Silent Cry (30 page)

I didn't want anyone else. I knew she was the one I wanted to work with. We set up
another appointment, and I started from the beginning. She asked me questions and
listened attentively, taking notes as I shared my story. This book you are reading
right now is the result of our collaboration. God brought me everything I needed
to accomplish the task he assigned to me. He's like that. When I obeyed and took
steps of faith, God provided all the resources — people, time, finances, opportunities,
strategy — every single thing needed to complete the task that came from his hand.
All I had to do was obey.

Now you know my story. The way I did things didn't always match up with the way God
intended. He wants us to have relationships. He loves people, and he gives us people
to love and be loved by. I believed I was supposed to be strong and independent.
I thought asking for help was a sign of weakness, or that it meant I wasn't relying
on God. I didn't open up to anyone — and that was a mistake.

I wish I had sought help long before I did. I wish I had gone to the authorities.
I wish I would have told my family about the danger I was in. I wish I had trusted
Ingrid and Monte, Lynn and K-Mart — somebody. I didn't have to suffer as long as
I did. What I experienced in my relationship with Nate was not punishment for my
sins or my poor choices; it was abuse.

Looking back, I see how I actually enabled Nate. By staying with him and not forcing
him to be accountable for his actions, I enabled his destructive behavior to continue.
I put
my children in a terrible situation. I was afraid — afraid for my life, afraid
of being alone, afraid I wouldn't be able to provide for the boys without Nate's
help.

At first, the abuse was verbal. Horrible arguments that lasted for hours. Cursing,
intimidation, demeaning language. I wish I had reached out then and not allowed it
to go any further. But it did go further. The verbal abuse became physical abuse
and got worse by degrees over time. Then the physical abuse turned to sexual abuse.
Nate was bigger than me and much stronger than me. I felt completely helpless to
escape. I believed no one could stop the abuse. I believed that law enforcement authorities
would give Nate a pass for his celebrity status. I didn't think anyone was capable
of helping me escape, but I was wrong.

Fifteen years have passed since Nate and I were divorced in 2000. By no means can
I say that I walk in that perfect freedom every day. There are times when the shadow
of my past still tries to bring darkness to my soul. The difference now is that I
recognize it and cast it off. I know how important it is to have people in my life
to be accountable to — people I can be open with and trust not to betray me. Trust
still doesn't come easily. I wish I could say it did, but God is still at work, and
I know he will bring me into his perfect design.

I celebrate my story — every part of it. If I were given the opportunity to go back
and change things, of course I would. But I am the person I am today as a result
of the journey I have traveled. My strength and grace are a result of life lived
and lessons learned.

I am stepping into a new chapter of my life — a chapter I hope will offer freedom
to other women who are in abusive situations. Perhaps that describes you. If so,
I pray that as you read my words, you realize that abuse of any kind is wrong. Abuse
is never deserved and should never be tolerated.

I pray that abusers will recognize they are hurting the people they love the most
and that they need help. They need God. They need accountability. They need someone
to guard them and help them through their anger and bitterness and to resolve not
to resort to violence.

God offers hope to us all. He provides a way of escape when we are ensnared in a
trap that is outside his design. We each have a purpose. We each have a reason to
live. I pray that my story will offer you hope for a new day. I pray that my experience
will touch others and cause them to reach out for help and refuse to remain one day
longer in the prison of abuse.

Mostly, I pray that my story will honor God. He is my everything. His love and his
light have guided and protected me, even when I walked a path he did not choose for
me. He has restored my soul, delivered me from the pit, and set my feet upon a solid
rock. If you don't already, I pray you will come to know him as I do. I pray you
will allow yourself to feel his love and accept his complete, total forgiveness and
restoration.

He sees your tears. He hears your cry. He knows every detail of your life — even
the things you think no one else sees or hears. He captures your every tear. There
is hope. He will save you. Only believe.

Afterword

It's been nearly eight years since I completed the overview of this book for my WILD
class, and more than three years since the book's first edition was published. Reading
my story for the first time was a shock for many family members and friends. It is
a fairly common trait among those who have been abused not to divulge everything
that transpires during the course of an abusive relationship, and I had withheld
the worst of it from most people. Since I've shared my story publicly, I've had many
in-depth conversations with family members and friends in which I've tried to explain
how the abuse happened and what it meant for me over the years.

It has taken considerable time to work through the pain — and I am by no means fully
healed. In fact, I believe I am in a state of constant healing, and that I'm on a
journey that will continue for the remainder of my life on earth. I'm not sure I'll
ever reach the point of feeling totally healed and complete, but that's okay. I know
I have God's grace to fill in the gaps, and I trust that his promise is true: He
will continue the good work he has begun in me.

Nate and I continue to be cordial for the sake of our boys, each of whom has his
own relationship with their father. Tré
received a master's degree from the University
of Texas in December 2013. He is currently employed there in the athletics fund-raising
department. King recently completed high school. He earned an athletic scholarship
to the University of Texas, San Antonio, and began his freshman year there in 2015.

I still enjoy my work at a health care organization, and in 2014, I completed my
graduate studies, earning an MBA in Leadership. I volunteer in several capacities
at Gateway Church, speak on various topics at business and women's conferences, and
serve as an adviser on the board of The Life of a Single Mom Ministries. King and
I served together for two years with SASO (Scholars and Athletes Serving Others)
and also with the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of Jack and Jill of America. I also enjoy
being asked to serve as an occasional cohost on “Joni Table Talk,” a Christian talk
show on the Daystar Television Network.

My plans for the future haven't changed much. I strive to be the best parent I can
possibly be to my boys. I work hard to be a servant leader, remaining obedient to
God's calling on my life. I am an ordinary person with an extraordinary mission,
which I think is true for all of us. We are meant to use the power of our words and
actions to bring love and healing to others. All of us can and should be advocates
for abuse victims, helping them to find and experience the physical, emotional, and
spiritual transformation that takes place when our hope is placed in God.

Meet Nate Newton

Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal.

Mike Ditka

When I began writing
Silent Cry
, it was important to me to give readers a look into
not only Nate Newton's past but also his present. My objective was never to expose
juicy details about a famous athlete, but to shine a light on domestic violence in
hopes of helping others escape it and find healthy and meaningful lives on the other
side. To that end, I arranged for my friend and collaborator, Wendy Walters, to interview
Nate and learn more about the man he has become. This is what she wrote after interviewing
Nate in 2011:

The weather was miserable the chilly October evening I met Nate at a Starbucks in
Southlake, Texas. We had never met before, and as Nate entered the café, he scanned
the room, looking for the person he was supposed to meet. I could see he was dressed
in warm clothes in anticipation of standing outside to watch his son King play football
for the Carroll High School Dragons later that evening.

I caught his eye and stood to meet him. “Nate?” I asked, not
positive it was him.
He'd lost considerable weight and looked very different from the photos I had seen
when researching him on the Internet. “Yes, ma'am,” he said, shaking my outstretched
hand and sizing me up. This was definitely not his first interview.

I gestured to a corner where I had positioned some chairs to face each other in an
attempt at privacy. I was grateful Nate had granted the interview and knew he was
fully aware of the content of Dorothy's book. I could only imagine how he felt about
the information soon to come to light. As a high-profile alumnus of the Dallas Cowboys,
a well-known member of the Dallas/Fort Worth community, and a current radio personality
(The Coop and Nate Show, 103.3, ESPN Radio), Nate is no stranger to public scrutiny
of his personal life. Years of fame and infamy stretch behind him like yard lines
on a familiar field.

As I prepared for our meeting, I came across words he'd spoken in another interview:
“I don't care what you write about me. What I did, I did. That's on me.” Other reporters
have found him bluntly honest without any attempt to gloss over his missteps along
the way. I was curious to know how he would respond to my questions. I began by telling
him the purpose of my interview was not to dredge up his past, but rather to offer
a perspective on his future. I wanted others who had been abusers to understand that
the cycle of abuse does not have to continue indefinitely. There is hope.

“Let me first tell you something about my past,” Nate began. “I always lived life
to what I thought was the fullest for me. I'm an emotional person. I'm excitable.
If I believe I'm right, I don't care what nobody say — how dumb it is or how dumb
it may seem to somebody else — if I believe I'm right, that's the end of the story.
My highs are very high; my lows are very low. That's what drove me, and sometimes
I took things to extremes.”

He took a sip of his coffee and settled in. He was ready to talk.

“My Uncle Charles died when I was in high school or college — I can't exactly remember
when,” he said. “When I would visit him, he always told me, ‘Son, live life to the
fullest. Live it how you want to live it.' Well, I took that beyond what he meant.
He meant for me to live a good life and cherish every day how it comes. Me, being
a young buck, I took that to mean for me to be the wildest dude in the world. I took
his advice to mean ‘do what you want to do, how you want to do it' — and I did. I
lived like that, whatever I did. Whether it was drinking . . . everything . . . I
took everything wrong. Like the drinking, women, living on the edge, mistreating
people — I just took everything too far. By the time I realized what Uncle Charles
really meant, I had spent a good part of my life living on the edge, having fun —
and believe me, I had fun. I ain't one of these people who look back and say, ‘Oh,
man, golly, what have I done?' I had fun. The good, the bad, and the ugly — I had
fun. But by the time I realized what life is all about — and thank God, thank God
he saved me before I got too far that I can't recover — by the time I realized who
God was and what he really meant to me, I had done lived a whole life of pursuing
the wrong things. So now this is where we are right now.

“I realize now that if you are a parent or a husband, your life ain't yours. I was
married, but everything had to revolve around me. I had kids, but everything had
to revolve around me. Since I've changed my life and God is a part of my life, now
I know I have to make sacrifices for my kids — for my wife now [Michelle]. It's kind
of amazing the transformation because you just do things differently. That's basically
all I can say.”

“When did you find God?” I asked.

“It was once I got out of prison — you'll have to do the
research — seven or eight
years ago maybe. I got out of prison and had to find a job. I went to Deion Sanders;
I went to David Wells — he was a bail bondsman — and he said, ‘Man I got just the
guy. His name is Omar Jahwar. He's a preacher out of South Dallas.'

“I had to get a job, you see, because I was on parole in Louisiana and on probation
here in Dallas, so I had to get a job or I'd be in violation. They were giving me
time to get a job, and I had a big fine I had to pay back, so I went to David Wells
and Deion, and they were trying to help me find a good job — not just any job. At
the time, I just needed to get a job and start paying these people back their money.