I would never have pictured myself divorced. Christian Bible believing wives who are homeschooling moms don’t get divorced. They always put their families first, so that couldn't happen to me. Or could it?
No one has ever heard or will ever hear me say that God is the author of divorce or that divorce is God's will. It is not. Doesn’t Matthew 19:6 say, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder”? Doesn’t that mean any man, even the one I had been married to for over 21 years?
The year that I turned 40, I learned that God will sometimes allow us to go through pain because of someone else’s choice to go against His perfect will. God will allow devastating things to come into our lives, but he promises to use everything for our good if we love Him.
By the time that year had ended, the divorce which I didn't think I could survive: was the easiest thing I dealt with. If the divorce was all I had faced in those months, it would have been the most painful time in my life. It alone seemed to be more than I could bear. I couldn’t imagine any worse pain.
But, worse it became. God allowed so much more sorrow and pain to come into my life in that one year that I truly didn't think I would survive. But survive I did, and God redeemed every part of it for my good, just as he promised. For that I can only praise Him, even for the pain. I am blessed.


The Tunnel (A Preface)

June 2005, on a Sunday morning at 6:00;

I don’t need to be awake for 2 more hours. My mind woke me suddenly with an analogy of my life for the past year.
In February of 2004, my husband told me that our company and we personally were close to bankruptcy. I was terrified; worry and fear ran rampant in me for weeks. It was one of the lowest points in my life up to that point. After spending time on my knees, I turned it all over to God.
I said, “I trust you Father. You promised you would care for me more than the sparrows, so… with money, without money, I trust you. Take us down or take us up, either way I praise you.” Unimaginable peace came with laying that burden down. I thought I could soar spiritually at that point.
Immediately after turning it all over to God, we were able to borrow the money to keep the business open. I praised God and was ready to follow him anywhere that he led. I thought that I had faced such a great personal crisis and with God I had came through it. All I could do was praise God.
It was a trial, but with what was to come into my life it would soon pale in comparison. It was a step that God used to prepare me to trust him during darker trials.
Three short months later, my husband of almost 22 years told me that he didn’t love me and he wanted a divorce. There was no warning, no hint. Emotionally it was like falling into a pit. The pain of that moment and every moment to come was almost unbearable. So many times my mind cried out, “There is no way to live through this much pain.”
At that point of my life, it was as if I had stepped into a cold dark tunnel. The light was absent from either end. I could find no way to tell which way I had entered; I couldn’t find my way back. The darkness was so deep and so black, it swallowed me. It was so overwhelming mentally and emotionally that my mind couldn’t even search for a light.
I can remember as a child touring Linville Caverns. It was a dark, wet and scary place to a child. The path was lit, but at a mid point in the tour, to demonstrate just how truly dark it was, the guide shut off the lights. You couldn’t see your hand in front of you or the person standing beside you. It was the total absence of light. In that same kind of darkness for a year, I existed.
Early on, inside the tunnel, I stood frozen in place. I found myself afraid to move or to turn, paralyzed. My heart screamed for what had been, for what I knew. I felt so alone in that darkness. Somewhere in me I knew I was never really alone. Standing terrified, in my pain and fear, I reached out for God. The second I reached for him, he grabbed me, he held me tight. Darkness still enveloped me, but there was someone there in the darkness with me, holding me.
From that moment, I clung to God and he held onto me. The pain was worse than I could have imagined, but he held me. He didn’t take away the pain, but he held me. I didn’t understand, but I held on to him. I couldn’t think of my future, I didn’t know what it might be. I was afraid of what it might be. For so long, I took tiny steps, scooting along the wall, looking for something unknown.
At some point, I became able to string thoughts together again. I assumed that I would go through this difficult period and then my husband would turn back to God and to me. I wanted God’s will and I knew that a mended marriage had to be God’s will. I saw no other way that I could ever be whole or safe. This had to be God’s answer and resolution. There was no other outcome I could consider. I just had to hold on to God.
I waited on God to pull me from the darkness. I waited on God to do what I knew was his will. Step by step he led me. I followed, through sharp curves and into sudden unseen walls. God didn’t seem hurried to rescue me into the light I had known.
He would gently ask me, “Will you still hold on and trust me?” It only became darker.
There was no hint of light, so I kept holding God and each tiny step I would say, “Yes, Father I will trust you. I don’t know when you are going to rescue me. I don’t know when you will take me back and make it all what it once was. But, Father I will wait on you. I praise you.”
As the tunnel became darker and colder God continued to ask with each frightening step. “Will you trust me still as I lead you deeper into the unknown of the tunnel?”
I held on, he was all I found in the darkness.
When I look back at the tunnel, I am unsure how much I was holding on to God and how much was him holding onto me. I believe it was mostly the latter, since I had no strength of my own. I prayed for my rescue. I knew that was God’s will. It was up to me to hold on until he sent my rescue. It didn’t come.
The thought was constantly at the front of my consciousness, “This can’t be God’s will, so I know that I only have to hold on until he brings me to the end of the tunnel and back into the light.” I had complete faith that God would bring me back to what had been. I would wait for him.
Step by step, I kept getting farther from the light at the beginning. I could see no light from either end, but I knew I wasn’t turned back yet. I knew I would see the light from the beginning when I was. I trusted God; he would take me back there if I just held on to him. I knew that God wanted marriages to last, so he would eventually take me back. God created marriage and he would not allow mine to fail. I just had to have enough faith; right? God’s word reached out to me through the darkness. No other person or sounds could touch me. My only comfort came when I was reading my Bible. It mattered less what portion I read and more that it was open and I was reading. His peace washed over me through his words. I continued to wait for my rescue. I blindly continued taking the tiny steps as God held me and drew me. The pain and fear that could be no worse; became worse. It became darker and more alone and the pain intensified a hundred times. The pain, the darkness reached into my heart and became a part of me.
My 16 year old daughter had been emotionally crushed by losing her father and her family. The changes in her father shook her faith completely. But she turned on me.
Sunday night, January 9, 2005, she went to the police station and told them that I had abused her for 16 years. I faced social workers, a custody trial and a criminal trial. She moved in with her father, the father she had barely spoken to until that day. She moved into the apartment that she had refused to visit him at until that day. I endured 5 months before she finally told the truth and moved back with me. The pain during those 5 months was so intense that the rest seemed to pale and fade to the background.
Deeper still into the tunnel, I couldn’t think of steps to take. I had no more strength inside of me. My arms were weak and helplessly; I couldn’t even reach out to hold onto God. I felt him with me, but I had nothing left. I was empty.
Through the pain and the darkness, God whispered to me, “Will you trust me still? It may get better or it may become worse, I’ve promised you nothing except to hold you. Will you trust me still?”
God was all that was in the tunnel with me. I was incapable of talking to anyone. There was nothing to say, no words to express the pain. The walls in my dark tunnel were cold and slick with nothing to grab. “Yes, I trust you, but Father please, rescue me soon, I can’t hold on much longer.”
He held onto me, he didn’t answer, he didn’t hurry. The pain was more than I could bear. He carried the pain for me. He held on to me when I couldn’t hold on anymore. My arms hung feebly by my sides, I didn’t have the strength to hold on any longer.
I learned that it wasn’t about my ability to hold on to God; it was about his willingness to hold me. My past faded away, the light where I had come from was gone. There was nothing left of what I had known before. My future only held more fear, questions and more darkness. I couldn’t look forward and I could no longer look back.
Sometimes I cried out for God to pull me from the tunnel. Sometimes I would lie down and whimper, “Please Father, send my rescue, I can’t make it any farther. There is no way I can continue.”
God would say gently but firmly, “Stand up and hold on to me. I promise to hold you, but that is all I promise. You have my assurance that I will be here with you and never leave you.” He said, “Now take another step into the darkness. Do you fully trust me?”
I couldn’t think in words anymore, but I held on and took the next step as my answer. This journey with God continued for a little more than a year. Pure darkness; continually stretching to go back to the light that I was sure was God’s will for me. God was silent about what lay ahead. In my human understanding I just held to him and took my tiny, painful steps. I assumed that my future and my light were located back at the point where I first entered the tunnel. That was the only light I knew to seek. There could be nothing on the other side.
I constantly prayed, “God please take me back there. You alone are in control and I trust you. I’ll wait for you to take me back.” I only needed to have faith, and that was all I had left. Months went by, while I lived in the total darkness. Time didn’t exist. I moved tiny step by tiny step.
Somewhere in the tunnel, in a tiny place inside my mind, I began to think, “What if God doesn’t take me back?” I can’t picture anything that life will be if I step away from the past. I know that it is God's will for me to go back; God’s will is always for marriages to be kept together. I just have to wait and have faith. But, I began to consider, what if God isn’t taking me back? I couldn’t think of what life would be like.
I was so afraid and I couldn’t see an inch in front of me. But, God kept drawing me forward. He said, “You don’t need to understand or see ahead, just hold on and take each step as I lead you.” The darkness continued. God held onto me.
I still cried out for God. As I look back on that year I endured in the darkness, I now see where my lying down, clinging to the floor and the whimpering became less and less. The upright steps became more and more. God kept saying, “Another step… do you trust me no matter what?”
I said yes, with my steps.
God never took me back to the light I had known. Instead he gave me the strength through my complete dependence on him, to step out of the other end of the tunnel. I took my first step into the complete unknown, the place I couldn’t envision, but God was there.
As I stepped into that light, I realized that the light he brought me to so much brighter, but so much softer. When I came into the future that God had been drawing me to, I found that I was an entirely different woman than the woman that fell into that unexpected darkness. There was a peace that accompanied this light that contrasted sharply to the fear in the darkness of the tunnel.
As I stepped forward, God spoke, “You trusted me. Through pain and fear you praised me. Your mind and heart reached back for your beginning. You did not understand where I was leading you, but through faith you continued to follow. You have learned to trust my leading in the face of total fear”
In a gentle voice he continued to speak to my heart, “I still won’t show you the future. You have seen that no matter what the future is, as long as you hold tightly to me it will be the life that I have planned for you. You can have no better life than the one I choose for you. Continue to trust me, my child, don’t doubt me now. Take another step into the light I provide… now another… keep holding to me… don’t depend on yourself… another step this way. You don’t need to see what is ahead.”
The peace on this side was breathtaking. It was like stepping into a calmness that cannot be known here on earth. I didn’t know what lay ahead, but I no longer felt the need to know.
God spoke inside my heart, “My child, you have grown so much. You have learned so much. You have gained a wisdom and strength that I give only through pain. My child, you will never forget the darkness you endured. I have made it a part of you. I have allowed it to change you. The woman you are now through me has been given a gift of peace and contentment that the woman that entered the tunnel never knew.”
He cautioned, “You must not forget who held you. Never mistake the strength I have given you, for your own strength. I am providing a light on this side of the pain and darkness that dims any light that has been in your past. You are my beloved child and I will hold you whether you stay in the light or go through further darkness. Remember, with every step, whether in light or darkness, I will be beside you. When you cannot go on, I will carry you, you will rest again in my hand. You are my much loved child.”
The depth of my joy on this side of the darkness is so much deeper, when compared to the ‘happiness’ I thought I had on the other side. It is like comparing darkness to light. I never face doubts of whether God will take care of me. I don’t have to wonder if I can face whatever may come. With God holding me, I can face whatever he chooses to let me go through. I can praise him through pain and trials because I know that he is God and is fully able to choose my path. The joy and peace in that knowledge is immeasurable.
Could there be more pain in my future?
Probably.
Do I want to live in the darkness again?
No. But, I am not afraid of it. Right now my life is pure joy. My marriage is gone. My financial future is uncertain. My daughter deals with the pain of bad choices and painful memories. I have no man in my life and don’t have the promise of one. Life is very difficult on this side. It is lonely at times and sometimes still painful. But God chooses to hold me and carry me though.
My life is filled with a joy and peace that I can’t explain. God has given me a sweet gift that not everyone receives. Because I have seen and lived through the darkness, I now have the peace that God is always there and is truly sufficient. The gratitude that I feel when I think about the sorrow of the past year is purely a God thing. I thank God for the pain. I praise my Father for the deepest sorrow. Without it I could not be the woman that God has for me to be, the woman that can face an unknown future. In that tunnel, I lost my past, but I don’t need it anymore, because God alone holds my future.
Many times as he walks with me through each day, he stops to ask me, “Will you even now?”
I can answer without hesitation, “Yes, Father, I will trust you. Lead on.”




May 2004:The Beginning of Fear

I felt like I had just dozed off a minute before and now it was morning, the darkest, most frightening morning I had ever faced. My whole body was resisting mental alertness. My mind was trying to hide from the reality I was afraid of finding. How could I come awake and face what might be coming? It was like waking up inside of a dark shadow and not being able to see beyond the darkness. In that moment I did not want to see beyond the darkness.
Was it a death I was facing? Well, in a sense it was. It was the possible death of my way of life, my happiness, my love. It was the possible death of my marriage that I was terrified to face.
I looked over at my husband of almost 22 years, but there was a chasm between us. It his place was a man I didn’t know. In the bed that we had shared for so many years, I was waking up to find out if he was leaving or staying.
It is difficult to look back and try to figure out when everything reached the point that it had. A little more than 24 hours before, we were sitting on the sofa. I brought up that he had become more distant lately and tried to discuss it with him. As usual he told me that I was wrong, he was fine. He asked me “Are you taking your medicine?”
He always asked that to say that it was me and not him with the problem. For years it had been an effective way of shutting down a conversation. This time, I pressed more and told him that I needed him and I didn’t feel like he was there anymore.
He wouldn’t look at me, he just sat looking forward and said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
I didn’t understand, I said, “Do what?”
He said, “This whole thing, I don’t want to do this anymore.”
I became cold, and asked what he meant.
He said, “I just don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t deal with your problems anymore.” I asked, “What do you mean? Are you saying that you want to leave?”
He said, “I don’t know. I just can’t deal with your depression anymore. I’m tired of it.” My heart went so cold and fell into my stomach. I said, “What are you going to do?”
He said, “I don’t know.” But it was obvious that this was something that he had been thinking about for a while. I left the question hanging in the air. We went to bed, not touching; we were in a king size bed, but there was at least a mile between us.
The next day came and I walked mindlessly though it. I told my sister that my husband was thinking of leaving me because he was tired of my depression. I could barely get my mouth to form the words. I couldn’t explain any more. I didn’t understand myself.
Evening came and after Katie went to sleep; I tried again to talk to him again. He told me that he still didn’t know what he wanted to do.
I asked him and he said that there was no one else. Apparently, it was all me that was causing him to give up on our marriage. He said he just couldn’t pretend anymore. He said he would let me know the next day if he was staying or leaving me.
We went to bed together, but apart again; he slept. He had left me to wonder, to fear. I knew that pressing the question before he was ready to answer it would have been fool hearted. I had learned over the years of our marriage, that you don’t press a passive aggressive type for an answer. If you do, you will only get a backlash answer, but one they won’t back down from. So, I stepped back to wait on him.
I tried to pray. “God please don’t let my marriage end. Please God, make him to want to stay and work on any problems that we have. God, I will be a better wife, I will change and be a better person. I know I have not been perfect. I am selfish and don’t put my husband first all the time. But God, I really don’t understand, you know that over the past couple of years I have been closer to you than ever. You know the changes in me and you know that I am a better person and a better wife than I have ever been before; why now, God?
As I thought back over the past few years, it seemed the more I had tried to give and be unselfish, the more he showed what I now recognize as distain and disrespect. If I served him, he saw weakness and responded to it by looking down on me.
“God you have been teaching me about having a servant’s heart and prodding me to give. It is strange, but it seems that it has created in him a loss of respect for me with every act of kindness. God I don’t understand, but please let him stay.”
I pulled my mind back to the present and what faced me. I rolled over and looked at the man I had been waking up beside of for over 21 years. He was waking up; he looked angry, hard and bitter. He had a shell around him, more than I had ever encountered before. He laid there not saying anything, looking at the ceiling; ice cold. This cold silence I had dealt with before, some level of this I knew. I knew that he would never bring up a situation or a discussion, even if it is sitting between us bigger than life. We could have lain there for hours and he wouldn’t bring up the subject.
It was my place to do bring it up. I was required to ask. I can hardly speak, I am trying to hold back tears, my world was crumbling around me, but I had to say it out loud. “Have you decided what you are going to do?”
There, the question was out. It terrified me to say it out loud. My stomach felt like it was in my chest. My heart was pounding in my ears. I felt dizzy and couldn’t breathe. But the question was out now, no turning back.
“I’m leaving.” My life fell apart in only two little words.
“Please stay and we can work things out” I begged. “Whatever is bothering you we can fix,” I was crying, not uncontrollable yet. I tried to be calm; I was still hanging on for my life. “What about Katie? Please don’t leave us.”
“I don’t love you.” I didn’t think it could have hurt anymore, but it did.
I asked myself then,”How could I not have known? How could I not have seen? The questions were spinning in my head.
“We can pray about that. God will put the love back in your heart if you turn it over to him. I know for a fact that he will. You can’t just leave and give up on everything.”
I knew from experience that God would put love in your heart for someone. Many years ago I went through a period of about 5 years when I did not love my husband. I believe that you stay when you are married, so I prayed. Then I prayed more. When my feelings didn’t change I prayed more. Eventually God changed me and changed my heart and gave me a love for my husband and actually caused it to grow stronger over the years. I couldn’t understand not being willing to try.
“I never knew it was possible to fall out of love.” He actually had a tear in his eye when he said this. “I haven’t loved you for a long time.” He said.
The physical feelings that I had experienced up to that point intensified in that moment. I was still on the bed. I was on my knees and everything in my vision went white. I couldn’t see anything, just white wherever I looked. My hearing became distant as if my ears were closing. It felt like intense pressure inside of my head, inside of my entire body. It lasted for a couple of minutes.
He didn’t know or care what was happening to me. He just lay there, looking straight at the ceiling. My vision slowly returned and I became overwhelmed by a feeling of wanting to escape. To escape the reality I was facing, to escape the next few days ahead of me, to escape the humiliation that I was facing, when everyone knew that my husband had left me.
Oh God, how am I going to face my daughter with this? Her SATs are tomorrow. I was beyond thinking logically. Every minute was just another one to endure. At this point, my husband had distanced himself even further. He was beside me, but he wasn’t there. I needed someone, I couldn’t face this alone.
I picked up the phone and called my sister. I didn’t know what she could do, but I need someone. I told her, “He’s leaving, come down here.”
He was still lying in the bed beside me. At hearing this he got up and slipped on some pants and went downstairs. I heard my daughter waking up. I told her to go downstairs, I said that I was just having some problems and I would be down in a little while. “Oh God, how will I tell her? How do I tear her life apart?” Not one thought in my head was anything I could face. My sister came in the house and up the stairs to my room. She knew I was waiting until this morning for my answer. She walked past my husband sitting on the sofa with my daughter, with his arm protectively around her. Katie didn’t know what was happening. She was 15, she was intelligent, and she knew something was wrong. At this point, she thought her dad is protecting her, putting her first, taking care of her. The unspoken question that I didn’t know about yet was, “protecting her from whom?” His manner was telling her subtly that it was me he is protecting her from.
I couldn’t see that then. I was beyond upset, my emotions were out of control, I couldn’t deal with anything without tears. He must be protecting her from that? Right? Something I wouldn’t know for months; was that he went directly downstairs and called his mistress; right after he shattered our lives. All I knew was that I couldn’t get control of the crying. I was weak and broken. I thought, it was no wonder he didn’t love me.
I mentioned earlier that my husband said he was tired of dealing with my depression. I am bi-polar. I was diagnosed at 27 years old. I have admittedly been up and down since then. I have been through periods of depression when I didn’t want to be around people. I have been through times when I didn’t have the energy to deal with much of anything outside of “have to.” To clarify my illness; I have never been suicidal, I have never considered suicide, I have run a business, home schooled and raised and taken care of my daughter every day. I am not debilitated. I am and have been functional and in control of my life. Bi-polar illness isn’t me; it is just a condition that I deal with. I am defending myself here as I would find myself doing many, many times in the next year. I am an intelligent woman and an emotionally deep woman. I feel things deeply, then and now.
That morning, my sister, afraid of what I would do in this situation, and afraid because she couldn’t bring me under control emotionally, asked me to go to the hospital. I had never been through what I was going through then. I had never felt the things I was feeling. I was scared. I was scared to face what was to come and I was afraid of going to the hospital. One thing I was afraid of is that my husband would use a hospital visit against me to get custody of our 15 year old daughter. My sister talked to him and he made a promise that he would not use it against me if I went to the hospital. I believed. I trusted. I made a mistake. I was unwittingly walking into his trap.
At this point all I saw was what was right in front of me. I was the one that was being left. I was the one with problems that he couldn’t deal with. I was the one that was unloved and unlovable. I was the one that had driven my husband out of my life. I was the cause of our broken relationship and my daughter’s broken family. I was the one that wasn’t worth keeping. I knew that I was all of these, because my husband told me that I was. For so long I had listened to him when he explained my confused perception of reality. His view was once again my reality and I accepted his view without question.
I calmed down enough to go to my daughter and explained the best that I could that I was going to go to the hospital. I said I was having some problems and couldn’t deal with them without a doctor’s care. I made no mention of my husband’s decision. I told her to put the thoughts of me aside and go do her SAT tomorrow and not to worry, that it would all be ok.
My husband agreed to wait to tell her about the imminent separation until I came home. In truth, I still thought that he would change his mind and she would never have to know. Surely God wouldn’t make me go through a separation, and as Christians I felt sure we wouldn’t go as far as a divorce. It wasn’t God’s will. I felt secure in that. I just didn’t know how long or how hard it would be before we went back together, but I fully believed we would stay together. I kept hoping that it would all end and no one would have to know.
Unwittingly I was playing into my husband's, “dad and you against the world” picture that he was trying to get through to my daughter and had been for some time. I was taking ownership of the problem. I knew that I was causing her to have added stress before her SAT test, I was the one that couldn’t deal with life, and at this point I was the one turning her world upside down. I was the weak one. I was the broken one. I went to the hospital.
I had to go through the emergency room. They contacted my doctor and she was out of town until the next day. Without being there she couldn’t make a decision if I needed to be admitted or not, so she decided to take the safer route. On her orders they admitted me. The doctors in the emergency room assured me that if I checked in and decided that I didn’t need to be there all I had to do was to check myself out.
The mental health part of the hospital was in a separate building about ¼ mile or less from the main hospital. They would not let me ride with my sister and my mom. I had to go the short distance in a van that was used for transporting patients. My mom and my sister drove the ¼ mile and waited for me in the lobby. I was a mental patient at that point. I was terrified. Terrified to go to that hospital and terrified not to. I think a part of me was hoping they could somehow make it all go away or make me forget it for a while. I was still looking for an escape.
When I got to the lobby of the building they informed me that my mom and my sister could not go beyond the lobby. They couldn’t go with me inside. They also said that I could not check myself out for 72 hours even if I admitted myself. I stood up to leave. “That isn’t what they told me in the emergency room. They said it was voluntary and I could leave when I wanted.”
“Well, that isn’t the case.” The attendant told me.
I went to pieces again. I was so afraid of being there. I was so afraid of everything right then. I felt so helpless. Never in my life have I felt as powerless and helpless as I did at that moment. Out of fear, my mom and my sister talked me into checking in. They were scared too and thought it would be best for me. I left them crying in the lobby as the attendant led me through the door to the “mental hospital.”
Parts of the 72 hours are sketchy. I don’t know if I blocked some out that is too difficult to remember or if I just existed outside some of it and didn’t let the entire memories sink in to me. They led me down a hall and into another area. They turned a key in the lock and I was locked into the unit. I couldn’t leave. I didn’t know if I wanted to or not.
The nurse took me to an examination room and had me to remove my clothes and put on a gown. I answered questions about why I was there repeatedly. What had happened? Did I have thoughts of suicide? Had I been abused? I think I answered a million health questions and a million very personal questions. “No, I wasn’t thinking of suicide. No, no one had physically hurt me. I didn’t really know if I needed to be there or not, but I was afraid not to be.”
After the questioning, I had to stand in front of two nurses while one lowered my gown section by section and examined my body and took instant photos of my body parts. She looked at every inch of my body. When she came to my arm she said, “These bruises are a handprint. Did someone do this to you?”
I explained that no, I just bruise really easily. She didn’t believe me. She was adamant; she put her hand and fingers over the bruises to show me that it had to be a hand that did it.
I told her that I agreed it looks like a hand, but that it wasn’t. I still don’t know where the bruises came from, just as I don’t know where the 10+ bruises on my arms and legs come from right now. She said, “Ok.”, but she made it clear that she didn’t believe me. She said it in a tone that meant, if you won’t tell the truth and help yourself, I can’t help you. And she went back to her inspection, her invasion.
To have your body examined that closely was excruciatingly painful mentally. It was such a violation, but a violation for which I had signed up. I put myself in this position, in this room, in this hospital.
The nurse with the camera, took me next to a tall counter at the nurse’s station. The next nurse went through everything that I had with me. My sister had packed me a bag and I had my purse. They took everything that was sharp or could possibly hurt someone, or I guess myself. It was like watching a scene from a movie where they go through someone’s possessions. She looked up at me with each item as if I were trying to sneak the nail file or Tylenol past her. She tossed each forbidden item aside and told me it wasn’t allowed. Breath freshener was a banned item.
After the photos and the searches, I was led to my room with one bed, one dresser. It was thankfully private. The bath was shared, but my room was my own. The mirror over the sink was not even made of glass and it gave me a distorted view of my face. It wasn’t like a mirror mattered much in here. This private room is a place I was to spend as much time as they would let me over the next three days.
I don’t know if I asked when my family left or if my sister knew to pack it, but I had my Bible and my prayer journal. I don’t think they let me see anyone that evening, but they did let them bring me some things. I just know that in that place, my greatest need was my Bible. I know in my heart that I would not have survived the next days without it. I am not just saying that as a Christian phrase that is used so much, I literally could not have made it alone. God’s word became my refuge. I know that is a pat sounding statement, but it truly became the place that I would dwell. It was the only place my mind could rest.
A few hours later, going to the dining room that first evening was another shock to my sense of reality. We all were told to line up in the hall and to wait there like cattle at a gate, until someone came with the key to unlock the door. I was a prisoner waiting to be released to go to another room in the locked down building. We went through the doors that were immediately locked behind us. We were led into the dining room and those doors locked us inside. There was a claustrophobic feeling inside that big room. It wasn’t the size of the room; I just knew that I could not leave and that thought smothered me.
We were told to line up along the right side wall to get our food. I don’t remember what it was. I don’t remember eating it. I don’t remember if I ate any of it. I do remember that when I reached to pick up my silver ware, there were only plastic spoons there. It took a minute for it to sink in why there were no forks or knives. Protecting me from the other patients, or protecting me from myself, or protecting them from me? All of the above I guess?
I knew clearly in that moment that I didn’t belong there, but it was too late. I was there. I put myself there and I couldn’t change that. Not knowing what to expect, I thought that someone could help me cope with what I faced. I knew now that no one there could help me, but it was too late. I was there for 72 hours.
The conversation at the table was a mixture of medical terms for mental illnesses, medications, and patient's drinking, drug and sex lives. Some talked about violence, their own or other peoples. Many talked about cutting themselves or being a cutter as they called it. There was a strange kind of competitiveness among some of the patients that centered on who had tried to kill themselves the most or who took the strongest medications.
Out of place is an understatement of what I was feeling. Some of the patients asked me if I worked there. They were surprised that I was a patient too. I don’t know why. As bewildered as I felt I think I had to have looked like a crazy person, but for some reason they didn’t think I belonged there. I knew that I didn’t, but that was out of my control at that point.
When everyone was finished eating or when the allotted time had passed, we left as a group. They gave us permission to get up from our chairs and line up again to wait on the doors to be unlocked. We retraced our steps back through the doors and into the hall. Meals were the only time we saw this hall or the window that opened into the lobby where this nightmare had begun. As would happen three times a day until I left, I walked again into unit and the doors locked behind me. Once again I felt less than human, being trapped inside like an animal.
It became apparent to me very quickly that I had little in common with most of the other patients. There was so much hopelessness and despair in most of them. Many had gone through this time and again. They couldn’t see ahead to any help from their personal mental prisons. I was no better than them, but I was somehow different. I was not without hope. I had Christ. There is nothing like facing the hopelessness and emptiness of other people’s lives to make you realize what you do have. My life was full of fear and everything I thought I knew was turning out to be untrue, but I was never alone there in that place.
This place had nothing to offer me, but there was no changing my circumstances. I knew I was to face three days there regardless. So, I turned to Christ, in an entirely new way. He truely became my Savior. I turned to my Bible; the book I had grew to love over the past few years was to mean more to me than ever. Every second that I was allowed to be alone in my room, I spent in God’s Word.
I was required to go to group classes about “self discovery” and “finding the good within us” and was only allowed a limited amount of time each day in my room alone. I obediently went to the classes, but I took my Bible and sat with it open on my lap, reading. There was nothing that these classes or psychologists could give me. They could make me be there, but I didn’t have to take in what they were saying. With my Bible there in front of me I was no longer trapped. God’s word was the only place I needed to look for answers. In spite of what the psychologists were saying, there was nothing inside of me that I needed to reach for, except Christ.
When I was allowed to spend time alone, I wrote in my prayer journal. For many years I have written many of my prayers as a way of focusing better on Christ and as a record to look back on to see the answers to my prayers that I might have missed otherwise. One of the many prayers that I wrote in my journal at that time was this:
Father,
You alone know the pain I am in. You alone know my future. Please send me comfort. Please work a miracle in Jeff’s life. Help me to understand. Hold me in your arms Father. Hold Katie while she goes through the next couple of days. And God, help her after we tell her. Please stop Jeff from telling her without me.
Holy Spirit please breathe the prayer that I can’t think to pray. God, I praise You because you are all seeing and all knowing. I praise you because when I am in distress and have no words, you hear my needs. I praise you that you have promised that all things work together for them that love the Lord.
I love you Lord, my Mighty God. Please give me sleep tonight,
in Christ name, Amen
While I was in the required group classes, I was also outside of the group, escaping into Christ’s words. I found strength, I found love, I found comfort, I found the ability to face tomorrow. Everything I needed was right there. Being in that place, as horrible as it was, gave me the time, the incentive and the inclination to search in Christ for my needs.
I sometimes talked openly in the groups, about what was happening in my life and about God. I knew that most of the people around me did not know Christ by the way they talked and most weren’t interested. But a few I found a connection with, and interest in what I was talking about. Most of the patient’s lives were so empty, I had to reach beyond myself and let them know that they could have hope.
I was searching myself over those three days. I was listening to God. I faced that I had not been a perfect wife. I married three days after I turned 18. I would have probably been a better wife if I were older when we married. For much of the early years I was selfish in nature. There were plenty of areas over the almost 22 year marriage that I could have done better.
I could get irritable at times, especially when I was young and running my father’s business. It was high stress and it affected me. I didn’t know how to turn my stresses over to God when I was younger. I didn’t understand about giving more than you receive in the early years.
I was a better wife the last years of my marriage, but because of my husband’s own problems he didn’t see it until it was too late.
My feelings run deep and I have a hard time setting them aside. I am a communicator. I need to talk things out and not hold them inside. What I didn’t understand at the time was that I had chosen a passive aggressive man to marry. I didn’t know the term for it for many years. I just came to know the pattern well. He wouldn’t or couldn’t discuss problems. If he got angry, he usually told me that he wasn’t. I was wrong. But I could see his temples move rhythmically as he gritted his teeth, a telltale sign that he was angry and holding in his emotions.
I could never understand being upset or angry with someone and not telling them. How else can problems be fixed? What I didn’t understand for a long time was that in the family he was raised in, it is better to not bring up problems, not to talk about things. If problems or disagreements were mentioned, it was in a sideswipe, snide kind of way. There was one point in their lives when his father was angry at his mother for months because she pushed him to go to work. She was angry at him because he wouldn’t go to work and she had to carry them financially.
The way his mother dealt with it was to go to her family and complain about her problems with her husband to them. It turned them against her husband and lowered their opinion of him, but it did nothing to solve the problems. They in turn would call Jeff to tell him he needed to do something to get his dad to work. Of course he never brought it up to his dad.
His father would deal with his anger by going to his son, my husband, to talk about his mother to him. He then had to listen to how unhappy his father was in his marriage and about all of their problems. My husband hated this, but true to family form, he never told his dad it bothered him to be the confidant.
When his mother and father were together, the problems were never discussed. They would make cutting remarks about the cooking, the housekeeping, the clothes, the painting, the plumbing or whatever else was there as an irritant. To add to the passivity, most of the cutting remarks were paired with a honey or sweetie and spoken through gritted teeth. It would have been humorous if it wasn’t sad. This is where my husband learned his communication skills, in his parent’s house.
Now pair this deeply emotional communicator, with this denial of feelings, passive-aggressive man. When there was a problem or question in our marriage, I always would go straight to the point to try to resolve it as soon as possible. There were problems and issues that came up over the years. It was over 21 years to the point where we were; we had overcome a lot of tough things, or I thought we had.
Some of the issues we dealt with from early on in our marriage were hard for me to get past, but I believed completely in my vows, for better or worse. During the 5 years that I knew that I did not love him, I never considered leaving. I was a Christian, I was married, and that was how I planned to stay.
I didn’t do a good job of putting the problems he had out of my mind. I could leave them and not bring them up, but much of it haunted me and affected me. There were problems that he had of a sexual nature that were damaging to our marriage and to me emotionally.
The first came about 5 years into our marriage. I don’t remember what led up to the revelation, but I remember everything else about it. For some reason we were sitting in a parked car outside of a store. It was where the old Kmart was at that time. It wasn’t after hours, but it was night time, it was dark. He told me about something of a sexual nature from his past. It rocked me, but for better or worse. I dealt with it and tried to wipe away the visual image it left.
This was a sexual encounter with a family member when he was a teen. It was in his mind a forced act, but as he explained it, I saw it more as a coerced act. I was done as a trade for a ride to see his girlfriend. He had a choice.
Even harder to deal was the next part he told me of a situation with a neighborhood boy that was 6 years younger than him. My husband was 15 at the time. He explained the situation as a mutual exploration between kids. I tried to accept it as that, but as hard as I tried I could never see it that way. I wanted to be able to see it as kids playing around; I would have if the age had been closer; but it wasn’t. One was 15 and one was 9.
It is very difficult to visualize your husband in this situation, but I dealt with it as well as I knew how. So many times I saw this in my head, so many times I thought of this other boy who was younger than my husband, and wondered how he saw it and how it affected him later in his life. This was someone that I knew, someone I went to church with when I was younger, so it was easy to have a visual image in my mind. But, God says to love and forgive, so I tried to live with it and prayed for God to remove the images and feelings I had about this.
About 5 years later, he added into my mind another encounter from his teen years. It was an even more abnormal sexual encounter. It was something else to carry in my mind, to haunt me.
I knew he was my husband. I knew in God’s eyes I had married for better or worse, so I prayed. I prayed God help me to love him. “God please help me to stop seeing the visual images that all of this brings to mind”, I prayed.
The moments that these images would hit my mind the worst seemed to be in the bedroom. I prayed through so many nights in order to make love to my husband. While I waited for him to come to bed, I prayed. While we made love I prayed. Prayer and sex went together for me. When I couldn’t get these images out of my head and sex didn’t go well, it was because I had a problem. I constantly felt guilty when we had problems in bed.
Gradually, God helped me to put this aside most of the time and go on with my marriage. I think this is where I began to learn to compartmentalize things in my mind and in my heart. I had to carry these images with me, but it was my place as a wife to put it aside and love my husband.
It seemed ever 5 -7 years a new revelation would come. I would just get to the place where I felt like I could move forward and then something new would come into our marriage. I was never allowed to discuss any of these things after the day he revealed them. If I tried to talk to him about it or about how I felt about it later, I was throwing it up to him and holding it over him. He would tell me about it and then it was mine to deal with on my own. It wasn’t his problem or our problem, it was my problem.
The last revelation from my husband that I dealt with was about 6 or 7 years before. We had had a particularly romantic time during a weekend at the beach. Things were the best they had ever been. It had been a wonderful weekend, or so I thought. I felt that I had been able to put the ghosts of the past to rest and embrace my marriage and my husband in a new way. God was working inside of me to make me a better wife.
About a month later I came home from shopping. My husband was sitting in the basement, in the dark. He told me he had something to tell me. My heart rose up in my chest, it was pounding. The same feeling of impending doom that I had faced many other times was there inside me. “God, help me face this. God what could it be now?”
I sat down beside him and he told me that on the way home from the weekend at the beach he had stopped at an adult bookstore and went into one of the booths and watched a pornographic movie. I was sick, I was scared and I was humiliated. After I asked, he admitted this wasn’t the first time. This was something he admitted to doing 5 or 6 times before.
He was a married, Christian man and he was in a booth in the back of an adult book store watching a dirty movie and all that implies. Because I couldn’t understand any of this, I asked him a lot of questions that night. Was he a homosexual? Had he ever touched our daughter? Had he been to a prostitute? Questions you should never have to ask your husband. Mostly I tried to get him to tell me, why? He couldn’t. It seemed to be an obsession and was never related to what was happening in our sex life. He also admitted to buying pornographic magazines. I didn’t understand this anymore than I had understood the previous revelations. “God, how do I get past this one? How do I deal with the loss of trust?”
I was married, I had no choice; for better or worse…oh God, this is I hope worst. I prayed and I forgave, and I moved on with my marriage. But, now the mental pictures in my head were even worse, but prayer got me through it. The image of him in that little room and what he was doing there was an image that I could not completely erase. Prayer and love and prayer and sex continued to go hand in hand for me.
Something I learned through the years was that through diligent prayer, God was capable of putting mental images into the back of your mind. He could take hard, bitter, dark memories and make them a distant memory. While he didn’t take away the memory, He would make it less attached to emotions so the pain would gradually go away. I did not realize how much this was going to mean to me over the next year. What I had been through over the years had well prepared me to deal with what was to come.
As for what was to come, back at the mental hospital. . .I was there for 3 days. I had the opportunity to talk to several patients there and show them where their hope was. I talked to a few that said they were Christian, but had wondered away from God as they became more mentally ill, or maybe grew more mentally ill as they wondered away from God. It was impossible to know which led to the other.
I was surprised at how many were willing to hear about God. I left a Bible with a patient that asked Christ into their lives that night. I still had my Bible when I got home. I think the one I gave away was one of my husbands, I don’t know how I got it at the hospital, but I had it there to give.
God used my time in that place to prepare me. I found my strength. I found myself and who I was in Christ. I found my God on a deeper level than ever before. I stopped resenting the time I had to spend there and I began to see what God had done with the time. I left, capable of handling whatever came my way. I was broken, I was in a million pieces, I was in pain, I was excruciatingly unhappy; but I had God’s joy and peace.
It wasn’t that any of the pain became less. I still had so much to face and I knew it. The change was in me and my heart and my being prepared to deal with my future. That is when I learned to difference in happiness and joy. It was a long time before I was happy again, but from that moment on I have never lived a minute without joy.
I had dealt with the worst… I thought. My husband contacted a lawyer and had me served with separation papers while I was in the hospital. In a show of feigned concern, he had his lawyer to contact my doctor first to see if I could “handle” it then. My doctor told her that what he had already done was the problem and serving papers would be no problem. She told them, “Send it, she can handle it.”
He brought Katie to see me and gave me a letter before he left. In the letter that my husband gave me, he said again that he didn’t love me. He told me what a horrible person I was, and what a horrible wife I had been. It said that his last 21 years had been hell.
He said in his letter that he was always a kind, gentle and loving man and that I had walked all over him. He had no faults and I had them all. It was so opposite to what he had said and done for 21 years.
He said he was going to take the camper and stay 2 weeks somewhere to decide exactly what he wanted to do. He told me I should take Katie on the trip that we had planned together.
He was hard, cold and bitter. Nothing made sense. He wouldn’t or couldn’t explain why or what he was angry about. I didn’t understand how this person was the same man that had sat with me on the sofa and rubbed my feet at night. I just didn’t understand. To be honest I still don’t. I don’t understand how that once he said he wanted a divorce, suddenly he was angry and we hadn’t had an argument. He just went from not angry to pure hate. It just permeated his entire being; ice cold, hard and angry.
My doctor brought me the separation papers and she read the letter he had given me. She assured me that the emotions I was having were normal emotions anyone would have in this situation. I had become so unsure of what was normal and what wasn’t with my emotions that I wasn’t sure if it was “ok” to feel what I was feeling. She said that bi-polar illness wasn’t complicating my emotions. I was handling it better than could be expected in her opinion. She counted faith as the reason for that.
Having visitors at that hospital, having my daughter see me there was beyond humiliating, beyond painful. My mom and dad came. My sister and her husband came. Several pastors came including my cousin who was a pastor. It was so hard to face people and to see what having to see me there was doing to my family.
I hold a small odd, kind of funny memory about my mom during one visitation. Here she was dealing with seeing her daughter go through her marriage crashing, committing herself to a mental hospital and not knowing what would face me in a day or two. She was to say the least, having a difficult time emotionally. Her and dad came to visit me on the second day, which was the first time I was allowed visitors.
The way visitation was set up, was that we, the mental patients were ushered at the time, into the dining room. The whole process was like mealtime, the lining up against the wall; waiting for the door to be unlocked and then being locked into the dining room was the same. I had found out the day before and at breakfast and lunch that day that the dining room was always freezing cold. I prepared this for this trip to the dining room by wrapping myself in the blanket from my bed. There was a window into the lobby where my parents stood watching us pass by while waiting to be brought into the locked dining room to visit.
They stood at this window watching a group of mental patients walk through a locked corridor, trying to get a glimpse of their daughter. I walked by, wrapped from neck to feet in my blanket as it trailed behind me on the floor, and stuck out my fingers and waved with my still blanketed arm. My mom fell apart. I must have very much looked the part of the crazy person at that moment. I had not considered the picture I would make to them when I had determined that I wasn’t going to freeze anymore and came sliding down that hall like the Peanut’s character, Linus. It became a humorous visual memory for me, not as funny for my mom.
Through this 3 day experience God humbled me, He let me face the deepest fear, the deepest shame, the deepest pain I could imagine up to that point. When I checked in, all I could see and feel was my own pain. After a short time there I faced my blessings; what I had instead of what I was losing. It didn’t make it easy to bear, but it made it possible to bear. All I had to do was look around me and see and talk to people that were lost, that had no light to focus on, no shelter from their own storm. Some were so deeply buried in their problems that all they could see was their own self.
I found out quickly that to turn all of your focus on yourself will create a very narrow and troubled person. I felt like I had received a lifetime of education about myself and about God in just a few days. Oh God, I was blessed. I had God to a degree I had never had Him before. He was inches from my face every moment. My whole being was aware of His presence at every second. My tiniest movements were in response to his leading. He stepped each step in front of me. I got through the next days, weeks and months by stepping into the footprints that He made for me just seconds before.
Most of the people around me were alone. They talked about drugs, sex and medication and their illnesses constantly. They talked about cutting themselves and puncturing themselves. They talked about suicide. They didn’t have anything else. They didn’t have anyone else. I had Christ. I knew the true and deeper meaning of the phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Another prayer I prayed in my prayer journal near the end of my stay showed me feeling more hope, more peace:

Heavenly Father,
A card that I got from my Mom & Dad said:
You are a child of God.
He made you.
He loves you.
And he will not forsake you…
That I know for sure.
God, that hits close to the heart. I have no doubts that you made me and you love me. Holy Father, most of all I KNOW that you won’t forsake me. I praise you oh God. I lift you up Mighty Savior. You are my King Jesus. Emmanuel, Redeemer, you are my Lord of All. I praise you that all the battles have been won with your resurrection. We have nothing to fear. I praise you as my Lord, I praise you that you will watch over and care for Katie. God if he leaves me, I praise you that you will be there. You will not forsake us no matter who else does. God please touch Jeff in a strong undeniable way. God please let your will be done. I want him back with counseling, but I only want your will. In Christ name, Amen.
My life was no smoother, nothing in my life was solved and I still faced the loss of my marriage, my husband and everything in my life that I loved and found comfort in, but in God I knew I was going to survive.
Seventy-two hours was the requirement for staying in a mental hospital. I was released half a day before that. I went home, scared to death, but ready to face what I had to. I had to tell my daughter what was happening. Ironically my husband and I had a romantic trip planned for the next weekend. We had gone away together 3 months before and had been planning another trip. I had to deal with canceling reservations or figuring out what to do. But that was just one of a long line of things I had to figure out.
First, my daughter… my mind screamed at what I had to do. I still was hoping that God would just change things and make it all go away. I went home to face my life.




His Anger Became Who He Was...

I came home. Katie had been staying at my mother’s. Since we live beside my mother, Katie saw me come in and she returned home. It was time to face what I had to do. I sat down on the sofa and Jeff sat on the ottoman. While I struggled to find the words to shatter my daughter’s life, her dad sat there without a word. She was 15 and it was my job to destroy her peace of mind, her world. Looking back now, I am amazed at the cowardice in him. He wanted to leave, he wanted a divorce and he wanted a new life. This was all about what he wanted, but as had always been the case when it came to any parenting, he waited for me to handle it. He was silent, but he was rhythmically working his jaw. He was seething, but he said nothing. I told my daughter that her dad didn’t want to be married. I told her that he might be moving out, but he hadn’t decided that for sure. I didn’t tell her yet about the separation papers that told a different story. I stuck to what I had to tell her then. I said that he was going away for a couple of weeks in the camper.
There were no gentle words to explain it. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, she bolted. She ran out of the house, got into the car and headed out of the drive. We followed behind her in the other vehicle, and she turned into my sister’s driveway. Gina came outside and Katie ran to her. She was crying uncontrollable and holding onto her. I didn’t know at that time if she was angry at me or her dad. It didn’t take long to know. We both moved toward her and when she saw her dad in her peripheral vision she turned on him and screamed, “Get away from me!” She knew then what the past few days had been about and she understood. She knew that the “you and me against the world” had all been an act.
He was leaving me, but in Katie’s heart he was leaving her too. That moment did more damage to her and more broke in her then than I even knew at the time. Katie went home with me and her dad drove her car back home. The rest of that day is a blank in my mind. I don’t know if all three of us stayed in the house or if Katie stayed at my mom’s. I don’t know where I slept or where he slept. My heart and mind were still at the place where Katie’s heart broke. The next day, while her dad was at work, Katie and I packed. We left for 4 days in Pigeon Forge. We talked about it and it was the best way we saw to deal with things. The cabin was booked. I didn’t want Katie watching her father pack his things and leave, so we left that day for a log cabin searching for peace.
The weekend was probably the best way for Katie and me to start to deal with things. It was such a horrible time in our lives. We were both scared and sad. We couldn’t put any of it out of our minds, but were together and we were in a peaceful place. We talked about things but neither of us understood and there wasn’t a lot to say. We were on hold about whether he was staying or going so we had no decisions to make. She kept saying, “I don’t see how someone can go from only arguing about taking out the trash sometimes, to being so angry and wanting a divorce.” I couldn’t explain it to her. I was equally confused at how that transition could happen.
We both dreaded returning to the reality of our lives every day of our 4 days. During our “vacation” her dad called her several times and tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t talk to him. She wanted nothing to do with him and he was hurt and confused by her rejection. The day before we came back, I told him that we would come back early on Friday afternoon, so he could see Katie before he left. He seemed to be glad and was hoping she would talk to him. He said he would be there when we came home to see her. He was still ice cold to me, but I hoped that he and Katie could begin to mend some of the damage. I told her that her dad was waiting to leave for his trip until he saw her. I wanted her to know that no matter what happened in our marriage that she still had a father that loved her and valued their relationship.
When we came home early Friday, he had taken the camper and gone. I made sure to get her home in time, but he had left early. He hadn’t seen his daughter in 4 days, she was in severe emotional pain and confused, but he couldn’t spare a minute. He was gone. He was to return in 2 weeks and tell us what his plans were. He was driving back and forth to work during the week. He was 3 miles from our house at the shop. We passed his truck every time we went out. He didn’t try to see Katie.
Was he really going to leave? He had us and our lives on hold as he would so many times after that. I know now that it was a way of having control. It fit with the “plan” that he laid out in the letter he sent to me when I was in the hospital. He had informed me that he would be taking the camper and going away for 2 weeks. He said he had taken $3000 out of Katie’s college fund. He said he and would let us know his plans when he returned. This was one of many times to come that he put us in a pattern of waiting on his decisions.
Something I didn’t know for many months was that he was taking another woman with him. The amazing thing was that he had truly convinced himself that he was flawless, gentle and perfect and I was evil. He was a victim, a role he would come to wallow in over the next year and beyond.
More that I didn’t know until later, was that he had been treated for 6 months for depression. He had the pills filled at a different pharmacy so I wouldn’t know. To this day I don’t know why that was a secret, but it was one of many. I assume that if he admitted that he had problems with depression, then it might not be as easy to put it all on me and blame my depression. He might have to admit that he wasn’t perfect. When we came home at the end of our weekend, we came home to a closet with clothes emptied out. Most everything else was still there, implying he might be returning? Everything in the closet that he didn't want to take was thrown on the floor or left tossed on a shelf. I shut the closet door and closed the drawers. We lived through the rest of the two weeks somehow. I don’t remember much, except continuing life as normal as possible. I couldn’t break down in front of Katie. I had to be strong for her.
Again, I sought God. I spent any free minutes in my Bible, sometimes many hours a day. Katie continued to go to her homeschool classes on Mondays in Asheville, and we continued to homeschool. It was just a matter of going through the motions, our lives were in limbo. Someone else was in control and we couldn't look ahead and there was no point in looking back. The two weeks passed. I got a call from my husband, he was headed home and wanted to talk to me without Katie there. I sent her to my mother’s against her protest. It was the first time of many to come when she felt angry and felt like she had no control of what was also her life. I couldn’t change that. He came in the house, cold as had become his nature. He sat down and just waited; waited for me to ask. “What are you going to do?”
He said, “I want a divorce.”
I asked him then again, “Is there someone else?”
“No.” he said, cold and hard as usual.
I kept my voice as calm and soft as I could, “Have you been drinking?” Something he had never done in his adult life. I didn’t smell it or see signs of it. I don’t know why it hit my mind to ask. But it did.
He said, “Yes, for 7 months.” I thought it so strange to know immediately that it was 7 months that he had drank. Normally you would expect an estimate of a few months, but no, the answer was 7 months. Why would you count that up ahead of time? Later I counted back to a business trip to Las Vegas that corresponded to the 7 months. I can only assume that all this began at that time. The man I was looking at; talking to, was not my husband. It was him, but he wasn’t the man I had been married to. It didn’t matter; I was trying to hold on to my life. I asked him then to please stay and work it out. I said “Please think about Katie and what this will do to her.” He paused, and turned to look at me for the first time since he came in; his eyes were cold and hard. He said, “If I do, it would only be for Katie and not you.” He said it as hard and cutting as possible. It was almost a hiss. Then in what had become his pattern, he put us on hold again. He said he would be back in one hour and tell me if he would stay or not. Looking back through the clarity that time gives, I see now that he was playing out a scene, relishing the drama. It was as if he had rehearsed his words and attitudes in his mind and was on a stage. There was nothing real in him. Katie saw him leave and came home. I told her he was coming back in an hour and would tell us if he would stay or not. She was angry, I was confused and broken. We waited. Two hours later he came into the house. Katie was sitting in the floor working on a school project. I was sitting on the sofa. He opened the door and stomped across the room, slammed his keys down on the bar and turned to leave. He didn’t look at either of us. Even his daughter didn’t exist to him, even though he hadn’t seen her for two weeks. He was fuming and angry. He was 100 time more angry than when he left. As he went out the door he yelled, “Get an attorney,” and he slammed the door. The windows rattled. No harsh words had been spoken either time except his. We had not fussed or argued. His anger was a part of him and had nothing to do with what went on around him. It was a tangible thing. I know now that he went to a bar and spent his time making his decision there while he drank. I didn’t know until later that he was on antidepressants, it seemed the antidepressants and the alcohol had altered him into someone we didn’t know. But at that point, I didn’t know about the antidepressants, and I didn’t know about the woman, so I continued to look inside myself for what had caused his deepening anger. All I could do was pray. A page from my prayer journal…

Holy Father, Holy Spirit, Holy Son,
Psalms 63:1 Oh God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; My whole body longs for you, in this parched and weary land where there is no water. Amen
Father, I know you are holding me up. I know without you I would be broken now. You give me your perfect love, so, I am able to love.
God right now I want you to be with Katie. She is hurting at least as much as me. God she is young and has a harder time understanding. I admit that I don’t fully understand, but I know it is all about sin and separation from you. I know that this marriage can only work if Jeff gives his heart back to you, for that God I pray.
Please send someone to Jeff that can get through to the blocked up part of him. God please send your Holy Spirit to stay beside him and around him every minute of every day. God please break him and put him on his knees.
God, Katie has so many hopes and plans for this summer. Please don’t allow this to overshadow everything. Help her to put her trust in you and let you carry her through. God help me to be an example of grace, mercy and meekness as well as an example of love.
Father, please continue to give me strength to bear what I must bear God. Jeff says he doesn’t love me anymore. Please help me continue to love him and let him see and feel your love as well as mine through me. God I am so far from perfect that it scares me. I feel like Jeff wants me to be perfect. I know I can’t come close. Father, please help him to have a more realistic idea of a wife. But Father I do know there are areas that I can do better. Please help me to have the humility to change myself. I know I can only do it through you.
Jeff- Reach in to Jeff’s heart and stir it so that he won’t be satisfied without you. Break down the walls he has been building so long. God if there is anything I need to say or do please guide me.
Thank you for your love and for giving me strength. Please guide my heart, my tongue and my body over the next weeks, In Christ Name, Amen




God Had Spent Years Preparing Me For What I Was to Face...

When I look back at the years leading up to this point, I can see where God had been preparing me for what I would have to deal over the next year. I didn’t understand some of the things that God had required of me over the previous few years. Most of the preparation began with time I had on my hands, two years before I became separated. Katie was enrolled on Mondays in homeschool classes in Asheville. I drove her there around 8:00 and picked her up at 2:00, which left me with a 5 hour block of time to fill each week. At first I went shopping, and saw a few movies, but after a week or two that lost its glitter and I found myself just wandering around. Katie had been on a mission trip a month before and had become very interested in helping homeless people. I had picked up easy open cans of food, crackers, drink boxes, spoons, forks, and lunch bags a few weeks before. We also had some booklets that were the book of Luke. With these Katie was going to make up lunch bags for the homeless and give them out. So, these things were in the trunk of my car by coincidence, definitely not something in which I planned to be involved. One Monday in August, I found myself in the Asheville Kmart parking lot. I had nothing to do, and nothing to0 shop for. As I drove into the parking lot, my eye was drawn toward the end of the building, to what appeared to be a homeless man on a bus bench. I felt God nudging me, he said, "Take him the food."
A perfect chance to obey God without question…I didn’t have much doubt that it was God that was speaking to me. But, instead of just obeying, I got into a long conversation with God. It went something like this; “I don’t know for sure if he is homeless… What if he is just waiting for a bus? He might be insulted… He is really far away from the entrance; it might be dangerous to walk down there…”
God was silent; he had already told me what he wanted me to do.
“Ok… well… I want to be sure, so I will go into the store and shop and if he is still here when I come out, I will do it.” I stalled. I parked the car, went into the store and walked the aisles. I didn’t see anything on the shelves, I didn’t buy anything. I couldn’t focus on anything around me. My heart was pounding. Finally, I left the store empty-handed. As I stepped out of the store, with fear and dread, I looked to my left and way down away from the entrance sat the same homeless man on the same bench.
Surely then I rushed to obey?
Round two…”God, I have to bag that food. There is not much chance he will still be there after I bag it…BUT… if he is, I will go to him. THEN I will know that you really mean for me to.” As if there was any question. So…I opened my trunk, filled lunch bags with Beenie Weenies, canned soups with easy open tops, crackers, raisins, a fork, a spoon and a gospel of Luke. I looked around the trunk lid and there he sat just as before. I took my time and moved slowly. I shut the trunk, took the bag of food into the car with me and sat there shaking and talking to God in my head. “God, I didn’t plan to pass out any of this food. I am not good at stuff like this. Wouldn’t it be better to wait and let Katie do it? She has met homeless people. She knows how to handle this kind of situation. Katie has a gift for this, I don’t.”
“You know that I am bi-polar and I don’t know if I should be doing something like this…I don’t know if I am capable of this or not. This could probably set me back”
The debate continued, “He probably doesn’t need it, he might just take advantage of me…. How do I know if he is really in need or just lazy?
To that question God seemed to say, “It doesn’t matter.”
I slowly gave in. “Ok… if you are sure that I should do this, I will drive to that end of the parking lot and IF he is still there, I will go.” I was giving God another chance to get me out of it.
As I drove to the other end of the parking lot a bus came and parked between the homeless man and myself. “Oh… God, maybe you didn’t mean for me to do it. See, he was waiting on that bus. Good thing I waited God. See, he is probably going to be on that bus when it pulls away. But, if he is still on the bench I will do it.”
Slowly, the bus pulled forward, revealing the same man sitting on the same bench, all alone, just like when God told me to go the first time. “God, I know that a lot of these people choose to live this way and it isn’t right to give to them unless I know they are in need. I’m supposed to be a good steward of your money God. He will probably just take advantage of me.”
As clear to my heart as if he had spoken the words aloud, God said, “Yes, he probably will. Do it anyway. Let him take advantage of you. I said to go. Trust Me.”
If I could have come up with more stalls I probably would have, but I was out of excuses. I was shaking. I got out of my car, took the bag of food and I walked up to him. I would like to say I had some eloquent speech prepared and I sat down and shared the gospel with him and he accepted Christ on the spot. I would like to say that, but that isn’t what happened. I walked up to him and said, “Do you need food?”
He asked a question that really threw me. He asked what kind of food it was.
I wondered what did it matter what kind of food if you were hungry. I told him everything that was in the bag. He thought for a minute and said “Yes, I can use it.”
I gave him the bag, and told him there was a little book in there that he might want to read, and I said, “Jesus loves you.” Original I know. It was as much as I could get out. I went back to my car, trying to walk slowly away rather than running to the safety of my car. I drove away and sat in the corner of the parking lot crying. I don’t know why. Overwhelmed? Humbled? I don’t know.
This was the first of many times I was to meet this particular homeless man. We developed a friendship and I learned a lot about him. He took bags of food some weeks, other weeks he said he didn’t need it. I found out that he only took what he knew he could use fairly quickly because he didn’t want to carry extra weight. He carried about 5 grocery bags around all the time full of his clothes, food and everything else he owned. Weight was a constant consideration for him. I came to know this man well over the next months. His name was Michael. He had been homeless for 17 years. He had some family, a brother, but they didn’t know where he was and he had no interest in finding them. He was a veteran.
Michael had a master’s degree; something I didn’t expect. It didn’t fit in with my image of a homeless person. He was an extremely intelligent man that was actually pretty difficult to keep up with in conversations about history, current events, politics, and religion. He had been raised Catholic, and been to Catholic school for several years. I told him of my life with Jesus and what it meant to me. I talked to him about Jesus and my relationship with Him and he told me about the Catholic beliefs he was raised with. He was willing to listen. I learned to listen too. I learned about his Catholic beliefs, more about politics than I knew before even though much of his views were skewed with bitterness toward the ‘establishment’. The police were viewed with a great deal of skepticism by most homeless people. Michael was bitter about some policeman that had came to the place where they sleep, or more exact, camp. He said he had slashed everyone’s blankets so they would have nothing to cover up with at night. The police wanted nothing more than to have them out of their area, out of their city.
I learned how Michael washed his clothes in the river, and that he looked for washing detergent that is made especially for the cold water. We talked for hours over the next few months, with me always trying to bring the conversation back to Christ. He knew and understood the gospel. He knew who Christ was, but he still held to so much of the “extra religious trappings” that got in the way of him accepting Christ.
As I got to know him, I knew that Michael had some mental or emotional problems that led to his homelessness, although he was very intelligent and well read. He with some of the homeless in that area went to the library to read newspapers and magazines. Michael, I knew, was more of a “well to do” kind of homeless, if that makes any sense. He was extremely poor by our standards. He usually had a few dollars on him that someone had given him and he spent only what he had to. He felt sometimes that a person who was trying to give him money was looking down on him, not everyone, just some people. He would tell them that he didn’t need their money and walk away. If he felt they were giving it to genuinely help, he would accept it. He was ultra sensitive to people’s motives especially with money. He had a kind of strange pride. I never felt led to give him money, so I never offered. I continued to meet him at the same place every week. He would tell me when I was late and I would have to explain why. He came to expect me to be there on Mondays. I met other homeless people in that area. Sometimes they were sitting with Michael, and sometimes I drove around looking for them. After the exchange with God over Michael, it seems that it would be easy to trust God and obey without question, doesn’t it? But, no, it wasn't.
Many times, I had the same struggle with God before I would obey. “God, she doesn’t even look homeless. Yes, her sign says, ‘will work for food’, but I have tried to give jobs to these people in my hometown, so I know they won’t work. They don’t want a job, they want a hand out. She is just taking advantage of people. She might take advantage of me”
God would answer, “Yes, probably. Do it anyway. Let her take advantage of you. It is what I require of you.”
I didn’t know why. I knew God was telling me to do this, so… I would give out a bag of food with a gospel of Luke inside. I wasn’t giving away money, just food and God’s word. At the worst they would leave it lying and someone else might read it. Once I handed it to them, it was up to God what happened next.
I gradually found it easier to talk to people. I talked to some that said they were Christian. I learned that most of them say, "God Bless You," when you give them something. At first I took that as a sign that they were saved, but as person after person said “God Bless You.” I learned that it is sometimes just what they have learned to say to get the right response from people.
I didn’t tell anyone I was talking to homeless people, for a couple of reasons; first, because I knew my family would be worried and upset that I was out by myself meeting them. And because I am a firm believer in not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing, I didn't really know how to say what I was doing without going against my belief that you do as much as possible in secret. I think a third reason is that I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t understand why myself. It was just something I had to do.
Looking back, I realize now that I knew that it would be scorned by my husband. I didn’t know how to talk to him about something spiritual anymore. It hadn't been a language we spoke for many years. He just turned to cold at the mention of Jesus or God. I knew that it would be considered a stupid thing to be spending my time on in his eyes. I didn’t bring it up until I had to. It is really cold in Asheville in the winter. Michael had warm gloves and a warm coat. He said he didn’t need any other ones. I knew better than to try to give him anything he didn’t agree to. His gloves looked rough but were intact. I asked him about his food and if he ever had hot food.
He said he used to, but someone stole his stove. He described a little propane camp stove like one that we had at home. I told him I would bring him one and a propane canister next week. He said that would be ok, he had some room in one of his grocery bags. He had actually added a couple of bags to his “luggage set” now that it was colder. The next week I brought him a camp stove and a canister of propane. I asked him if he would want a back pack to carry his stuff around it. He said yes, but it had to be one that wouldn’t hurt his back carrying it. So I found a hiking backpack that was pretty large and had a place to hang some bags if he needed to. It was made for carrying a lot for a distance so I thought it would probably work well. He seemed to like it and put his stuff into it right away. He declined to take any food at that time. I pressed a little more than usual with, “Are you sure?” I asked it gently, because I knew not to push him and I didn't want to offend him. But it was winter and getting colder and I didn’t want him to be hungry.
He patiently took out the food he had to show me that he had enough for now. He showed me every can of food he had. He was smiling, not angry. I asked was there anything else he needed that he didn’t have money for. I wasn't offering money, just to buy something if he needed it. He thought for a minute and said he said he could use some coffee. I told him I had some coffee that I would bring the next week. We discussed what type of coffee pot he had so I would know what kind to bring. It just happened that my husband received regular shipments of Gevalia coffee, but he didn’t drink very much so we had a stockpile. I had finally told my husband about Michael the week I bought the backpack because I couldn’t spend that amount of money without telling him. He didn’t seem to mind or care and didn’t ask any questions.
I got my stuff together on Sunday night to go to Asheville the next day. I got out a box of coffee and started grinding it. He asked what I was doing and I told him.
What he said was a glimpse into his heart condition. It bothered me, but as a single incident I didn’t see if for what it was; a cold, hard heart. He got angry and said, “Gevalia coffee for a homeless man? Go to the store and buy him some cheap coffee; don’t waste that. He won’t know the difference” I was thrown; I said that I wasn’t going to go buy cheap coffee to give to someone when we had good coffee on hand. We probably had 10 boxes in the freezer at that time. I was amazed at his thinking, but it still didn’t tell me the whole picture of where he was spiritually.
On Monday, I was a little later and I had to drive around a little while to find Michael. He was on a different bench across the road. When I got to him, another man was there, as there was about half the time. I gave the other man a bag of food and some gloves and gave Michael the coffee.
He said, “I read about this kind of coffee, it is suppose to be some of the best in the world.” He was happy with it and actually excited. The brand wasn’t the point to me, if I had Maxwell House at home I would have shared that and if I had a store brand I would have shared that. What we had was Gevalia.
An entry in my prayer journal around this time…
Gracious Heavenly Father,
You are love. You are all I need. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayers. It is so unbelievable that you, all powerful God, all knowing Gd, who can see me for what I really am, will hear and answer my pleas. God I am so unworthy to come before you much less to ask things of you. But in your amazing grace and through your Son, you hear me and answer me. Please forgive me for being so short sighted. So many times I see only as far as my world. Please open my eyes to more around me and guide me in what you require me to do. I love you Father God. I worship you, Holy One. All I am and all I have, is already yours. I lay it all at your feet and ask you to use it to further your kingdom. Please use me, God. As Katie finishes her school year, my time in Asheville will end. Please open my eyes and heart to where you want me. I will go where you lead. Amen

Through meeting Michael and other homeless people, God continued to soften my heart. He taught me to put aside my own comfort with a situation and my own rights. I just didn't know how important that lesson would become a couple years later.


A Deeper Relationship With God

During this same year I discovered the book, A Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren. It opened my understanding of God and of my relationship to Him. Also Henry Blackabe’s book, On Mission With God were paramount in deepening my relationship with God. It was as if He was drawing me to Him like he never had before. My faith was growing and deepening and it was changing my heart. I had a hunger for time with God that I had never had before.
The first test of my new found trust and closeness to my Savior was to come in February of 2004. I found out that the business that my husband had been running was in deep financial trouble. I knew business wasn’t good, but until this time he had not revealed to me that it was near bankruptcy. He kept it from me “for my own good.” It reached the point that we had to borrow money or shut down so he told me. I knew that there was no way for the company to go bankrupt and not personally face bankruptcy as well.
I was terrified at first, but I spent a lot of time praying about it and I came to believe that God would protect us. I had faced what Henry Blackabe refers to as a ‘crisis of belief”. When it all came down around me, would I turn to God and trust him or would I crumble in my fear. I was afraid, but I prayed about how to handle the debt and God gave me peace of mind about borrowing money to keep the company going. We owed people already, it wasn't like it was putting us into more debt, just putting the debt into one place. I looked at the books and the orders and could see that it was possible to pull the company out. So, we signed papers to secure a new loan to cover the losses. I didn’t know that there was reason at this time not to trust that my husband would do all he could to keep the company going and pay back the money. I trusted blindly. I assumed he had done his best up until then and would continue to work to save the business. The money just absorbed into the company and disappeared. Within a month the bills were just as far behind and it was as if we had never added any money. I still assumed that he was doing the best he could.
I had an unexplainable peace during this time that God was in control of my life. I didn’t know how things were going to turn out financially, but I had a peace that could only come from God. I tried talking to my husband about his seeming distance from God and what it was doing to our relationship. It seemed that we suddenly didn’t have anything in common. My desire was a closer relationship with God and that was in direct opposition to what he was looking for in life. Sometime in that year I felt under conviction to stop listening to music other than Christian music. My daughter and my husband were in the room and I mentioned that I had made that commitment for myself.
He answered me in what could only be described as a sneer, “I hope you don’t expect me to do that!”
I told him, no that it was a commitment for me and no one else, but I told Katie then that I hoped she would consider making the same commitment. He snickered as if it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard and rolled his eyes to Katie. A look passed between them. It was only one of several times that I felt a distain coming toward me from both of them. It was like there was something I was missing. I brushed it off as me just being sensitive again. But it left an impression on my heart.
I desperately wanted to rebuild something between us, something in common. Sometime during that year, I suggested that we do the Purpose Driven Life book or the On Mission With God book together. God had used them to make such an impact on me that I felt if he would just see what I saw, he would come back to God, and we would have something to talk about. He seemed disinterested, but said ok. I bought another copy of the book and we both read the first chapter separately and then sat down together to discuss it. It was like talking to a wall. He either sat staring forward or saying nothing, looking completely empty or he would throw in a comment that began with “I think he is wrong about…”and stating a comment that was devoid of feeling or emotion. It was like you would discuss a financial paper rather than a book about your relationship with God. There was nothing there. Empty.
I prayed all the more, I thought the pressure he was under was weighing him down, so I continued to ask God to help him and comfort him. I never brought up the book again. Only God could reach him I knew, and I assumed that God would draw him back soon. God wouldn’t let one of his children wander forever. He would draw him back. My husband had been a deacon in our church and a Gideon. Years before, this point he had made a shelf and put it on the wall at our business. Over it he put a sign that said, Free Take One, and loaded it with small Bibles. He had been generous with the church and with missions. I just couldn’t see this man wandering away, God would draw him back. It was just a matter of when.


Just Hold On

After Katie and I came back from Pigeon Forge, and he was gone in the camper "making up his mind," I fully believed that I just had to hold on until God brought him back. Through all of it I really believed that it would all change and he would have to come home and go back to being the man he had been. It was God’s will for marriages to stay together, so how could it not work out? As far as I could see I just had to keep praying and waiting. It was up to me to pray enough... or so I thought…

Father,
This has been the longest day. I has been so full of pain that I just want it to end. But, then tomorrow will likely be the same. Heavenly Father, please don’t let me continue to have such loneliness. Please, I beg you Father to cause this to work out before the end of the week. I know you will give me strength to go through whatever I must and for your will to be done, I will endure whatever. But even though I know this, I ask you still Father, to bring Jeff back sooner. Please, please, reach his soul tonight and bring him back to you. It is so terrible and painful to know that the person I have always turned to when things are the darkest, not only isn’t there for me, he is the one bringing the darkness. I thought he loved me. He hid so well, how can I ever trust what he says if he does come back?
God please don’t let him be in the camper sleeping peacefully. Please stir his thoughts so he can’t sleep and make him think about you and his Christian life and me and Katie. Don’t let him be peacefully avoiding it all.
I want him here to hold me. It seems so long since his arms have held me. I almost feel pain from their absence.
Oh God, I just want to pour out my heart to you. I don’t understand how he can go all day without calling or at least calling Katie. Does he not feel the heavy burden of loneliness? God please don’t let him leave the camper there, if he does it is an easy place for him to run. Maybe we should sell it?
God, what if we go to counseling and he still feels he doesn’t love me? What will I do? Please lead me in every word and deed. Help me not to open my mouth with wrong remarks or negative speech.
God you can change Jeff, I can’t. I only need to concern myself with changing me. Please make me aware of a ministry I can do now. Doing nothing is driving me crazy. Let my idle time be yours so that you will be glorified and the kingdom will be glorified.
God, I keep wondering about all the times he has been angry and I didn’t know it. The thought of being held by him, kissing him and making love to him all the time he didn’t love me. God if he comes back that part will probably be the same. Help me to overcome the feelings of being used and the shame, and to be with Jeff to show him my love. I will turn to you Lord, to fill my heart until he loves me again. God please let him love me again. Find his love for me buried beneath his love for you. Soften his hear, completely break him down in order to reach him.
Thank you Father, thank you don’t get tired of listening even if I go on and on. My thoughts just flow like this and I want to share all that I think and feel with you. I could not endure all of this sorrow if I did not have you. Thank you for being my Savior and my friend. Amen

Up until everything fell apart, there had been periodic problems, but aside from those our marriage had been reasonably happy. We made a point to go away together at least 4 or 5 times a year. We rarely ever argued.
After he left, I heard from so many people that we were the one marriage that they never thought could end. Most people were as shocked as I was. In a period of about 2-3 years he went from being a man that wanted me to be happy and wanted the best for me to a man who hated me. He had never been very open with his emotions, but he was attentive most of the time. He would always rub my feet in the morning to wake me. I remember now, noticing that the last few months he would “forget” to say he loved me when we hung up. He would leave in the morning without saying goodbye. He would just be gone. I knew how tough things were at work, so I assumed it was just being distracted by work. He switched back and forth the last year or two from quietly attentive to passive and closed. When he closed down it was with a hard attitude. It was a wall and one that I couldn’t get through.
He began to be cutting and hateful more and more. It was like he had mood swings. Always though, it was my imagination and my “depression” that made me think he was angry.
I didn’t know until I had some time to think about it, and some space away from my marriage, but everything I did wrong, or that my husband perceived to be wrong was blamed on my “depression.” I never had a normal bad day. I never had a just a couple days of PMS, I never just felt afraid, guilty, or angry without it being perceived as a symptom of my “illness.”
Every human on earth has many different emotions every day, every hour, but I wasn’t allowed those normal emotions. Every up or down, every good mood, every bad mood was my bi-polar illness. This is said with the clarity that comes from time to consider the situation later. I did not see it at the time, but now several years later I see and understand more about what happened to me. Every part of my personality was reduced to being a symptom of bi-polar. I was not really a person, just a bundle of wrong emotional responses and had been for a long time. Ever negative emotion that I felt coming from him was also my bi-polar.
Something else that I didn't know until a long time later was that my husband had been taking my daughter to the library and looking up books and also bought books on Bi-polar disorder. He had been picking out the most severe cases and showing them to her. He had been telling her that I might hurt her and he showed her all the worst cases of bi-polar illness. He told her to keep this a secret and she did. I only found this out after the divorce. That was the exchanged glances that I saw once in a while between them.
My husband was never upset, never angry, never hateful or never negative. If I thought he was, I was wrong. If it seemed that way to me, when his voice would become hard and cutting, or when he said things to hurt me, that was my skewed perception brought on by my “bi-polar.”
I was never just grouchy and irritable and selfishly taking it out on those who love me. I was in the middle of a “manic or depressive” phase. All my rights to true emotions were revoked. I was told that my perception was off so often, especially when it came to my husband’s speech or behavior that I came to believe it. Every feeling, every thought I had, was filtered through “my illness.”
I didn’t realize it until later, but I had allowed my husband to assume control of my moods, my outlook, my health, my self-perception. What I saw and felt was always tempered by what I was told I should be seeing and feeling. I had lost ownership of my own thoughts, moods and emotions. I allowed someone else to take control of that; of me.
I felt loved and protected because he seemed to want to help me with my “problems.” I willingly gave into that feeling of love and protection. It seemed right to allow my husband to care for me by helping me through my emotions and feelings. I came to depend on him. I remember early in our marriage, his complaint ironically was that I didn’t depend on him, didn’t need him. I was too independent.
Now years later, I know that no one can carry responsibility for another person’s moods, happiness or feelings. We can take these to God to carry, but not to another person. People can have self centered motives and as much as we would like to think that that person cares for us enough to handle it, the self focused part of that person will eventually turn the focus inward.
“I wish she would lean on me.” turns to “Why can’t she deal with her emotions for herself?” and “Why does she turn to me all the time, I can’t take the pressure?” Inevitably it comes down to “Why me?”
Control taken on by someone else will eventually lead to resentment in that person and will lead to a weakness in ourselves.” You can’t give up control to someone that doesn’t want it, but that doesn’t mean they will want to keep it, no matter how hard they tried to get you to give it up to them.
Something really strange happened about a year and a half before he left. Looking back it must have been the beginning of his problems I just didn’t realize it then. He had been cold and hateful a lot for about a year. He was sometimes not hateful, just quiet. He got to the point that he didn’t really talk much. Then he would switch to being cold and hateful in the space of a moment. As usual when I tried to talk to him about it, I was mistaken. He was not hateful. I was wrong. I was depressed. I was seeing it all wrong. I asked over and over for months what was going on. He always said nothing, and told me that I was “not level,” referring to the bi–polar disorder. Or he would ask if I had taken my medication.
As usual, anything I thought was happening was only in my mind. Finally one day when I asked why he was treating me like that, and I didn’t ask it nicely, I pressed the issue. It snapped something in him and he turned on me and looked at me coldly and said, “I found a spot on our sheets.” That meant nothing to me and I said, “Ok?” He said in the same hard voice, “It was on the edge of the bed and I didn’t put it there.” Again I said, “Ok?” If he had a point he was going to have to come out with it and not just talk in riddles. I wasn’t getting it. Finally he came out and said in an accusing voice, “It was semen.” He was so angry and cold, but it sounded so crazy to me right then. “It was about a year ago.” He said.
I told him, “Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about and if it was there, it had to be yours, so what is your point?” It wasn’t something I felt compelled to explain or was even able to explain. This is something he said he saw a year ago. A spot on a sheet a year ago, I had no clue. He became calmer then and said he was sorry, but he said he thought I had been having an affair for a year. He started to cry.
I asked him how he could have gone a year, living with me and thinking that. And I also asked him if he thought I was having an affair for a year, why would he believe me now all of a sudden. I told him that if I was capable of an affair, surely I was capable of lying.
He answered that by my reaction that he knew that he had been wrong as soon as he saw my face. He told me then that he had been so convinced of it at the time that he had burned that set of sheets.
It all seemed so crazy to me, but it explained a lot. I asked him why he would have stayed for a year thinking I was having an affair. And why not just confront me?
He said that he didn’t want to let me go and that he was trying to win me back.
Dumbfounded I blurted out, “By being mean to me?”
He kind of looked sheepish and laughed. He answered that he had tried not to be, but that he just couldn’t help it at times. That explained the switching back and forth from nice to angry all the time. I told him that I didn’t know how he could be married to me for 20 years and not know me any better than that.
He said that he just never thought that he deserved me and that he always thought I should be with someone better and better looking. He had even decided who it was. The man that he thought I was having an affair with was his plant manager.
I asked him why, especially when I only saw this person once or twice a year? He explained that it was the best looking man he could think of and he thought it had to be him. He went on to tell me that he had been hateful to this man for a year. He had tried to get him to quit. He even confessed to taking a gun to work one time planning to confront him.
I should have probably seen how bad he had become then, but I was just glad he had finally been honest and thought we could now go back to normal. I told him that it was extremely insulting for him to think I would cheat.
He apologized over and over. It seemed that there had been a breakthrough and we could begin to rebuild. We planned a trip together and things seemed to be better than ever. We talked a lot more for a while and it really felt like our marriage was back to what it had once been and what it should be.
After a few months, the hatefulness returned off and on. It seemed that it had become a habit that he couldn’t get past. Several times when he was back to being cold and mean, I asked him, “Am I having an affair again?”
He would say no, he was fine. I was wrong, he was normal, it was me misinterpreting again. I don’t know if it had just become a way of talking to me that he couldn’t get past, a habit or if it was who he had become. Once again I was living with periods of coldness and aloofness punctuated by periods of loving attentiveness.
Again, if I questioned him, I was wrong, I was depressed, it was my imagination and he was just fine. It was all in my mind, all my bi-polar. Anytime he was hateful to me and I questioned him, he would ask me if I am taking my medication like I am suppose to, thereby ending the argument because once again I start to question my own perception. It was a very effective tool. This was a pattern for much of the next couple of years. It always ended in me feeling less than complete, less than emotionally whole, and just less in general.
I was a woman who had to constantly question my every thought and feeling. The man who loved me and lived with me for over 20 years surely knew me better than I knew myself. If he said I was depressed, unable to handle things and incapable of reasonable emotional responses then he had to be right. He loved me and only wanted me to be well, right?


His New Life

Two to three weeks into the separation I began to hear from people in the community, how he was saying his life was so wonderful. He was telling everyone how happy he was and that he hadn't been happy in 21 years.
He rented an apartment and bought expensive new furniture. He charged a motorcycle on a credit card. He threw out all his old clothes and bought new ones to fit his new image. He didn’t keep one piece of clothing from his life with me, I guess because I had bought them all.
He bought black leather chaps and a leather vest. He wore that outfit with his full face helmet into a customer's office to pick up a check. He didn't open the face shield.
He kept calling me and telling me that he might be coming home and then he would spend $300 on end tables for his new apartment. He would ask me to come to his apartment to see if the bedspread he bought matched the pictures that he had hung; all the while treating me as if he hated me.
But, still he called. He called almost every night because he didn't want to go to sleep alone, but he wouldn't come home. I was hearing from people all over the community that he was talking about me and saying that I was a horrible wife. He told people that I was crazy and that I was psychotic. But he would call me again when night came and stay on the phone for hours.
I knew what he was saying, bu I continued to talk to him when he called, hoping that if I showed him unconditional love that I could show him Christ and he would come back to God and to me. I prayed for God to make me able to love him no matter how he treated me or what he did to me. God answered those prayers. He was cruel to me but still God allowed me to continue to love him and try to make it work.
About 4 weeks after he left, he called me and told me that he was thinking of killing himself and was checking himself into the hospital. He was crying and he was angry and bitter. He told me if I told anyone including his parents, that he would run and I would never see him again. He told me to bring him some clothes and things to the hospital. He told me to go buy them. I did what he told me to do. The human side of me, felt the audacity that it took to call me while treating me that way. I didn't miss it, but I had to push that aside and pray for God to help me to continue to love and to help him.
When I got there he was sitting in the lobby waiting. He looked at me so cold and hard. He turned on me again and told me again that I better not tell anyone. I promised him that I wouldn’t. When he walked away to go inside the place where he would be locked in, I reached out and put my hand on his arm. He jerked his arm away and sneered, “Don’t touch me!” And he walked away.
He had called me. He told me and no one else he was there. He turned to me. But he still was cold and hateful to me. It was impossible to understand where his mind was.



The Business Dropped In My Lap

I had not worked at our company in many years. I started the business, but when I had Katie I quit working to stay home with her and my husband took over running the business. The morning after he checked in to the hospital I had to go into to handle the business. I had never worked with the people that were there now. I told the office manager and the plant manager that Jeff was sick and would be out for a few days. I said that he would be back, but I would be there in the meantime until he was better. I believed what I said.
I was still homeschooling Katie; I had no idea that I would be continuing at the shop after he got out of the hospital. I began going over the books and when I saw all of what we owed, I was in shock. I had no idea that it had reached that point. We were well over $300,000 in debt, closer to $400,000. I discovered business cards for bankruptcy lawyers that he had contacted. He had no intention of trying to save the business.
It was obvious that he hadn’t been keeping up with any of the orders, the two managers had been handling all of that end. At that time I didn’t know what he had been doing, but it became obvious that he had spent very little time dealing with business. Beginning that first morning, I had to take calls from creditors. Many of them were telling me that they couldn’t get in touch with Jeff and he hadn't returned calls for months.
I told them that he was sick and that he would be back soon. I promised them that I would do what I could to get them paid. I was still trying to get a complete picture of what we owed, so I didn’t commit to a time frame yet. Jeff was kept at the hospital for a little more than a week. He called me and said he wasn’t able to work yet, and told me that I would have to continue to work at the company. He said he started crying and shaking all over every time he considered coming to the shop. I was willing to do whatever I had to for him to get well and be back to the person that he had been. If the stress of the company and the debt was a threat to his health, I was willing to carry it.
He did manage to come to the shop in the dark of night, when he wouldn’t be seen. He came the night that he checked out of the hospital. He braved his fear of the business to come in and wipe out pages on the computer, before I could see them. I had not had the time to check everything on the computer by that time. He of course said he was never there. What he didn't know was that erasing the history on a computer does not erase all traces of where you have been. I saw where he had logged on and that changes were made to documents with the time they were made. He cleared the history thinking that would clear his tracks on the internet. He didn’t know that the computer saved every web page in another file.
When I went in the next morning it was obvious that he had been in the computer. When I asked about it and he lied about being there, I began to look further into the computer to find out what he was hiding. He had been on several singles dating sites, he had other email accounts than the one at the company, he had been on numerous pornography sites. I still hoped that he was just toying with these things and that there wasn’t a relationship with someone else. Without proof I wouldn’t want to accept that he was unfaithful. I knew I was looking at least at good probability. I wasn’t stupid, and I wasn’t naive, but I was holding on for my life and I couldn’t afford to make assumptions.
I kept coming in daily, still holding on to the belief that it was temporary. I worked with Katie on her school work in the evening and tried to handle business during the day. In the first months I had to carry home the paperwork every day and work late into the night just to keep a step ahead of the orders and balance out who we could pay each week.
After several weeks at the company, I had to call all of the creditors and tell them that he had some health problems. There were many that I had not talked to yet. I assured them that I was handling things temporarily. I had to ask for their trust and plead with them to give me more credit even though some of the accounts were months behind. I told them that I had no chance of paying them back if I shut down.
I had not been in the business directly for about 15 years, so a large part of every conversation began with me telling them who I was and why a wife thought she could step in and handle a business that was obviously in deep trouble. Some of them knew me from years before and knew that I had managed my dad’s company and also started this one. When I finally got across that I knew the furniture business inside and out, and had been raise in it, they were willing to take on more risk in the hope of being paid. I only hit a road block with one company. No matter how much I tried to explain the situation they wouldn’t work with me. They continued to demand payment right away. I didn’t have it. It wasn’t possible. They threatened to sue. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the company where his first affair was still working.
I continued to believe (or hope) that he was telling me the truth and wasn’t having an affair. I knew it was becoming less and less possible that he had not been unfaithful, but I wouldn’t look at anything less than proof. I had so many friends and family come to me and tell me that they had seen Jeff at this place or that place. They told me that they thought he was having an affair. People at our business told me about a woman that used to come to the plant and go into the office with him. Foolish or not, I told everyone not to tell me anything that was speculation. I asked them to only come to me if they knew for sure. I couldn’t make any decisions based on opinion or speculation. This was my life, my marriage. I knew that much of what I heard pointed to an affair, but it could also have been that it hadn’t gone as far as a sexual relationship yet. I could only deal with facts, not speculation. It was frustrating for my family because the facts looked pretty obvious and I wouldn’t hear them. It was kind of like if you have a family member lying in a coma and the doctors are saying that they were pretty sure there was no chance of recovery and wanting you to pull the plug. You have to know for sure.
They didn’t know that I had seen enough on his computer to know for myself that he had probably had an affair with a woman named Angela. I knew she worked at a temp agency that Jeff had used to hire employees. I knew that she had been to the shop numerous times even though she only worked in payroll. I knew these things, but I still did not know for sure that the relationship had gone as far as sex. I had to know for sure to make any decisions about my marriage. It made me appear to be a fool, but I couldn’t let pride make my decisions.
I did find out for sure many, many months later that the breakdown that put him into the hospital was when Angela broke off the relationship with him. Every day of my life had become a series of trials. I cannot even begin to explain what I felt every waking moment. The most intensely sad feelings I could even imagine. I was in so much pain it showed on my face. I could only turn to God and lean on Him every step. He carried me through each hour at the shop; he helped me to keep trying to repair my marriage, in the face of obvious failure; he carried me though the evenings when I was alone or with my daughter. He simply carried me through it all; I was beyond being able to handle any part of my life on my own.
My husband would call me almost every night and talk for hours. He wanted me to stay on the phone with him until he fell asleep. But, he didn’t want to be home. He was on what seemed to me to be excessive amounts of medication. He was drinking along with it. I tried to not condemn. I tried to just listen and be there. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and drive him away.
The next day if I talked to him, it was as if we had never talked the night before. He was cold and hard and filled with hate for me. But then he would call again most evenings. This went on for months. If he didn’t call some nights and I asked him why he didn’t, he flippantly said, “Oh, didn’t know I was supposed to.”
I learned to hold my tongue, to give love and not argue, to give love in the face of hate, to give love unconditionally. I could not do it, but through Christ I had the strength. He seemed to be getting a little better, a little less depressed. He said he still couldn't work. He could travel, he could ride around on his motorcycle, but he was unable to work. He had money because he weekly took the same salary that he had made before.



A Change of Heart?

My husband showed up at my door unexpectedly in early November and said that he wanted to make our marriage work. He said that he saw that he had been wrong and that he had quit drinking. He said that he realized that he still loved me. He said that he wasn’t ready to move back in yet that he still needed to get better mentally because he would be hard to live with. I told him that I didn’t think Katie would be ready for him to move back yet either. She needed time to adjust; she had a lot of anger toward him. He seemed somewhat back to the person that he had been years before. He seemed humble and broken. I praised God that he had brought him back to Him and to me. I thought this was the answer to all of my prayers. I was pretty sure of the things he had done, but I was ready to let it all go, forgive and begin to rebuild our marriage.
We were sitting on the sofa when Katie came home. I was in his arms and Katie walked past as if nothing were different.It was just like a flashback to when it was normal… until it hit her. I heard her footsteps stop as she reached the other room and realized what she saw. She walked back and said coldly, “What is going on here?” She was angry. I had told her numerous times that I was praying for my marriage to be healed. She didn’t agree, she didn’t understand. She had told me over and over that I was letting him run over me. She wasn't happy or relieved. Katie didn’t see this as an answer to prayer. I smiled and wiped tears away and told her that we were planning on getting back together. I thought all my prayers were answered and she would come to see that. I told her he had quit drinking, but he wasn’t moving in right away.
She asked the question that I had not even had a chance to ask yet. She was direct and cold. “Have you had an affair?” He wouldn’t look at her or at me, he looked at the floor. He answered, “Yes. Two.” He looked at me and said he was sorry.
She asked him who, and he told her who they were. One was Angela, the other I had not heard anything about until then. She walked out of the room. After he left, to say that she didn’t share my joy and relief would be an understatement. She told me that I was Biblically released from him and she didn’t think I should go back. I tried to make her understand that you don’t just give up on a 22 year marriage. I reminded her that I had prayed for this, for reconciliation, for my husband’s redemption. She was furious with me and made it clear.
I couldn’t get through. She wanted to know how I could forgive so quickly. I explained to her that I had begun to assume that he had had an affair before he told me and that I had already went through the process of forgiveness.
God had worked on me through these past months and I prayed thousands of times for God to help me to love my husband unconditionally. He answered that prayer. Jeff had been hateful. He had said horrible, verbally abusive things to me. He had cheated on me. He had humiliated me over and over. But somehow God had put love in my heart for him that didn’t depend on the circumstances; it didn’t depend on what I received in return. It was purely God. I moved forward, believing that he was sick with depression and would change back to who he once was when he became healthy. Over the next 5 weeks we spent time together when I wasn’t working. We spent some nights together.
He was still hateful and cold to me most of the time, but I thought it was temporary. He told me how he was going to be different this time in our marriage. He said he would make all the decisions. I kept silent. I would have agreed to anything at that point just to have my marriage back together. He told me that we would be living at the beach in two years. I kept silent. He said he didn’t believe in God and would not be going to church. He said it was all just foolishness. I kept silent. He was still hard and cold, but he blamed it on the medication he was taking.
He would go from just uncaring to mean and cruel in the space of a minute. When it came to sex he was just as cold. He made a point to be. He would be rough with me, trying to be as close to hurting me as he could without actually hurting me. He tried, and succeeded in making me feel like an object rather than a person. Immediately afterward, he would turn his back to me and face the wall and not speak to me. If I tried to touch him he would jerk away, much like he did at the hospital. I assumed when he got better, and turned back to God this would change also, so I dealt with it.
During the time we were working on going back together, He didn’t attempt to come back to the business. He insisted that he was too sick. He spent his days driving his motorcycle around and doing whatever he thought would make him happy. We still lived separate lives, so I never knew for sure what he was doing most of the time. I accepted whatever he wanted me to. I would live with whatever I had to if he would just come back. I wanted my marriage to work. I didn’t want to be divorced, and even though it was very difficult right then, I thought God would change it, if I was faithful enough in my prayers. It was all up to me to pray enough, pray right and accept whatever I had to accept.
We went through a strange, difficult Christmas. One incident sticks out in my mind at that time. We went together to pick out Katie’s Christmas present to the mall. An incident happened there and I couldn’t get the feeling that it gave me out of my mind or my heart. We were in a store looking around. He was strange acting as usual and still very cold. I tried to act like things were normal.
We ran into a woman that he knew, and that I had never met. He became animated and chatty. He was laughing loudly and acting completely different. This was nothing like the man I had been seeing for months. He kept talking to her and I was standing beside of him. She kept looking over at me. He ignored the looks. He saw the looks. He went on talking excitedly as if I wasn’t there. I didn’t know if it was a woman he had had an affair with or who it was to him. I wasn’t standing there silent any longer. I reached out my hand to her and said, “Hi, I’m Teresa, I’m his wife.” She said hi and at that point he told me her name, as if he just hadn’t thought to introduce us.
When she walked away, I asked him if she was the one he had the affair with. He said, “No!” hateful again and acting as if I was stupid to ask. He said she and her husband ran the bar that he had been going to. I remembered that she had said she hadn’t seen him in a while, so I took it from that he wasn’t going anymore.
When he didn’t introduce me it wasn’t an oversight. He was purposely dismissing me and putting me in my place by leaving me standing there. It was the same attitude that had made him walk several steps in front of me, always leaving me to follow. The attitude that made him slam doors in my face after he walked through first, and a million other little things he did to show his contempt.
Now it was different because he was supposed to be changing. He had said that he loved me again. But there was no love in his actions or words, ever. I still had clung to the hope that he would turn back to God if I continued to love him unconditionally. At that point, I began to consider for the first time that we may never go back together. Nothing in him was changing. He still didn't believe in God. He was still filled with bitterness and hate. I began to wonder if God wanted me to go back to him no matter what the situation was.
I only wanted God’s will for my life, but I began to realize that maybe I was only accepting what I assumed God’s will to be. I began to change my prayers. I began to pray for God to help me accept his will for my life, no matter what it was. I told God that I would accept his will if it was not to put my marriage back together. I still couldn’t imagine what my life would be if my marriage didn’t work, but for the first time I told God I would accept any outcome. I didn’t want to be divorced, but I trusted that whatever life God led me to he would make work for my good. I knew that I could only be whole living inside of God’s will.
I began asking God then, if it was not his will that my marriage survives, for him to begin pulling my heart away from my husband. I told God that only he knew what my future held and if it wasn’t a healed marriage, please take away the love that I had for him.
I had spent the weekend at his apartment and was there on the morning of December 29th. He had been cold and hard all weekend. We hadn’t fussed or argued, I had bit my tongue all weekend, still trying to accept the way he treated me as part of his illness. But, I had been able to see how he acted around other people enough that it was difficult to accept that he had no control of it.
Finally, the weekend was over. I felt guilty for being relieved to be going home. It had just been so difficult. The night before, he had told me that he didn’t believe what I believed about God. He said that he had become an atheist and he would never believe in God again. He said it was all silly to him now. I told him that God was a part of me and that I couldn’t live without being able to talk about him. He said just don’t expect him to change.
That last morning I said, “I want to ask you a question, and I need the truth.”He said, “Ok?”
I said, “If we go back together, can you promise to be faithful to me?”
His answer chilled me completely. He said flippantly, “Well, I wasn’t able to do it the first time, so I can’t promise to now.” And he walked away. He had become so used to my taking whatever he said, however he said it, that he thought this would be just another thing I would overlook.
I didn’t answer him then, he didn’t expect one. He thought it was just one more thing I would take silently. I did for that moment, I had to pray. I didn’t feel like it was my decision to make on my own. I went home and prayed. I told God that I would do whatever He wanted me to do and that I knew it would work out for my best. But I also told God that I didn’t want to go back under these circumstances.
God led me to a part in a book that I had been reading called, Love Must Be Tough. It was about standing up to your spouse in order to regain their respect. I knew then that I had to draw a line. I knew there was very little chance for us left, but I wrote a letter to him as the book suggested, to tell him that it was over. I don’t remember what I said exactly, but I told him that even a non Christian could promise to be faithful and I couldn’t go back with him if he couldn’t promise that. I left it to God to create a miracle out of the situation. I went to my pastor with my letter for guidance before I gave it to him. I wanted to do what was right in God’s eyes and I believe I was by doing this. I still held out a tiny hope that this might make him turn to God. I kept a little of the hope that something would put him on his knees.
While I was leaving the letter at his apartment, he was out on his motorcycle and had gone to my sister and brother-in-law’s coffee shop. I think he was trying to normalize things by going around my family again. They had not faced him until then. Only Alan saw him that day. He just chatted and tried to act normal. The last time he had saw Alan before this was the right before he moved out and he had told Alan that he wished I was dead.
When he got home and found my letter, he brought his wedding ring by the house and put it on a cork board in the kitchen. I wasn’t home, but he called me later and told me where to find it. A dramatic gesture, he was crying. He said he was sorry that he wasn’t able to make it work this time. He said it was his fault and he just wasn’t the man he used to be and probably never would be again. He was feeling sorry for himself. He was again the victim.
I was resolved and knew I was doing the right thing. I still did hope that the letter would shock him back to real life and to God. I kept praying. Without a complete turning to God there was no hope.
But for the moment, I had to find Katie and tell her. She had been so angry at me for saying I would go back. When I told her, she was angry all over again. I think the anger was at the feeling that she had no control. It wasn’t fair, I will admit that. It isn’t fair that her dad could be jerked in and out of her life by our decisions. It wasn’t fair that he could have been moving in when she didn’t want to live with him. But when he was no longer moving in, I think the only feeling was anger at having no control. There is nothing fair about divorce.



The Pain Fills All the Space Inside of You

Katie had been having a bad attitude toward me for sometimes. I think she saw me as weak and needy because I was willing to take things off of him rather than fight back. She was young and couldn’t see that as strength. She was angry, she was hurt, she was 16.
She had a boyfriend that she was spending way too much time with. That relationship had turned into a destructive one and I was trying to stop that. I watched her attitude worsen and I started keeping them apart a little more because I saw her changing.
I know that since my husband left, I had been inside of myself to some extent. I was trying to get by day by day and minute by minute. I was in my Bible much of the time or listening to praise music. I spent a lot of time in prayer and I sometimes think that maybe if I had focused more on Katie during that time and less on my own pain that things would not have happened as they did. I was with her all the time, but somehow maybe I still let her down.
Katie had been sleeping in my bed with me until that day. When I told her that her dad wasn’t coming back she said, “OK.” She looked at me with contempt and distain and walked away. I knew the look, but it was the first time I had seen if from her. She wouldn’t talk about it. She bottled up even more. She stopped sleeping in my bed. She just chilled toward me. I thought it would pass. It didn’t.
A few nights later she was in the basement talking on the phone to her boyfriend who was in college in Greensboro. She came upstairs. She was upset and told me that a girl at the college that she knew was threatening to kill herself and that she was driving there to talk to her. I told her that I would take her. She protested and said that the girl wouldn’t open up if I was there that she had to do it alone. This was just more of the constant drama that surrounded her boyfriend and now enclosed her life. His whole life was lies and drama and she was drawn into it. I told her that she was 16 and she was not driving to Greensboro at night. She said she could stay in the girl’s room that night and drive home the next day. I knew she wasn’t telling me the truth. I knew it was some kind of a game. I told her again that I would take her. She turned hateful and said, “I’m going, I have to do this.” I looked her square in the eye and said, “You will not tell me what you will do. You are a child, you are not an adult and you will do what you are told. You will not leave this house tonight. You need to remember that you are a child.”
She tried to stare me down and looked at me so cold. It was the first time she had ever acted like that and the first time I had ever had to talk to her like that. I knew she was lying and I called her on it, by saying I would take her.
Looking back, I know there was a breaking point right then. It was like I saw a decision in her eyes, but I didn’t know yet what it was about. Nine days after I wrote the letter, and a few nights after the standoff with Katie, it was Sunday night. Katie had gone to church with her boyfriend. He called at about 8:30 and asked if they could go out to eat before he brought her home. I said ok. It became 10:00, then 10:30. I called her phone and I called his. No answer.
I waited until 11:00. After calling again, I called Gina and told her I couldn’t find Katie. Gina and Alan came down to the house. I was getting really worried. I called the highway patrol to check if there had been any wrecks. Alan went out driving to see if he could see the car. I called the hospitals. Finally after midnight I called the police. I told them that my daughter was missing. They asked a few questions and said they would send someone out.
They never came. I waited an hour. I called again. They said they had run into something and that they were sending someone out now.
About 30 more minutes went by and a policeman showed up at my door. There was a woman with him in regular clothes. She introduced herself as a social worker. I invited them in, assuming that they always send a social worker out when a teenager is missing. She stood beside of me, the policeman sat across the room like he wasn’t involved. He was the one I had asked for; I thought he was there to find my daughter. I didn’t understand what was happening. She looked me in the face and said, “We have had reports that you have been abusing your daughter.” I have no idea what my face must have looked like. I heard her, but my question was still, “What?” She repeated it. My legs quit working and I slid down to the sofa. She sat down beside of me, watching me closely. I said, “Who would have said something like that?” She said, the obvious, “I can’t tell you that.” She started asking me questions. “Have you ever hit your daughter?” “No.” I said, “I spanked her as a child, but not since she was 10 years old.” Have you ever… a long list of things I was being accused of; pushed Katie down the stairs, twisted her arm, broke her shoulder, hit her with a bar stool, busted her lip, shoved her face into a dressing room door. On and on she questioned, looking at me like I was a liar and a child abuser. I answered “No.” to every question. I kept asking where she had heard this. Several of the incidents sounded like they had to have come from Katie herself. Only Katie was in the dressing room when she busted her nose against the door. I wasn’t even in there at the time, it had been months before. We had stopped on the way home from Asheville at a department store to buy her some clothes and while I was getting her another size shirt she hit her nose on the door and was bleeding when I got back. I had to use her shirt to stop the bleeding and buy her another shirt to put on. It was a real incident, just not as it was being told. How could anyone else have come up with these incidents whether or not I had done them? Only Katie could have said this. I kept asking her where Katie was, and was she ok. She wouldn’t answer that. I told her that these things sounded like things Katie would have to be saying, but that Katie didn’t lie and I didn’t think she would make up these things. I kept asking, did she know where Katie was and if she was ok? Finally she told me that Katie was at the police station and she was safe. I was relieved, but still so confused. I was in someone else's life.
She asked, “Did you bust your daughter’s lip by pushing her face against the tub?” She told me then that Katie had a busted lip that she had saw that night. Of course I said, “No.”
Gina had been sitting there silent until then, she said, “I was there when Katie busted her lip. It was a day or two before. She was getting the mail and when she got into the car she hit her lip on the top of the car. She was laughing about it. I saw it happen.”
The woman just looked at her and wrote something down. I was panicking. I didn’t know what to do or how to defend myself. I explained each incident she brought up. I could feel it all whirling around me and out of my control. It didn't matter what I said, I could tell she had already made up her mind.
My mind went to my husband. He knew what kind of mother I was. He would tell them, right? I called him and told him what was happening and asked if he would come and tell them that I have never hurt Katie. He lived here all her life until recently so he knew that I had never hurt her. I called him to protect me. He agreed to come. After more and more questions about what kind of abuse I had done to my daughter, my husband walked in the door. Didn’t knock, just walked in as usual. I was relieved… until I saw his face.
He was hard, cold and mean. I tried to tell him what was going on and he stood in the center of the room with everyone watching and held out his hand to shut me up. His feet were braced about shoulder width apart and he would reach out and extend his palm toward me as if to say, shut up, each time I tried to speak. I shut up. I was broken, I was crushed and I had nothing left. I shut up.
He never acknowledged me except by that gesture. He stood and told the social worker that he had suspected me of hitting Katie for years. He said that he thought that she had too many bruises and too many accidents.
I spoke up then and told him that if he thought I was hurting his daughter that he wasn’t much of a man or a father then to sit back and let it happen and not even ask me about it.
He ignored me. He told how Katie was afraid of me and how he had told her years ago to run to Gina’s if she was ever afraid. There was so much more of this kind of thing that I was to discover later. He had been instigating and feeding into this idea with Katie for several years, something else that I never knew.
After he finished, the social worker asked to talk to Gina and Alan outside, away from me. They went on the porch. She told them she wanted to give them a chance to tell her things with me not present.
While she was gone, I sat on the sofa. My husband sat on the fireplace and the policeman sat in the same chair he had taken when he first walked in. My husband started up a casual chat with the police officer. It was as if they were sitting in a waiting room somewhere passing the time.
I looked at him and said, “Again, I trusted you; again I am a fool.” He turned and gave me a look like he could kill me.
The policeman didn’t say a word, but the he sat up straighter and more forward in his chair as if he was ready for a fight to begin, as if I had any fight in me. They returned from the porch. The social worker went on to tell me that Katie was afraid to come home. She said I would beat her again. She said that Katie had been keeping a change of clothes at a friend’s house packed in case she had to run. More drama. I knew that had to do with the boyfriend and his parents. She said that Katie had been sleeping with her phone under her pillow for months because she was scared of what I might do. I told her that was really funny since, until a few days ago she had been sleeping with me and wouldn’t sleep by herself.
She ignored that just as she did everything I said. She never listened to one word. She said that Katie wouldn’t come home. She said that Katie would not stay with my Mom or Gina because they wouldn’t protect her from me. Katie had told them also that she couldn’t stay with her dad because he had a drinking problem. The social worker suggested that she stay with her boyfriend’s parents. I could tell this was Katie’s suggestion.
I said, no. And at least in this one thing, her father agreed. The social worker asked me if I thought Katie would be safe at her father’s house. I told her that he did drink, but that I didn’t think he would hurt her.
She told me to call Social Services the next day to talk to a regular social worker. She was only the emergency social worker and would only give her report to the one who was assigned to our case. She said I wasn’t to see Katie or call her. Jeff arranged to bring Katie the next day to the house to pick up some things while I was at work. To further enhance the drama of the situation, he asked for a police escort.
The next day, first thing, my mom and dad had to be told. Gina told them for me. I tried contacting Social Service, but they said that there had not been anyone assigned to our case yet. They told me to call the next day. I had no choice, but to go to the shop that day. I had to tell the managers what had happened before it hit the gossip lines. They were shocked since they had been around Katie and me. They did not seem to think there was any chance I was guilty of what she was telling. I didn’t know until later, but that day Katie went to her classes in Asheville and told the teachers there what she said was happening to her. I had no way of defending myself. Katie had always been a good child and I had taught her to speak well in public. She presented herself well. She seemed believable. I don’t know if they believed it or not. I assume they did.
Suddenly the pain of the divorce was a distant second and on the back burner. I had talked to my baby when she was still inside of me. I had held her every time she cried as a baby. When she was sick I took care of her. I could remember sitting in the doctor’s office when she was 4 months old and holding a mask over her face to help her breath during her first asthma attack. I remember crying through it the whole time while I held it. There were a million memories. I had homeschooled her from the first grade until that point in the 12th. I was there when she was seven years old and when I was blessed to lead her to Christ. The tea parties we had, the books we read, the pride I had in watching her grow into such a wonderful young woman. All those memories, all of the love I had poured into her. The pain of this was like cutting out my heart.
I knew then that no pain I ever go through would cut this deep. Death would be easier. I knew that Katie might never be able to face telling the truth. She would have to put herself into ridicule in order to get herself out of this corner that I felt like she had backed herself into.
God, I thought I was in pain before. There are no words to describe the pain. I still loved her just as much, I wasn’t angry. There was so much pain that there wasn’t any room for anger or any other emotion.
I just moved through the days like a robot. I had no choice but to function. One step after the other, I went through the days one by one, hour by hour. I called Social Service again and was given the name of my new social worker. Everything I found myself doing was something that I never thought could happen to me. I have a social worker. My child has been taken away. I am accused of child abuse. I am getting a divorce. It is like I am living someone else’s life, or someone else’s nightmare.
I tried calling the social worker and had to leave a message. It took me until the next day to get to talk to her and set up an appointment. It was 4 days since I had talked to or seen my child. The only communication that I had with her was when I walked in my house after they had came with the police escort and looked at the bar. There was her house key and the credit card that I had her keep for emergencies. It said it all. It said she never planned to come home. It said she was willing to follow through with the lies and the charade. It said it all. Her room was in the same shambles that it had been in for a while, but clothes and other things were missing. She had taken her computer and her school books among other stuff. I shut the door. I couldn’t go into the room. My closet was in that room. I couldn’t face the room to get my clothes. What clothes were in the laundry I had, the rest I did without or bought new ones. I could not open the door from that point on. The door stayed shut for 5 months.
My heart was broken completely. I had nothing that mattered in this life. I loved her with every fiber of my heart and soul. I still did. I had spent 10 years homeschooling her and making sure that she had the best chance to be the best that she could be. I had prayed over her since she was inside of me. I had nursed her for the first year of her life. I was the only one that ever took care of her when she was sick. I had loved her more than I believed any mother could love their child. To say I was in pain cannot begin to say what I felt. I no longer was the person I had been and I knew that I never would be again. But the nightmare went on. I’m writing, 5 years later and sitting here crying. The pain has gone to the back of my mind. I have forgiven her completely, I did immediately and I love her dearly, but the pain is still there.
We are very close as mother and daughter now, closer than most I think. But the scar will always be on my heart. It changed me forever, all of it changed me. All I had during this time was God. I had my family, my mom and dad and my sister and her family. But people couldn’t reach to the pain. Talking didn’t reach the pain. There is no way to talk about pain like that when you are in the midst of it. There was just nothing inside of me except the space that God filled. Knowing that the child that I has raised and protected and took care of all her life was also in pain right then and there was nothing I could do was even more difficult. She was making the most life damaging choices she could ever make and I couldn’t reach her. All I could do was pray for her. I could not help the child that I had tried to protect all her life. I wasn’t even allowed to talk to her.
I just kept saying to God that I knew that He loved her even more than I did, even though it didn’t seem possible. I prayed for her repentance and her protection. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through to allow her to reach a point like this. That scared me more than anything. I knew that in this she was being used by her father, but I also knew that she was 16 and knew right from wrong and was making this choice. I didn’t see her as innocent in it, but I couldn’t overlook the underlying pain that I knew she was going through and how it was affecting her. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t reach her.
It was as if your little child was just beyond your reach screaming in pain and you aren't allowed to touch her, or help her. You had to watch it happen, but you were held at a distance. It was horrifying.


The Pain Grows Deeper

After 4 days without my daughter, I went to my interview with the social worker. She questioned me for about an hour. She told me the things I was accused of and asked for my explanation of each incident. Some things I could explain, like how she busted her lip or hurt her arm. Some things I had no answer for because there wasn’t even a real life situation that had been exaggerated; like being beat with a bar stool. It wasn’t like she had fallen over a barstool and hurt herself ever. It was entirely made up. All I could say to those things is that they didn’t happen and I had no other explanation.
This woman was much more interested in my answers and seemed to listen to me. She told me afterward, that she was a Christian, and that she had been though something similar during her divorce. Her child was very young and her husband was the one accusing her. I felt a lot safer for a few minutes.
After I finished answering her questions she said that she had talked to Katie also and that she was satisfied that I had not done these things. The facts that there had been no signs or reports for 16 years and were coming now during a divorce were a big part of her reasoning. But, she warned me, that wasn’t the end of it. She said if it was up to her it would end there, but that Jeff and Katie had went to the DA yesterday and filed criminal charges against me. She said the charges were assault. She said it was out of her hands.
She did show me the file and what the emergency social worker had written. She told me that both of them would probably be called as witnesses and warned me that the first social worker fully believed everything that Katie had said. She showed me on the file where she had written, “Please don’t let this child fall through the cracks.”
She asked for names of people that she could talk to so she could find out what other people who knew us had to say. I gave her the name of two pastors and my mother-in-law. I told her that if she called her quickly before Jeff could get to her that she would tell the truth.
She did call her and later when I got copies of the report I saw that she did tell the truth and say that Katie and I were very close and that she could not believe that I had done any of those things. I was able to read that and also what both pastors and said. One of the pastors had been counseling Katie since her dad left and was able to tell them that there had been no signs of abuse and that he thought that Katie was just extremely hurt and had gone through a lot of damage when her family fell apart.
Until this time I had refused to get a lawyer. By getting a divorce lawyer I felt that I was giving in and agreeing to a divorce. I knew that once the lawyers got into it there was usually no going back. I had resisted everyone that tried to get me to protect myself. I knew that God would protect me. I had felt that God had led me not to seek a lawyer until this point. Now the whole thing had changed. I went to talk to my pastor. He knew my conviction about not bringing a lawyer into it. I told him I was very torn about what to do. I did not want to get a lawyer, but this was criminal charges that I had been charged with. Once again the night before, the police were at my home. This time they served me with papers saying I was charged with assault. They were kind and seemed to see this as a normal divorce occurance. I’ve never had a traffic ticket, but now I have had a policeman at my house charging me with assault. It was like being in a different life.
I had been praying over a particular passage of scripture about Jehosephat for the past months. In this scripture, God had called on Jehosephat to stand down in a battle and allow Him to fight it for him. God said, “The battle is not yours.” I had held onto that passage as a reassurance that I was not to fight back. I was to leave it all to God. Now with the changes in my situation I was seeking guidance about what to do. My pastor said, “You have to protect yourself now.” I began to cry and told him about the scripture that I had held onto for so long. I told him that I thought that I wouldn’t have to fight, that God was going to do it all for me. I asked him what about that scripture? He looked me in the eye and said very simply and very gently, “You are not Jehosephat.”
I agreed to get a lawyer. At this point I knew my marriage was probably over. What had happened had happened and there was no going back. I was being attacked by my husband on a whole new level. I still wasn’t saying no to God about going back, but I knew it would take Him leading me there for it to work. I prayed about a lawyer. My sister called a Christian attorney that we knew from homeschooling. She explained my situation and asked him about a Christian attorney that handled family law. He gave her the name of a Christian attorney. I made the appointment. Something else I never thought I would do, especially to talk to him about my criminal case.
What I didn’t know was that my sister and my nephew were praying all the time that God would surround me with Christian people during this time. Every day of my life at this point I knew I was surrounded with so many people’s prayers. God answered. My mom went with me to the appointment. I told the lawyer first, that I wanted a Christian man that was led by God, but not someone that would be a weak push over. He said that was him. I was to learn over the next months that it was.
I cried as I had to spill out my story to him. Interestingly, I found that the details of my marriage no longer had the same sting. It had been overshadowed by the loss of my daughter. The pain was so much worse. There is no way to explain the depth of that pain.
I tried to give him the details of the entire situation. No matter how I tried to explain it to him, it seemed to him that my daughter was this spoiled brat teenager. She was not. It is hard to tell someone these things that she is doing to me and them not to think she is a spoiled petted kid. I told him that I knew that at some point she would tell the truth. I was just afraid that it would be after she was an adult and had children of her own. I told him that I didn’t think she would be able to sit in the courtroom across from me and lie. I thought she would break.
He told me not to be surprised when she didn’t break. He told me that I had created a monster. I had no defense. That is what it had to look like. How can you tell someone that your daughter is telling lies on you, trying to destroy you, and doing what she was doing and also convince them that she is really a good person? I could only tell him that I knew my daughter and that this was not her. She was acting out of pain and out of manipulation. As I said before, she was 16 and making her own choice and I am not removing any of her responsibility. But I also know the others that were equally responsible.
He made it clear that he thought I was delusional about who she was. He was right about one thing. She came into the courtroom a couple days later and she lied. For probably 20 minutes, right in front of me, she lied. She handled herself well. She sounded convincing to me, until my lawyer questioned her. He tripped her up and some of her lies showed up. He made it obvious that there were a lot of inconsistencies and a lot more less than well thought out lies. They unraveled on cross examination.
My mom and my sister also had to take the stand. Seeing my mom go through this was one of the hardest things. She doesn’t like to talk in front of people. She gets really nervous. She loved Katie so much, she was her grandchild, but she did what she felt she had to do. Her and my sister having to do this for me was really difficult. They also knew they might never see Katie again because of it. I sat across from them and didn’t even cry as I heard it all. I was numb. I was brokenhearted. I was not angry. It wasn’t that I was such a good person that I couldn’t be angry, it was just that there was no room for any more emotions besides pain.
At one point I found, that emotionally when you completely break, you reach a saturation point and nothing else can get in; no anger, no fear; nothing else, just pure, deeply searing pain. It doesn’t matter what you pour on top after that. The pain fills all of the space inside you and there is no room for anything else. You could experience anything at that point and I don’t think it would affect you.
When it came to my turn on the stand, Katie along with her boyfriend and his father walked out of the courthouse. She didn’t stay to hear my answers. She didn’t have to face me; she didn’t have to listen to my answers. I was counting on her not being able to put me through this and sit there and watch. But she didn’t have to be there. They came back in when my testimony was over. It was as if hearing my testimony would do damage to her. The walking out as I was called to the stand was another planned out part of the drama.
My husband also took the stand against me. He didn’t tell this time that he had suspected me of abuse for years. It was very obvious that his lawyer had explained the obvious, that if that was the case, he was responsible for not taking action. So, his stories differed from what he said the night the social worker came to the house. When my lawyer questioned him it was amazing to watch his story fall apart. He questioned him about his drinking and one exchange I remember is when he agreed that he had drank 10 mixed drinks at a bar one night, but he insisted he wasn’t drunk. This is something he had told me during one of the nights he called and stayed on the phone for hours. He asked him how he got home and he answered that he drove. My lawyer asked how he knew he wasn’t drunk. He said that he always waited just enough time in a bar until he was not drunk. He asked him what bar he was at that night.
Jeff answered, “I don’t know.” He asked him what roads he took to get home.
He answered, “I don’t know.” He asked him exactly how long did he wait there to be sure he wasn’t drunk? Jeff said again.”I don’t know.” Jon, my lawyers said, “You drank 10 mixed drinks in one night, you don’t know where you were or how you got home, but you weren’t drunk?” He said. “That’s right.”
As he continued to question him and he went into how I was a bad mother and wife, I can remember sitting there and feeling a calm peacefulness come over me for just a moment. I felt like someone said. “It is done.” I knew at that point there was no mending this. I wasn’t saying that I wouldn’t go back, but I no longer felt that God was telling me to.
Looking back I think He closed a door then. I was still so overwhelmed with it all that, I am seeing this more clearly looking back than I did then, but I knew something changed during those lies that couldn’t change back.
Both social workers were called. The one that was there that night upon cross examination had to admit that the bruises that Katie said she had, were never seen. My lawyer asked if she had her to pull up her sleeves and show her. She said, "No." She had put in her official report that Katie had these bruises, but didn't ask to see them. He asked her did she see the busted lip that Katie had told her had happened the day before.
She said, "Her lip was a little red." He said, "Was there a mark or a scratch?" She said, "I didn't see one." He said, "So you did not see any evidence of abuse that night?" She had to answer, "No." Although she had told me that night that she had seen it. Then he asked if the doctor that examined her the next day saw any marks, bruises or signs of abuse. She said, "No."
I had two pastors and several doctors waiting by phones to see if they would be called. My lawyer seemed to think they weren't necessary. I wasn't sure. I was still scared.
The custody hearing ended. The judge gave me joint custody. He said to wait a week to see Katie and give it a "cooling down period," Then I could have joint custody.
He told Katie that someday she would appreciate her mother and he also lectured Jeff on his part in this. He told him he thought he would see things differently if he tried to raise a teenager on his own. He made it clear that he saw no abuse. He said that you don’t abuse a child for 16 years and not see a bruise or a sign.
I remember thinking then that it was a step toward going back to things with Katie. It really wasn’t. My lawyer told me after the trial that I could not be by myself with Katie. I still had a criminal trial coming. He said she could tell anything and it could be even worse. If I brought her home I had to have witnesses the whole time.
It didn’t really matter because at the end of the week, Katie would not come home anyway. She had been seeing a county appointed counselor for the last week as was required by the courts. I met her for the first time at the end of the week. I met with her and it was obvious that she thought that Katie was telling the truth. She asked me if making Katie come home was worth losing her forever. She said that Katie was afraid and said she would run away. She told me how well Katie expresses herself.
I told her yes she does. I told her that I taught her to present herself well. I told her then that Katie was a good child that was just messed up right then. She told me that Katie would meet with me, with her there and told me how I should be glad that she was willing to see me. She fully believed it all. Katie came into the meeting with her dad. It was the same, “You and me against the world,” that I had seen when I went into the hospital that day. It chilled me. She sat and said very little. The counselor told her that I would not make her come home. I told Katie right then for the first of many times, that I could forgive her for anything. I told her I loved her. She said. “I love you too.” There was no feeling; it was just what she was supposed to say. And then they left.
The counselor told me how impressed I should be that Katie said she loved me. I told her again that I had not done any of the things that I was being accuses of.
She let me know that she didn’t believe me with a look. I walked out and went home alone again, without my child.



Do You Know Who I Am?

I put one foot in front of the other and continued to just do the next thing. I had a company to try to save or face bankruptcy, I had accepted I had a divorce to handle, and I had a prodigal daughter that was out of my reach. I also had to prepare for a criminal trial that was looming in the months ahead. I coped by never thinking of more than one of those things at a time. It was like God allowed me to compartmentalize my life and deal with what I could as it came. Just take each step, one at a time and move forward. While at the shop, I tried not to think about Katie or the divorce. While at home working on the trial, I could put the shop out of my mind. The divorce was no longer much of an issue except for the property settlement and trying not to lose my home. The pain of the divorce was gone in an instant. I knew at the moment that I sat in the courtroom and watched my husband of 22 years make up lies about me, to try to do as much harm to me as possible, that it was over. God released me. He separated my heart.
My name was in the paper for assault on my daughter. I was facing criminal charges. I accepted then that the divorce was inevitable. I remember having a peaceful feeling come over me in the midst of that custody trial. Strange I know, but as one lie after another came out of his mouth, my marriage was done and it didn’t really hurt anymore. I knew the only chance was for God to step in and completely change him. If that happened and God wanted me to go back I would, but it was as if God had said, it is over, you have done everything I required you to do. It is done. Up until a few weeks before, I had been praying for God to allow me to continue to love him unconditionally. God answered that prayer and controlled my emotions.
After Jeff said he couldn't be faithful if we went back together I began to pray that if God was not going to bring my marriage back together that he would begin the work of pulling my heart away from my husband. When I began to accept that a healed marriage might not be what God was leading me to, I asked him to take away my feelings of love. It began gradual at first, but the separation from him and the acceptance that it was over came while he was on that stand. In a short moment of time, it was done. God gave me a moment of peace and clarity in the midst of all of the pain and horror of that day.
Until that point I had been unwilling to accept any other outcome other than for God to put it back together. I still believe that in most cases that it is God’s will for a marriage to be mended and stay together. But I know in my case, God was not leading it back together. I know in my heart that I forgave the infidelity and gave my marriage every chance until God said, it was finished. I still remember the moment that the divorce happened in my heart. Only the legal stuff had to be done.
Two months after had Katie left, my husband asked to borrow my vehicle. When he brought it back, he had accidentally left a pocket calendar in it. I was fighting for my life, so I felt no guilt about looking through it. There was a date circled and it showed an appointment with the District Attorney a few days before the scheduled criminal trial.
I panicked and called my lawyer. I asked him what could he possibly be meeting the DA for right before the trial? I was terrified it was more charges? What else could they be doing? My lawyer said he didn’t really think it was new charges, but he called Jeff’s lawyer to ask. I found during this time that lawyers communicate more with the other side than I ever dreamed. I guess I had the idea that you see on TV in my mind. But it is much more out in the open than that. She told him that she thought that they were planning to drop the charges.
Later that day I called Jeff and told him that I had seen the book and asked him what was going on. He said it was none of my business and became instantly hostile. I told him what his own lawyer had said and he was furious. He said she had no business saying that. He wouldn’t tell me anything. He wouldn’t confirm that they were dropping the charges. My lawyer said that he thought they were being forced to drop the charges because the DA didn’t feel that they had any evidence. He said it was up to the DA whether to go ahead with the trial or not, but that I might not know until the day of the trial.
That day came; another thing I never thought I would face. I was a stay at home, homeschool mom, how could I be accused of child abuse? But I was.
When I look back on it I realize now that I never asked what would happen if I was found guilty. Somehow that seemed to be a lack of faith so I never asked. I don’t know to this day if it could have been jail time or not. I never asked. Jon, my lawyer, told me to sit in the waiting room and not to come into the courtroom until he called me. He was in there about 30 minutes. I watched Jeff walk past me and into the courtroom. I also watched Katie look straight ahead as she walked past me as if I wasn't there. Her head was held high while she walked into the stage she had set. I don’t know what went on in the room.
Jon came out a little later and said, “That is it. They dropped the charges. It is over.” I had become so used to the next shoe falling that I didn’t trust that it was done. I asked him what if they brought it back up and charged me again. He said that after they had signed that they dropped these charges that there was no way a judge would let it be brought back up. He told me again it was over. He told me he would still have to expunge my record and it would take about 6 months. I was still having trouble realizing that I had come though this part. I left the courthouse alone.
Katie didn’t change her story. She continued to say that all of it was true. She still didn’t come home and I talked to her only a few more times over the next couple months. When I would talk to her, I would always tell her that I could forgive her for anything and that I loved her. Many times she just hung up on me and then went to her dad and said that I was harassing her and she would cry and break down to him. She had perfected the drama by then and used it to control situations.
During the time that she was gone, people at church and other places would ask me about her. I would have to tell them I really didn’t know much about how she was doing that she wouldn’t talk to me. So many people told me, “She is going to reap what she sows.” Or “She will pay for what she is doing to you.” To me that was the strangest thing to say. All I could think and all I could say, was that I didn’t want her to reap what she was sowing. This was my child they were talking about. How could I want anything bad to happen to her? My horrible fears at that time were the things that could be happening to her then that I could not control. I had to give her over every day to God. She was mine, but first she was His. I knew she was in pain during this time. This wasn’t Katie, it was her choice, but she was acting from pain. I had no doubt about that. She was 16 and knew right from wrong, but she was also still a child and pain can cause even adults to do things they wouldn’t normally do. What more damage can it do to a child? I knew that what she was doing was a reaction to her pain.
During these months I ran the shop and tried to keep it from going under. Jeff still said he was too sick, too depressed to come in and help. After he finally admitted to being in a depression, he used it as a pass for whatever he wanted to do. He was well enough to date, to travel, to party at bars, just not well enough to work. I continued to go to my church. Most people there seemed supportive and seemed to believe me. A couple of people were somewhat cool to me, but that was very low on my list of priorities.
With everything else happening a few people’s opinions were the last thing I could get upset about. I know that there were a lot of people praying for me. People that I had not even met were praying. There was a lady at my sister’s coffee shop that sent me a book by Charles Swindoll. The book was named Job. It was a book about the Job of the Bible. There was so much in that book that was meant for me to study at that time. I felt so much a kindred to him. Through that book and just studying the book of Job in the Bible God guided me through the next months. The lessons I learned there got me through. They held me up, and they taught me so much. I learned to be grateful to God for being my God, and if He was all I had left, I had enough.
I learned that we can’t expect only the good from God. I learned to praise him for the good, but also for the bad. God made the choice to allow each thing that had happened to come into my life. He had allowed my husband to change, He allowed my financial situation and He allowed my daughter to betray me. I began to understand and accept that God is sovereign and the choices are His. He could have changed any of these circumstances of my life in an instant, but He didn’t. Did I owe him resentment for that, did I owe him anger for that? No, just as Job tells me, the Lord giveth and he taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
I also saw through Job, that to look to people for advice and counsel can easily lead you astray and away from God’s path. Emotions and pain can cause everyone to make choices that might not be God’s way. I couldn’t afford to seek anyone’s advice outside of God. The things that I was dealing with were too big for any human to understand; only God could lead me. Only God knew where I was going. I didn’t know myself.
If I had depended on my own judgment I would have made the wrong choices. Job could not depend on advice from friends either. They saw what was on the surface. It is all any human can see. God took me through sections of Job every day. I had read through my Bible twice since my husband left. It was my comfort, it was my answer for the question; how do I go on?
God never let me see ahead, but He walked with me and in front of me every step. One passage that stood out during that time, verses that I tried to take my steps by were (Job 23, vs, 11 & 12: My feet have closely followed his steps. I have kept to his way without turning aside. I have not departed from the commands of his lips. I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.)
Not that I was able to live up to those verses perfectly, but that was what guided me to take the steps as God led me daily. I grew to love Job 38 and 39 where God “answered Job out of the storm.” It reveals who God is, and what God has done since the beginning. To me it simply says, “How can you dare to doubt me, do you know who I am?”
And it also says to me, “Remember who you are.” It leaves me no room to question, no room for self pity. Not that I don’t sometimes fall into it and did during that time periodically, but I couldn’t dwell there. I could not doubt God, he was all I had.

The Truth Wins Out


During the next month, I continued to work at the shop. Jeff still said he was unable to work, and he still continued to take a weekly paycheck. I was gradually catching up on some of the bills that were late. I had to keep balancing the money between paying some on the old bills and paying payroll and purchasing new materials to keep going. I had to figure out each week what I could pay and what I had to wait to pay.
When I took over the bills were months behind and the payables were over $200,000. I tried to pay each company a little each month as I was able to.
One Friday, I had to drive to Liberty NC and pick up a check, so that I would be able to pay the payroll that week. While I was gone Jeff came to the shop and took the money that I had put aside to buy lumber to keep going that week and transferred it into the petty cash account. He wrote a check for $4000 to pay off the company where his girlfriend worked. He was no longer with her, but I guess he didn’t want her to think that he didn’t have money. He told them that we had the money and that I was just not paying them.
I paid them every month at the same time as everyone else. He didn’t tell me about the money or that he had been there. I saw the debit from the checking account when I checked the account online 2 days later. If I hadn’t seen it we would have bounced checks. I couldn’t pay for lumber that week.
I had taken everything he had said to me, and taken everything he had done until that point. I had not answered back or fought back in anyway, I never raised my voice to him since this all began. He was so used to me taking and not standing up for myself. Once he did this, I was left without any choice, but to try to stop him from putting the company into more trouble.
I had to call my lumber company and tell them that I would not be sending the $4000 that I had promised to mail that week. It left me in the position of looking as if I had lied.
It was too late to stop payment on the check since I didn’t find it until it went through the bank, just as he intended. I called my lawyer to see what if anything could be done. The next day my lawyer filed an emergency order to have Jeff stopped from accessing any money in the company and from having any contact with customers, vendors or employees. I did have to continue to pay his salary because that wasn’t something that the court would handle as an emergency order. When he was contacted by his lawyer to tell them that we had filed for the order he called me up, hateful as usual.
He yelled that if I wanted it that way, that I had it. He said, “This is war.”
I asked him what choice he had left me. I told him, I had to run the company and couldn’t do that with him taking money out of it. He hung up on me. I guess he just thought it would be something else I would just take. He left me in the position of having lied to a customer about what I was sending them that week on the old bills. I didn’t have a choice.
The next day the order went before a judge. My lawyer and his lawyer went into his chambers and were in there about 45 minutes. When they came out he said that we got what we asked for, he could no longer touch money in the company other than his paycheck. He wasn’t allowed at the shop until all employees were gone for the day and he wasn’t allowed to talk to customers or vendors. I found out many months later that he went home that day and told Katie that he had won the case.
Right after the emergency order was put in place, for some reason he just gave up on everything. He had been holding out on the property settlement and hoping to get money. By this point, he had run up thousands of dollars in personal debt and gone through his $50,000 IRA. I don’t know where he thought the money would come from, my parents I guess. He called up the next day and said he wanted to just settle it all, he said he was tired of the whole thing. He sounded defeated.
Of course, my first instinct was to feel bad for him as usual. I told him that my accountant and lawyer had gone over everything and that they had said that whoever takes the shop should get $50,000 from the other one because it was in more debt than it was worth. The person that was able to walk away from the shop was getting out of hundreds of thousands in debt. I told him that the equity in the house should count against the company debt.
My lawyer had already told me that while that was fair, that there was no lawyer that would agree to that. He said they would tell him to bankrupt the company and then the equity would still be in the house, so he could get $40,000. I didn’t want to be forced into bankruptcy, but I didn’t know if it would be possible to avoid it. He told me that he didn't want the shop.
I told him I knew that. It wasn't a business that anyone would want by that time. I didn't want it either, but I didn’t want to cheat all the people we owed either.
Somehow he misunderstood my whole conversation and thought I was offering him $50,000. My lawyer called me the next day and said, “Please tell me you didn’t."
“Didn’t what?” I said.
“Tell me you didn’t tell Jeff you would give him $50,000 for the company.”
I told him, “No, I didn’t. I told him that whoever took the shop should get $50,000 from the other person.”
He said that he had just got a call from Jeff’s lawyer and he thought I was giving him $50,000.
I told him what had really been said and said I would call and straighten it out.
I didn’t know which person I was calling when I called. Would he be the hateful man he had been so long or would he be the broken, giving up person that had said yesterday that he just wanted it settled now? I was nervous about how it would go, but I called him. I told him he had misunderstood and I repeated it all again.
He sounded worried, “I don’t have $50,000.” It was even more obvious that he didn't want the company. I told him that I knew that he didn’t and I wasn’t asking for anything except for him to sign over the house and the company.
When it was all counted up I would owe more than I owned, but I had a chance to keep from filing bankruptcy. I knew it was what I was supposed to do. I knew I was going to be paying it for years, but I might be able to pay it all back. I told him that he could take the camper that I didn’t want it and it would give him something to sell. I knew by then that he had taken a woman off in it and I didn’t want anything to do with it.
He walked away out of debt and I had 3 mortgages totaling over $250,000 plus the bills at the shop. But, I knew it was the right thing.The settlement was done within a week.
I know that a lot of prayers were behind him finally just folding. He had tried to fight over everything and I wouldn't fight. He tried to pick arguments and I told him that I wasn’t willing to argue. I took everything he wanted to do to me and never spoke harshly to him. He had pushed and pushed for his way at every turn. When I finally had to take action to stop him from further damaging the company he just folded completely. So many people were praying that I know that was the reason for his finally wanting to settle.
It was the first time I had stood up to him so it should have made him worse, instead God took control of the situation and used him against himself. I learned then that God doesn’t need for us to figure it out; he doesn’t need for us to control every situation. God handles things in ways that we never see coming. Never once did I see God answer a prayer and think that is how I knew it would happen. It was and is always a surprise how it comes about. It is like, if we can conceive it, that isn’t going to be God’s way.
Still, even today, I find myself trying to figure out how God needs to handle things and how he needs to answer my prayers. We are so short sighted as his children. I find that I see things through lenses that are colored over with the problem in which I find myself. I don’t always see behind me to what God has done, and I make the mistake of looking forward and trying to figure out what God need to do. Once I get it all figured out, or once I give up trying, God steps in and answers my prayers in the way he planned to all along. It seems he was just waiting for me to get out of his way.
So the property settlement was finished before the divorce. Katie stuck to her story and continued to live with her dad. A lot of this time is a blur. Painful incidents stand out, but the time frame of when they happened in the 5 months that she was gone are not clear.
The humiliation of being accused of abuse was a part of every day. She had to be put into a private school for the months that she was gone. To further hurt me she convinced them that she was on a first grade level in her math. They had her test scores, but it didn’t matter, she pretended she didn’t know 2x3 and 8+10. They sent her to a tutor.
We spent $5000 out of her college fund for private school and tutoring for 5 months. The tutor told me how she had progressed from first grade level to second grade level. I had to sit and listen to this, after all the time I had put into her schooling. There was no use defending it. I sat and listened and then left and sat in the car and cried. It was just one more part of something I had given my life to only for it to be crushed and thrown back at me. There was no point in explaining it to them. I was nothing but an abusive mother; no one would listen to me. No one did listen to me. I was in the middle of a nightmare.
Another situation arose when I knew that she was sneaking around with her boyfriend when she wasn’t supposed to be. He dad didn’t really care what she did if she was out of his way. But he had told her she couldn’t see him, or he had told me that he had. I drove into the parking lot where her boyfriend worked to see if she was there. She was. He saw me there and told her. When I called to talk to her the next time, she was hateful to me and told me that she would not see me or talk to me again unless I stopped checking up on her. She was condescending to me as if she held all the cards and was in control. I told her that if it had to be that way then I wouldn’t see her, but I was her mother and I would not stop being her mother. She hung up on me again. To add to the strangeness of how my ex husband acted, he started going back and forth on whether he believed her or not. He would start acting like he cared about me again and didn’t believe her anymore, and then a couple of hours later go back into the hateful crazy acting person and say he didn’t know what I was talking about. He would say he was going to confront her and then the next day when I asked what happened he would say, “Confront her about what?” as if we had never discussed it.
It was as if he would realize that he would have to admit that he was wrong and that he had lied about it and the easiest thing to do was to just go back to going along with it. He would act gentle and kind for a little while and then he would be around other people and the cruel hard man would come back. It was always 100 times worse when he would be around his cousin. He was an entirely different person after he had been with him. This was a cousin that was also involved in an affair with a friend of the woman that Jeff had the first affair with. He kept going back and forth on whether he believed her or not. He continued to go from gentle and saying nice things to me, to suddenly being hateful and verbally abusive again. He would call to tell me he was having problems with her and then if I asked him something later he acted as if we had never talked. About 4 1/2 months into this whole thing, he completely lost interest in being the hero. He told me again that he had begun to not believe Katie anymore about the abuse. I told him that I knew that wasn’t true, and that he had never believed that I had hurt Katie.
He snapped, “Whatever.” He didn’t deny it though. Then he got control of himself and turned nice again. You could watch the anger run across him and see him fight to get control of himself when he wanted to play the nice guy. He went on to tell me that she was driving him crazy and that he didn’t have any privacy or time to himself. He said, "she is here all the time."
I kind of laughed and told him welcome to being a parent. He had never really been the parent. He had never put his child in front of his own needs as a mother does every day. Playing Daddy had gotten old, just like the judge told him it would when he had to do it full time.
He told me that she belonged with me, "a daughter should be with her mother." He acted as if it was for her good and for mine, but he had made it too clear that she was in the way of his single life. He said that within two weeks she would be home with me, that he would see to it. He didn’t say what he was going to do, but it was obvious from the way he talked that he was going to make her want to leave. I told him that he was going to ruin his relationship with her and not to do anything to hurt that. He said, “She belongs with you.” As if he was doing this for me.
Because I continued to try to handle everything in a Christian way without anger or lashing back, he wrongly assumed that I fell for his kind act when he chose to use it. So, starting that day, he began being hateful to her. He was playing tough dad then. He did everything he could to make her feel unwanted. She was in his way. He was done being Daddy. It no longer suited his purpose. He had nothing else to gain. Even though the situation she was in, living with a father that she didn’t trust and despised, was of her own making, what he did was wrong.
She was left with nowhere to be and not being welcome anymore and she knew it. She wasn’t ready to tell that she had lied about all of it, but she knew he didn’t want her there anymore. She was of no use to him anymore. The drama was all played out. He had jumped on the lies to hurt me and to try to break me. Now there was no chance of getting any money. He used her as long as it suited him. He was done with that, and was looking at things differently. She no longer suited his purpose and had become just a burden to him.
I had, up until this time told my parents and my sister that they had to stay out of the whole thing. They were angry and wanting to talk to Jeff. They were tired of seeing me walked on and they were tired of watching me take more off of him. A lot had built up in them especially my mom. In May about 2 weeks after he said he would make her come home, it came time for Katie’s graduation. Even though she had went a few months to private school she had to graduate from homeschool. I had homeschooled her since the first grade. I had poured everything I had into her life and her schooling, but she had decided that I was not going to be allowed to come to her graduation. Partly, for more drama, and partly so she wouldn’t have to face me.
It broke my heart all over again. It was so much worse than the divorce. It was just one more thing I would never get over.
God heals, but scars remain. My mom found out that she wasn’t letting me come to graduation and without asking me, because she knew I would tell her no, she called Jeff. She told him what she thought of what he and Katie were doing. She told him that Katie was being cruel. I don’t really know what else she said but she finally got to say some of what she had been holding back. He called me and said for Mom and Dad and Gina and Alan to come down to my house that he was bringing Katie over and we were going to confront her. They all came and Alex came also.
In a little while Jeff came in with Katie. She of course didn’t want to come, but he made her. He was being the hero again, but this time it was seemingly for me. I knew better.
I don’t remember everything that was said. I don’t remember who started talking. I do remember having to tell my mom several times that this is not the time or place to deal with Jeff. It was the first time they had seen him and they had a lot built up that they wanted to say. But, it wasn’t the point right then.
Katie continued, as she was confronted by everyone to say that she told the truth. She even turned on me during one exchange and yelled, “I can’t believe you are sitting there denying it. You know it happened.” She was playing a part. Gina, Alan, Mom and Dad all tried to get through to her. She kept lying and wouldn’t back down. She was playing it well. Sometime in all of this Alex, her younger cousin got into her face and kept telling her to look him in the eye and tell him that her mom had ever hurt her. She kept saying it and looking down. He kept making her look at him and say it.
Finally she broke down and told the truth. Even in this she played a part though. She acted as if it had all just come back to her and she pretended that her boyfriend had brainwashed her into thinking those things. She was still lying as a means to get out of the corner she had painted herself into. Interesting in that moment that she didn’t mind turning on her boyfriend and using him to get herself out of the situation. But at least she told the truth. I made her go through different incidents. I said, “Did I ever hit you?” “Did I ever push you down the stairs?” Did I ever push your face into a dressing room door?”She answered no to each one in front of the witnesses that were there. I had to make her say all of it because I couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t change her story again tomorrow.
I don’t know exactly how the next little while went. I know that it was about 2 in the morning when they left and she went home with her Dad that night. She said she wasn’t ready to stay there yet. I remember feeling relieved that it was over. I remember feeling a weight lifted. But also still feeling the terrible burden of what my daughter had done to herself. She had a long way to go to rebuild her character. Her dad told her that night that she would never see her boyfriend again. She would never talk to him again and that it was over.
Around 2 in the morning when everyone was gone, I went upstairs and opened my Bible up and looked down at it. It opened directly to the last chapter of Job. I read of the promise that God gave to Job that he would restore everything to him more than double. I knew that God was saying this was the end of it all for me and that he was promising to redeem my life and give me greater than I lost.
God is still blessing me through this promise. The next day or the day after that was graduation. I had waited for this day for years. It should have been such a joyful day. It could have been so wonderful. I had made so many plans of how this would go over the years, the party we would have, walking in front of the church. That was all gone. The last 10 years were torn apart.
The parents of homeschooler give out the diplomas to the student. So here I was sitting beside of her dad waiting to go up on the stage in front of 1000’s of people to pretend that we were this happy family celebrating our daughter’s achievement. The day was so full of pain. It was all I could do to get through it. I helped her get on her cap and gown, seemingly like a normal mother and daughter. I tried to be as normal as possible. There was no normal.
She was telling me how her father was treating her and I knew it was true, because he had told me that he planned to do it. I couldn’t tell her that. I didn’t want her to know that yes, he was trying to push her out. But the irony of her telling me, the mother that she had charged with criminal assault, that her dad was being mean to her, just wouldn’t leave my mind.
We got through the graduation, we got through the day. We took smiling pictures; we acted as if things were normal. But nothing in life felt like it could ever be normal again. I no longer even knew what normal was. Sometime within the next couple of days she moved back in with me. She brought her stuff back to the house, but couldn’t get her computer in her car. So, I drove her back the next day to pick it up. She had already been crying because when she started packing stuff from her room at her dad’s house to move back home, he pitched in to help pack her. He took everything she had and packed it. He took her posters and pictures off the walls. He made it really clear that she was moving out, but that he also didn’t plan on her coming back, apparently even to visit. Most divorced parents have a room for their child in their home so they can go both places. He was done. She knew it. I knew it. But I had to keep telling her that I’m sure she misunderstood. I didn’t want her to feel rejected. I didn’t want her hurt. So many times I had to cover for him to spare her feelings, but she knew.
She told me that he wanted her gone so that he could move his girlfriend into his apartment along with her daughter. She said he wanted her room for the little girl. I told her that I was sure she was wrong.
When she went the next day to get her computer, I waited in the car. She got her computer and as soon as we pulled away she burst into tears. I knew that this wasn’t one of her drama moments that she was really upset. I asked her what happened. She said that he had completely moved her room around. The bed, dresser and everything was set up different. He had taken everything of hers out of it and helped her pack it the day before and now he had rearranged it for the other little girl.
There wasn’t much I could say. There was no use trying to say she didn’t see what she knew she saw. We just drove home.
I asked him later why he had taken her posters down and sent everything home with her and he said he thought she would want them. He acted as if he didn’t see what the problem was, as usual, oblivious to anyone but himself.
I told Katie that night that I had been studying Job while she was gone and some of what I had learned about God through it. She said that she had been studying the prodigal son. We began the difficult job of trying to rebuild our relationship. I was trying to rebuild myself. But mostly I was trying to rebuild my daughter’s character.
She didn’t want to go to church at the same place and face all of the people that knew what she had done. I told her she wasn’t running away from it. I had to face them every Sunday for 5 months and she had to face them. It wasn’t to hurt her; it was to help her in the long run. Running had become second nature to her. I had to stop that tendency. I could not allow here near a phone, or out by herself because she would contact her boyfriend. I tested her the first day she was home and left her alone. What she didn’t know was that I was recording the phone calls. She called him.
She was 16 years old, but for over 2 months she had a babysitter if I had to go somewhere. She couldn’t be left alone. I knew that if I kept her away from him long enough that she would come back to the person that she had been. I told her that she had a lot of character problems and that she was going to rebuild her character. I told her hard work builds character. She didn’t argue.
I worked her at the shop. I worked her fixing up a house in the evenings. She worked in the heat morning to night many days.She started coming back to the person she had been slowly. After a couple of months I started letting her be by herself some, but always with someone checking up on her when she didn’t know it. Trust was very slow to rebuild. Love and grace were there all along, but to say that trust was gone is under stating it. My divorce was supposed to be final in May. That was 1 year. Jeff kept dragging around not filing it. He had agreed to file for it, because I told him that I didn’t believe in divorce and I would not file it. He agreed to do it, but he took his time. The property had been settled in February but the divorce didn’t go through until July.

He kept calling me and finding reasons to come to the house. True to his character, during this time, he was engaged to be married to someone else, I didn’t know it then. It really didn’t matter though. He asked me to go back with him while he was engaged. I didn't know then that he was engaged, but I knew he was the same man that he had been for over a year, the man who said he couldn't be faithful. God had released me from the marriage to that man. I asked him later what would’ve have done if I had said yes. He said, “I would have broken up with her and went back with you.” I told him that that should probably tell him something. He looked blank and said, “What?”
He later left this woman in another state and drove home. He had gone to meet her parents, they got in a fight and he left her several states away. During this time, he suddenly began to see me in a different light. He turned softer toward me. He said that he now remembered what we had before all of this. He said he remembered our marriage being good. He kept trying to draw me into conversations with him and found reasons to contact me.
He said over and over that he couldn’t believe that I was handling the shop and all that I was handling. He asked me then if I thought the depression that I had gone through for years was him bringing me down. I had begun to realize that in the past months and I told him that yes I thought it was. I told him that I no longer had anyone telling me that I couldn’t do everything. I didn’t say it angry or mean, I just said it. He would sit and look at me and say how gentle I had become. He said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing when he looked at me. He said his eyes were opened up now and they hadn't been. I told him that I had changed a lot several years before, but he hadn’t really seen me for a long time.
Everyone in my family said that he was just regretting giving up the shop and the house and was after money. They never realized how insulting that was to say to me. They were just scared that I would fall for his act and wanted to be sure I didn't go back. I don’t know if money was all it was or not, maybe he did see me different. Either way, it didn’t mean anything anymore. God had released all the love I had in my heart for him in an instant. It was gone. I was not angry. I didn’t hate him, and I didn’t wish him bad. It just didn’t matter anymore.
I think it was kind of like, if you cut off your finger, it hurts terrible for a long time. You don’t think you can live with it, but then if somehow you cut your whole arm off, the pain from the finger is gone along with the arm. The pain of losing is so much worse and the loss is so much deeper. But there is no more pain from the loss of the finger, it just doesn’t matter. It no longer affects you and you no longer miss that part.
That is how I felt about him and about my marriage. It had been, but it was no longer and that was ok. He would frequently come to the house and ask to speak to me alone. He would always send Katie upstairs: something that made her more and more bitter toward him because he treated her as if she didn’t matter. She would sit at the top of the stairs and listen to the conversations. She overheard him telling that he missed me and that he still loved me. She heard him tell me that he had made a mistake leaving and heard him apologize. But later when she asked him if leaving us had been a mistake, he told her no. He couldn’t admit fault to his daughter even though she had heard him say it to me. She needed him to say that leaving her had been a mistake. It was just one more piece of the wall between them.
Sometime a few weeks before the divorce, he asked me to go out to dinner with him. I said ok. My whole family, including Katie was upset. They all still seemed to think that I was going to just fall back into things with him if he asked. I knew there was no danger of that. I knew that all love was gone, God had done that for me. I was not angry but there was no love. I didn’t see any reason to say no and I wasn’t at all scared of my reaction. But everyone else was.
I told him I would go. He said he would come by the house to pick me up. He had his gentle voice on then. I told him no, I would meet him somewhere. He suggested Carrabba’s. We sat down in the restaurant in a booth across from each other. I just sat and waited on him to talk. I didn’t call this meeting and I wasn’t planning to fill the conversation. I had spent a lot of time in silence and I could just wait patiently.
Strangely he did the talking. I sat and listened. To most of it I had nothing to say. I have to admit that it was nice to hear good things about myself from the man that had spent the last year trashing me to everyone he knew. He told me that everything had been his fault. He said that I didn’t share any of the blame for our marriage ending. He talked about how strong I had become and how he couldn’t believe it. He said I was beautiful. I said, “Thank you.” He said that I was going to make someone a wonderful wife and he was sorry that it wasn’t going to be him. I again said, “Thank you.” He poured this all out in the middle of a restaurant. He cried openly, something I had rarely seen in 22 years. Strangely, at that time he didn't seem to worry about what everyone around him thought. It usually seemed to be the most important thing, but this time he sat and cried. He spent the entire meal telling me all these things about myself that were the opposite of what he had been saying. I told him all of that was nice, but it would mean more if he would go to the people that he had told all the other stuff about me and straighten it out instead of telling me.
First, he said of course that he hadn’t been saying things about me; still lying. I brought up some people in the community that I had heard from and he admitted that maybe he had said some things and that he would go to them and tell them the truth. Not something I believe he ever did, although he told me later that he had. I just sat and listened to it all. I said thank you at the appropriate times, but I really had nothing else to say. I couldn’t say, and you are a wonderful person too. I couldn’t say I still loved him too. I couldn’t say any of that. So I said thank you. Then, true to the character that he had shown all along, he said, “Can I ask you something and you not tell anybody?” I said, “What?” Not really answering the question. I didn't owe him any promises at that point so I didn't make them. He asked was there a chance for us to ever be together? I felt God say inside my heart, “You have done everything that I required.” God didn't required this of me. I told him that what we had was gone. It was over and could never be rebuilt. I told him that he needed to go through with the divorce. I was kind, but I was truthful. He told me that it was going to be a really difficult day in a few weeks when the divorce came through. He was crying again. He asked if I would be ok. I told him that I had dealt with all the pain of the divorce long ago and that I was fine. I told him that there were no feelings left and that I didn’t expect to have any problem dealing with the day of the divorce. He said he could see from my response to the things he had said that there was no chance. He asked could we at least be friends. I told him yes. He said he didn’t think he could make it if he didn’t think we could at least be friends. It all played out as if I was watching it from the outside of myself. I knew it wasn’t where God was leading me any longer. I can’t say it didn’t make me feel somewhat vindicated that he was the one telling me all these good things about myself after he had tried so hard to destroy me. But I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't tell everyone else the same thing. That was why he wanted to ask about us being together, but wanted it to be a secret. It could make him look as if he had made a mistake and his pride still wouldn't let him do that. He still couldn't be honest any more than he could be faithful.
We left the restaurant; he walked me to my car. He asked if he could have a last hug. I said sure and hugged him. It was like hugging someone who worked for me or someone that wasn’t close to me. It was good for me to go through all of this to be sure there were no hidden feelings that I had toward him. I didn’t. I felt sorry for him and the mess he had made of his life. He had set out to destroy me and had in the process destroyed himself. But God had made me stronger though it all. God had taught me to give grace. Jeff did not deserve to sit across the table and pour out his heart and his hurt to me. He didn’t deserve to be forgiven. He didn’t deserve for me to agree to be his friend. A friend you have to trust. He didn’t deserve any of that after what he had done. But God taught me to give grace. I don’t deserve God’s grace, but he freely gives it. God gave me a lot of gifts through this year of trauma. He gave me a more complete understanding of grace. He taught me to forgive. He taught me that He will never forsake me or leave me. He taught me that I may not feel him there all the time, but that my feelings are not what I live by. He is there whether it feels like it or not. I have that to count on. I learned and now understand how God is able to see us as his children no matter what we do. It doesn’t hurt him any less, but he continues to love, forgive and give grace. Very rarely in life are we allowed to witness people reaping what they sow. It seems like sometimes the worse people are, the more they prosper. I have watched as a man who lived to hate and destroy me ended up destroying himself.
While I am not the woman that started this journey, it has made me stronger, better and so much more secure in God and in myself. He on the other had has made himself into a shell of a person by his own hand. God gave me so much during this time. I understand and can praise God for being the God who gives and also takes away. I can trust that his will for my life will always be right. Through this time I knew and still remember what it is to be a “child of God.” It is not just a phrase. I am his child and never did I feel more like a helpless child than during this time and never did I need God more. But, what I am blessed with is knowing that when I need him most he will be there far beyond what I even know I need.God's Grace and Renewal This ends my divorce story. There were a lot of details that are left out because it is difficult to put an entire year on paper and also because of my daughter. She is a wonderful young woman who was recently married. I don't want the past to continue to follow her. She still has no relationship with her father. She does keep some communication with him. She makes the effort, he doesn't. I have told her it will be a lot harder to go back and rebuild a relationship if she ends contact with him all together and have encouraged her to not shut him out completely. She didn't have him at her wedding, but she did call him later to tell him she was married. It is her relationship and her decisions. I don't have to live with them and she does, so they are hers to make. I still have the business and God has been faithful. I am in a very difficult place financially. I still owe about $130,000 on the building, and with the economy as it is, I am losing money every day. I am trying to stay in business to get the rest of the debt paid. There is no way I can make it without God's hand in it. I am just waiting day to day to see if we have enough business to keep going. I am again trusting God, but not seeing a step in front of me. I just take the steps as He brings them. God could pay it all off in a minute, but He hasn't chosen to do that and He hasn't chosen to make it easy for me. I praise Him. He knows my needs, and I completely trust Him to do it in His time. I do get afraid, and I do get frustrated, but not with God. I've spent too long following a step behind to question Him now.
During my separation I took a class at my church called Divorce Care. It was a wonderful program that God used to help me reach a place of forgiveness and wholeness. I went through the first half of the class while separated. When it appeared that my not yet ex husband was making a change in his life and we were going to reconcile, I stopped the class. After several months it became apparent that was not going to happen. This was during the time my daughter was gone. I entered the next class that was meeting at that time for the last half of the program.
It helped me so much to deal with forgiving my ex husband and not becoming bitter. That was one of my deepest fears about divorce. I did not want to develop a closed heart and become a hard and bitter woman. It is hard to go through rejection like that and not let it change you. Without God’s help and a lot of prayers for him to change my heart, I know that is the path my heart would have taken. I read somewhere and always kept it at the top of my mind that divorce will make you better or bitter. I never wanted to be bitter. When God released my heart from my husband it happened so instantly and so completely that I was afraid that I was suppressing my emotions. It just didn’t seem that it was possible to love someone for so many years and then suddenly to just be ok. It seemed to good to be true and I doubted my own response.
So, I took Divorce Care again. I went through 13 more weeks of exploring my emotions. I didn’t want to think I was ok, only to be hit with feelings that I thought were gone years later. Each week of the devotions, I studied and inspected myself so closely. I tried to push every emotional button that I had. I found out that I could trust the gift that God had given me, a softer, healed heart. I was free of anger and resentment. I was free.
I had gone through deep rejection and had lost everything. But God had been so faithful. When He assured me that I had done all that He required and that it was done, it was done. I know there is no way possible for what I went through to end with me stronger without God. I had been told by a woman at my church that the turmoil that her divorce turned out to be the sweetest time of her life spiritually. I could not fathom how that could be when I was in the middle of such pain, but I had always admired this woman for her Christian heart. I later began to understand how she could feel that way. I came through it all and I knew I was blessed to have experienced it.
I knew God more deeply and was able to trust Him to a depth that many people never experience. I knew that He was capable of controlling my life, my destiny and even my emotions. I knew that God held me in the palm of His hand, and that was complete peace and comfort no matter my circumstance. I am a visual person, and I many times could see myself curled up asleep in God's hand.
I had spent so much time at home alone literally face down on the wood floor crying and praying, only to find myself an hour later, up on my knees with my hands held up to God in praise. Never once was I face down before God that he did not eventually lift me up. The gift God gave me through all of this pain was priceless. I know now that I only have to look for God’s decisions for my life. I don’t have the burden of making the decisions; I only have to wait for God to make it clear to me what he wants. I know way beyond any doubt that He is capable of whatever miracles that I need in my life. And now I can trust Him to provide the miracles, and I trust him to withhold them as He sees fit. (Job 2:10 Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?") His will is perfect and I am blessed to have been to the point of having to trust Him enough to find that out for myself. He may not always give me happiness, but he will always provide me with his joy if I will accept it. Many times people including Christians say, “God would want me to do this or that, because God wants me to be happy.” That isn’t necessarily true; God never promised us happiness. God will give joy and peace in any circumstance, but he may not bring happiness. Happiness may be a part of your life or it may not. Job was not happy when he lost everything. He was in pain, he hurt, and he was not happy. But, he was inside of God’s will and God gave him joy and peace in spite of the circumstances of his life.
My life right now is so much happiness, but that isn’t a promise from God and it could change at any time. God allows trials, to increase our dependence on him and through that dependence to bring us joy and peace. The happiness that we can find here on earth isn’t of much interest in heaven.I get very passionate about the difference in happiness and joy and the value of the latter.
Once I knew that I was truly whole again, I spent my time working on myself before I began to think about dating. I didn’t want to be out looking for someone to complete me, so I waited again for God to let me know if and when it was time.
I know some people do not believe in marriage after a divorce, but I spent a lot of time studying God’s word about it and I believe that God makes a way for remarriage in the case of infidelity and abandonment. I know that not everyone believes the way I do on that and that is ok to me. I only need to be sure of God’s will for my life not for what other people believe. After 2 years I began to consider dating. But I still had a company to run and I had also bought a couple of houses to fix up and sell to try to help with the debt, so I didn’t really see much possibility of meeting anyone. I had resisted the idea of online dating because it was scary to me and just seemed so different. I had several good lady friends at church and we went out together sometimes, but Christian single events were few and far between. I kept thinking that God would just bring the person to me.
My sister joked that I would not consider anyone unless God dropped them on my front porch with a bow tied around them and a note that said, “From God.” That was kind of true. She had listened to someone on a Christian radio program say something to the effect that God can use all ways to lead a person to the person for them, even Christian online dating. I had never thought of it that way. Maybe my preconceived ideas might get in God's way. So I began to pray and consider it. I found a peace about the idea and searched out the different websites.
The one I chose to go on was called Big Church. I don’t know what led me to that one initially, but it seemed to be where God was leading so I chose it. I started a profile on the site. It suggested a picture, so I had my daughter take some pictures of me around midnight. We were in the middle of a giggle fit, but I got it posted.
I didn’t want to deal with anyone that wasn’t interested in the same things that I was so I was very honest on my profile, maybe too honest. I put in my profile that I was over $300,000 in debt and the reasons for it and I wrote that I was not skinny. If someone had problems with any of that it was easier just not to even start communicating. Mostly, I talked about my relationship with God and my beliefs, including that I did not believe in sex outside of marriage. I wrote that I realized that 95% of the men reading it just went away, but that it only had to make sense to one person. I posted my profile one day and the next day I received several messages.
One was from a man that said that he had been on the site for a while, but that he kept his profile turned off so he couldn’t be pulled up in a search. I learned later that the women on the dating sites far out number the men and can sometimes be very forward in their searches and correspondence.
His message said he was from a local town and told me his name was Terry and sent me his profile privately. He sent his email address and said if I had any interest in talking, to send him an email. He sent his picture with it and he looked very sweet and gentle, although one of the first things I thought was that surely those big black glasses can’t really be that bad in person; can they? (Sorry honey :-)
The really amazing thing that I didn’t know until almost a year later, is that Terry had gone on the Big Church site to cancel his account that day. He had been a member for over a year and had just decided to stop searching. He had some points that he had built up, so before he canceled, he decided to spend those points to send a message. He came across my profile and decided to use those last points to send a message to me. If he had came on a day before to cancel, I would not have been on there yet and if I had went on a day later he would have already canceled his account.
Both of our marriages broke up over 2 years before; we had been married for 22 years, but there was only one day that our paths could possibly cross on this website and we both chose that day.
I did send him an email, and we started talking daily over emails. It took a little while for him to convince me to try the yahoo messenger, because I would have to try having a conversation without having the time to think out my response to each question. Every step just seemed like a really big step. I hadn’t had a date in 25 years and had dated my ex husband since I was 15 ½. It was all new to me.
Finally, I did go online and talk to him on the instant messenger. We talked (or rather typed) for hours that first time. I told him about my divorce, my daughter, my company, my debt and everything else. I remember telling him that I was not skinny and he said that if he wanted to see skinny he could look in the mirror.
He told me about his marriage and how unhappy it had been. He told me about his family and his daughters. We talked about God and what he had done in our lives and the conversation was just really easy; until one point. During the online conversation, he realized that he had been to my company before. He had been there several years before and had met my ex husband although he didn’t really remember him. I was a little wary, because until then he didn’t really know who I was or how to find me. I felt like my veil of anonymity was gone. I was really concerned when I found out that he had been there with my ex husband’s cousin, who I did not trust at all.
He realized then that I was completely taken aback. I guess my responses changed at that point, because I remember him typing that if I chose not to talk to him anymore that he had enjoyed getting to know me and finding out that there were still some women out there that were interested in talking about God. When we ended the conversation, I wasn’t sure if I would talk to him again or not.
The cousin of my ex husband that Terry knew, was the one that had an affair along with my ex husband, so it really spooked me that there was any connection to Terry. The next day I did answer his email and I decided to follow my instincts and continue getting to know him. We talked a little longer on instant message and email and Terry asked me many times to give him my phone number. (Something else that I didn’t know for almost a year was that he kept every email from me and that he sent to me and he still has those.)
He didn’t push, but he did mention it a few times. He said it would be easier to talk on the phone than on chat. I didn’t know then that he is a “hunt and peck” typist, so long emails and chats were kind of difficult for him. Eventually he gave me his number and told me to call him when I was ready, thinking that would be easier for me.
One evening I got his number out and sat on my bed with the phone. It probably took me 30 minutes to get up the courage to call. I was so nervous about it and worried that I wouldn’t know what to say. But as soon as I heard his voice, it put me completely at ease. I don’t know what we talked about, we just talked so comfortably.
Soon after that, we started talking about meeting. True to form, I was scared to at first, but then after a few days I agreed to meet him. He suggested that we meet at my sister’s coffee shop, where he knew I would feel comfortable and safe. He had been lecturing me a lot about being too open with information about myself, so it wasn’t unusual that his concern was my safety. We agreed that it wasn’t a date, just a meeting. The plan was to meet that weekend when he came back into town from his job. I got to the coffee shop first because I am always early, he was on time, as I was to find out later was unusual.
We met and sat down to talk. I have to say that the first thing I thought was, “Yep, those glasses are just as bad in person.” (Sorry again, honey; The great thing is that about 6 months later his co-worker stepped on his glasses and broke them! He had to get contacts. I still tell Terry I paid Tyson to step on them). We talked for a while and were very comfortable with each other. We decided to walk to a local restaurant and eat. We had just planned to meet for a little while, but both of us wanted to talk longer.
I don’t remember if we decided then or later that day to meet for an actual date the next day. It was my first date in over 25 years. I wasn’t scared anymore since I had met him already. We met for our first official date at a restaurant and then went to a movie. It was kind of funny, because the movie theater was freezing cold. I was shivering, it was so cold. I know I must have mentioned it over and over, but it wasn’t just normal air condition cool, it was really, really cold. He put his arm around me trying to keep me warm. (And probably trying to keep me quiet) By the end of the movie, he had one arm around me and was rubbing that arm trying to warm me up and I had my other arm up against him trying to get it warm. We were much closer than we had planned to be for a first date. It was only about 9:30 and we had met at a restaurant, so we really didn’t have anywhere else to go, but neither was ready for the date to end. We found ourselves sitting in his truck, on the upper deck of Belk’s parking lot. We sat and talked. I was leaning back against my door with my bare feet across his bench seat and he was leaning on his door.
As we sat there for a long time talking, we kept noticing a mall cop driving up onto the deck and slowly driving around the parking lot, past our truck and then driving back down. He seemed to come around about every 15 minute. We just assumed it was his regular routine so we just sat there and kept talking. Finally, after about the 4th or 5th time, he pulled up beside our truck, and Terry rolled down the window.
The young security guard hesitated to say anything, as if he was trying to figure out what to say. I finally said, “Are you making us leave?” He said, “Well, yes, you’re really not supposed to be here after closing.
”Terry said, “Ok, we’ll go, thank you.” The young man hesitated another minute, and then said, “We usually don’t… I mean we don’t usually have to…” he hesitated.
So I finished for him, “To run off old people?”
He said, “Yes, we don’t usually have that.” And then he drove away smiling.
We still laugh and Terry refers to that parking lot as the place that I tried to get him arrested on our first date. We drove back to where my truck was parked at Outback, but it was really hard to end our date. We sat and talked I don’t really know how much longer. Before I got back in my truck, he pulled me over to him and held me in his arms. It was so hard to leave.
We went out a couple more times over the next weekends and he called me every day while he was out of town. When we finally kissed it was like a flame. I know that is something you hear all the time, but it that is the only way to describe it. We both were a little overwhelmed at our response to each other.
Well, I was overwhelmed, he was, I was to find out later, scared to death. Terry told me the next weekend that he didn’t think he could continue in a dating relationship. He said that he thought he was ready, but he knew now that he wasn’t. He said he didn’t know when or if he would be ever be ready. He had gone through so much in his marriage for so many years that he was afraid.
He was concerned that he would not be able to control our physical response to each other and he felt like that was his responsibility. He said he still wanted to go out, but without anything physical including holding hands. He said it was all he was capable of right then. I was upset, but I wasn’t ready to give him up, so we agreed to keep seeing each other as friends.
He had dated other people for a while, but he knew that I hadn’t. He told me then that he didn’t plan to date anyone else, but if I decided to later, for me to just tell him. He continued to call and email and we continued to see each other, but the only physical contact we had was when we said our blessing at a meal and held hands for a minute.
A few weeks into it, I told him that I did want to date other people because I was 42 years old and he didn’t know if he would ever be ready for a relationship. I cried because it broke my heart to tell him that, but he wasn’t asking me to wait for a period of time, he was saying he didn’t know if it would ever happen. At 42 I think I was feeling like I was going to face an expiration date on possibilities at some point.
We stayed in touch by email and phone every day and we continued to go out as friends on the weekends. I decided to go out with a very nice man that I had met on the web site. He had gone through a difficult divorce himself. We talked a lot about his marriage and divorce and he still held on to a lot of bitterness. I suggested that he try to find a Divorce Care group to join. We went out a couple of times and he was really nice.
On the second date as he left my house, he kissed me. It was like kissing my brother, if I had one. There was nothing there. I kept talking to him for a while by email, but I didn’t agree to meet him again. We stayed in touch and we talked a lot about letting God take away the bitter feelings that he had about his wife. He was really one of the sweetest people that I met.
Over the next 7 or 8 months, I dated quite a few different people. Terry always asked me about them and how the dates went. That was very strange for both of us. When I asked him did it not bother him to talk about it, he said for me not to worry about him, he was trying to be a good friend.
He spent a lot of time warning me about something about this person or that person. He never met one of them, but by listening to me he was always able to pin them. He pointed out a lot of things about different ones that he told me to watch out for. He was always right in the end. He told me that one man that I only saw a couple of times was controlling. He was. He and a few others had some problems with me having a male friend that I talked to and saw on a regular basis. I refused to agree to give up my friendship with Terry especially for someone I was only talking to on the phone or had went out with a time or two.
It was a strange relationship that Terry and I had. He still refers to the people I dated and talked to as my harem. I didn’t date most of them more than a few times each. When I knew they were not what God was leading me to, I didn’t go out with them again. Dating at 42 was more like interviewing than dating at times. I was look for someone specific although I didn’t know who it was. I wanted someone like Terry.
There was one man that didn’t call to ask me out for a second date; I choose to think that he was killed in a tragic accident on the way home. lol.
Terry still seemed unable to handle a dating relationship, so we continued as friends and I continued date.
I met one man and I really thought that he might be something long term. We dated for a couple of months. One thing that I wasn’t comfortable with, but I found myself willing to compromise on was his drinking. Terry was the only man that I had found that did not drink at all. I gave up on finding another man that didn’t drink. This man said that he only drunk a few beers a week. I reasoned that I was extremely conservative in my view of drinking, because of the family in which I was raised. My parents did not drink at all and see it as a sin. I knew that wasn’t a common view, although I was very uncomfortable with the drinking and I had never had alcohol myself. I decided to compromise: usually not a good move.
I talked to Terry about him and the drinking really bothered him. He told me that very few people actually drank only a few beers a week and told me some things to watch. He knew I had never been around it. He asked me how many cans were in the trash, because it would be unusual to have a lot of beer cans if you only had a few per week. There were a lot of cans sometimes. There were a lot of red flags that went off in my head about this man, but because he seemed so thoughtful and loving I ignored them. I continued to see him.
There was something that Terry told me a few weeks later that happened to him the last weekend that I saw this man. He said that he went over to an old friend’s house and walked into his kitchen and saw a stack of beer cans piled up. This old friend was a long time alcoholic.
Terry said it hit him hard in the stomach and he knew right then that the man I was dating was an alcoholic, and I was with him then. It was like God was warning him. At the same time I was realizing this myself. I was at his house and from the time he came home from work around 4 until night time he drank 15 beers and they didn’t affect him. I didn’t say anything about it, I just watched, as Terry had told me to. I knew if I reacted to it that I wouldn’t find out for sure how much he really drank. Terry had told me a few weeks before, not to talk about the drinking or act concerned or I wouldn’t find out how much he really drank. He had told me this before the experience at his friend’s house.
I waited until I got back home to confront the issue with the man over the phone. I told him that he had told me all along that he only drank 4 or 5 beers a week. He kept arguing that it was true. He explained then that he considered the work week, the week and the rest was the weekend. He admitted that he drank more on the weekends.
I told him that he had been dishonest about it from the beginning, but he wouldn’t admit that either. I knew from then on, that I could not compromise on what I believed and I wouldn’t date anyone again that drank. I don’t say that drinking is necessarily a sin, but it is a conviction for me. I found out later that Terry was praying that weekend for this man to let his true nature show. God answered that prayer.
I was supposed to go with Terry the next weekend to his daughter’s wedding. He had asked me a couple of months before to go and then a few weeks prior to that he asked if I was going to have a date that weekend or if I could still go. I told him that I wouldn’t plan a date on a day I was going to do something with him.
Most of the time he would just tell me before the weekend came that if I found myself without a date one evening to call him and we would go eat. So any weekend night I didn’t have a date I would call and we would go somewhere.
The weekend came that his daughter was getting married. He asked if I would also go to the rehearsal dinner with him the night before the wedding. The whole week when I talked to him on the phone there was something different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I sensed a change in him. We were talking on the phone on Thursday and I was complaining that my shoulders were really hurting. I am prone to holding stress in my shoulders when things get difficult at work. Terry said, “I’ll rub your shoulders tomorrow.” There was something in his voice that was different. And we never touched except to say a prayer together while holding hands, so offering to rub my shoulders was something new. The next day we went to the rehearsal dinner. He put his arm around me during the rehearsal and we just sat closer than usual, but we just sat and talked.
After that his ex wife left crying. She said she couldn’t stand to see us together that it broke her heart. She didn’t stay for her own daughter’s rehearsal dinner. What you have to know about his ex wife is that she was not a kind person at all. I have asked other people in Terry’s family if she was really as bad and he and his daughter’s think she was and they all say that she was. There are a lot of stories.
She left Terry many times over the years and left her kids also, but she always came back. Because of the kids and the fact that he had made a commitment he let her come back. The last time she left her youngest daughter was still 15. She was gone for months. When she decided she wanted to come back that time he told her that she better be ready to answer some hard questions and if she couldn’t answer them truthfully not to come. He told her when to come, but instead she went to another state that night. After years of infidelity that went back as far as his oldest daughter’s age, he gave her a chance to work it out. He had taken her back time and again.
It still amazes me that she was unfaithful and she left him, but she cried because he was with me.
After the rehearsal dinner we left and came back to my house. He was sitting on the loveseat and had me to sit down on the ottoman and began to rub my shoulders. He did this for a little while and then by my shoulders he pulled me back against his chest. I relaxed back against him while he put his arms around me and held me. After all this time that we had been just friends I was surprised. We didn’t talk; we just sat there together.
I felt like that was where I was supposed to be. I can still remember that moment and that feeling as if it were yesterday. It was like everything that I had been holding back in my heart for so long just opened up. I moved up onto the loveseat with him and he held me in his arms. He tried to kiss me, but I didn’t let him right then. I told him he had to be sure. I didn’t want him to be reacting without thinking and then regret the step he was taking. I knew how wary he had been of a relationship and I didn’t want him to make a rash decision in the moment, so I didn’t let him kiss me then.
The next day we went to Heather’s wedding. I was waiting to see if he pulled back from me after more thought. Terry is a man whose deep desire is to follow God’s will. More than any man or woman for that matter than I have ever known. He pulled away from a relationship the first time because he wasn’t sure he could remain in God’s will while dating. Rather than follow his instincts, he followed what he felt was God’s leading. My fear was that the night before that he was caught up in the moment and that he would regret taking the step forward. I knew him enough to know, that if crossing the line into a relationship beyond friendship wasn’t a decision made in prayer, he would regret it. That is why I didn’t let him kiss me that night. I needed to be sure that he was sure. A kiss doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for us it was a point that would be hard to pull back from.
He wasn’t pulling back. We held hands and he kept his arm around me at the wedding. Later that evening after we talked and he said he was sure, he kissed me. It was the same intensity that had been there before. We started dating that weekend, rather than just going out as friends. He didn’t seem as afraid of his feeling as before although I still suspected he was gun shy. We continued to date for a couple of months.
One thing that always was so different with Terry was that when we went out to eat or anywhere to sit and talk, from the first time we went out when we would sit down in a restaurant, everyone else disappeared. Even when we were going out as friends, we would sit and talk and I would realize an hour or more later that I had been totally unaware of anyone else sitting around us. I would listen to him talk and I didn’t know anyone else existed in the room.
I don’t know when I actually fell in love with Terry. I had a sense of it the night of the rehearsal dinner when he pulled me back against him. My mind didn’t say the word love at that point, but there was such a sense of perfectness, a feeling that I was where I belonged.
We had had a difficult time keeping things to only kissing and neither of us wanted to get into a sexual relationship outside of marriage. Finally we decided that the only way we could be together without having a problem was to not kiss at all. It was difficult, but it seemed the only way. We began to talk about marriage and pretty soon he was completely spooked again. He started saying that he wasn’t sure if it was ok for someone that had been divorced for any reason to marry. I knew he was scared again.
I asked him, "Then what exactly are we doing?
I told him that he needed to do some studying and praying about what he thought about the subject. I told him that I was sure for myself what I believed, but he needed to find out what he believed, and soon because if there was no chance of marriage that there was no point for us to be together. He said he knew that and that he would. We spent a few weeks talking about it and searching out verses and commentaries about marriage and remarriage.
I left it for him to decide what he believed, but I sent him some of the verses and articles that I had read. After a few weeks of praying and research he came to the same conclusion that in the situation of infidelity that the innocent spouse is free to marry in God’s eyes. But, it was obvious he was still spooked about marriage. We fell back into kissing which was leading us into more. We still did not want to have a sexual relationship if we weren’t married. After a particularly difficult weekend he seemed very distant on the phone all week. He didn’t talk long and I knew something wasn’t right.
That Friday he came over and told me that we couldn’t date any more. He said if we did, that we were going to end up where we didn’t want to be and as the man it was his responsibility to stop the situation. He said that we couldn’t see each other anymore.
God had clearly spoken to me a few weeks before and when I was praying I was crying to God and said, “I don’t even know if he is the one, God.”
In my heart almost as clear as if it was said out loud, God said, “Yes, you do.” I still know the exact spot where I was driving when this happened. I had no more doubts after that, but here he was walking out. I knew Terry enough to feel that once his mind was made up and if he believed this was God’s will, that he would stick to it. Through tears I told him that if he changed his mind to let me know. But I also I told him if he wasn’t positive don’t come back at all, that I couldn’t go through this again.
I cried and before he left, I told him that he was the one I was supposed to have married. He looked hurt, and sick and scared, but he left. I didn’t hear from him all week. It was so hard. Since I had known him, I had never gone more than a couple of days without talking to him. I didn’t know how he was feeling. Maybe it was no problem for him. Maybe it didn't affect him. He hadn’t called, so I assumed he never would.
I knew that he was the one I was supposed to marry. I knew I loved him. I knew he loved me. But, I also knew that might not be enough. If he felt that being apart was God’s will, there was no way he would go against it. I knew he was only feeling that way because of the marriage that he had been in and the fear it had put in him. But, I couldn’t change that fear, I had tried. I had hoped that gentleness, and love would break down all of the walls he had, but it didn’t seem like it had. I tried to move on and let him go.
I agreed to a date for the next Friday night with someone else, but when it got close to time, I couldn’t go. I canceled it. My daughter Katie had talked to Terry’s daughter before I canceled it and told her I was going out with someone.
On Sunday, nine days later, I saw on my instant message that there was an offline message from him asking how I was. I typed an answer to it and sent it to him assuming he would see it later. He popped up on the messenger when he saw it come through. I didn’t expect him to be there. We talked online for a couple of minutes. While we were on the instant message, his daughter came into his house and told him that I had a date that past Friday. He typed in and asked me about it and I told him that I canceled, that I couldn’t go through with it.
He asked if he could come over to talk. I said yes. I didn’t know what was going on this time, I waited for him.
He didn't knock; he walked in the door, took me in his arms and held me for the longest time. He said, “I’ve been scared for so long and I didn’t know it.”
I told him I knew that. He had had so many walls when we first met that they were almost visible. Every time they started to come down he got spooked and ran.
He said he wasn’t running anymore. I was crying again. He said the week without me had been hard and he had spent the whole time praying. I told him I had to. We talked for a long time and then decided to take a walk around the pond. We sat on a picnic table with my back to him and leaning against him.
He said, “We need to talk to pastor Jerome.”
Terry many times comes to a subject from the side rather than head on. But, he wasn’t getting off that easy.
I asked, “Why?”
He said we need to talk to him about premarital counseling and see how long it will take. I asked him, was he positive?
He said, yes.
I asked when? And he said how long will it take to plan a wedding and that he didn't think we should wait long.
We decided that we wanted to get married in 6 weeks. Once we knew for sure there seemed to be no reason to wait. I have to say that I did keep waiting on him to get scared and run again. He kept assuring me that he wasn’t going to and that he was sure. But, to be honest I was not positive that he would not get scared again until we were actually married.
From that point on, he was so much more relaxed and peaceful. Getting married again after what we had been through was a huge step. Both of us although we were divorced, believe that marriage is a lifetime committment. We couldn’t afford to be wrong or rely on our feelings alone for this decision. Once God had let us both know it was right, there was never a doubt.
It was like a huge weight had been lifted from both of us. We no longer had to carry the fear of making a mistake. We had God's assurance. Terry made an appointment with Pastor Jerome the next week. We sat down in his office and Terry told him we were getting married. We had been kind of walking on a cloud for the past week and I guess it showed. I'm not sure either of us had stopped smiling all week.
The pastor said, “You two are glowing.”
We asked him if he had any problem with marrying people who have been married before. He said that he actually had not had the question before. He had only been a senior pastor of about a year so we were only his second wedding. He said he would need some time to pray about it and he would let us know the next week. We told him that whatever he decided was OK, to follow his conviction and we wouldn't get upset.
He knew Terry's story because they had talked a lot in the past. Since he didn't really know me well he asked about my situation and my previous marriage and how it ended. We talked to him for a while and then we left him to consider and pray. Pastor Jerome did agree to perform our ceremony.
We decided to have it at my mom and dad's house. It is really a pretty place and neither of us wanted to have it at the church just in case someone in the church has a problem with a second marriage in the church. We have researched and prayed and knew what we believed about second marriage after infidelity, but if someone else feels different about it we didn't want to create a problem for them or the pastor. It has nothing to do with our "right" to have it there. It has to do with not causing anything unnecessarily problem in a church.
So we managed to get through the next few weeks. Terry took all three of our girls to the jewelry store to buy my ring. I can imagine how he must have been spinning dealing with all of their opinions at once.
During the six weeks that we waited to get married, my grandmother died. She had Alzheimer, and had been going downhill for a couple of years since she broke her hip. I had always told Terry that I wasn't good as a nurse or good with sick people. I don't know exactly what he was thinking I meant. I am just not real good at dealing with someone who is full of self pity for a case of the sniffles. I think that is something left over from my previous marriage. The world always had to stop for a cold, unless it was me. Someone actually sick or needing someone it is different.
Terry had never met my grandmother and by the time that he did she was past knowing anything much at all and was screaming out in pain. He went to the nursing home with me that night. I don't remember exactly what went on, I just remember trying to talk to Grandma and make her feel better.
When we left he told me that he loved me so much more than he did even a little while before. He said that because I had said I didn't deal well with sick people that he didn't know what to expect. I guess I should be more careful to clarify what I mean sometimes.
A couple days later Grandma died. Most of us were in her room when she took her last breaths. I had never been in the room when someone died. Somehow even though it was sad, it was so deeply comforting to be there when she took her last breath here and then know that she just woke up in the presence of Jesus. That was difficult, but it was a gift to carry forever.
After her funeral and the receiving, we came home that night and Terry got down on one knee and said that he knew it had been a difficult day and a difficult week, but he wanted to try to make it better. He asked me then if I would marry him, and gave me my ring. We had planned to get married, but it had been so fast the ring actually came later than the decision.
It might seem to be an odd time to officially propose, but it was sweet and perfect. He had stood with me in the receiving line and met all of my family, and been there with me through all of it. It was kind of an acknowledgement that we will go through many difficult things together over the next years, but we will be together no matter what. It made the memory of my Grandmother even sweeter to me.
We planned our wedding in six weeks. When the day came, his daughters walked him down and my daughter gave me away. They all three were dressed in white dresses and during the ceremony, I fastened a silver locket around each of his daughter's necks and he fastened one on my daughter's. The wedding was beautiful and so perfect for us. It was just fancy enough to be a wedding, but for the party afterwards we had BBQ and drinks in cans on ice. Our wedding toast photo is with two canned Sundrops, a soft drink in our area. Very us; it was casual, fun and happy.
It has been two 1/2 years, though it doesn't seem that long. We are so much more in love now that even then. You know you always hear about people becoming less attentive, and less loving after a year or so. It isn't like that. I told Terry the other day that he is more attentive and more thoughtful now than he was when we got married. He has just become more considerate. That is really wonderful.
God is in our marriage so much, there is no one that could ever convince me that God doesn't have a plan for people who may have ended up divorced through no fault of their own. God had a plan for us and He has a plan for us every day. With the financial things we are going through, life is never easy but it is wonderful.
When I look back and try to understand why I am so different now emotionally, I realize that I don’t know how much I really had mood swings and how much I accepted my ex husband’s explanations of my moods. I know I had some mood swings, I know I did have problems, but these years later as I live my life without the constant doubts in myself and constantly being told I am wrong and I am sick, I am remarkable stable in my moods.
I deal with problems everyday in my business, it can be overwhelmingly stressful. I am still carrying about half of the debt that I took on in the divorce, but I don’t get depressed. I can get sad, I can occasionally get angry about something, I can get lonely if my husband isn't home. I can have many different emotions each day.
I am never told I am bi-polar, so my perception is wrong. I am never made to think it is wrong to have any feelings. When my husband is grouchy or upset, he says he is. Not once has he tried to convince me that it is me, not him. If I am sad, usually because my husband, Terry is leaving to go out of town, I can say, “I’m sad.” He usually answers, “I know honey, me too.” And then he holds me.
He never asks, “Did you take your medicine?” He never tells me I am wrong to have feelings. Terry is rarely grouchy except when he misses sleep. If he is like that once in a while, he know it, he admits it. He says he knows he is like that when he hasn’t slept. He doesn’t tell me it is me looking at things wrong. He doesn’t say it is my bi-polar illness. His goal is never to make me doubt myself to make him feel better about himself.
In turn, if I am irritable, he lets me know.
I have learned that I can deal with my own emotions; I was not capable of carrying my own and also my husband’s for all those years. If I was made to doubt my own perception it kept me quiet, it kept me unsure, it kept me from expecting anything from him emotionally.
Since we got married two years ago, Terry has worked out of town Monday through Thursday. It has been so difficult. It is not enough to be together only half of every week. Terry said that he had been feeling like the Israelites looking into the Promised Land but not entering.
We prayed about it for a long time and a few months ago we made the decision for him to quit work with his company and work at the shop. We don't have a lot of business so money is really tight, but we know we are doing what God is leading and we trust Him to care for us. It is a big change in our spending, but as long as we know it is God’s will, we know he will provide.
When Terry called to tell his company that he was putting in his notice, they asked him not to quit but to take a lay off for about 6 months to decide if he wanted to come back or not. They said they would sign him up for 6 months. It was a confirmation to us that we were doing the right thing. Every time we think we understand what God is going to do, he does something so far beyond that it is amazing. I can't help but be a little afraid. I know that this is God's will and I know that he will care for us, but I don't know how difficult things will become financially. We are unsure of what lies ahead, we are unsure where money will come from to keep us going, but we know this is God's will, so as I have said so many times in the past few years, Lead On Father!