Title: A Heart's Journey to Forgiveness
Author: Terese Luikens
Publisher: Redemption Press
Publication Date: November 3, 2022
Pages: 282
Genre: Memoir

For Terese Luikens, a picture-perfect childhood it was not. Frequent cross country moves, an emotionally absent mother and an alcoholic father who ends his life by suicide when Terese is just thirteen years old.

The sixth of seven children, Terese grew up in an unstable and chaotic household–invisible to her mom yet cherished by her father.

This heartfelt memoir documents the chain reaction of a tumultuous family history. From her stormy childhood to the far-reaching effects of her father’s suicide, Terese shares her inspiring journey to escape the shame of her past, find healing and live, learn to trust, and discover faith in a real and personal God.

A Heart’s Journey to Forgiveness is available at Amazon.

Chapter One

[Mark] what is one of your favorite memories of Dad?

Do you remember how Dad fell through the ceiling when he was up in the attic?

Wasn’t that at 3848 Randolph Street?

I remember how I couldn’t stop laughing. One of his legs just dangled from the ceiling.

Ella, quit laughing.

I can’t help it.

When I was growing up during the 1950s and 1960s, magazine illustrator, Norman Rockwell depicted how he envisioned the American life should look, while Ozzie and Harriet showed us on television how the American family lived, albeit in black-and-white. From the outside, that ordinary green stucco house in Lincoln, Nebraska, looked as if it would contain a Norman Rockwell- or Ozzie and Harriet-type family. But neither of those idealized images reflected my stormy family life.

During my childhood years, Catholics married Catholics and produced large families. Mom and Dad, both Catholics, married in 1946, and Mom conceived seven children over a span of thirteen years. The only acceptable birth control available to my parents was abstinence, a method my father did not prefer, even though I think he was more devout about his religion than my mother. Mom referred to me as Number Six, as though it were my name.

I was more fond of my father than my mom, more devoted to him than to her. Dad, not Mom, came into my room at night to read bedtime stories. He’d lie down on our white shag rug in the middle of the bedroom that I shared with my three sisters and ask, “Does anyone want me to read them a story?”

I always kicked my blankets off and crawled out of my bottom bunk. Then I’d lay down next to him, close enough to breathe in the smells of his day: Old Spice from his early morning shave, and sweat mingled with the smell of grease from his job as a restaurant manager.

Whether any of my sisters joined us on the floor, I don’t recall. But I do remember how Dad’s deep voice made Prince Charming and the seven dwarves come alive for me.

On Sunday nights, when our whole family gathered in the living room after dinner to watch The Ed Sullivan Show, Dad got down on the floor and pretended to be a park bench on a windy beach. Taking turns with Bruce and Mark, I perched on his hip while he told the story.

“It was a windy day on the beach when a little girl sat down on a bench. The wind blew harder and harder until the bench tipped over and the little girl fell off into the ocean.”

Even though I knew the story by heart, rolling on his hip gave me a thrill. Falling into the imaginary ocean with Dad tickling my bare feet, I howled with laughter.

After dinner on summer nights, Dad went outside to the front-porch swing to smoke a cigarette, and I’d climb into his lap.

He always asked, “Would you like me to blow smoke rings?” Then I’d lean back against his chest and watch the rings appear one after another and float away.

Sometimes a Midwest thunderstorm rolled in, but we stayed put on the swing, under the shelter of the porch roof. As the air chilled and the leaves rustled in the breeze, Dad tightened his arms around me and pressed his chin on top of my head as if to say, “It is safe to stay here with me.”

Then we watched the performance together. The dusky evening turned black, lit by flashes of lightning for seconds at a time. Next came the low rumble of thunder that sounded as though God was rolling a giant bowling ball across the floor of heaven. The boom that followed, a strike, always made me jump. Finally, splats of rain hit the porch roof and sidewalk, slow at first and then with increasing volume and velocity.

The storm’s intensity never lasted long before moving on to the next county. Then the air warmed again, dusk returned, and the melodic chirp of crickets replaced the thunder.

In my mind, these warm childhood memories include only my dad, never my mom. One photo from that era, snapped by an older sibling using Mom’s Instamatic camera, seems to capture our family dynamic. We are in the living room of the house that had the front-porch swing. I might be around four years old. My hair is cut short, pixie style, and I am wearing a long-sleeved, cotton-ribbed bathrobe. Dad, kneeling, wears a suit coat and a bowler hat. His hands are clasped behind my back and mine are hooked around his neck. Smiling, cheek-to-cheek, we face the camera.

Dad and I are in the center of the photo while Mom is in the lower left hand corner. She is sitting in a chair, and wears a plaid skirt and a turtleneck sweater. Her passive face is turned toward the camera.

That snapshot captures my life: Dad at the center and Mom on the perimeter.

About The Author

Terese Luikens has been married for forty-four years to the same man, although she is on her third wedding ring, having lost one and worn out another. She lives in Sandpoint, Idaho, enjoys being mother to three grown sons and grandmother to her much-loved grandchildren. She is the author of A Heart’s Journey to Forgiveness, a Memoir of her inspiring journey of emotional healing from her father’s suicide. She facilitates retreats and workshops focusing on forgiveness, and publishes her own blog, Why Bother?

You can visit her website at www.tereseluikens.com.