Marriage

I was the one in school who was never going to get married. I had a plan for my life and nothing was going to stop it. Oh, I liked boys and dating, but I was NOT going to get serious.

As a matter of fact, before I left for college, I had been dating a coast guard boy (he was in his 20;’s and I was barely 18). I was having fun; he was serious. He gave me an ultimatum - don’t go to college or I’m out of here. I chose the “I’m out of here.” I did cry for three days, but I was not going to change my mind.

So off I went to college.

My goal was to become a home economics teacher. However, I quickly got disillusioned with school. It was nothing like I expected it to be. So, my new goal became to date at least one guy in every fraternity before I finished college. (That’s how my GPA got so low!)

One of the guys I dated (Al) was from Phi Beta Kappa and, although I didn’t know it at the time, he was engaged to someone else! (It probably wouldn’t have mattered to me, anyway, had I known!) Anyway, some guy in the same fraternity, named Bill Downes, saw me with Al and asked him if it would be alright for him to ask me out. Al said sure (why not, he had another babe on the side!). So, the next thing I know, here’s a guy I didn’t know at my door asking me to go out.

Well, he WAS a fraternity guy, so why not. We went out and had a good time. If my memory serves me right, we dated quite a few times and then he just disappeared off the face of the planet. No calls, no nothing. Just gone.

Oh well, on to the next fraternity. I spent the next couple of months exploring the “offerings” at other fraternities. Nothing serious, just having a blast and being ornery. (And I wonder why my daughter is so ornery.) I even chased a football player up to New Jersey to get a date with a Theta Chi - that’s another whole story!

Then, in the spring, in marched Bill Downes back into my life. He said he saw me downtown and I gave him the brush off look. I don’t even remember seeing him! Anyway, we started dating again and that was the end of my fraternity shopping. I found my guy.

We dated for 2-1/2 years. He finished college and went off to Georgia for army training. He was in ROTC at college and his draft number for Vietnam was four so he decided if he was going to Nam, he’d go as an officer, helicopter pilot. While he was gone, he got lonely for me. On a break during the summer, he came back to town and proposed to me. We were riding in the car, stopped at a stop light, when he said, “If I asked you to marry me, what would you say?” I said yes. I think that is when he gave me his fraternity pin that you can see in this picture.

The next thing I remember is getting engaged. He took me to a jewelry store in town where he had picked out two rings. I had the choice of either one. One looked bigger than the other, and being the nice girl, I picked the smaller of the two. It just so happened that it was actually the more expensive diamond! It pays to be nice!

He went back to the army while I started my junior year. He was in Mineral Wells, Texas; I was in Newark, Delaware. We wrote and planned our wedding for Christmas as this was the only time he was able to get off.

Because I didn’t have any money, his family paid to have a small ceremony and reception in Newark. It snowed the day of the wedding, so I was afraid I would not make it up to Newark in time for the wedding. Bill said he would “come get me in a snowplow if he had to.” Isn’t he wonderful!

We were married on December 26, 1970.

After the ceremony, we packed up a U-haul and headed for Mineral Wells, Texas. That was our honeymoon. And we’ve been happily married ever since (at least mostly!).

The Phone Call

I remember that phone call as if it were yesterday. The woman introduced herself as a neighbor, Diane Baker. She explained that she was the granddaughter of my mother-in-law’s neighbor. She continued to say that she had heard I recently moved in and that she wanted to welcome me to the area.

The year was 1980. I was 30 years old and had just moved, with my family, from the suburbs of Newark, Delaware, to a rural community about 30 minutes south. The purpose of our move was to “save our marriage.” The plan was for me to quit my job selling real estate and together we buy a house closer to Bill’s work in Dover. Then, we would have more time together and surely that would fix our marriage. It sounded like a good plan, but it was seriously flawed. First, our income was cut in half. Second, we had a bigger mortgage! Now, we not only had marital problems, but financial ones as well!

Shortly after moving in, we realized we were in over our heads, financially. I began to think about how I could earn money from home. Only God knows how, but someone from DuPont company (where I had worked as a typist) found out I was looking for work and called me . She wanted to know if I was interested in transcribing a book she was writing. I said, “Sure.”

The book turned out to be an autobiography of a woman who had been in witchcraft and how she got “saved.” Because I dabbled in the occult, I found it interesting; but, I shrugged it off as “nonsense.” It did get me thinking about religion, again, so I decided that day that I ought to take the kids to church so they could “decide for themselves” about religion. Shortly after that decision, I received the phone call.

After our brief introduction, I asked Diane where she went to church. She told me about her Methodist church a mile down the road, and I told her I would meet her there the following Sunday. (She later told me that she was shocked that I asked about church as she had heard I was a pagan!)

That Sunday, I attended church for the second time in my life. The first time was at about eight years old with a friend who attended a Catholic church where the service was in Latin. (I later found out from my mother that I attended church several times as a toddler. However, I don’t remember it.) The Methodist service was dull and uninteresting and the kids began to misbehave; so I ended up leaving church early. But Diane didn’t give up.

She invited me and the kids over to her home which was part of their huge family farm. My kids loved going there to play with her four children and I enjoyed Diane’s friendship. While the kids played, Diane shared her life with me. She listened as I talked about my problems. She gave us a bag of food one time when we were short of money. She accepted me for who I was - a messed up woman who cussed, dabbled in the occult, and had totally messed up her life.

I began going to a Bible Study in her home where she showed me who Jesus really was. She gave me books to read and music to listen to. She prayed for me and counseled me. I slowly came to the knowledge that Jesus was real and that I needed to make Him the Lord of my life. But Satan wouldn’t let me go that easy.

As I considered giving my life to Jesus, a thought came into my mind that if I did, Bill would die. I know now where that thought originated, but at the time, I thought it was ESP. It frightened me. I told Diane and she and the group prayed that God would show me that this was a lie.

In June of that year, I went to visit my parents and decided to “camp” out in the back yard with the kids. While they were asleep, I thought about all that Diane had told me. I cried out to God that I knew He was real but I couldn’t let Bill die. As I prayed that prayer, God sent me a supernatural sign that convinced me Bill would be safe.

I gave my heart to Jesus that night, in a tiny tent in the back yard of my family home while Wil and Shelly were asleep. When I got back to Odessa and told Diane what happened, she was delighted. During the next few months, Diane became my best friend and my spiritual mentor. She modeled what a Christian should be. She loved me when I was at my worst and accepted me just as I was. She was never judgmental and she showed her Christianity through her actions as well as her words. She was one of the best examples I have ever met of someone who was a “doer of the Word and not a hearer only.”

In 1990, Diane was struck by an automobile and killed while walking down the road past her home. Her life was short, but I know that when she arrived in heaven, God presented her with at least one crown - a crown labeled, “For your patience and faithfulness in presenting the Gospel to Cindy Downes.”

Organizing - Lesson 1

Here I am - sitting in a somewhat cramped booth waiting for two “study buddies” so we can work on our project for Intro to Mass Media. While I wait, I am listening to comforting music, taking in the aroma of hot mocha and cinnamon rolls, and writing my first lesson from the book, “How to Write the Story of Your Life.” So, here goes:

Lesson # 1 - Organizing. The only organizing I am going to do is create a new folder on my Mac entitled, “My SOYL.” Don’t you love computers! So, I’m ready to begin writing “The Story of my Life.”

After reading the chapter, I think I am going to begin with a transition in my life. I am creeping up on 60 (58 in February) and I became a Christian at 30. So, I’m going to begin with the event that divided my life in half: One half living my life the best I could as a pagan and the other half living my life the best I can as a child of God. I think that would be a good starting point for anyone reading my memoires so they could understand the contrast in my life experiences!

A Sneak Peak! - Cindy Downes

I wasn’t always a city girl. Actually, I grew up on a 240-acre farm in Lewes, Delaware, only 5 miles from the Atlantic ocean. My favorite pastimes were running barefoot in the woods with my two brothers, sewing “purty” dresses from chicken feed bags, and playing my clarinet for the three old maids down the street.