The Route of Escape

The Route of Escape is a modern day “Pilgrim’s Progress” of an event that happened one day in the life of an unsuspecting Christian woman.  This event sent her reeling headlong down dimly lit back roads of her past while taking to task the spiritual endurance required for her bright future in ministry.  To gain supernatural strength to overcome every barrier casually, yet strategically strewn along her way required certain gifts, several acts of God, and more than not, a route of escape.

Come!  Let her words guide you along her way.  She will tell you in truth, for this is her life.

Not much occurred in the summer of ’64 unless one had eyes to see and ears to hear. The gift of patience allowed my folks to wait nine whole months for the anticipated miracle of a blessed event.  In the intense month where the emeralds of May faint and fade to the wilted green of peridot, God staged my entrance.

On the day when God told my mother that it was “time”, I was birthed.  It was the cusp day of a transition month when Jim Sr. and Shirley Ann would take full responsibility as well as opportunity of being parents inevitably a third, yet not, final time. However, it was how the inevitable would present itself that caused the nail biting and eventually hair (or hell) raising experience.

Prior to the month when Indians’ heated revenge rampages and scalps summer of its foliage, -leaving in its wake a trail of blood-red, burnt-orange, and flame-yellow heaps for rakes to herd into massive burial mounds that ignite swiftly and burn brightly in the warm autumn nights- I entered the world in my full regalia of nothingness.  In other words, I was born butt-naked in the month of August.  With that knowledge, life would be forevermore radically extraordinary.

My name is Jacquelyn A. Berry, yet those closest to me call me Jacque   More than not my parents called me by my full name for they were often fully infuriated with my vest for life (and getting into trouble).  I was reared in a safe haven of do’s and don’ts.  I learned about God, and was told that He somehow always knew about me.  I was taught that God was to be feared, and like Santa Claus, He knew what I was thinking as well as doing.

Because Santa only came around the month of December seeking every good girl and boy, I spent the end of November and all of December reminding my parents just how good I could be.  They in turn reminded me that what they could not see everyday, God could. Therefore, any antics missed by them were always caught by “the-Man-upstairs”.  (My parents always motioned upward noting God was “the Man”, and I should fear His all-knowingness.)   I usually forgot that part until I was caught red-handed doing the less than admirable behaviors, or when my conscience would get the best of me to inspire me to look high and grin my most magnificent smile and ask for forgiveness.

Since God is almighty as well as all-knowing my infantile mind told me that He had a sheer and awesome advantage over everything about me.  He selected my parents without my consent.  He told them what I had been up to when they were not around to see what I had been down to.  He even gave them knowledge to fix what may or may not have been broken by my siblings or me.  He was very awesome.

He even allowed my parents to correct those things needed to be fixed about me, which often left a stinging retort on my hind-parts.  When I tried to be good, I still managed to cause great drama.  And when being a good girl was too tiring, the extreme was all-too welcoming.  Yet for me, I learned more about God in the midst of negative situations than I did in those times of peace.  I called on Him more in times of turmoil, and often forgot to thank Him when things went smoothly.

My parents however, thanked God all of the time.  They thanked Him when my siblings and I decided to investigate Detroit City on our own (all being under the age of 8), and the police brought us back to our mother who was praising God and threatening murder at the same time.  My parents thanked Him when the doctors found I was allergic to aspirin, when it almost cost me my life.   They thanked Him when my brother broke his neck, yet could still walk, or my sister’s biking accident with a parked car was nothing more than a few stitches.  Or when my mother found she had cancer and that she was pregnant with my youngest brother, and both survived.

As I grew, my thoughts about the “Man upstairs” grew also.  And so the story continues--