In 1972, Jackie was twenty-two years old and had been married and divorced twice. After finally getting out of a turbulent marriage, she learns that her baby daughter, Jenny, is profoundly brain-damaged and will probably never walk or talk. When Jackie decides to take care of Jenny by herself rather than put her in an institution, Jenny’s pediatrician tells her to include a social life for herself. To pay for Jenny’s mounting medical bills and still have a social life, Jackie works two jobs: one as a cocktail waitress on weekends and the other as an office girl at Cessna during weekdays. In spite of her promiscuous behavior and naivety, God patiently draws Jackie to Himself through Jenny.
In 1972, Jackie was twenty-two years old and had been married and divorced twice. After finally getting out of a turbulent marriage, she learns that her baby daughter, Jenny, is profoundly brain-damaged and will probably never walk or talk. When Jackie decides to take care of Jenny by herself rather than put her in an institution, Jenny’s pediatrician tells her to include a social life for herself. To pay for Jenny’s mounting medical bills and still have a social life, Jackie works two jobs: one as a cocktail waitress on weekends and the other as an office girl at Cessna during weekdays. In spite of her promiscuous behavior and naivety, God patiently draws Jackie to Himself through Jenny.
    I was twenty-two and single when I missed two periods and took a jar of urine to the local clinic. It was the fall of 1971. My heart pounded as the gray-haired woman wrote my name on a sticky label and smashed it on the glass jar.
    “You’ll get the results in a couple of days,” she said without looking up from her paperwork.
    After work a few days later, I called for the results.
    “Let’s see—oh yes—the results are positive.” Silence.Â
     A wide grin spread across my face, and my pulse quickened. “Thanks!”
    I strolled out of the tall, glass-walled insurance tower and stepped into the windy September heat. I drove my silver Plymouth Duster across the bridge that overlooked the Missouri River to my apartment in North Kansas City. I had to be careful who I told about this, and I sure couldn’t tell anyone at work.
    I pushed my key through the lock on the front door of my apartment and threw the keys on the yellowish Formica countertop that acted as a barrier between the kitchenette and the rest of the studio apartment. I pulled open the refrigerator door, grabbed a cold bottle of Coke, and traipsed across burnt orange shag carpet that smelled of musk and smoke. After I twisted the knob on the window air conditioner, cool air made its way through the stuffy apartment. My double bed was situated in the center of the room with the headboard against the back wall. After I planted myself on the edge of the bed, I opened a pack of cigarettes and steeled myself for the conversation I was about to have. My fingers shook as I lit a cigarette and placed it in the mustard-colored ceramic ashtray that sat on the end table beside my bed. I took a deep breath, lifted the receiver from the avocado-green desk phone, and dialed my mother, who now lived in Virginia. The phone rang three times before she answered. When Mom realized it was me, she lowered her voice.
    “Hi, Jackie,” she said and then waited. When I told her the news, she didn’t say anything.
    “I could move to Virginia, and I would work and pay rent until the baby came.” I bit my lower lip and kept wrapping and unwrapping the curled phone cord around my finger.
    “You know your dad and I are having problems.” After a pause, she added, “We’ll probably get a divorce.”Â
    I ignored her remark and continued. “After the baby is born, I’ll get a babysitter—no—I’ll get the babysitter and apartment lined up before the baby is born. I won’t be any trouble at all—I promise!” It all seemed doable to me, but on the other end, there was a long silence.
    “Mom?”
    “I’m here,” she said. “We have a lot going on right now, and I—I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come up here.”
    “I really would work and pay my way.”Â
    Then, Mom broke the silence with the dreaded words, “You could have an abortion.”
     At the sound of those words, I closed my eyes, and my lips pressed into a grimace. I knew she would say that. “No, I would never do that.” Â
    After a polite goodbye, I put the receiver back on the cradle of the desk phone. I took a drink of Coke, crushed my cigarette out in the mustard-colored ashtray, and lay down on the double bed. My apartment was silent except for the humming of the air conditioner.
     My stomach turned when I thought about marrying my baby’s father, Tony. Too many times I had heard how Tony’s brothers’ wives called around to bars late at night trying to hunt down their husbands. With Tony’s outgoing personality and winning smile, I could see that I would have the same problem, and there was no way in hell I would live like that!
***
    In the late 1950s through the mid 70s, there were social rules that everyone understood. Everyone knew that girls didn’t call boys, and everyone knew that the boy invited the girl out on a date. He picked her up on Friday night (at the door, of course, because only a schmuck would sit outside and honk), he paid for the drive-in movie, and he parked in the last row. An hour later, the windows would fog up. In those days, it was possible for girls to get a bad reputation, which was devastating. If a girl got pregnant, she would have to leave school; and if she came back, no one would talk to her. It was also common for parents to forbid their high schoolers to date certain people based on social status. Many successful parents made sure their daughters didn’t get too serious with someone from the lower class. Songs like “Patches” by Dicky Lee and “Dawn” by the Four Seasons reflected this social rule.
    When teenage girls pulled into a gas station, they cranked down the drivers’ side window and asked for either regular or ethel. After the cute boy attendant checked the oil, he would try to sneak a peek up a girl’s dress as he swiped the squeegee over the windshield.
    Daily living was also different. There was more dirt on the ground in those days, so kids had to regularly use a nail scrub brush to clean their fingernails, and since everyone washed their hair once a week, they also had to clean the gunk out of their combs.
    When kids went to school, boys wore collared shirts that tucked into their casual pants, and girls wore dresses. Everyone had three sets of clothes: play clothes, school clothes, and Sunday clothes. Of course, not everyone went to church, so Sunday clothes were really dress-up clothes—like something a girl would wear when she went downtown to shop.
    At home, window air conditioners could only reach the living area, so in order to sleep, people had to push up the window beside their bed and turn on the attic fan. In those days, families ate meals together. No one could start eating until everyone was seated, and kids couldn’t leave the table until they said something like “May I be excused please?”
    During that time period, there were two means of communication: telephone or letter. Letters would take three days, or two days if it went airmail, and long-distance phone calls cost money. Thus, when students went away to college, it was unlikely that the high school romance would last. High school graduation meant boys would either go into the service or go to college. Those who went to college learned to protest in the streets and harass those in military uniforms. Those who went into the service learned to march to chants such as “I don’t know but I believe—I’ll be home on Christmas Eve.” Servicemen followed every oral and written instruction, which included the writing on the inside of the plywood stall: “Flush twice; it’s a long way to the chow hall” and “Put on civilian clothes before you get off the plane in the U.S.” Similarly, when girls turned eighteen, they would either go to college or get an apartment. Everyone had to leave home—sink or swim.
    People in those days were raised by parents who were familiar with the effects of the Great Depression; therefore, things like credit cards were not a normal part of people’s lives. If people owed money, they didn’t sleep until they had figured out a way to pay it back. The government assistance programs that we are familiar with today were not well established and relatively unknown. People who were physically and/or mentally disabled were sent to state institutions, and homeless people were called hobos.
     Until 1962, kids who didn’t go to church learned to pray in public schools. Thousands of kids across the United States began the school day with heads bowed and hands folded on top of their desks. I was in Mrs. Hall’s sixth-grade class when I learned the Lord’s Prayer. After we prayed, our wrinkled, gray-haired teacher bellowed instructions and slammed the ruler on her desk to get our attention. I noticed that people who passed by our classroom as they strolled down the hall would back away when they heard her holler at some boy with a short attention span. On the other hand, those of us inside her classroom adored her. Mrs. Hall never scolded us if we asked a question, and she always knew the right way to get information through our thick skulls. All her theatrics didn’t bother any of us.
    From the sixth grade forward, every night after I turned off the light and pulled the covers over my chest, I closed my eyes and whispered the Lord’s Prayer. Who knew what “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name” even meant?
This sweeping memoir grabs your attention from the opening of its pages until the last word you read. It is told in such a way that it is as if you are living out moments of life with this author in real-time. For a memoir, it is quite a triumph!
The narrative jumps back and forth. However, from growing up to the author's motherhood years, it all works together. To understand the back story is to understand the years that came next in their entirety with fullness, as a reader, you would otherwise lack. Each chapter adds a layer that makes it more rich and in-depth.
The author's life is certainly not a fairy tale. For years upon years, it was one of great tumult. Yet, underlying, almost imperceptible (perhaps), there was God. God showed up through the kindness of encouraging words of those she encountered, like Mr. Martin. It's these small pockets of kindness that helped to shape and change the trajectory of Jackie Guinn's life, and it's these moments as a reader that I cried.
One huge takeaway from "For the Love of God" is never to give up! This author faced so much adversity, such an uphill battle around every corner, but she was smart, counted her pennies, and did what needed to be done to have her daughter, Jenny, with her despite all odds. She found employment that would support herself and her daughter and did not give up on finding Jenny the specialized care she needed and deserved.
This gritty book about real life tells a salvation story in its ugliness and beauty. Times were different and the author does an amazing job of remembering details and sharing insights for the reader to get a true feel of the life and world as it was that she was immersed in. While I didn't like reading the foul language or imagining all of the smoking or moments of abuse (probably because it hit a little too close to home), my heart soared when nurses would display kindness and when a man proved himself to be loving and caring in simple things like not drinking because he knew it bothered his wife.
From being used, abused, and unloved, Jackie Guinn became beloved by God and her husband, Allan. The transformation of lives lived in this book is beautiful to behold. The last line, especially, ties everything together, is completely satisfying and makes me cry. Most authors will tell you their books are their babies; in "For the Love of God," a mother's heart is shown holding nothing back. The rawness of this book and the honesty are not to be missed! It is a must-read.