From: Pat Sabiston <patsabiston@irawriter.com>
Sent: Monday, February 7, 2022 11:15 AM
To: ‘Cathy Byrd’ <cathybyrd1212@hotmail.com>
Subject: Here You Go!
Dear Cathy:
It’s weird. As I began to write about what I remember, other little minor elements came out. So glad this blessed you this morning.
Love,
Me
THE DREAM
Acts 2:17
“In the last days, God say, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.”
Quite frankly, I don’t think this is gender specific, because I believe old (wo)men shall dream dreams as well. The key is to share those dreams with those involved, if you are so led.
Over the weekend, I had a rather rambling dream. There were numerous vignettes where I was “exploring.” I love being alone out in nature, and in this dream, I was way out in the country.
In one segment, I clearly saw Bill Byrd coming down the road. Oh goodness, he was still his tall, handsome self, a somewhat younger Bill, like when I first met him. (I saw him, but he didn’t see me, even though I waved.) However, I was astounded when he got nearer and rather than circumvent some rather obvious, exceedingly, thick muddy puddles … instead … he tromped right through them, MAJORLY soiling his beige suit. He looked down and just shrugged.
Flash forward … now I don’t see Bill get out of his suit and run around in his skivvies. In fact, I don’t see him at all after that scene. Nor do I see my friend (his wife) Cathy, although I’m aware this is “their place.” Rather, I’m inside a tenement shack (which I assumed was their “get-away/retreat” cabin, as it certainly was not an environment I could see Cathy living in.) It had an open fire going without a screen to protect from embers that may fall out. It was obvious Cathy had washed Bill’s suit clean, and now the jacket and pants were hanging from the rafters, just as was done in early years, letting the heat from the open fireplace dry his clothes.
There were ladder-back chairs to sit in at a rough-hewn table, but you had to “duck and weave” around Bill’s suit that hung in the way, to take a seat. So, I didn’t stay.
I was off on another adventure.
2-9-22
Pat called me after this dream and I asked her to write it down. It had such rich, meaningful imagery that is in harmony with some things that clearly relate to Bill’s and my life together.
- Beige suit – Bill had on a beige suit when we married. It was July 22, 1972, a rather modest service in the chapel of First Baptist Church in Auburn, AL. As I recall, the suit was probably a light weight polyester knit, which much of our clothing of that era was!
- Bill started work at WMBB-TV in October 1992. He was 41 years old and very handsome. This photo was taken in Scottsdale, AZ around that time at a company reward trip for my job with Federated Insurance at the time (1989-1993). This is when Pat met Bill and is how she said he looked in her dream.
- He tromped through thick muddy puddles in the road with what seemed like little concern or attempt to avoid them, muddying up his suit and just shrugged when he looked down at it.
It was soon after Bill had moved into an apartment in Panama City in October for his job at WMBB-TV, in December 1992 that I attended the Emmaus Walk and my life was radically recommitted to Jesus Christ. The change was so stunning that Bill wanted to attend, too. He went the following August 1993. We began living a significantly differently Christ-prioritized life. However, a brief few years later, on April 1, 1997, I made a major confession to Bill about several events of secretive infidelity when traveling that had occurred between about 1984 and 1992. I had been angry, struggling with marriage and personal issues. Bill had been building his career and had his head turned by a couple of women, though he denied any involvement with either of them. A younger cousin had lived with us briefly in Montgomery and seemed to have also made a pitch for him. I felt insecure. Additionally, his mother and his uncle, who had a stroke and needed care, had moved into a home with us built to accommodate us helping her with him. It was stressful. She developed breast cancer in 1991 and I had a panic thinking I was going to have to quit work to care for both of them. She got treated and seemed okay. I had gone through 2 job changes, had closed a retail store I had to oversee from 1986-1989 that had been Bill’s ambition and I had helped meet his goals…. But It had become very burdensome…. as did several rental properties that we had also purchased in an effort to build income and wealth. I became the property manager of low income housing, which also was stressful. I did not realize how co-dependent and unboundaried I was when it came to pleasing Bill until the anger had simmered for a decade. We joined Bill in Panama City in April 1994 moving Uncle Harry into a nursing home and Marilyn continuing with us. The next year, 1995, Uncle Harry died. We had two children in expensive selective colleges, finances were stressful. We finally got the rentals in Montgomery sold and our home there sold, too. In October 1995, after Hurricane Opal, we bought a house in Panama City after renting for a year and a half. My brother’s wife, Kay, died in November 1995 of a recurrence of breast cancer and I had been very involved with her the final six months of her life. Billy and Joni got married in December 1995. Charlotte began to have emotional issues just before graduating from college in Birmingham. (almost 10 years later she was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder.) Marilyn died of a recurrence of her cancer in July 1996. And I felt totally disoriented in life. These were hard years and there was a lot of “mud” that Bill would have had to slog through, and shrug off. When I made my confession in 1997 after having struggled for a week or so with hearing voices, and beginning to totally unravel, he was angry, to say the least. I spent 6 days in a psychiatric hospital and began what would be nearly 10 years of regular counseling. I thought for sure he would divorce me. Six months after my hospitalization he said he thought we could work through it and we went on trying to recover our lives. Later, I asked him why he didn’t leave me then. His response was that he didn’t want to live alone and we had too much invested in 30+ years of marriage by the time I asked this question. He also said that Christ had not given him the freedom to walk away. As I had heard one person observe, “Sometimes you forgive people
simply because you still want them in your life.” He said he could envision holidays alone as the children would probably be with me. He still referred to this hurt from time to time and had difficulty fully forgiving me for several more years. In fact, it would be well into about 2006 before we finally resolved the anger and him throwing it up at me every time we had cross words. Divorce was still a threat he would raise at times. I finally surrendered and said we needed to divorce. I couldn’t continue to be held in a penitent posture forever. Bill’s position was that this had all been my doing, although during the worst of our months after my confession, he acknowledged a night with a former friend in Michigan on a trip there on a business trip, too. We were both “muddied.” We finally got beyond it and were living comfortably, happily in retirement from 2006 (me) and 2008 (him) and we moved on to second jobs in a Christian parachurch ministry for a few years until I started Titus 2 Ministry. He was supportive and we were happy and productive. Then came an end to my disappointing lengthy attempt at deacon ordination in the UMC, Hurricane Michael, Covid, Bill’s declining health, and stresses that came with all of that. When he got Covid at the end of July 2020, he seemed to accept that it was inevitable that it would be fatal….. It was. So I know where all the “mud” would have come from associated with our marriage woes and multiple attempts at marriage counseling through the years.
- Next vignette Pat is in a shack that she described to me “like an old tenement shack”, very primitive, with a fire burning in the fireplace. Bill’s suit had been washed and was hanging from the rafters on hangers. Her sense was that this was “our place”…. Like a second home getaway….. and that I had washed the suit, though neither of us were present. And she left for other adventures.
My breakdown and its cause were public knowledge. Bill persevered through it. I learned a lot through all that had happened about myself, about God, about counseling, about addictive behavior, about forgiveness. We worked through our past and God redeemed our marriage. I had said on several occasions that with my rebelliousness and codependent dysfunction, my salvation was a miracle….. and that I would be grateful and fortunate to have a decrepit old tenant farmer’s shack just inside the pearly gates when I got to heaven. I expected nothing more. When Bill died, I had vivid dreams of him and me doing some things that could only be being done in heaven…..riding together in a car on water, talking to Jesus, etc. I have written about them elsewhere. Pat, seeing his washed suit hanging there on the rafters of a tenant farmer’s shack, told me that Bill had gotten to that little heavenly home I had envisioned through the years, having held our marriage (represented by the beige suit) together, and somehow I was there, too….. that the muddying I did of his marriage suit had been washed clean, presumably by me, too, she seemed to think.
Pat and I have been through so many similar issues in life, though with different perspectives… her from the back side of a divorce and me from the backside of somehow having avoided divorce. But many of the experiences we had have been parallels. Our spiritual growth, too, has had parallels. Because of the friendship in Christ we share, I believe He gave her insights into our marriage in somewhat humorous and softened imagery that could truly speak only to me! What a sweet summary narrative of 48 years of marriage, and to have it come to such a redemptive ending…. A suit, “muddied” by Bill having slogged through annoying obstacles, made clean; a welcoming fire in the very home I have envisioned me spending eternity in; and the implication that I somehow recovered from the mess and we are indeed still together in eternity! Bill didn’t dodge the puddles, but slogged on through them….. persevering with the obstacles, undaunted by the muddied suit and it all worked out in the end. Pastor Terry Tatum has made a point of telling me on several occasions how very much Bill loved me. I believe he really did… that he would stay on the road and be willing to join me in my humble heavenly home.
When I talked to Pat about it later, another thought occurred to me about the ending…. Perhaps Jesus cleaned Bill’s suit and he has the fire going, waiting for me to arrive “home”! This dream seemed to be Bill’s journey. My contribution was just the mud holes he had to slog through.