Parent Compass Radio

Guest (Male): I'm tired of seeing myself hurt. I'm tired of seeing my kids hurt. Why does this keep happening? Deaf since she was a baby. I never thought that marriage would be that challenging. Welcome to an advanced course of death to self.

Leah: My mom was just trying to protect me. She brought us up the best way that she could in comparison to how she was raised.

Ron: My mother went into a psychosis, made a plan to take us all to heaven. There's always a spiritual war for your life. We have a busy, blended family full of excitement and love. He loves to get the family together and watch football. He is just so adamant about that.

Deborah: Every Sunday dinner we make a Sunday dinner and watch a football game together. My daughter and my son-in-law love football. Blake is an incredible photographic memory for every rule that there ever was for an NFL game. Drew will drift in and out because she's not really into football, but it's just so fun having everybody together.

Ron: Our son-in-law, Blake, and our daughter, Leah, the newlywed couple who I had the privilege to perform their wedding ceremony. Leah is a deaf ed teacher. We have another daughter named Drew.

Drew: My siblings are fun. Leah has a lot of friends. She grew up doing sports. She was in school a lot, very studious. Monday through Friday, she went to Austin Texas School for the Deaf. I really care about them and love my family.

Ron: Leah has been deaf since she was a baby. Her mom was sick with pneumonia when she was pregnant with Leah, and when she delivered Leah, Leah was sick with pneumonia. The doctor said you need to give her medicine, but it was strong medicine. It may stop her hearing and strip her hearing canal. But no medicine, she dies. You decide. And so mom and dad said yes, give her the medicine. And she lived.

Deborah: When my husband, Patrick, and I married—the one that died in COVID—that is where my daughter, Leah, comes from. Her mother had died. She was seven when we got married. We were married for about 20 years, and then her father died. And so I am her parent. I'm her only parent.

Ron: She's my bonus kid. I wanted more kids, but no more kids. And then she comes along. She's my bonus kid. I don't think I can live without her either. She's part of my family and her husband too. He's my second bonus kid. I get two now. That's awesome.

Deborah: We went to a marriage retreat the first week we got married and we just dedicated our marriage to the Lord. The Lord just perfectly impressed on my heart: Deborah, you are forgiven. Ron is forgiven for all his mistakes. This is a clean, pure, fresh start marriage for you guys. I'm going to be in it. I'm going to be running it. You're forgiven. To lift off that burden off of me of any form of relationship that Ron had had, any form of relationship that I had had. For this new marriage to be blessed by God, to be ordained by God, that was just such a beautiful thing to know.

Ron: I wouldn't wish divorce on my worst enemy. I never thought that marriage would be that challenging. Welcome to an advanced course of death to self. When I realized that I was going to live with a bullet in my back for the rest of my life, and I realized that my whole body remembered trauma, and I realized that when I thought about it, it hurt me emotionally, that's when I thought: Oh wait, no. There's been damage.

Of course, I hadn't even been out of the Marine Corps a year when we got married. When you try doing an inspection over the ledges of doors for your wife, that just doesn't go over near as well as when the drill instructor does it for the recruits. But anyway, we had three wonderful kids, pastored a church, started a church in Denver, Colorado. I'm the eternal optimist. God's going to take the world by storm by the time I was 25. I'm going fishing for Moby Dick with a cane pole and bring the tartar sauce along with me if that's what I think God's told me to do. She, however, was not that way.

Deborah: Relationships didn't work out. I had some really traumatic things going on as far as personal relationships. And then even after being a single mom, these people would be traumatic with my kids.

Drew: It was just me, my mom, and my brother. She was a single parent. It was difficult especially because everybody around you has a lot of money and then you're being raised by a single parent. It's a little difficult, but she did her best. She loved us, took us to church all the time.

Ron: Oh my gosh, was I a shock for her system. I'm a shock for most people's systems, but really a shock for her system. I didn't know how to be my part either. I just thought Jesus is the answer, we'll be okay. I'm God's man of faith and power, we'll be okay. And then unfortunately we weren't. It was tragic and all the fallout effect. I did everything I could do to try to turn that marriage around.

Deborah: People get so hurt and they get so traumatized that their picker gets broken, so to speak. They pick the wrong people and then unfortunately it becomes a habit. I'm tired of seeing myself hurt. I'm tired of seeing my kids hurt. Why does this keep happening? I knew that I had tried everything else and nothing's working. I needed to get healed by the Lord.

Ron: That's why so much of my ministry over the last 20 plus years has been trying to encourage men especially that if there's any way that you can stay in that marriage, you need to stay in it. You get your choice of which tough to take. You get your choice of the tough of staying with that woman, working things out, going to the threshing floor, or you've got the tough of being out there on the open seas not knowing what lies beneath that pretty face.

Divorce is an occupational hazard as a pastor. Yet God just worked in my life through it all, was gracious and restored me and put me back on platforms of churches I never thought I'd be on again ever in my life. That's where I got into media. K-LOVE Radio opened up. I was the central Oklahoma voice of K-LOVE Radio for many years. I can attest to the grace and mercy of God.

Deborah: I allowed the Holy Spirit to come into me and come out of me and work in me. I started submitting my will to him. I started really getting healed. She brought us up the best way that she could in comparison to how she was raised. It's amazing.

Ron: My mother had had me and then she had my brother and then she had a miscarriage. The miscarriage really messed her up. She started having a postpartum depression. She just went into a psychosis. She had gone to the hardware store and got a gun and laid us down on her bed and just really made a plan to take us all to heaven.

Nobody knew that her brain was going haywire and she was trying to take care of two little kids and probably didn't even know herself what was going on.

Leah: My mom told me about that when I wasn't too young, because a young kid can't really understand that, but maybe around the time she went through it, like seven or eight. I thought it was horrible. I've never met my mom's mom. I didn't have a relationship with her and I can see why. Maybe I didn't understand that when I was younger, but then when I understood exactly what happened and everything that transpired, I understood my mom was just trying to protect me, which I'm thankful for.

Ron: When I was seven and my brother was five, we were living in Pensacola, Florida. At the time, my dad was traveling quite a bit. He would sell things and then come back, but he'd be gone for long periods of time. Unfortunately, I think there may have been some sort of an affair going on of some kind. I'm not sure. But that's the little bits and pieces you hear when you're a little kid and you don't know what that means, you don't know what that could be.

I think that was another reason that my mom was losing it. Something was going on in the marriage and then she had this postpartum depression. Nobody knew. I think she just wanted it to be better and just go to heaven. She was just tired of it, I guess. I think it was that with whatever was going on with her brain and a postpartum depression since nobody saw it and nobody knew. She didn't get any counseling for that. This was many years ago when nobody got any counseling for that. There was no support system there to say, "Oh, you're acting strange. What's going on with you?" It was all just inside her head. She just began to live inside her head.

She said, "Hey, Debbie, you want to go to heaven?" And I had been to Sunday school and I was like, "Yeah, heaven's a great place. I'll go to heaven. I know about that from church, from Sunday school." And I said, "Can I take my dolls?" And she's like, "Sure, you can take your dolls." And I'm like, "Okay, I want to go."

She gave me a bunch of children's aspirin, gave my brother a bunch of St. Joseph's orange little children's aspirin, which in itself could have killed me. She put a sign in the window of the home that said, "Do not come in. I have children. If you come in, I'll shoot." She laid us down on my parents' bed, put towels over our heads. She shot me three times in the back and shot my brother three times in the back and then shot herself in the head.

The bullet's trajectory changed just a hair's breadth not to kill every single one of us. We were drenched in blood, but we were all alive. "Why, Mommy, why? Why did you do this?" And then the police were there almost immediately.

I do remember them taking me to the hospital. The first thing they asked me was had I taken anything, or somehow they knew that I had taken all this great number of children's aspirin. They were pumping my stomach, they were pumping my brother's stomach.

Satan was after me. Satan decided to destroy me from the time I was a child. But I did have the Holy Spirit and I did have Jesus. And it was like a war for my life. Satan has a plan for your life, God has a plan for your life. There's always a spiritual war for your life. What has happened to us? Our dad disappearing, our mom trying to kill us, and now this?

Drew: I think it's devastating. It's extremely traumatic and can break up a family. My grandmother starts beating us, psychologically torturing, physically torturing. "You're going to go crazy just like your mom." My mother was in what they used to call insane asylums. I'm going to be homeless like my mother. God, I don't have a mother. I don't have a father. I don't have anybody. I need Jesus.

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