Posts Tagged ‘spirituality’

The Phone Call

Posted: June 7, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
2

July 31, 2010 is a day that will be forever known to us as, “the phone call.”  It was also the day of the mock tri; a practice run with my training group for the upcoming triathlon in Republic.  Let me back up…

In March of 2010, my wife ran a half marathon (13.1 miles), her first ever.  There’s been a lot of debate about whether my derailment and/or hers was the result of the dreaded “mid-life crisis.”  She insisted that a year or two prior, I had been going through such a state and that explained some of my behavior.  She was now approaching 39 and her stated objective was to prove that she wasn’t getting old. 

Whatever the side stories may have been, I came to support her and was blown away and inspired by what I saw that day.  Remember, I was a former fitness instructor; that was how we had gotten to know each other while we were in college.  Call it laziness or life getting in the way, but I hadn’t done anything to keep fit for a long time.  There had been some half-hearted attempts from time to time, but I had just gone through the motions.

That day, at the half marathon, I saw people of every category.  Children, elderly, men, women, fat, thin, you name it, they were there.  And they were all doing it.  That was what struck me.  All these people were out there on a cold, miserable day to run/walk 13.1 miles and I was doing absolutely nothing.  When I saw my wife cross the finish line, I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of another person in my entire life. 

I vowed that day that I was going to change and get back in shape.  I never, in the farthest reaches of my imagination, could have fathomed that it would only be a little over 2 weeks before my marriage as I knew it would essentially be over (or at least suspended).  That was part of the irony of it all.  The very time that I was getting ready to get at least parts of my life back on track, she was turning me out of her heart.

I started a running program called “couch to 5K” or C25K for short.  It’s designed to get a person who has been doing nothing to be able to run a 5K race in about 2 months time. My wife had done it years before, and now it was available as an app on my phone.  I followed the program to the letter and got back to the gym in earnest.  When my wife unexpectedly went cold at the end of March, I desperately held on to the one part of relationship that was still intact; us running together and being workout partners.

Our fitness center was offering a class to train people who had never done a triathlon before.  It was to run from late spring until the “Tiger Tri,” the annual triathlon held in the town where we were living at the time.  My wife only went once, then dropped out as we separated.  Somehow, I fixed it in my mind that I was going to complete that triathlon, and that in so doing, I was going to get my wife back.  I had no reason to believe that one would lead to the other, but I did believe with all my heart that when I crossed that finish line, it would be the culminating event in bringing us back together. 

Two Saturdays before the actual triathlon, our coach had us do a mock tri.  We would swim, bike, and run the entire actual course so that we would know that we could do it, and be prepared for the rigor of the event.  Throughout the mock tri, and especially during the run, I prayed and spoke my wife’s name to keep me going.  I was determined that I was going to finish, and that I was going to run every step. 

When I got done, I felt a sense of accomplishment, but was still focused on the real event that was two weeks away.  I had literally only been home about 15 minutes when my phone rang and it was my wife.  She said, “I’m calling to ask you if you’re ready to give your landlord your notice and come live with me.”  I don’t know how or why the timing went that way, I only know that after I hung up I laid on my bed and cried for about 30 minutes straight.  Joe called about then and asked how I was doing.  I told him, “I’m crying this morning, but it’s tears of joy today.”

Something Beautiful – Something Whole

Posted: June 6, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

My wife’s favorite scene in the movie Joshua is where a character named Maggie tells Joshua, “My life is a mess,” and Joshua responds, “Your life’s not a mess; your life is beautiful.”  Maggie says, “My life was beautiful.  It was great.  It was whole.”  Then she smashes a glass vase on the ground and says, “That is my life, and it can’t be fixed.”

The next morning, the priest tells Maggie, “Wen Joshua left, he gave me something for you.  He said he made it.”  He holds up a glass angel and says, “Amazing.  The guy takes a million pieces of broken glass and makes something beautiful out of it”  Maggie takes it in her hands and stares at it in wonder and then finally says, “Something whole.”

There are times in a restoration project that you just have to tear down parts of the house.  They are too flawed, too damaged, too overcome by the years and everything they’ve withstood.  In another scene in Joshua, there’s a church that was hit by a tornado.  Joshua begins to dismantle it and sates, “Sometimes you have to tear it down to build it back up.”

My wife’s childhood and early adulthood is the stuff of daytime TV talk shows, made for TV movies, and soap operas.  An abuse victim from a very early age, growing up around mental illness and dysfunctional relatives, it is nothing short of a miracle that she has any kind of stable, successful life.  When I married her, I wanted to take her away from all that.  I wanted to be the rescuing knight who set her free and transformed her life.

Unfortunately, I am as flawed as the next guy, with a tendency toward some mental illness myself.  Even so, I always believed that, as the years went by, and I didn’t abuse her and was always there for her, she would heal.  They say that time is the healer and that time heals all wounds, but that’s another cliché that simply isn’t true.  A person with a severe laceration or a compound fracture doesn’t go to the doctor and be told that time will heal it.  It won’t.  It needs to be treated.

I’m not making excuses for why I did any of what I did, and there is no excuse for how I could have reached the point that I thought I wanted to end my marriage, but my frustration and feeling of helplessness continued to grow as certain things never changed no matter how many years we were together.  There were parts of my wife’s heart and mind that were inaccessible to me, and I had no way of fully understanding the things that she had been through and how they had shaped and affected her.  There were things she carried, and no matter how desperately I had wanted to set her free from them, my love wasn’t going to be enough. 

During our separation, my wife was keeping up appearances on the outside, but on the inside, she was growing more and more unhappy with the choices she was making and the direction her life was going.  She got to the point that she knew she wanted to try to come back to God and back to me, but she didn’t know how, or if she even could.  Christ is referred to by many names in the Bible.  Two of His titles are The Great Physician and The Master Builder. 

Some friends of ours used to have a poster in their house that said, “God can heal a broken heart, but He has to have all the pieces.”  As The Great Physician, He knew that time would never heal her wounds, and as The Master Builder, He knew that some things had to be torn down – shattered like the vase in the movie – so that my wife could be built back up, and made whole. 

I called Joe one night and told him that we had the upper hand now and urged him to join me in a final push in prayer to break through and finish this.  He spoke prophetically again without knowing it.  He said, “When this is over, you’re going to have a brand new wife.”  He didn’t mean a new person to be my wife, he meant my wife would be a brand new person.  Just like the yielding over of my hard, stubborn heart was terribly painful, so my wife needed to be broken to pieces in order to be healed, so her life could be made into something beautiful, and something whole.

Deciding I’m Worth More

Posted: June 5, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

As last July wore on, there was a strange dichotomy taking place in our relationship.  At the very same time, we were growing closer together and farther apart.  Looking back, it makes perfect sense.  I was winning her over.  She could see that I had changed.  She was seeing glimpses of the possibility of things working.  At the same time, she was scared.  She was afraid that it wouldn’t last.  She was afraid that things would go back to the way they were.  She was afraid that the choices she had made would keep us from being together.

The first sign that things were changing was the return of the laughter.  There were days and nights that we sat at a cafe or laid in bed and laughed and laughed together.  Comedian Yakov Smirnoff says, “Where there is love, there is laughter.”  When the laughter came back, the evidence of love being present, no matter how deeply buried, was unmistakable. 

Another sign was in our physical relationship.  We had gone through a stretch of time where my wife was mostly unresponsive to me.  Anything between us tended to be mechanical and without feeling. That all changed fairly suddenly, and even though we didn’t really talk about it much, she not only wanted my touch again, but we found ourselves acting like newlyweds despite the fact that we were still separated. 

What struck me as the strongest indicator that we had turned a corner came on the day we went to St. Louis with my daughter from Kansas.  We all had a blast that day, and anyone who saw us probably just assumed we were a very happy family.  We went to the zoo, took pictures, laughed a lot, and had a magical day.  While we were sitting at lunch, we were reminiscing about the past and I realized that my wife was telling stories of happy memories from our life together. 

For too long, when she talked about the past, she had only talked about the negative things that had happened.  Hearing her that day recalling the good times gave me a surge of hope that she was moving beyond the pain and toward a future with me still in it.  When we got back, she kissed me good-bye like it was the most natural thing in the world.  That day was, in fact, a turning point for her.  That was the day that she started to allow herself to believe that it was possible that our marriage could really be made beautiful again.

It was during this same time period that we experienced some of the bad times that I’ve mentioned in previous posts.  My wife called them fights.  To me, they were just painful conversations.  One evening, near the end of July, we were talking and I verbalized to her the idea that I had become a much healthier person and I saw myself differently than I used to.  I told her that I still wanted her back and that I would still continue to do the things that I had been, but that I would eventually need her to make a choice and a committment to me.  Things couldn’t go on like this forever. 

I wasn’t trying to give her a deadline or scare her into making a decision.  I was in no way being manipulative.  It was just that I realized I was worth more than being her errand boy and part-time lover.  I told her this, even though I was afraid to, in the gentlest way possible.  It had just become clear to me that I had value and that it wasn’t what was best to continue to let her call all the shots, while I simply went along with whatever she wanted at any given time.

I had learned to respect myself, and that led me to understand that if she was going to come back to me, I would have to be someone she could respect.  That meant being strong.  That meant being a leader that she could willingly follow.  It meant being whole and complete in my own self and not dependent on her or anyone else to make me happy.  I never imagined that instead of putting her on the defensive, it was exactly what she needed to hear. 

She asked me if I was still praying.  I told her that I was.  She said that I needed to pray like I never had before because she really wanted things to work between us.  She said she didn’t know how it was going to be possible, and that it would take a lot of prayer, but that she could see that I had really changed, and that the time we had been spending together made her want our marriage to work out.

Darkest Before The Dawn

Posted: June 4, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

I’ll never forget a story I heard from two older veterans of D-Day describing the invasion at Normandy.  One was a foot soldier who was landing and attempting to take the beach.  He was under intense fire and saw his comrades falling all around him.  He said that, from his perspective, there was no way the allies could win. 

The other was a pilot providing air support.  From above, he could see how many allied troops there were and how the Germans would soon be overwhelmed by their sheer force.  He said that from his vantage point, there was no way they could lose.

I wonder how often people give up right before their victory would have come.  I wonder how many times people fail to hold on, don’t make that necessary push, aren’t willing to pay the price to get to the other side, and never know that the thing they’ve been fighting for was within their grasp. 

I don’t know if it really is darkest just before dawn, but I do know that many times, the hardest resistance comes right at the very end.  It’s like a defense in football who is backed up against their own goal line.  They know that if they don’t hold the line here, they’ll give up a score.  How sad it would be if the offense didn’t know that they only needed to gain one or two more yards and they would have a touchdown.  Unfortunately, I think that’s exactly what happens to us sometimes, when we fail to break through.

I know that some of you reading this don’t believe in God, much less angels and demons, but I can assure you they are all real, and as much as I want to be able to give you good advice and inspire you in your own relationships, I have to tell you the truth.  The truth is that God saved our marriage, and there was a spiritual war that went on throughout this entire ordeal that had to be won in order for us to be where we are today. 

My wife had fallen under the power of darkness and couldn’t break free.  Because of the evil forces that had overtaken her (I’m talking about spirits here, for those of you unfamiliar with these things), she had allowed herself to begin to live in a way that was contrary to who she really was.  Her thoughts had become confused, her reasoning flawed, and her actions contradictory to what she really wanted.  What she wanted was for us to be in love again and things to be right.  What she was doing was trying to close the door on that and drive me away for good.  It’s a form of self-destruction that people often fall into when they don’t believe they can actually get the thing they truly want.

God began to speak to me very specifically in prayer around the time that my wife told me she had begged Him to make things work between us and that they weren’t.  He began to give me exact words to say to her.  It was literally that clear and specific.  He would dictate to me exactly what I was to go to her and say.  He also told me that she would respond badly, but to say it anyway – that she needed to hear the words, and that me saying them would have an effect on her that I would only see later. 

I was afraid of being hurt more than I already had been, but I was well beyond the point of no return by then.  I also knew that she was like a prisoner of war that had been taken captive by the enemy, and even though she was blind to it, she needed me to come and rescue her.  In the spirit realm, I led a mission to free her from her captors.  In the physical realm, I went to her apartment and delivered the message.  As God had told me she would, she rejected my words and told me she didn’t love me. 

I didn’t know what she would do from there, or how long it would be before the work was done.  I just knew that I wouldn’t give up while there was still hope, and that hope came from God, not from any signs from her that she was returning to me.  I resolved that whatever she did from that point, I would continue to fight the spiritual war on her behalf and show her love when I had the opportunity.  Even though I was the foot soldier in this story, God had the view from the air, and he knew it would soon be over.

Her Own Car: A Final Step In Her Journey

Posted: June 3, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Summers always seem too short.  On the last day of school, it feels like there’s a wonderfully long vacation to look forward to, but it always flies by.  Last summer was unlike any other in that our marriage fell apart right after spring break and we separated at the end of the school year.  Instead of a vacation to rejuvenate, I found myself in the fight of my spiritual life trying to save my marriage. 

As July was slipping away, I grew more and more conscious that the new school year was right around the corner and for us, that meant something would have to give.  We both work at the same school, and it’s a considerable distance from where either of us was living.  We only had one car when we split up, and I was driving it.  My wife’s only means of transportation were her bike and rides from me. 

If it came time to report back to work and things hadn’t changed, it was going to be a problem.  I was willing to drive her to work, but I wasn’t sure how realistic that was.  Far more troublesome was the possibility that things would change for the worse.  If things were not going to work out, I couldn’t imagine working in the same building, especially if she began dating. 

The way we had always talked, the idea was that by time school started, she would have had time to get her issues worked out, and I would have been able to pursue and win her back.  One evening, when I had brought her home from work and we were supposed to eat dinner together, she told me that she had thought that her heart would change toward me, but it hadn’t.  I asked her what about wanting me to romance her and win her back?  She told me it wasn’t working and she didn’t know if she could ever feel that way about me again.  She cried and told me that she had begged God for things to work between us, but now she didn’t know what to do anymore and had pretty much lost hope.

I was utterly confused and blown away by all of it.  I didn’t respond well and she ended up telling me to leave.  For the first time, I really began facing the idea of a future without her.  I didn’t lose hope, and I stepped up the intensity in my prayers, but I began to honestly ask myself the toughest of questions.  If we weren’t going to be married, what would I do?  Our lives were so tied up together that I wouldn’t be able to continue to live in the area without running into her often unless I completely changed my habits and way of life. 

In the days ahead, I expressed this to her and she seemed taken aback by it.  “You wouldn’t really go away, would you?” she asked me.  I told her that I was sure I would; that I just couldn’t handle living where I would see her.  I told her that I was willing to give her as much time as she needed, and that I would pick her up and drive her to school everyday, as long as there was the possibility of us working things out, but that if we weren’t going to be able to, I couldn’t stay around.

In the midst of all this, she decided that she needed her own car and asked me if I would help her find one.  I wasn’t to put in any money, sign anything, or in any way be part of the purchase itself.  She had to be able to qualify and be accepted on her own.  I never imagined that this was going to be the final step, in her mind, to establishing her independence, and then being able to choose what she wanted.  For me, it was another opportunity to love her unselfishly, so I went with her, test drove cars, listened to salesmen, and ultimately sat and watched her sign papers on a car that was only hers. 

Once she had that car, something in her changed.  She had done what she set out to do.  She was now completely independent.  She could choose to pursue a relationship with me, or someone else, if she wanted to.  She could choose to be alone if she wanted to.  It wasn’t until later that I somewhat understood this.  I thought that having this car would make her less likely to ever return to me.  In reality, it helped assure that the door stayed open, and my willingness to be a part of it all made choosing me a more likely outcome.

Good Counsel Pushes Us Forward

Posted: June 2, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Once God had me where he wanted me, things began to fall into place.  As long as I was working on my own agenda, I wasn’t going to receive all of the help that was available.  When I surrendered my will to His and gave up control, it was like a channel of communication was opened that hadn’t been available before. 

One of the things I struggled with was whether God really got involved in these types of situations.  I understand the concept of a free will, and I know that God will not override a person’s freedom to choose, even when someone is praying for them to make “the right choice.”  I’ve been divorced before, so I know the helplessness of praying that the other person will change and having nothing happen.

I knew that the only things I could really do in the physical realm were to change myself as much as possible, get as close to God as I could, and try to demonstrate, as much as the opportunity presented itself, that my love for my wife was true and that things really were different.  I hoped that God could and would influence her to come back to me, but I had no assurance that my prayers would be answered.  Fortunately, God began to give me signs that He was at work.

One day, while I was reading my Bible, I came across a verse that rocked my world and energized my prayer life in regards to my marriage being saved.  It was in the story where Abraham has sent his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac.  There is a part where the servant prays, “Let her be the one you have selected to be the wife of my master’s son.” God confirms and answers that prayer and Rebekah becomes the wife of Isaac.  I had never realized it until that moment, but now I had scriptural proof that God does choose people to be together in marriage.  I knew that my wife was the one God had chosen for me, and now I had a verse to stand on while I prayed. 

I also gained an unexpected prayer partner.  My friend Joe met a couple while out walking near his house and they got to talking.  It turned out this guy, Kevin, and his wife have an amazing testimony of restoration in their own marriage.  They also have a heart to help other people who are going through troubles.  Joe gave me Kevin’s number and we talked a few times over the phone.  One conversation in particular was nothing short of a miracle.  I honestly don’t remember today what he told me, but when I got off the phone, I knew what to do.  I also knew he was praying for us and I was strengthened and encouraged by his friendship, advice, and support.

Probably the most powerful thing any of my friends said to me came from Joe.  I had been struggling with whether there was any hope and wondering if my wife wouldn’t just be better off with someone else.  I figured that I hadn’t been able to love her like she needed and that I may never be able to.  I was telling Joe all this one day on the phone and he said to me, “You are exactly what she needs.” 

When he said those words, they went straight to my heart and soul.  Somehow I knew he was right, as if God Himself was speaking through him.  They lit a fire in me, and gave me the confidence to not only not give up, but to go after her like I never had before.  I didn’t know it at the time, and had no outward confirmation, but we were in the last stages of our separation.  It wouldn’t be easy, but we didn’t have to long to go before everything turned around.

Willing to Give Her Up – Love’s Supreme Sacrifice

Posted: June 1, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
2

Time can play tricks on us when we’re going through stressful events.  Hours can seem like days, and days like weeks or months.  When it’s your marriage, everything is amplified, because your whole future is tied to that person and whether or not you’re going to be together.  The days, weeks, and months I spent not knowing how things were going to turn out drove me to become a better person and deal with my issues, but it also wore on me.

In the book of Job, you see the effects of time on a person’s state of mind.  Job is a righteous man who has a great life, but suffers tremendous tragedy and difficulty all at once.  His initial reaction to it all is extraordinary.  He accepts the news and worships God in spite of his loss.  As time goes by, he is unable to maintain his peaceful acceptance.  Eventually he curses the day of his own birth and begins to demand an explanation from God as to how and why this could happen.

As time continued to pass with little or no visible change to my circumstances, it became even more critical for me to stay strong by leaning on my close friends and spending as much time as possible in prayer.  There were days when I could feel myself wanting to break, but I fought through them.  I also allowed myself to cry and grieve.  That’s not the manly thing to admit, but it’s the truth, and it was important that I have an outlet to get some release for my emotions when it all became too much.

In the song, “Start Again,” by Red, there’s a part that says, “What if I let you in? What if I make it right? What if I give it up? What if I want to try? What if you take a chance? What if I learn to love? What if, what if we start again?” As I mentioned in an earlier post, the song tore me up with grief, but also gave me hope.  The line that haunted me the most was, “What if I learned to love?”

Throughout this whole ordeal, I was learning what love really was.  The hope in the song was that, if I really did learn to love my wife, and if she took that chance, things could be right and work out between us.  There were times I would lay on my bed and I could see such a vivid picture of how things could be.  I could envision in great detail how much better our marriage could be than it ever was before and how we could be closer than we had ever been. 

As desperately as I wanted that (and I would have given up everything I had to get it), I was also learning that true love means giving, not getting.  Loving someone, really loving them, is not about having them, it’s about giving them what they need, no matter what that is.  Real love sacrifices.

The best known scripture in all the Bible, John 3:16, begins by saying, “For God so loved the world that He gave…”  The apostle Paul so loved his people, the jews, that he wrote, “I would be willing to be forever cursed…if that would save them.”  That’s how real love operates.  True love is sacrificial in nature.  God wasn’t going to force anyone to love Him, but He was willing to sacrifice His son to make it possible.  Paul couldn’t save all the jews, but he was willing to give up his own salvation, if that could accomplish it. 

As I prayed, I released my wife to God and to whatever was best for her.  I knew she wasn’t following God at the time, but neither had I been and He had brought me back.  I also knew that she could very easily find someone younger and more attractive, and who made more money than me, and that it was very possible that she already had.  It was the hardest prayer to ever pray and mean it, but I told God that if I wasn’t ever going to be able to make her happy and be right for her, that I would rather that she did find someone else who would. 

Without even realizing it, with that prayer, I had learned to love.  What I also didn’t realize was, with that prayer, something shifted in the spiritual realm.  Moving forward, God began to answer prayers and move in powerful ways on our behalf.

Finding Strength Through God and Friends

Posted: May 30, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

I can’t emphasize enough how much the support of a few friends means when you’re going through a tough time.  It’s not so much what they do, but more the knowing that they are there.  Knowing that you’re not alone, and you don’t have to face it by yourself can get a person through some of the longest days and darkest nights.  I don’t know what I would have done last summer, had there not been several people who stood by me. 

I’m a teacher, so I didn’t have work to keep me occupied. This was a two-edged sword.  On the one hand, it gave me lots of time to read, pray, attend my therapy sessions, and be there to show love to my wife as much as she would let me.  On the other, there were many long hours of unscheduled time where I had to fight the loneliness and pain that threatened to overwhelm me and pull me under.

The pattern of me staying with my wife on the weekends, then being sent home to my apartment on Mondays or Tuesdays continued, and it never got any easier.  We would have a great time for two or three days, then she would tell me good-bye again.  I desperately wanted her to say or do something to give me hope at those times, but she didn’t, and it always seemed like everything that had just taken place hadn’t mattered.  I respected her boundaries, but also took advantage of every opportunity that presented itself. 

Sometimes she would call during the week and ask me if I could give her a ride, or help her with something.  I always did, and I tried to not expect anything in return.  I wanted her to see me as someone who was able to give without taking.  I figured that any positive interaction between us could only serve as a building block to repairing our relationship, so I tried to be very careful not to push.  I failed at times, of course, and did push her to talk about things she didn’t want to, or deal with my pain, which only pushed her away.

Many times, when I would return to my apartment with no assurance of anything in regards to our future, I would seek God’s comfort through prayer, but also that human aspect of a friend who would listen and be there in whatever way I needed.  There were a small number of such people, and they may not think they did much, but their willingness to give me advice, come over and sit with me, listen to me vent and cry, and spend time with me made an immeasurable difference. 

My primary source of strength was God, and I spent a great deal of time crying out to Him, reading the Bible, and listening to His voice.  More than at any other time in my life, He was real to me in tangible ways.  I would read verses and I knew that they carried a message for me.  My thoughts would be all out of whack and He would help me to see things in perspective and get a grip.  Beyond that, He spoke to me, clearly and unmistakably during this time of need.  Hebrews 11:6 says, “Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.”  I was seeking Him more sincerely than I had for a long time, and probably ever.

He was proving Himself true, and showing me that He was deeply interested in what I was going through.  I understood that my wife had the same free will that we all do and that nobody, including God Himself, was going to force her to love me against her will.  I also was greatly encouraged by the knowledge that the creator of all things wanted our marriage to work out, and was helping me on my end.  If you’re reading this and you have a difficult situation in your life, draw close to God and spend time with some true friends who will support you and lead you in the right direction.  They are truly worth more than gold.

Latest Stop OnThe Restoration Tour: A Graduation Party

Posted: May 29, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Yesterday’s post was very difficult to write.  Jesus said that people would recognize His followers by one characteristic.  It wasn’t how often they went to church, how much money they gave, or how much they read their Bible.  It also wasn’t that they didn’t curse or drink or fool around.  Very often, christians define themselves by what they do or don’t do.  Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35

Someone once said, “Love is giving someone the power to destroy you, but trusting them not to.”  My wife and I ended up pushing that one to the limit before we figured things out.  You see, when you think someone loves you, and you want them to love you back, it hurts infinitely more when they hurt you and let you down.  The pain my wife and I caused each other was deeper than any that anyone else could have caused because of the relationship that we had with each other.  The disappointment that we felt when people from our church let us down in our time of need was minute compared to the way we failed each other.  Even so, it was much more significant than it would have been, had we not known what it was to be loved by them previously.

There were a handful of people who remained true friends.  One in particular was a guy named Joe, who had moved to the area at almost the same time we had.  We had become friends right away, but then had a falling out during the time that I was wandering.  We had pretty well patched things up by the time my marriage fell all the way apart, and he was a true rock for me throughout.  We called each other almost daily, and he would pray with me, come over when I couldn’t bear to be alone, and offer encouragement any time, day or night.

Joe has a daughter who was and is a true miracle child.  She was born so prematurely that she weighed less than 2 pounds.  She went to special schools most of her life, but she was always loved and prayed for.  Her development continued over the years to the point that she attended a large public high school for her senior year, where she earned a student of the month award and graduated as a member of the National Honor Society. 

When we received her graduation announcement and party invitation, we had every intention of going.  When we saw that the party was being held at our former church, my wife balked.  Going to the party meant not only facing people that we weren’t sure how to respond to, it would also mean returning to the place that held such bitter memories.  I told her that I stood by her whatever she decided and that we could celebrate with Joe’s family privately instead. 

Love has a way of building people up, giving them courage, and making them strong.  From within the safe covering of my unconditional love, my wife soon announced that she was willing to go after all.  She only asked that I stay by her side and not let her get cornered or put in a difficult situation, which was the very thing I was eager to do.  We were going to celebrate Joe’s daughter and her accomplishment; everything else was secondary. 

Last Spring, we left that church broken and disgraced.  Almost exactly a year later, we returned as a completely different couple.  It was definitely awkward being there, but enough healing has taken place apart from the church that we were able to put aside that part of the past.  I couldn’t have been more proud of the beautiful lady by my side. 

A few days later, Joe told me over the phone that my wife had never looked better.  He said she had a glow about her and she looked like she was free of some huge burdens.  He was right.  She and I both still have some healing and the final phases of the restoration to go through, but we’ve reached that point where it shows on the outside.  Just like when the new siding, paint, shutters, etc. draw people’s eyes to a house that’s undergoing restoration, so the effects of everything that’s taking place inside our marriage can now be unmistakably seen on the outside.

Church: A Family Or A Failure?

Posted: May 28, 2011 in Love and Marriage
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Our move from Kansas to Missouri was a pretty amazing story of faith, adventure, and starting over.  We were floundering helplessly in Dodge City.  My parents had retired to Springfield, MO, and were getting older and starting to see their health deteriorate.  They kept encouraging us to relocate to that part of the country, so in the Summer of 2005, we did. 

I called a school district who was advertising a teaching position in a small town I’d never heard of, while I was teaching summer school in Dodge City.  I set up an interview over the phone, and we drove up over the fourth of July weekend.  Before I even went to the interview, we scoured the classified ads for rental houses and signed a one year lease on a home in the country.  Fortunately, I got the job.  Unfortunately, the place we rented was the ill-fated tornado house.

What still remained was to find a church.  I was afraid it would be a long drawn-out process, but it was exactly the opposite.  We decided to try a church in the town closest to our new house of the same denomination we were used to attending.  That first Sunday, we knew we were home.

When the tornado hit, we learned what a true church family was. It was people from the church who cleared trees off the road until after midnight to reach us at what was left of our house.  It was people from the church who gave us a temporary place to stay.  It was people from the church who came out and helped us find and salvage possessions, clean up the mess, and move into the rental we found a few days later.  These were people we had only known for few months, yet they treated us as one of their own.

Fast forward a few years.  Same church name and building, but a very different church.  Many of the leading families had left, and the attendees changed almost from week to week.  I was stumbling and falling, but no one seemed to notice or pay it any mind.   My wife became more and more withdrawn over time, but no one reached out to try to find out what was wrong.  More than once, we put in prayer requests indicating that we were having marriage problems.  I’m not sure if anyone prayed, but I know that no one from the leadership ever offered us any help.

We’ll never know for sure, but we believe that if there had been a support system there, if people had cared and gotten involved, things may not have gone so far, and so much damage might not have been done.  As it was, they not only didn’t reach out, but in many cases they pulled away from us.  My wife felt completely abandoned and alone.  People who we thought were true friends just disappeared once we went public with our problems.  The phone didn’t ring, and when we did still attend church, people avoided and ignored us.

After my wife quit going to church altogether, and once she had moved out, I took it upon myself to go to the pastor and tell him what was going on.  He pretty much told me to put on a smile, come back to church and everything would be ok.  I still attended a few more times, but it was awkward and painful to realize that people now knew what was happening and still did nothing to help. 

My purpose in writing this is in no way to bash any particular church or people.  It is simply to say that this should never have happened.  When that church was healthy, I don’t think it would have.  I don’t know what changed, or why, but there was no longer a family for us to be part of.  Where we should have felt loved and encouraged, we felt abandoned and rejected.  What should have been part of the solution became an aggravating factor in the problem.  My wife had already been hurt and angry with me.  All of this compounded her hurt and anger to include many people from the church and God Himself. 

God was not to blame, but at the time, she couldn’t separate Him from His people.  She lost her way when she lost hope in the people and the institution that should have been a refuge and strength for her.  It’s not their fault that either of us fell, but we wouldn’t have fallen as far had someone been there to catch us, or, better yet, pull us back from the edge before we went over.

Older Entries
Newer Entries