I'm Still Alive

I have the urge to write - perhaps it's from the Lord.

I have been quiet for a long time. I haven't talked to my own family in weeks. Many of my closest friends, I've been silent with for months and they are hurt by my silence. When things are happening that I don't understand, I shut down to process without all the voices. I stop talking so there won't be any more probing questions from anyone. When I feel like others would not be pleased with my words, I keep quiet. When I see that I might offend, I hold back. When I am trying to process, I keep from sputtering out my opinion because it may take a month to figure out how I feel.

This post is probably going to fluctuate from topic to topic, bear with me. It will be unpolished. It will be raw. Here is what has been going on in my life.


Last night, as I drifted off to sleep, I had a dream in my first few seconds of rest. It was so powerful I felt the dream and can still feel its fear suffocating me. I was driving at night. I turned down our street. But instead of seeing houses, I saw nothing but branches covered with leaves. They came in close to the road as if branches had either grown or were scattered blocking the houses from view. It looked like a hurricane had come through, but I couldn't see the destruction, just the branches. I was having a hard time seeing the road in front of me. Fear gripped me. I put on my brights, and seconds later they became more dim.  Soon, I realized that I could see absolutely nothing. I had my foot on the gas pedal, but everything was pitch black. My eyes were opened wide, but there was nothing. I was terrified. I couldn't even see the lights on my dashboard.

My first impulse was to slow down because I didn't want to hit anything or anyone. I slowed some, feeling like I couldn't breathe. Why couldn't I see anything??  Then I realized that I couldn't possibly stay here. It was dangerous to remain here any longer. I had to get out of here to a place I could see. An urgent push of fear sent me forward and I floored it. I raced in complete darkness for a few eternal seconds. Soon I got to the end of the street and was able to see. My heart was still pounding from the darkness that had engulfed me only a few seconds earlier.

I had no idea where I was. I didn't recognize anything I was seeing. The ground and road were covered in snow (the endless winter of 2014 just had to make an appearance) I turned and didn't see a soul. The glow from the moon and amber street lights bounced around from sky to snow and back to sky giving me plenty of eerie light to drive by. I knew that if I kept driving that I would be even more lost. I stopped the truck I was in. (We don't own a truck, I have no idea why I'm driving a truck.) I stepped out and started walking toward a house or a small office building. I saw someone, a man looking at me through a basement door window with an expression that told me that I should probably not ever encounter this man at close range. I instantly felt a dagger of fear and that same push of "get out of here" once I saw his face. I was vulnerable and I had to get out or it was over. I walked backwards some and turned around. And there was another man in front of me as I walked toward the truck. I was in terrible danger. Two bad men, no one to save me, I couldn't get to the van, I was lost. My chest hurt with fear.

Then I woke up. I laid there trying to catch my breath and let my muscles relax.

In a couple minutes I heard a bang in the house. I sat up. I whispered to Jack, "did you hear that?"  nothing. "did you hear that?"  "what?"  He didn't seem to concerned when I told him, so I just stayed sitting up for several minutes knowing unless he or I went downstairs to check and go into our son's room to look, that I wouldn't be OK. After a long silence, he asked if I'd like him to go see so I could relax. "that would be nice." Turns out our son was sleeping perpendicular in his bed, so we figure he must have hit his head on the side of the bed or something. At any rate, we made it through the night and I'm alive. I'm still pondering the meaning and strong emotion of my dream. In order for you to understand, I may have to backtrack some.

I actually felt intense fear before I fell asleep. I tried to calm myself with "What time I am afraid I will trust in You."  Oh, yes, the Lord. He is here and He is watching over me. Covering me with His wings. But I have believed that before and have been subject to crippling pain multiple times from multiple places while he supposedly covered me with His protective wings. Enter fear again. Recite the verse. Enter thoughts and reason, I welcome fear. And the circular never-ending battle spun in my head creating a deeper crevice in my mind. The rut of my thoughts circulating in its regular fashion.

Sometimes it's near impossible to derail fear once you give it track. Once you dump in the coal. Once you light the fire and allow water fill to the brim. It perches on a hill ready to fly down at full speed until you can't answer your son's 5th "why?", or you can't sleep or keep your heart from racing. Until you feel so sick you're wishing for vomit. Until fears and memories you thought had been killed rise from their graves and push the already rushing engine over the next hill.

That battle rushed through me as I surprisingly fell asleep 

and had a dream that seemed to play out a simple allegory for the last 3 years of my life. 

I've had my world in upheaval as you know. Then 6 months later, there was more. I was advised to separate in hopes of a certain reaction. I did not receive that reaction. I received spiritual abuse from some that I went to for help. God told me to return before I saw what I had hoped for from my husband. I continue to not receive the full understanding that I have been hoping for from our new counselors who I do believe are really trying. And now, God has opened the door for another counselor and I am terrified to walk toward it. 

God clearly told me to leave, yet two counselors my husband has meet with have strengthened my husband's belief that I should never have separated. "He wasn't beating you."  "There was no physical abuse." Husband:"You abandoned the marriage" "You didn't follow Matthew 18".  My legitimate concerns were labeled as "unbiblical" by one counselor who said that my desire was to take things away from my husband. I wrote two lengthy emails to him explaining my distress and heart. He never even acknowledged receiving them. Family members were upset with me. I received letters from well-meaning friends telling me that the young girls were watching me and I needed to remember my vows. None of them had lived what I had lived. They didn't know what I had seen on my computer. They didn't know that the lawyer told me my son could be taken away if I did nothing. But even with all of this and my husband's mind unchanged on many things, I returned. I obeyed God in the separating and I obeyed Him in the returning. And I have been shamed for it all by some in spiritual authority. Our current counselors are trying but I feel a roughness toward me and a frustration with me over my having a hard time trusting my husband's words. I pray for God to save me from all of this. 

This weekend God opened the door for another man to meet with us. A humble and gentle man with a firm side. I was fearful every time my husband suggested him. I don't think I can take any more instruction from a counselor who is frustrated with me. From anyone who will compare our situation with someone else and say to me that I should be thankful and apologize for a fleeting desperate sentence spoken after my husband's new actions last month tore me apart again. 

So yes. There is great fear.  

So. Much. Fear. 

I prayed last week, "God, I really like this person. He seems very godly and perceptive. He seems very kind and gentle. But I don't know what he would say about me here, or here, or on this subject. What would he say to me about this? I'm not going to leap out of the frying pan until I can see where I'm going to land. Unless you want me to be in an institution, don't let this happen again."  

I teeter from feeling terrified to not caring because I know it will never change. No one will ever get it and I must just comply with what they think my sins are. Get some calluses where their sandpaper continues to rub my still throbbing wounds. Take it. Just get through and try to believe that they aren't blind to the things I see - but instead I'm just paranoid and they're trying to bring me back to the normal setting. 

Three days before my dream, something happened that only God could have brought about. This man, I'll call him Dr. Alex,  became alerted to something that my husband was getting ready to to. This something I had slight reservations about, but it didn't seem nearly as eyebrow raising as some of the things that I have voiced my opinion about and been pushed down as being divisive. So I don't say a thing since this seemed like a smaller matter.  Dr. Alex, knowing only a small portion of what has happened with us called me to share his concerns and advises against my husbands planned actions. 

Could this really be happening? Someone who is not me thinks my husband should not do something?  He was humbly sharing his concern and gently expressing that he feels awkward and very sorry to have to bring it up to me, but that he really must broach this subject. I sit down with shaking hands. The  relief floods my body along with a good dose of adrenaline. This is the sort of phone call that I longed for from someone else 2 years ago when I was in distress over my husband's lack of boundaries and transparency. This is the sort of reproach I also once despised but now after a couple years of having counselors and pastors try to normalize his past actions while my alarm system went on higher and higher alert because no one else was watching, I welcomed it. I felt attacked but I was thankful. I was hurt but I was thrilled. Someone ELSE - NOT ME - had a problem with it!  And for once this same person with their concerns and authority was going to speak to my husband. It's been a very long time since all of these factors were rolled into one person. Not since the beginning of our journey have we had a counselor who understood my pain, was gentle with me, firm with my husband to my satisfaction, and also had the authority to speak to him. I was not the police in this. 

I explained my thankfulness and relief and we continued to talk. 

Don't you know it? Everything I had told God that I was unsure of about this man was dispelled in about 15 minutes. It's like God took notes on my concerns and gave Dr. Alex the list to share his kind heart about all the things that I had been beaten up over before. He said words like, "validation" and that I had come back and "done beautifully" in my "forgiveness" to my husband. He didn't give me a pamphlet on forgiveness or tell me to pray against unrighteous anger or pride. He saw that I had already forgiven but was in distress. 

Hope. 

A little light in my dark world. 

Afraid to hope. 

Did he really say that?  Yes, but I'm sure he'll tell me I did that wrong and I need to straighten up here. He won't feel the same way when Jack tells him his side. 

I bring in doubt and fear comes in tow. 

God gives me light and I don't believe. The beautiful music he sends me gets drowned out by all the terror of past experiences. But I try to believe. It seems that God is saying, "Yes, this is the man I have sent to you, daughter."

Then came the pain over the next few hours. For the first time in a long time I saw our situation through someone else's eyes. 

Try this on for size:

My husband molested a teenaged boy in our pastoral care for two years. 

What did your face and body just do? Yeah, that. The ever so slight facial expression even if in check is what I see. It's that ugly truth hitting another person for the first time that tells me "yep, it's about as ugly and sick of a thing you can think of and you're married to that man and everyone knows it and they all look at you that way." Marked by the most foul label imaginable. Public. 

You know, the police could still come get him anytime they want? If anyone says anything. If that teen's family changes their mind…. it's over. Last month I was upstairs when a man came to the door and spoke to my husband. I couldn't hear what was being said. My first thought was "They've come for him." 

So I knew that it was going to be a bad night of PTSD junk. I was ready to ride it out because there's nothing else to be done. The nightmare plays again just as shocking as it was the first moment I heard. I can't breathe my chest is so heavy with shock. Then I relived finding more information, new activity, friends I wasn't comfortable with. Then the spiritual abuse. That feeling of being taken roughly by your bruised arm and dragged down a dark hallway where the man you fear the most waits for you playing the victim to a room of mesmerized authorities. "You want to do the right thing, don't you? You have to go home with him. You're being unbiblical. You're not bleeding, you should never have run away in the first place, anyway. You have to forgive him, it's a command. Trust God. You're being unreasonable." (No one ever said those exact words to me - I felt them, though).

Surf Facebook to try to get my mind on ANYTHING else. 12am. Icecream. Put on Scripture Lullabies except it also takes me back to all the places I've played it which then brings back those hideous memories. Rocking my son at night crying and begging God for answers. The hotel room where we met for counseling where I was told again that I wasn't physically abused so I should never have left. My bedroom at my parent's house where I cried on the floor as quietly as I could to not wake my son sleeping in his crib. I asked God to please let me die many times in that room. I fight through the memories that this music brings in order to hear the comfort of Scripture. 

Then there was the weekend conference I went to. A blessing in countless ways. I saw God's goodness toward me. I was encouraged to raise ebenezers of remembrance. Monuments of what God has done. There are many that are undisputed moments of God literally reaching down and making His presence undeniable to me. These last three years, He has done some things that I can't push away as being coincidence. And if I choose to believe that he still loves me and is intensely involved in every part of my life, I see even more of it in the mundane. He has shown his love toward me in strange and wonderful ways. He has given me personalized love notes through people at specific times. In all of this He whispers, "I see you. I'm here. I love you and hold on, honey."

• The day I found out about everything in August of 2011, only about 6 people knew what had happened. A lady that I knew but had never even had a face to face conversation with texted me saying that she was praying for me and that I was on her heart that day.

• A friend sent me a verse that was on her heart and ended up being a direct response to something I asked God about that day.

• After one of my worst nights, I had lost all hope and the emotional fear and pain was physically affecting me. I felt betrayed by the people whose house I was in. My husband had just torn me apart by his words the night before, and I was going to have to go home with him. My then, 1 year old son pointed to a wall decoration and said, "Wassat?" (What's that?)  I looked and I was so angry and hurt. I was so mad that he was pointing to a wall hanging that said in huge six inch words, "FAITH". I didn't even want to say the word. I muttered, "it says faith."  He asked again, "Faith, it says 'faith'". He pointed again. I was livid and did not believe that God would have the audacity to tell me to have faith after the previous evening. "FAITH!" I whisper-yelled.  Even though I rejected it, I knew in the deepest part of me, that God was obviously in gentleness trying to give me something to hold onto since everything else had fallen way under my feet. 

• One Sunday I was especially hurting after finding out something my husband did recently. A woman came up to me and told me that I was on her heart that morning and she had been praying for me.

• One evening I laid on the floor in a bedroom in my parent's house crying after midnight. One of the nights that I probably begged to die. Confused by God's direction and the counselor's advice, my parent's take, and my own gut reactions, I begged God to tell me if he saw me. I remember saying to Him. "Show me that you hear me. Are you hearing my prayers? Are you pleased with me? Am I where you want me to be?" When I was done sobbing, I got on the bed and read the selection from that day's scripture. Daily Light on the Daily Path is a devotional book that lays out phrases of Scripture along the same theme. What met my eyes sent me into more sobs. Verse after verse of:  "Ask and it shall be given you. ..This is the confident that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us…The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry… The Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles…Ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full."
I had said, "Do you hear me?" and He answered specifically, "Yes, I do."

• Recently I was having an awful time sleeping. The pain and nightmarish trauma was closing in on me. I asked God for help. I laid there and cried. I flipped through a bunch of verses on my verse app. But it was getting worse. In a few minutes my son woke up and called for me. He asked me for some music. I clicked on the Scripture Lullabies. The first song was "I Will Hide You Underneath My Wings". As I left his room, I let the song play in my mind. It was like God as audible as he possibly would ever become in this age, spoke to me what He wanted me to hear from Him. I was in his intense and intentional care. 

I tend to push away things that could be coincidence. I desperately want to see God's hand in a situation so much that it must be so obviously His doing. He has been generous to do things that are so unusually obvious that only He could have brought some of these things to pass. I feel like Gideon and the fleece. How loving and patient of God to show Himself to me in these ways. To answer my specific questions, to press my name on people's hearts who have no idea what's going on in my life.

Here are the monuments that prove that God is watching and involved and that He loves me deeply. However, I must choose to see them, and to focus on them as the darkness presses in, and the fear starts to take me over. No! I will believe what He has said even though I have no relief. Even though people shame me. Even though I am a little bullied or misunderstood. He knows and sees. He collects my tears. He gives me what I need to keep my head above the water.

I must choose to see Him working. 

Agonizing

My thoughts are a whirlwind of fragmented sentences, impressions, confusions, hopes and disappointments. It is agony. I keep hoping to see the bright sun break through the dark clouds so I can have a day of peace. But I just keep being teased. There is hope but it's like at the promise of rain and sun, the farmer must go out and work the soil and only by the sweat of his brow will he reap the harvest.

I am exhausted beyond words. Physically and mentally. I am drained beyond the ability to enjoy my son's sweet face. Mental and emotional rest and relief is all that I can think of but I see the rocky road stretched out before me and it's only by walking the road will I even hope to see glimpses of this rest.

Others who are not so close to me and don't know every detail react with immense joy and excitement as we have started to work through things. I feel like I should be jumping with hands raised in overflowing joy and praise to the Lord for His abundant gifts of hope.  But I find myself instead cautiously watching my husband and holding on to whatever is beside me while I try to catch my breath emotionally. Hoping and being disappointed with the progress, I know that I will have to revisit an issue when I have the strength to walk through it with him yet again. So forgive me for my silent processing, my watchful eyes, and my hesitancy to judge this a done deal while you praise God for "doing a new thing!!".  This new thing is killing me right now. It is not clear. It is not cut and dry. It is painful and it's a complete mess and most of it is totally out of my hands.

God please don't make me have to contend with him and explain everything and help him to see. Can't you just open his mind and heart for me? I'm so tired of this.

Our week of counseling was incredibly hard. And then it was incredibly good followed by the smack of reality. We'd worked through some things and it helped us to enjoy our time together. But I soon saw that so many things needed to be worked through. As we started trudging through it all I found more heartache with differences of opinion, different memories, and unresolved issues that will either just have to be dropped or approached at another time.

It is agonizing. Every step of it.

A friend texted me today in response to my confusion: "All of that is what goes along with the hard choice {to stay in the marriage} which is why few choose it and why it is hard to pray for it to go this way. I cannot even imagine how to get through it without agonizing." Such wise and strangely comforting words.

• •• • •• •

It's supposed to be a mess. 

• •• • •• •

In a way that's comforting. Accept the mess. Accept the stomach churning, nausea and the intense pain.

He held me tight while I sobbed. He wasn't angry with me. I was however incredibly disappointed in some of his other reactions. It is a strange place to be expected to and want to be so close to someone who still hurts you. To transfer my heart back to him is so painful when I'm not completely sure he is safe yet. There is no lightening bolt of change. It is gradual. This is not how I want it to be.

So we text and he calls every night and while we bond on surface levels we contend over other things. It is a dreadful mix of relief and pain. Hope and disappointment.

I wanted to be able to use a back hoe and get all of this taken care of, but instead I am down with my face in the dirt with paleontologist's tools. It is back breaking work and I have literally only begun.

The purpose of my life is not to have a happy marriage. It is to glorify God. And if people will turn to God because they have watched a desperate fight over what seems hopeless and unworthy of the effort only to see the end result of a restored marriage in every way, then I guess I'll have to say "so be it".  I must follow my Lord because HE is safe and HE is love. If I have to follow Him further into the shadows of death and pain to learn His ways, then I have no choice.

Facedown

From the day that I found out about my husband's pornography use and other horrifying activities to the following Sunday, we held our breath until the church could be notified publicly and properly. We were allowed to tell only those closest to use who we could trust to keep things quiet until the Sunday morning service. There were endless meetings with church leaders, friends, teenagers we were closest to, our youth workers, college students...Jack told them individually and in groups. I watched their faces. Some gave instant forgiveness, one walked out of our house suddenly when Jack broke the news. 

It was like knowing your house was going to fall over a cliff, but a week went by while you agonized over every crack in the ground or stone that gave way or watched the sand start to slide. We knew what was getting ready to happen, but we had to wait as we watched small glimpses of what Sunday would look like. 

I don't know how I came across this song, but it reflected my heart as the days brought us closer to revealing Jack's sin. 

 The approaching Sunday seemed like a place of deep reverence to me, 

a day that I would tremble before the Lord and beg for mercy. 

I would put it on loudly and just sob. I wanted to be at His feet, in His presence and this song with it's cautious beginning and haunting cords helped me get there. Then as the music swells, I was able to praise Him and find joy in His sovereignty. 

When the Fishbowl Is Dirty. . .

There's something about public shame, especially when you are a private person. The worst and most devastating thing happens but instead of it being kept in the family or in your own home, it is visible to everyone. All of the dirt, your reaction to the dirt, people's opinions of the dirt, and people's opinions of your reaction to the dirt is out for all to see. They watch you try to clean it up. They share their input even though they've never done it themselves, and you're ahead of the game if you're the one they share it with.  They can see your progress and then they give their opinion about that, too. 

It reminds me of something a friend said to us once. My husband and I had candidated for a youth pastor position at a church we'd attended for a few years. We lost it by only a handful of votes. It was humiliating and at the time, completely devastating. A year later we were blessed to be called to another church and would be moving to another state. While we were packing, some dear people were helping us clear out the most embarrassing parts of our home. There were corners I hadn't cleaned, closets I hadn't straightened, clutter I hadn't thrown away but people were putting things into boxes for us all the same. Rooms I had shut off when guests arrive were now being cleaned by those very guests. A gentleman helping us said with a laugh, "having your friends help you move is like standing in front of everyone naked while they give you a good soaping down. And there's nothing you can do about it."

Public humiliation is like being helplessly exposed. 

I've never done well in the fishbowl. Like Beth Moore states jokingly in one of her lessons on Deuteronomy, I want to shut the door and lock it. My welcome mat is out but I don't mean it. I tend to be a private person so the public humiliation of my husband's twisted unfaithfulness sent me to the breaking point. But being a private person, I didn't let anyone know that I was secretly on the mental edge of normal.

As a result of the fishbowl, I would not be able start quietly processing everything as a wife for several months. We were so busy with other things. There was, after all, God's name to shame, a church to shake to its foundation, a youth group to crush and dismay, friends to be shunned by, countless well meaning people to avoid, thoughtless words to endure, looming jail-time to be terrified over, a husband that kept reaching out to hold my hand expecting mine to be there, a sweet one-year-old to take care of, a family of in-laws to please. And it was exposed for all to see in the fishbowl of our former-ministry. There was no room for processing, no room for escaping, no room for getting a breather. I was buried and drowning in it.

But God . . .

I've had to develop a type of tunnel vision that causes me to only focus on the Lord. I need blinders. Over the last two years this idol of pleasing man has been exposed by public humiliation and more recently disagreement over actions I have taken. I must turn my focus not on all the cheering or scrutinizing onlookers, but on the Lord Himself. What He thinks. What He says.

I have learned that I am a huge people pleaser with a fear of man disability. It is paralyzing and can make a person crazy. God exposed this sin and thought routine in my life and as my situation progresses, I am sort of on the training wheels of working through it.

I have had to do some things that have made the people whose opinions and approval I coveted the most shake their heads in disbelief. I have finally stood to speak up against things that were happening in my life and though it's been impossible to ignore the opposing opinions from those I had looked up to, I have done my best to follow God's leading when it has gone against the current.

It is so hard to keep those blinders on. Often I find in the midst of an anxious night that the reason I am anxious is not because I've received another difficult email, but because I have placed God's direction and opinion of me aside, taken the blinders off and am looking around at other things.

It takes intentionality to fight the feeling of the fishbowl. Focus has to be constantly redirected to the Lord.

The Day Cinderella's Castle Crumbled

I can’t say exactly where it started, or exactly when I was aware of it, but I do remember the date that my world was jolted severely by it.

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.