On Tuesday August 23, 2011, I woke up from a short night’s
sleep and saw that my husband, Jack, was in bed next to me. Normally he would
have been getting ready for work by now, but here he was. I figured last night
had been a rough night since he didn’t come home before I decided to go to bed.
A phone call in the evening had caused him to head to church because of an
“issue with a teen”. My husband was a youth pastor and phone calls like this
late at night, I'm ashamed to say, annoyed me as much as they concerned me.
Jack left and I waited. The hours rolled on. Sometime close
to midnight, I decided to go to bed. Nausea rolled around in my stomach as I
tried to push the what-if’s out of my mind. Little did I know that nausea would
be my continual friend for an undetermined amount of time.
Jack sat up. I was dying to know yet simultaneously dreading
the news. I asked him what had happened and he told me to get up and go to the
bathroom and be sure I was awake to hear what he had to say.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
My hands trembled and butterflies roared inside me. I felt sick. This was going to be unusually bad. Either one of our teens had gotten in serious trouble or someone had died. I came back and sat on the bed trying, in futility, to brace my
heart for what was going to happen in the next few minutes.
From that moment on, my life was forever changed.
To preface the worst of the blow, my husband first quietly revealed
his struggle with gay pornography. It had started when he was 13 and continued
on until that day. Twenty years of gay pornography.
Twenty years.
He continued to explain, to my horror, a situation that
resulted in a report made to the police office and subsequently to our church. He
had inappropriately touched one of the teen boys in our youth group and if the
parents chose, he could be jailed and forever be labeled a sex offender.
He cried and my first natural response was one of pity and
compassion. His ministry was over. I was in shock. I didn’t really know much
about pornography, I didn’t understand the details of what he did with the
teenager. I just knew that he looked broken and he was scared to death that he
would end up in jail. I was numb and I didn’t know what to do with myself. He
said that in a few minutes his parents would be over to the house and he was
going to be telling his mother for the first time and that maybe I’d like to be
out of the house for that.
So thankfully I had an objective task ahead of me. I became
robotic. It was the only way to survive my following seconds of life.
Pull myself together. Get some clothes on. Get our 23-month-old
son together. Mix a bottle. Get the stroller. Head outside before I see his
parents.
Already a thick dark covering of shame had started to roll over
me. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Escape. Hide. Don’t let anyone see you
because you are shameful.
I wasn’t fast enough and before I knew it, his parents were walking
into the house. Dad knew what had happened already, but I pitied Mom. She had gotten
ready, and waited the 10-minute drive knowing that she was about to hear
something that would shatter her life.
I was so mechanical that I walked right past her on my way
of escape before I thought to say hello and give her a hug. Turning back
around, I leaned over and hugged her as she sat on the couch waiting for the
bomb to hit. I could only say “hi, Mom.”
Jack started talking as I slipped out the door.
I had walked our neighborhood before. Many times. This time
I was a zombie. My muscles were moving, but I didn’t know where I was going.
Muddled and unable to process, my brain was not registering what I had just
been told. I was so jolted I couldn’t take it in. Our lives were going to be
spent in ministry and in a matter of three minutes that had all changed. Like a
record that kept skipping, my brain could not move on and accept the new life
that I was staring at. Like losing a loved one and not knowing how to function
or even imagine life without them, I kept thinking, “this can’t be happening”.
. .“this can’t be true.”
My husband. This is the man that would deliberately look the
other way when we walked by a Victoria Secret store just so that I would be
assured that he wasn’t going to enjoy anything but me. This is the man who
other women would refer to as a wonderful man. He was a man of high integrity.
“You can just tell that he really really loves you. I wish I had that in my
marriage,” I heard numerous times.
I texted a close friend: “Please pray for us.”
I remember the realization hitting me so hard I couldn’t
believe it was really me, here, now, dealing with this. “I can’t believe this is my life.” “We are one of those people . . . the couples that other people talk about in
hushed voices in conversations that end with, “so sad” or “I can’t believe
it.” I am one of those wives. We are the people who shame the Lord’s name publicly.
We are a news broadcaster’s poster child for the sham of Christianity.”
My prayers were mostly short sentences. One I prayed on my
walk still crosses my lips many nights, “Hold me together.”
I never doubted God’s care for us or His goodness. I may
have asked Him “why?” but as soon as it left my lips, I knew it was an
emotional and fruitless question. I knew
the answer to that one. Sin. Fallen world. It was not God’s doing but His allowing.
I only desired His help and sustaining power. I needed Him to be close to just
get me through this awful day.
I remember trying not to be too emotional thinking that my
neighbors could be watching, so I walked on very slowly, in shock, staring at
my son peacefully drinking his bottle. Then I got a text from Jack. “I’m done,
you can come back.”
I turned the stroller around.
If I had known what lay ahead in the months to come, I might
not have headed back home. But God was there with me. Holding me then, guiding
me as I walked and lovingly writing His plans for the rest of my life.
