Thomas Stepforth Sr. woke up in a cold sweat, every vein on his bronze face and neck standing out, his heart rate pounding to the point that it recalled the heart trouble of previous years and reminded him that, at 66, he would not live forever and the time might be nearer than he thought.
The nightmare was recurring, and the terror persisted until he remembered to move his neck at a certain angle – the pain still persisting there brought him back into the reality.
There were some things even a Black billionaire he could not buy his way out of, or even accelerate his progress with – a hard pill to swallow in the middle of the night, with a long way still until the morning.
Mrs. Velma Stepforth did what she could, but she knew what her husband was seeing in this dreams, just not as he had seen it … it felt good to both of them to embrace and settle back down, but she could hear his heart pounding far too hard for far too long.
“Tom,” she said gently in the morning, “you've talked to everyone about this but the one person you need to talk to about it.”
“I just don't want to re-open that can of worms, Velma,” he said.
“The way you are sleeping says that the can is not closed and that those worms are trying to kill you,” she said gently.
“Yeah, my friend Jean-Luc said the same thing yesterday, and Rev. Stone said it at therapy,” he said. “All right, Velma. If this is the only way forward, here it is.”
Melissa Stepforth Trent was at home with her family when her father called.
“Hi, Dad,” she said, and the warmth of her voice spoke to the love and the healing between them.
Mr. Stepforth's nightmare started at a time when forty years of hurt had boiled over – he had not realized in time what becoming a billionaire was doing to time with his family while his children were growing up in his absence. His wife had divorced him, and walked out with nothing but the cost of a house – she wanted $150,000 when she could have had 5,000 times as much. Their daughters had sided with her. Much later he realized that although as far as proving to America that he was as much a man as any other billionaire he had succeeded, he had failed his own family.
To even humble one's self, as an old billionaire, was a nightmare … but it was one God would not let him avoid … it had broken him … but then in his brokenness, he had been able to reach back out to his wife … and found that she still loved him, and that there was a way back to her that money could not buy.
The miracle that money could not buy had occurred; Mrs. Stepforth and four of their five daughters had been willing to reconcile, and he had canceled disinheriting all five daughters.
But his oldest daughter, Melissa, was not willing to reconcile, and became angrier and angrier and angrier as others made their peace with God and their earthly father, until there was a blowup at a barbecue after a funeral, and things turned very bad, very fast.
Mr. Stepforth did not want to discuss it again because he knew his daughter was struggling with her guilt about her behavior and what it had nearly cost them both … but to his surprise, she wanted to discuss it when he called.
“I didn't know how to start the conversation – I see it every night! Can we get on Zoom?”
“Sure, Melissa.”
It was like they needed to see both the love and the terror in each other's body to be able to acknowledge the reality to get past the most terrible moment of both their lives.
Melissa had started cussing her father out, 40 years of hurt boiling out without filter, while she was backing out of the house and the yard and into the street … into the street, without thought that there were cars in that street.
“I saw all my sins against my family in 40 years– no money I have ever made was worth knowing that you were within seconds of death because of the pain I had put you in. Everything I had ever worked for fell to pieces in one instant – with my dear, in the headlights!”
Melissa started crying – the pandemic meant that she and her father could not embrace, and he felt she desperately needed it, and then realized he also needed it. His neck ached at the thought.
“But that was what I saw too – when you threw me out of the way, and then you were in the headlights –.”
Thomas Stepforth Sr. had been a D1 basketball star in college – one last time, the speed and strength came back, and he covered the distance in time to get into the middle of the street and push his daughter out of the way.
“I finally understood who Jesus is, in that He sacrificed himself for me who didn't deserve it!” she said. “But you were going to have to die!”
“And I understood who Jesus is, in that He loved us enough to give up His life – every way that I had failed, and everything you had ever needed – and given by Him this last chance to love you!”
Now THAT was a surprise – Jesus was not who ANYONE expected to see in the headlights! Father and daughter both stopped in their tracks when they realized what – or Who – they both had discovered.
“Wait – is that the moment we BOTH got right with the Lord and started our healing?” Melissa said.
“I think it was,” Mr. Stepforth said. “We recognized the Lord and repented there, and then, the miracle happened.”
The miracle had been that Mr. Stepforth had gotten all his basketball skills back – his vertical leap of 38 inches was among them. He pulled up his legs for a full five feet of clearance, and landed on the back of the car instead of being hit by it. The car was one of those fiberglass sports cars – so HE totaled the car, and the car had NOT totaled him! All Mr. Stepforth had to show for it was whiplash, which is why he checked with his neck hurting – that was the fastest way of knowing, in the terror of waking from the nightmare, that his daughter had survived, and so had he.
But, Melissa hadn't known that, and, not being able to understand that her father had hit the car and landed in the street behind it, had thought she had seen her father killed – and that had caused her nervous breakdown that had caused the discovery of the untreated mental illness that had caused all the problems in her marriage – and then her marriage was restored as well, so that two generations of the family were healed.
“So … that was all about … God doing what God does?” Melissa said.
“Plus why He made me a billionaire after all … do you know what those fiberglass sports cars cost to fix?”
Melissa cracked up laughing.
“Here you are out here totaling whole cars,” she said. “Talk about God giving a man strength! If I could believe it, I could stop having nightmares – but, here you are, though!”
They laughed and they laughed and they laughed … and the change came, although they did not realize it.
Thomas Stepforth Sr. slept through the night, and so did Melissa Stepforth Trent, having seen the light they were both meant to see.