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IAWAKENED FROM A SOUND SLEEP as I was thrown across our motor home. Dishes crashed all around me. Did we hit gravel? I wondered. In an instant, a wall of flames separated me from my husband, Rusty, who was driving, and our twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Nikki, in the passenger seat.
Intense heat chased me away from them. I spotted a gash in the side of the aluminum wall of the motor home and kicked my way through. Even though I wasn't on fire, I could see my skin melting. Blood ran down my forehead and into my eyes, blurring my vision as I tried to escape.
The grass in the gully where I landed was on fire. As I crawled away from the motor home, flames pursued me. I crawled to a wire fence and tried to climb it, but fell back because my feet were burnt and raw. I was only wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Two men suddenly appeared across the fence and picked me up like a sack of potatoes, racing from the menacing flames. "Save my family! Save my family!" I screamed. Billowing black smoke blinded me as our motor home incinerated. I collapsed, sobbing, sure that Rusty and Nikki had burned alive since the seats where they had sat just moments before were consumed in the inferno.
Rusty, Nikki, and I had been heading north on I-55 near Corning, California, on our way to Washington that Saturday, August 28, 1993. Rusty had pulled off the road onto what looked like the shoulder but was really a gully hidden by tall grass. Our motor home careened into the gully, landing at a tilt. We didn't know until later that the gas tank had been punctured.
As I lay there, a policeman leaned over me and said, "Your family is up the road. They're alive." Then I heard a paramedic say, "Let's take the man first," so I knew Rusty was in the most danger. We were taken by ambulance to Chico Hospital to be stabilized. From there, Rusty was taken by helicopter to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, while Nikki and I stayed in the Chico Hospital emergency room.
My hands and body were swelling to twice their normal size. The emergency room nurse had to cut off my wedding ring to keep it from being embedded in my burned flesh. She had no way of knowing the depth of my sorrow as she cut away that symbol of our devotion. As she snipped the band of gold and carefully removed it from my left hand, all I could do was cry.
OUR FIRST twenty-five years of marriage, Rusty had spent his time chasing his dreams of business success—and occasionally chasing other women.
I'd spent my life trying to be the best wife and mother I could be. I'd raised our two kids, Nikki and Todd, and run our twenty-five acre ranch on my own. I'd tried to create the kind of family that would make us all happy. I had known about the other women, but dared not make an issue of it. Knowing he was unfaithful only drove me to redouble my efforts to become more of what he needed me to be. But my marriage was lonely, so I let the Lord fill my emotional needs. He was the husband I longed for when Rusty wasn't.
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