provide an answer to that question that would make sense of everything—but all I could do was stammer and stutter, which produced little but a ‘see-I-told-you-so’ look from my friend. I didn’t want to get it wrong, so I didn’t say anything at all.

Flash forward a few years to last summer, when I myself was posing a similar question to my Creator. Like a whiney little kid, I found myself bargaining with God. “C’mon God,” I would say, “can’t you see how hard I’m trying here? Why are things getting harder instead of easier for us?”

The answer to that question was clearly “Because I love you, and you’re not nearly tough enough yet for what lies ahead.” Gulp.

Nightmares Can Come True, Too

By way of offering up somewhat of an explanation for the lapse in postings, I can only say that 2010, thankfully, is now behind me. It kicked my butt, but now it’s gone. My fervent hope and prayer is that this year will not be quite so tumultuous.

No one died or even came close, so I really cannot complain. And in retrospect, I think the whole of last year was by some grand plan designed to make me put up or shut up. Literally.

I mean, the title of this blog is Testing God. So should it surprise me that perhaps God is doing a little testing of his own? The hits came from all directions—financial, emotional, physical—things that stuck at the core of my beliefs and betrayals by those I thought I knew. Things from out of the blue that I never in my wildest dreams saw coming.

At one point, I told my husband that I was literally afraid to answer the phone, open the door or even poke my head out from under the covers in the morning for fear of what the new day would bring.

But a funny thing happened on my way to the psych ward—I realized that while I thought I had surrendered all to God and was fully relying on Him, truth is, I hadn’t even come close to that. I probably still have a ways to go in being totally reliant, but 2010 brought me much, much closer.

And while I am certainly not saying I’m hoping for more bad stuff to rain down, I can say with certainty that the silver lining is that by turning to God, I made it through. I’m still standing, I learned a lot and I love God even more than in 2009, when it seemed I had the world by the tail and He was giving me everything I wanted.

I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to my wonderful husband and two very good friends, all of whom were never too busy for me, even when all I could do was sob.

As I sought answers to my constant question of “what the heck, God?” a woman who shared a barn with us at the track this summer handed me a book which she declared to be one of the best books she’d ever read. After reading it myself, I tend to agree. Between that book and the Good Book (particularly the Book of Job!) I cried, screamed, cursed and questioned my way through the second half of last year. So, since I have pretty much finished up the material from Rich Toward God, the focus of my Daily Notes will now be geared toward material from Dave Earley’s 21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People. I’ll begin with them next post.

And now, on with the blog:

Somewhere along the line Mark realized that his substance abuse problem and the ensuing financial problems caused by drugs and his agent were dragging down his career and his life, and he worked hard to get his life back on track.

Mark was clean and sober at the time of the accident. I remember him telling us that as he lay on the track for what seemed like an eternity, he called over to Mike, who at that time was still conscious, to offer encouragement.

“I was so cold, laying there shivering in the mud,” Mark recalled. “I remember thinking how I just wanted a blanket and wondering what was taking so long to get help for us.”

By the time he was being transported to the hospital, the pain from his broken bones and other injuries was excruciating.

“I told the ambulance driver, just in case I was unconscious when we got to the hospital, to make sure that the doctors didn’t give me anything addictive for the pain.” The sadness in Mark’s voice was enormous.

“When we got to the hospital, I was still awake so I told the doctors and nurses the same thing. I told them why it was so important that they choose my medications carefully. But when I woke up from surgery, I found out they had put me on morphine, and I knew I was in trouble.”

Released from the hospital with a long recovery ahead and some hard-core drugs at his disposal, Mark went home to recuperate at his mother’s house.

Mark’s battle with drugs was back on, and he wondered if he was strong enough to win it yet again. There were certainly many reasons to give in—a long, painful rehab and a good friend on life support were the two that came immediately to mind.

Mark found himself easing back into his old ways as the pain from his injuries and the anguish of wondering if there was anything, anything he could have done--should have done—differently that fateful night on the track nagged at him.

And then:

Dazed and confused, Mark woke up shivering on the floor of an isolation cell in what he assumed to be a detention center. Apparently the victim of a total blackout, Mark felt his blood run cold when he was informed of what went down the night before.

Mark remembered getting into his car after taking some pain meds and stopping to party with some friends. What he didn’t remember was the police trying to pull him over. Instead of pulling over, he led the troopers (by now there were a few of them) on a high speed chase down a busy in-town four lane road and eventually out a twisted, turning country road where Mark was eventually apprehended, thrown to the ground, cuffed, scruffed and jailed. Mark remembers none of this.

Dreams Can Come True

Racing is a sport that can make dreams come true in a flash. And it can break your heart just as quickly. One day, you are at the top of your game—plenty of money, plenty of clients—the world is your oyster, as they say.

But if you are young and impetuous when all the fame and money comes your way, you may find yourself facing the best of times and the worst of times all at the same time.

Mark was an unlikely candidate to become a top jockey. In high school, football was his preference. He loved the game, but he was a little on the small side to be taken seriously. Mark kind of liked horses, and since so many folks had told him that because of his size he should become a jockey, he decided to pay a visit to the racetrack.

A country boy from Marion County, Kentucky, he ventured out to Keeneland one day and crossed paths with a lady by the name of Lee McKinney—a tough-as-nails, dyed-in-the-wool horsewoman.

Mark and Lee struck a deal. She would teach Mark how to ride, and while he was learning, he would work his keister off in her stable. It worked out well for both of them, and as fate would have it, Mark turned out to be a natural with horses. They liked him, and even more importantly, they ran for him.

And so began the rise of a young man’s star in the racing world. Winning an Eclipse Award as an apprentice jockey pretty much assures the recipient of getting plenty of really good mounts. Which in turn assures success. And prestige. And gobs of money.

And gobs of money, if you are not extremely mature (and who of us, being entirely honest, can say that in our youth we were?) can in turn make for some big problems.

Between hanging out with their agents after the races and being wined and dined by owners and trainers, there is ample opportunity for top jockeys to party.

For Mark, the growth spurt that he had wished for in high school that would have allowed him to pursue his dream of playing football unfortunately kicked in after he began riding. As is the case for so many jockeys, Mark’s weight became his mortal enemy.

There are two kinds of “flippers” on the racetrack. The horse kind is represented by The Unbelievable. They “flip” upside down in starting gates and trailers. The second kind, represented by many jockeys, binge eat and then vomit, or “flip.” Not a pretty thought, but extremely common in the Jock’s Room at any racetrack.

Although he was still expected to socialize with clients after the races, Mark was finding it harder and harder to sit through dinner without eating when he was ravenous, so he drank instead—rum and Diet Coke. And there was, of course, the abundance of the other kind of coke, which may solve the hunger problem but generally causes much bigger troubles from the standpoint of both addiction and finances.

Daily Notes: This scripture comes from 1 Timothy 6: 17-19:

Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.

The Message

Hmmm…money is here today and gone tomorrow is right—just look at what the stock market has done over the past couple of years and you have proof of that! I grew up with a dad that wanted for me what he called “security.” A steady job that would provide a good paycheck, regular raises, medical and dental insurance and a good retirement income.

Tell me, does that even exist anymore? I mean, it did back in his day. Unfortunately, even if it did still exist, as I’ve told you all before, I am afflicted with career A-D-D. And since it seems like our income is never, ever of the “steady” variety, when it does come in (usually in hunks at random times) I am prone to squirreling it away. My husband calls me a rat-holer. What I don’t have rat-holed away in a bank account, IRA or piece of property I have rat-holed away in some actual rat-hole-like spot in the house. I’m a never-put-all-your-eggs-in-one-basket kinda girl.

I am so very thankful that this blog project seems to be helping me learn to rely more on God than on myself to do the providing.