Mighty Wings Take My Breath Away

Home videos are my only recollection of life before my parent's divorce, with one exception, maybe two. “There's a raging fire in the sky tonight” (“Mighty Wings,” Cheap Trick). I don't remember what it was like to be nurtured by my mother. That's how young I was and I'm fairly certain I blocked some things out too. But, I remember a moment of learning it was over between them like a ghost with presence and minimal detail. 

“You broke my will, but what a thrill…” (“Great Balls of Fire,” Jerry Lee Lewis). “Risin’ up, back on the street. Did my time took my chances…just a man and his will to survive” (“Eye of the Tiger,” Survivor). 

How can a moment I barely remember have such a definitive impact on my life and career? I know the answer to that, but it's pretty mind blowing to think about how much this singular event influenced my entire life. 

There have been times that I was grateful it worked out the way it did because the thought of my parents together was just messy. Objectively, I don't know what drew them together as humans. They went to the same high school a few years apart in age. They both wound up working in healthcare before the wheels fell off. I've spent more time in my thirties and forties as a working professional than either of my parents. I don't know their whole story. 

I know healthcare work and high school were connecting points, I believe drugs, alcohol, and Jesus were too. My earliest church memory is from a Baptist church in the city that my parents attended together. You would think I'd remember this, my dad had half my childhood on camera in some form or fashion. He was a photographer for his side hustle. He actually went to school for it. 

I know what ended their marriage, at least as it was presented to me, which I never questioned for a very long time. I'm not going to disclose that here because I don't need to. My dad wound up with full custody. If you know how that typically works out, it's obvious that growing up with a single father as my primary partner had a tremendous influence on me. 

“Watching I keep waiting, still anticipating love…take my breath away” (“Take My Breath Away,” Berlin). If my parents were a wrestling storyline, my mom was the heel and my dad was the babyface in the divorce story and my mom would do whatever it took to get the upper hand, at least that's how I saw it for a while. 

But, the real impact of the divorce was relational and professional, and spiritual. I defined a lot of my past theology on the redeemability of my parents. Surely a loving God could save a junkie and an alcoholic who found their respective recovery through treatment and the program. Jesus had to be able to save them or that story was no more real than the Three Little Pigs. 

I went into ministry as a profession because I could physically do the job with my Cerebral Palsy, but you don't go into work like that without conviction. The capacity of a god to save my parents was always a powerful force in my belief. I'm not entirely certain if I've ever fully communicated that before now because it's just kinda like wallpaper you've seen enough to ignore it. 

But, my parents not only spent most of my life before their respective deaths divorced, but unemployed and disabled in some way or another. My dad had to stop working at the hospital because he hurt himself lifting a patient and had major back surgery as a result. 

I remember my mom taking us kids to visit my dad in the hospital after his back surgery. I know it was winter time because I was wearing moon boots. Side note, I think my parents and that era were brutal to me with footwear. My mom also renovated our home while my dad was in the hospital. Adult me sees all of this with grown up eyes, but I tell it like it happened yesterday.

After the divorce, I saw my mom for limited visits on Sundays after church. We usually did things like go to Wendy's, go to a movie, or occasionally go to my maternal grandparent’s house. My mom's form of affection was in gifting things and activities. She's arguably responsible for my introduction to professional wrestling, as she gave me the VHS of WrestleMania 4. Still one of my favorite wrestling events to this day. 

My mom moved around a lot and was in and out of various relationships. I even had a step brother at one point. I don't know exactly at what point she got sober for a time, but it was certainly on and off until my teens, when she invited us to a meeting to celebrate a sobriety anniversary. I'm fairly certain my mom stayed off the drink, but unfortunately she picked up the pills. 

My dad, on the other hand, stayed in addiction treatment for the majority of my life. From about as early as I can remember, around 4 years old, I would accompany my dad daily to his addiction treatment center, then be taken to school, likely go to PT or some sort of CP specialist after school, and repeat. In my childhood, my dad really seemed like the stable one of the two of them. My dad was also not an easy human being to live with. It was his way or the highway. But we were pretty open with each other, too open for a parent-child relationship, and so I tended to do what he said without much question. 

As a teenager, I took on more and more care responsibilities for the household and my dad. My relationship with my mom also got more and more strained. Her prescription abuse was a leading factor of that. I was a child the last time either of my parents worked.

I didn't learn how to be a professional from my parents. They weren't really an example for that. I learned it more from mentors in the Church. My first ministry job was my first real job. I didn't have a lot of on the job training for how to do basic work things. I remember making the church secretary laugh on my first day when I asked about when to go to lunch and she was like, “you're on salary you just go when you go.” I was 26 years old. The only work experience I had prior to that was a couple of months as a school janitor at my high school. To put it bluntly, I was green as goose s***. I had to learn how to be a professional and how to use professionalism the hard way. Telling these stories makes me afraid that I'm breaking that a little bit.