Recently in our home worship groups, we shared stories about looking back to see the goodness of God in our lives. This week we are sharing Debbie and Jeff Strickland’s love story.
Debbie and Jeff dated while Debbie was still in high school, but they knew that Jeff would be moving to Virginia to live with his father and go to college. There was a specific song on the radio after she dropped him off at the airport (this will be significant later). They found they couldn’t retain a long-distance relationship, ultimately going their separate ways. Both married other people and had three children each, and both eventually got divorced. Debbie shared that, “We’d run into each other occasionally, and I would always think that he was the one that got away. I never stopped loving him.”
As part of her backstory, when Debbie was younger, she lived across the street from Roxanne, in Seal Beach, where they went to elementary and middle school together. She led Debbie to the Lord and to baptism at church camp. This will come into play later in their story!
After Debbie’s divorce, there was a period where she had broken her foot and had three months where she couldn’t place any weight on it. She became really depressed with that, and raising her three children as a single mom. Her relationship with the Lord had waned, and she was not going to church. All this led her down a very dark path, and serious thoughts of suicide. She believes her ex-husband not responding to her is what stopped her from following through because she was concerned for her children. One day while sitting at her desk at work, she heard Barry Manilow’s song, “Somewhere Down the Road,” that reminded her of that day she dropped Jeff off, and she began crying. She prayed, “Bring someone into my life that can show me what a good relationship is.”
That very day (Veteran’s Day 2005), she received an email from Jeff on “Classmates,” who she hadn’t heard from in 16 years. He was in the military and getting ready to deploy to Iraq. “We started sending emails to each other and wanted to get together, but there was no convenient time before he was leaving, due to deployment preparations and training, and her broken foot. I couldn’t believe that I finally found him again and he had to go to war!” Then Jeff contacted her and said, “Something came up and I have a window of opportunity for one night in Monterey. If you can drive there, I can see you.” Debbie started driving, with a broken foot. She turned around twice, but eventually decided to continue on to Monterey and arrived with a very swollen foot. She and Jeff were able to spend that one day together.
In Iraq, Jeff would get up at 3am local time and walk a mile from his tent to the office trailer to call Debbie. They also exchanged many, many emails (3100 give or take, that she still has). “God brought him back into my life to save me from my depression and dark thoughts.” In the meantime, Jeff was in Iraq getting shot and mortared everyday. The base was always under attack, and he was a Helicopter Crew Chief performing Direct Action Assaults to destroy the IED infrastructure and Mahdi Militia in and around Baghdad. A close call came one morning as a mortar landed 20 feet from him – but luckily was a dud and didn’t explode! He was gone 121 days.
When Jeff returned home in April 2006, he and Debbie picked up where they left off back in 1982, thanks to almost six months of correspondence while deployed, eventually getting engaged (again). After retiring in 2008, Jeff returned to school to complete his Bachelors degree.
At this time Debbie still had not returned to the Lord. Enter Roxanne. Debbie and Roxanne had lost touch over the years, but Debbie saw on Facebook that she and Ed were doing “Date Night” performances at book stores and coffee shops around Orange County. From that night on, Jeff and Debbie would regularly attend when they could, while Debbie listened, Jeff would do his schoolwork. Roxanne and Debbie became close again, and began walking together weekly. “We would go to church on Christmas Eve where Roxanne and Ed were leading worship. We did that for three years, with Roxanne always asking, “Why don’t you just come to church?” Eventually they did, and became friends with Ed as well.
Jeff felt that the things he did in the war were unforgivable and wouldn’t participate in communion because he didn’t feel he deserved God’s love. Jeff and Ed became close and started meeting for coffee. Through Ed’s counseling, Jeff soon found his way back to the Lord and forgiveness.
“We blew it the first time, but it was God leading us back to each other and to him. We used to call all these things that happened in our lives karma, but now we know that it was and still is the goodness of God guiding us on a path to the light.”