God Has a Reason for Everything

A Book of Tragedy and Miracles That Can Make You Believe There is No Such Thing as a Coincidence

Chery Manning

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781630476946
• eBook ISBN: 9781630476953

A remarkable memoir of a young love, a devastating loss, and the power of miracles... It's 1989, and Jason and Chery have been dating for almost nine months in Phoenix, Arizona. She's looking forward to a reunion with some friends from back home in Alaska when Jason's friend invites them to go three-wheeling. She's not excited about the idea, but gives in. Then, on the last run of the day, there is a terrible accident. The accident happens forty-five minutes away from the nearest town—and cell phones don't exist. Help may not get there in time. But help comes in a most miraculous way. One will not make it. The other is put into a coma. There will be an intense and agonizing recovery. The recovery will have to be made in phases decided by the doctors. They have to be sure the information can be handled and accepted without giving up the fight to survive. As time progresses, God always seems to be there. More miraculous events transpire to get the results He's looking for. The one who survives never understands the events that happened that day—until much later. Looking back, God has a reason for everything. We never fully understand our purpose in life, but sometimes it is made known. This is a true story of how miracles do happen, on a daily basis. You just have to listen to God's voice to understand....

CHAPTER 1

My History

She’s flat-lining! Get the paddles! HURRY!” yelled the pilot. They pulled out the portable unit and quickly placed the pads on me and grabbed the paddles.

“CLEAR!” he yelled, as he sent electric shock through my body to try to revive my heart. Everyone pulled away from me as the shockwave went through my entire body, lifting me up off the ground for only a split second. Nothing!

“Hit her again!” he said, as they pumped up the machine again. “CLEAR!” This time, they got a heartbeat. “Okay, we’ve got her back. Let’s get her in the chopper and head out,” yelled the pilot. They got everything packed up, loaded me into the chopper, and we were off to the hospital.

On the way to the hospital, I flat-lined again. They were able to get me back one more time. They knew there wasn’t much time left for me.

After the explanation of that day, I remember thinking to myself, “Every girl I’ve ever known has had a dream they wish to have fulfilled when they get older—a man who fits every aspect of what they would like their husband to be. When you finally find that man, you never think of anything that can separate you. Then, when you least expect it, it happens.”

Since I was seven, my dream was to be a movie scriptwriter. When I graduated high school, I wanted to move to California and study filmmaking. I had written my first full movie script in the eighth grade, during study hall class. It was called “After the Empire.” I am a huge Star Wars fan and wanted so much to write this script with George Lucas. What can you expect? I was only thirteen years old. I sent separate copies to 20th Century Fox Films, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Mark Hamill. I got all the copies back, with a letter from 20th Century stating how impressed they were with my enthusiasm about Star Wars, but that they couldn’t read the scripts anyone sends in, due to policy. They also reminded me that Star Wars was copyrighted and that I could not use it.

I was upset, of course, but more determined than ever to get my own story out there. I didn’t tell them how old I was. They gave me the address for the Screen Writers Guild so I could join and keep writing. Unfortunately, you had to be eighteen to join, another push backward for me.

I did start to write my own story. I still have never seen it out as a movie.

Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s not already out there or something close to it anyway. I haven’t seen every movie ever made. That would cost too much money. I can’t even say what it’s about at this point, just because if I do get it out there, then the story is already known and not so interesting.

I was the typical teenager. I had lots of crushes on different people growing up. I think my first crush was on Ricky Schroeder from Silver Spoons. Then it went to Ralph Macchio, after I saw The Karate Kid when I simply had to join a martial arts class. My junior year in high school, Top Gun came out and I fell in love with Tom Cruise. I would follow him for a long time until he did Interview with a Vampire. Things kind of changed for me after that. In high school, my boyfriend and I watched Top Gun, The Color of Money, and Cocktail. I had no idea how much impact these movies would have on us later in life. Our relationship, however, didn’t last.

My mother was totally against me moving to LA. She said, “There’s no way I’m letting my eighteen-year-old daughter from Wasilla, Alaska, move to Los Angeles. They’ll eat you alive. You have no relatives there and you will be totally on your own.”

My mother suggested my older sister, Dawn, and I go to the DeVry School of Technology in Phoenix. We had relatives there and it wouldn’t be such a bad place to live. After many discussions, my sister and I headed for Phoenix. My mother had the mind-set of, since we’re moving into the computer age, maybe we should go to school for business management or computer programming or something. At least that way, we’d always be able to find a job.

We ended up in Phoenix, in October of 1988. The next semester started on Halloween. Dawn and I had spent some time looking for just the right place to rent an apartment. We found the perfect place on Nineteenth Avenue and Thunderbird. We lived just across the street from some very big-named celebrities, even though we never saw any of them. It was always fun to let everyone know who our neighbors were, like Stevie Nicks.

After starting school, the first trimester was pretty standard. Classes were just to get an idea of how much you really knew. The first trimester was for getting to know people and settling in, from what I could tell. There were lots of parties and functions where you could interact with your classmates. Things had started to change when I started into my second trimester.

Dawn and I realized that we needed to find jobs to keep us going. We had saved money from jobs during the summer, but it wasn’t going to last long. We both took jobs at Burger King, on the corner of our street. We had experience since we worked in one back home in Wasilla in the summer of 1986. We were hired within a week from arriving in Phoenix. It was looking good so far.

When we started our jobs, I was placed in the front to take orders. Dawn was in the back making burgers, which didn’t make sense to us. We had worked the exact opposite back home. I made all the burgers and she worked the front. It was like learning a whole new job. After the first night of work, Dawn decided to quit. She said she saw roaches in the back and couldn’t deal with that. They refused to put her out in front with me. I went back to work for two more days, then I also quit after my shift. Things were not looking so good at this point. Nothing else was available in our area and we didn’t have a car either. Luckily, we had a Safeway on the corner of Nineteenth and Thunderbird that was within walking distance. We spent as little as we could when buying food. The typical college food was mac-n-cheese, Top Ramen and spaghetti. Fruit was quite inexpensive there, compared to what we were paying back in Alaska, so we bought it as well. The walks were occasionally accompanied by a shopping cart, which would eventually make its way back to the store on the next trip.

On Christmas vacation, I had gone home to Alaska and run into my old high school sweetheart. Bruce had been introduced to someone else the night before I left for Arizona who he was dating now. He was supposed to spend the evening with me, the night before I left and was about two hours late. When he finally arrived, I smelled perfume on him, but was just glad to see him. I didn’t say anything about the perfume until I found out later what had happened. I wasn’t too wild about men after that. I swore men off and wasn’t going to even think about another man for quite awhile.

CHAPTER 2

We Met

When I got back to school in January, we started to look on the work board at DeVry. There were businesses that hired students all the time. We thought one sounded pretty good and the hours were perfect for school. We set up appointments to get interviews and crossed our fingers. I was interviewed and hired by MCI Telecommunications as a part-time telemarketer. Then Dawn got hired about one week later by a different supervisor. Our scheduled hours were from 4:30 to 9pm Monday through Friday.

They weren’t supposed to hire relatives for the same department. No one had any idea that we were even related, at first. We looked a lot different from each other. All they knew was that we lived together and went to the same school.

Since we had no transportation, we always took the bus where we needed to go. I had never gotten a driver’s license. There always had been someone to drive me around. Dawn did have a driver’s license, but no car at first, and was a little nervous about taking the test in such a big city. That eventually changed.

While we were at work, we started talking to people that we worked with to see if there was anyone else who lived close to us who could give us rides to work each day. Dawn found someone who lived in the same complex we did and it worked out great. Her name was Lynette. She lived with her friend, Robby, in the next building over from us.

One day, about three weeks after working at MCI, Dawn was going to do something with Lynette after work. I was set up to ride home with someone else. I wasn’t told who it was, just that he’d be waiting in the lobby after work, at the elevators.

After my shift was over, I headed down in the elevator, unsure of what to expect. When the doors opened, I saw him standing there. I was so nervous. He was gorgeous! He had short dark hair, neatly combed back, brown eyes, a very fit and stocky stature, and was just a little shorter than me. He was carrying a briefcase. His smile just made you want to melt. He was wearing a very shiny, silky dark gray shirt with dark dress pants and a tie. The pants and shirt were creased in all the right places. He introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Jason Robbe,” as he put out his hand to shake mine.

“Hi, I’m Chery. Are you the one who’s going to drive me home tonight?” I asked.

“Yes. If you’re okay with that,” he replied with a big smile.

“Do you know how far out I live?” I asked, hoping that it wouldn’t be a problem.

“Yes, I do. You live very close to me.” He smiled again, and then continued. “I live right off Thunderbird where the Circle K is at. Do you know where that is?” He had a curious look on his face. “I know you just moved here and I don’t know how much you’ve seen.”

Me and Jason standing by tree

I smiled at him, “Yes, I think I’ve walked there a couple of times. I know it’s just off the highway, right?”

“Yes. They just finished filming a movie there. It’s called Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. They also filmed it at the Metro Center.” He had an excited look on his face as well. “Have you been there yet?” We started to head for the main entrance.

“Yes, but only for short periods of time. I can’t shop a lot because I have to take everything home on the bus. My sister and I don’t have a car yet, as you already know,” I said with a smile.

We walked out of the MCI building and went toward the parking garage. I was stepping down the stairs when a very large sewer roach ran right across the sidewalk in front of me. I stopped with a very surprised, confused, and nervous look on my face. I stared at the ground and pointed, “Is that what I think it is?” I asked, not really sure if I wanted to hear the answer to the question.

“Yes. It’s a sewer cockroach. They get very big here in the downtown area. Be careful, because they aren’t afraid of you either. I’ve had them chase me down in the garage,” he said. With that comment, I made it to his car as fast as I could.

What a car! It was a 1989 Honda Prelude, cherry red with detailed work. The wheels had inky directional rims colored to match the car, four-wheel steering, and a fin in the back. It also had a sunroof and had the word Prelude down both sides of the car. From the front, it looked like a Ferrari. Everything on the inside was automatic.

Jason standing next to his car

“WOW! Nice car!” I said.

“Thanks. I just got it,” he said very excitedly. “I’ve been saving up for a while. I wanted to make sure I could get all that I wanted in it.”

He power unlocked the doors and opened my side. “Get in.”

“Thank you,” I said. The inside was immaculate! Black, plush seats with a black interior and wood trim highlights. The car smelled like his cologne.

“You’re welcome,” he replied. He shut the door behind me. He walked around the backside of the car, opened the passenger door on the driver’s side, and placed his briefcase in the backseat. He then proceeded to get in the driver’s seat next to me and started the car.

“Is that your cologne that I smell?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s Obsession. It smells better than the new car smell, so I use it in here as well,” he said with a smile. “Is it too overwhelming for you? I can roll the window down a bit, if you want me to.”

Without hesitation and being pleasantly surprised, I answered, “No, I think it smells very nice. I’ve never known anyone who uses cologne as an air freshener in the car. That’s a great idea!”

The whole time, I’m thinking, “Could this really be happening to me? Could I really have just met someone, out of my league, who seems truly interested in talking with me? So much for swearing off men.”

We talked the entire way home. It was about a half hour drive. We had a lot in common and had a very exciting conversation. He told me about all the girls at work who wanted to date him. At that point, my hopes for him asking me out started to plummet. I began to think that I was going to be just another number to call. I was happy to have had a good conversation with him.

When he pulled up to the complex where my apartment was, I didn’t want to get out of the car. We continued our conversation for at least another half hour.

“Well, I better let you get home. It’s late and we both do have to work tomorrow as well,” I said. “Thank you for the ride home. It was very nice getting to know you. I hope we can do this again.”

“I’m sure we can arrange that, if you want. How about, I pick you up for work tomorrow and we can continue our conversation then?” he asked.

I smiled back at him, “I would really like that.”

“Okay then, I’ll be here to pick you up at four. Will that work for you?”

“I’ll be ready and waiting,” I said. We both smiled at each other. I closed the door and he put the car into gear. The window was down on his side of the car as I walked around the front. “Have a good night,” he said.

“I already...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: My History
• Chapter 2: We Met
• Chapter 3: Thanksgiving
• Chapter 4: Preparations
• Chapter 5: The BIG Day!
• Chapter 6: The Accident
• Chapter 7: Friends and Family
• Chapter 8: My First Memories
• Chapter 9: The Explanation
• Chapter 10: Christmas
• Chapter 11: Rehabilitation
• Chapter 12: Things Were Starting to Change
• Chapter 13: A Trip I Will Never Forget
• Chapter 14: The Phone Calls Back Home
• Chapter 15: Jobs
• Chapter 16: Starting Over
• Chapter 17: The Courtship
• Chapter 18: The Kids
• Chapter 19: Proper Binge
• Chapter 20: In Conclusion
• About the Author