To Live and Die in the Garden of the Gods

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A story of rebounding through resilience and redeeming love

I wandered happily through the Garden of the Gods in the company of angels. A few months later, I returned to collect the shattered remains of my daughter and her son.

The year was 2009. Our only grandson (at the time) was four years old. Ashley and her husband were stationed in Colorado Springs. He was in the army, but they lived on the base at the Air Force Academy. How to describe the idyllic grounds? Pristine and spectacular come to mind. We were there in December and attended a candlelight service at the spectacular Crystalline Academy chapel.

We made a family visit to the Garden of the Gods, a 1,300-acre national park. IN 1859, two surveyors helped to establish the city of Colorado Springs.

One surveyor suggested it would be “a capital place for a beer garden.”

His companion answered, “Beer garden! Why, it is a fit place for the Gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods.”

That is one story. The one issued in the 1893 issue of the Colorado Transcript asserts that Helen Hunt Jackson named it:

Riding past the cabin of a prospector from the South in one of the early days of the settlement, she was attracted by a beautifully kept garden in which two negro servants, a man and a woman, were working. In answer to a question the man informed her that his name was Jupiter, and the woman’s Juno, whereupon she exclaimed: “Then, this must be the Garden of the Gods.”

Whatever its name’s origin, it is the regal spot where jagged peaks and Juniper trees meet the jubilant sky and where the rising sun bursts in a kaleidoscope of colors beyond Pike’s Peak.

The Good Life

It appeared for all the world that my kid was living the good life.

Love is brutal for some girls. They place their fragile hearts into the careless, rough hands of monsters or mice masquerading as men. The monsters crush them. The mice nibble away until they are chewed up to the core.

The following Spring, I received a devastating call from my now ex-son-in-law that Ashley was in the hospital and being closely watched because she was deemed suicidal. He had broken her heart. She took in a friend who needed a place to stay after her marriage fell apart. That friend and Ashley’s husband engaged in an affair. The marriage was over. He came from a long line of Walkaway Joes and was destined to be the next.

I hopped a plane to Colorado Springs, picked up Ashley and Ty, and drove them home to Texas to live with us, lick their wounds, and heal. Her husband married the girl he had an affair with. They produced two children and not much else and then divorced.

Sometimes, curses are blessings in disguise. Other times, blessings are curses in disguise. What I thought was blessed was cursed. What I feared was cursed was blessed.

For the next eight years, our grandson and daughter lived with us. We got to invest in him during the most vital years of childhood. We got to model for him what a home based on faith, hope, and love looked like. It was not a perfect home environment. Far from it. If I know anything about myself as a man, a husband, a father, and a grandfather, it is that I fall woefully short much too often. But we gave him stability and soaked his tender heart in love. No boy was ever more loved. His grandparents, his mom, his aunts—how we loved him.

I do not curse the cursed union of Ashley and that guy. There is no other genetic or God-ordained way we could have gotten the prince of our lives. He is good at his core. Where his father marinated in self-pity and made one selfish decision after another, this kid thinks of others. He still tells me he loves me every time he sees me. He is 20.

True Love Conquers All

Ashley rebounded, too.

In 2013, she was working one of those throwaway jobs at the mall, managing a Godiva Chocolate store. The store was near the food court, where an energetic fellow managed a taco shop. They hit it off. They agreed to date. On May 9, 2015, I led the ceremony and nuptials for the wedding, a thing I have been privileged to do for all three of my girls.

I didn’t think much of Dylan at first. I didn’t think much about him, only that I threatened his mortal existence if he proved to be another monster or mouse. He proved anything but. He took to fathering my grandson like he was his own. He calls him “son”. Ty calls him “Dad”. Dylan works like a Tasmanian Devil. His identity and self-image are tied to his work ethic. He says “my wife” when referring to Ashley and does so with evident pride. He respects her, leans on her, dotes on her, and defends her in all circumstances I have seen.

Love is Brutal

Love is brutal because love is investment and investments are risky. Love is giving without restraints or strings. When you give like that, there is no guarantee the recipient will be worthy or honorable. “God so loved the world” and look what the world did to His Son.

Love is Beautiful

Love is beautiful because it is the only way to squeeze the truest meaning out of life or to experience it on its highest plane.

Everything is better shared.

Love is a Blessing

Love is a blessing, even if it is not reciprocated. Even if it is wasted on the unworthy. Even if it is mishandled or abused.

Love is a blessing because the real curse is to do what current psychologists, social media commenters, and self-appointed authorities on being human tell you to do, which is to always think about yourself first. They tell us this but are as miserable as anyone because selfishness is the sanctuary of the sad and lonely and a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you think will insulate you against pain really isolates you and prevents the chance to really live.

The more selfish you become, the more isolated and miserable you will be. It is a vicious cycle.

Love is Better than the Best Things in Life

Faith is essential. Love is better.

Hope is vital. Love is better.

Why? Because only love is forever. Faith will end in sight. Hope will end in glory. Love abides. It is its own reward but the dividends carry everlasting value and eternal glory.