Dear Overcomer,
I am a Christ follower and I was divorced in late 2020. I had been a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom for 16 years and was left alone with no job in the middle of a pandemic. I was awarded the house and even though I was able to make the payments, my ex-husband refused to sign the deed that would allow me to refinance. After I was let go from my very part-time job due to the pandemic. I couldn’t refinance because I was only able to secure a part-time, 1099 job, and the bank would not approve me without a co-signer. I have never failed to make a payment in my life (in fact, I was always the one on his case for being late on bills), but he didn’t believe me so I had to sell my kids’ childhood home. I moved to the only place I could get without credit history and it is in a much less desirable part of town, where I still live. I smell drugs every morning, and the first summer I was here a kid was shot across the street from our parking lot. A far cry from our safe little farmhouse in Mason. But hey, if he couldn’t have it, no one could have it.
I did not want to be divorced. In fact, I used the Biblical tool of separation to try to AVOID divorce. I gave him the opportunity to stop doing what he was doing so that we could stay married. He refused. He claimed I was cheating on him, even though he had no proof and no good reason to believe that. He never brought that concern up in the years of counseling we went through or in any conversation ever, so when he brought that up in mediation as a reason for recording everything I did, I was shocked. I had found tape recorders in his car and in our house, and he locked me out of his phone so he could use that to record as well.
At first, my church was very supportive. The care pastor tried to talk to my husband, and he counseled my kids and me for a while. He gave me a lot of great resources that helped me put names to what was going on so I could begin to deal with it. Even though he knew a lot more about abuse than most pastors, he was not a trauma counselor, and his help could only go so far. Several of the men on staff took my husband aside privately to ask him how they could help. He told them there was nothing that could be done. The lead pastor even told me that if I wasn’t already pursuing separation, he would advise me to do so.
I asked my husband to go to his parent’s house and give me space so we could figure things out. I did not have any family in the area, and our teenagers were deeply involved in sports and other activities, so my moving to a family member’s home out of state wasn’t practical or good for the kids. He refused to leave. I told him that if he didn’t, I was going to have to file for a legal separation. He said if I did that, he would divorce me.
I have since learned that when a person wants something, he fights for it. He pursues it. He doesn’t punish it. My husband’s response of punishment for putting up a boundary should have told me that he was looking for a way out of the marriage via a route that he would later be able to use to blame me for breaking up the family. He can now say that I filed for separation even though he warned me that if I did so, he would divorce me. Therefore, I must have wanted the divorce. See the sick logic? It almost makes sense. It’s almost believable. It almost makes you feel sorry for him.
I can’t say I believe he did that on purpose. I can’t say I believe he plotted to get me to fall in love with him so that he could control me. I believe he had deep-seated control issues that he probably didn’t know about until he got married, and the beliefs I held as a new Christian enabled his issues to get out of control. It didn’t help that I came from a family who told me my father loved me when he allowed his wife to treat my brother and me like trash. I was taught to pursue men who did not love me, and that what my dad did is what love looked like.
It was a perfect storm.
The Background Story
I met my husband through my dad and stepmother, which should have been my first clue that something wasn’t quite right. Ever since my dad met his current wife, my relationship with him has been on and off at best. It started when my dad was dating her and she met my brother and me. She was very insecure, separated from an abusive husband, and didn’t want stepchildren. I remember one time she told a joke about herself being fat and laughed at it. Well, she wasn’t fat, but the joke was funny and she was laughing, so I laughed. The next thing I knew, my dad was telling me he wasn’t going to speak to me until I apologized for calling her fat. And so it began.
The betrayal ran strong and so did the lies. I couldn’t understand how my dad could know me for my whole life and still believe I would act as she described. I wasn’t a mean kid. I would never in a million years call someone fat. I now realize that her perception was so far off due to her own rejection and abuse issues that she probably DID believe I said those things, but as an adult she should have gotten healing for her own issues before stepping into a new marriage. She was the adult; I was the child.
Many blended families use the mantra, “My kids come first.” How can both parties say that effectively? They can’t. The strongest personality always wins. That’s how it was with my stepmother. Her kids came first, she had the strongest personality, and my dad did what he had to do to keep her from being mad at him, even up to betraying his own kids. He tried to force me to apologize to her for things I did not say or do, and when I wouldn’t I became the self-fulfilling prophecy of the difficult child. I was then the hurtful one.
Fast forward to my last year in college. I had become a Christian and wanted to go on a mission trip that required me to raise money. The leaders advised that we get our parents’ blessing to go. So, I wrote letters to my mom and dad, telling them about my decision to follow Christ and that I was raising money for a trip to learn how to share the Good News with other people. Not unexpectedly, my dad didn’t respond with financial help, but later when I must have done something “right” in his eyes and he was on talking terms with me, his wife mentioned my ex-husband as someone I should meet because “he talked about Jesus, too.” He was the brother of my stepsister’s husband. To make it simple, just think of it as two sisters marrying two brothers. I wasn’t interested, as I had recently broken up with a boyfriend, but they sent him my picture and me, his, and before I knew it, he sent me an email.
After we were married, my husband always thought it was funny to tell people we met on the internet and then walk away, leaving me to explain the story. Back when we met in 1999, meeting people on the internet was not the norm. He knew it would get me to tell people the true story because I couldn’t stand having people think I met my husband on the internet. So here it is . . .
In the Beginning…
As mentioned previously, at a time when my dad was feeling warm toward me, he and his wife sent my husband a picture of me and me a picture of him. Let me just tell you-WOW! I had recently ended a two-year relationship and was not interested in starting another one, but he had me at one look. This guy was GQ gorgeous. So, of course, when he sent me an email introducing himself, I was pretty excited! However, I did have my wits about me. I had come to Christ because my previous boyfriend’s mother had loved me to the Lord, and I ended up breaking off the relationship with her son because he didn’t want to live for Christ like I did. At the very least, I knew I would not date a man who didn’t love Jesus, so I asked my future husband to tell me his testimony.
His response startled me a little because he said that was a deeply personal question. Hmm. Not to me! I wanted everyone to know about my relationship with Jesus and how I got there. I wondered how a Christian could feel that telling his testimony was too personal a question. I later began to question his relationship with the Lord when he refused to be baptized because he couldn’t get all the people together that he wanted to be there. He did email back, though, and tell me his testimony, so I was content with that.
I lived in Georgia at the time and he in Michigan, so we began our relationship through emails. He was witty, intelligent, and we seemed to have things in common. Most of all, it seemed our love for the Lord was a priority for both of us. I don’t think either of us thought it would turn into a dating relationship, since I never planned on moving back to Michigan and he certainly didn’t plan on moving to Georgia. When he talked about his future, he spoke of living in Michigan in order to stay near his family. His family seemed to be a priority to him, which was a selling point for me because my family was very broken and dysfunctional. I had visions of having two parents, more siblings, and family holidays without arguments and crying.
We emailed each other for about six months, and then we talked on the phone for the first time. My dad happened to be celebrating Easter with my husband’s family (remember my stepsister had married into his family), so when my dad called me to say Happy Easter (again, this was not a norm), he passed the phone to my husband and we talked for the first time. After that, my husband started calling me semi-regularly. Nothing predictable, just once in a while. Just enough to make me wonder and think about him.
About one year later, I flew home to Michigan for my grandparents’ 50th anniversary celebration. Things were going well over email, telephone, and even hand-written letters, so we decided we should meet while I was in town. I had a very strong feeling that if sparks flew when we met in person, then I probably had met my husband. It seemed we had talked about so many important things over email, and it felt like I knew him so well. Everything else had fallen into place, and chemistry was the last piece of the puzzle. So he planned a day date for us, and even though I was very nervous, I knew the minute I laid eyes on him that the chemistry was there for me! That was Labor Day weekend of 1999, and we were married on Labor Day weekend of 2000.
The Day I Met His Mother
I distinctly remember the day I met his mother. As I mentioned, I lived in Georgia when I first started talking to my husband. While there, I was involved in a car accident with a drunk driver and it was terrifying! I wore a neck brace from severe whiplash for a few weeks, and I had extensive physical therapy for soft tissue damage. My car was smashed, my roommate was gone for the entire summer, and I felt very alone. I wanted to go home. After months of wrestling, I finally decided to move back up north. I quit my job and moved to my mom and stepfather’s house near Chicago.
All the while, things were getting serious between my husband and me, and he wanted to take me to meet his parents. It was a warm summer day when we drove out to their house. We sat outside with his dad, and I remember his mom coming out to join us. I stood up to greet her; she didn’t crack a smile. She greeted her son but said little to me. Later I found out that she felt I was irresponsible for leaving my job and coming home after my accident. Well, she certainly made sure I felt that! I do remember her asking about my job, and I lamely explained my situation as I felt her judgement wash over me.
I am not irresponsible, but she didn’t take time to get to know me that day or any other day after that. I left that day with the distinct feeling that I somehow wasn’t good enough.
Almost a year later she validated that feeling. We had gotten engaged around Christmas time and were in the throes of planning our September wedding. Things were rocky again with my dad, which made it difficult because we were now going to be married into the same family. I really have no idea why things were rocky with my dad again. I had been living with him and his wife for a couple of months to be closer to my husband and prepare for the wedding. I worked hard to stay out of his wife’s way. I made sure I helped around the house, but that wasn’t good enough. If I did the dishes, it was at the wrong time. If I used the dial-up internet, it was at the wrong time. However, I didn’t know these things were bothering her until the day we announced our engagement to them. Her response to me was this: “You little shit!” And then she launched into all the things about me that bothered her.
Per usual, my dad just stood there and let her yell at me and say things that weren’t true. But what really surprised me was that my future husband did the same thing! He did not stand up for me, and then when I got upset and told my stepmother that I would just stay out of her way, he later reprimanded me for not handling things “right.” I felt so unsupported, but that was normal to me, so I didn’t even notice how toxic the situation was becoming.
I moved out of my dad’s house and into my grandmother’s house, where I stayed until the wedding. One day, my stepmother told me that my mother-in-law-to-be was “very mad at me.” I’m sure it gave her great pleasure to tell me that, as did the result of her telling me. I decided that I would call and see what the problem was and how I could remedy it. *UNSOLICITED ADVICE ALERT: If a person is not big enough to tell you herself that she is upset with you, then confronting her is probably going to make her feel very threatened. * How I wish I had known that then!
It was mid-afternoon on a weekday, so my husband was at work but I had the day off for some reason. I called his mother and told her that my stepmother had told me that she was upset with me, and I asked if she could tell me what was wrong. Whoa! Reminiscent of the scene with my stepmother above, she decided to take that opportunity to tell me how much she disliked me. I was 24 years old and already a disappointment to my future mother-in-law, so I listened in shock without comment. When she was done, I asked, “Do you even want me in your family?”
“No, I don’t,” she replied.
I was shocked and terribly upset. I had no idea why she didn’t like me. I had never done anything to her or laughed at any fat jokes around her, so I couldn’t figure out what made her so angry with me. I was so upset that after hanging up with her, I knelt on the floor, sobbed uncontrollably, and prayed for a long time. After pulling myself together, I called my husband at work to tell him what had happened. I had prayed before calling him and I told God that I would not marry him if it wasn’t the right thing for me to do. I surrendered my relationship to the Lord, even though it would have broken my heart to call it off. I did not at that time or any other time after that get the sense that I shouldn’t marry this man. After all, he was a Christ-follower, and his mother was not. He wasn’t her.
I told him that if he didn’t want to marry me, it was ok. I didn’t want to marry him if it was going to come between him and his mother. He made light of it and said he would call her, reassuring me he wanted to marry me. Little did I know that for the next 20 years I would endure her hatred, not to be supported by him.
The most dangerous thought I had in that moment was this: “It’s ok, I’m used to this treatment. I can handle it.”
What I also didn’t know was how much dysfunction he didn’t realize he was used to.
Smile for the Camera
One day, a friend was helping me move some furniture, and I needed to transfer some of my photo albums to another shelf. He picked one up and glanced at the cover. It was one of my wedding albums and it had three photos of my husband and me on the front cover. He looked at it for a few seconds, then handed it to me and said, “This guy is marrying a beautiful woman and out of three pictures, he’s not smiling in one of them.” I took the book and looked at it. He was right; not one smile. I hurriedly put the book in its new home, but his words lingered in my mind.
I remember my kids trying to differentiate between my husband’s identical twin sisters, whom we rarely saw. It was understandable that they couldn’t figure out which one was which; it took me several years to know myself! One day, the kids were asking about their aunts and I finally said, “You know which is which because one doesn’t smile.” They both knew immediately from then on.
Today, I had a moment to myself, and my friend’s words were still running across the screen of my brain. I got the photo album down and began to flip through it. I saw the same deadpan face on my husband, his mom, his sister, his grandmother. Hardly any facial expression. I compared them to the pictures of my family, even to the memory of a recent wedding I went to where the groom could not stop smiling, and I began to remember that I used to tell my husband he didn’t know how to smile in pictures. I used to laugh about it, but then again, I worked as a model for years and had been trained how to react to a camera. Most people don’t know those things, so how could I hold that against him? Looking back over the years, I realized there were a lot of times when the smile was missing.
Maybe the lack of emotion in his family was attractive to me because my family was so overly dramatic. Someone always had some kind of emotionally-charged drama going on, and it felt like a relief to be around people who weren’t always talking about how hurt their feelings were. The problem was, they didn’t talk about anything. Ever. That’s the detail I missed. And they did have emotions. One, to be exact. Anger.
I was so relieved to have what I thought was the opposite of my family’s dysfunction that I didn’t notice theirs. And neither did my husband. His most common statement when his mom said hurtful things, ignored us, refused to babysit or even bring us a meal when our daughter was in the hospital, was, “My family has problems but yours is worse because your parents are divorced.” So all the focus went to my side of the family and fixing those problems.
Meanwhile, I was trying desperately to understand why I could not make these people smile toward me. It felt so personal. I could get along with anyone, but not these folks. I never left his family gatherings without a stomachache, headache, or sore jaw from clenching. In fact, just today I noticed that I no longer have sore teeth from grinding and cracking them as a result of stress. I grimaced as I remembered my husband’s statement to me shortly before we separated. We had received an Explanation of Benefits from our dental insurance company and he threw up his hands in frustration, saying, “When are you going to stop cracking teeth so I can stop paying for your crowns?”
I wonder if he’d be glad to know I haven’t cracked a tooth since our divorce?
Thankful for the Loss
About a year after my divorce was final, I was talking with a counselor and I mentioned that I had recently gone someplace I used to go with my family. She asked how that made me feel. “Surprisingly,” I said, “it was redemptive.”
For the past several years, my family had gone camping with our church over Labor Day Weekend. The campground was in an obscure little town, and you had to navigate backroads to get there. From year to year, we could never remember the route.
The second year we went, my husband asked me to print a map (this was before Smart Phones), so I went to Map Quest, put in the campground and our address, and printed the directions. He packed the car, we loaded up the kids, and off we went. I thought everything was fine. As usual, I had no clue that I had done something “wrong.”
When we got to the point in the trip where we turned off the main highway, my husband told me to pull out the directions. I took them out, found the spot we were in, and told him where the map said to go. It wasn’t where I said to go; it was where the map said to go. He made the turns, but it didn’t seem right to him because we had gone a different way the year before, so he got frustrated and told me I had printed the wrong directions. My head spun. I had printed directions to the campground, and to look at the map I could see that the route ended at the correct campground, so how could there be a “wrong” way? I was so confused. Apparently, he had wanted to take the other route.
Instead of just following the directions, he decided to go the way he thought he remembered, and it became a very long, frustrating, tear-filled trip. By the time we arrived at the campground, I was ready to go home.
The year after that, he was mad at me for not packing the camera. I wasn’t aware I was supposed to pack the camera. I asked him why he hadn’t packed the camera, and he said he hadn’t planned on taking pictures. I hadn’t either, that’s why I hadn’t packed it! But apparently you are supposed to pack the camera when you went on a trip, so that was what we fought about that year.
And that was pretty much the story of every trip to that campground. Until the year I took the kids alone.
The drive was peaceful, the directions were correct, no one yelled at me. And it was redemptive. My loss was actually my gain.
I told my counselor this story and she gave me a knowing smile. She told me that a person going to a place where she had trauma and creating a new memory is actually a healing tool she uses at the appropriate time in a person’s journey. I was naturally doing that, and it did make such a powerful difference in the way I experienced so many of the places we had gone together over the 20 years of our marriage. Now, instead of being blindsided on every occasion that is supposed to be special, I am able to create my own atmosphere and lock those new memories in.
After that, I had enough perspective to do something that I found enormously helpful in moving forward: I made a “Loss List.” Again, it was a task I had no idea would bring such powerful results. I was grieving so many losses, so I decided to write them all down in a list. And this is what happened…
In the last three years, I have lost my:
Husband; house; neighbors; some friends; identity as a homeschooler, wife, and mother; time with my kids; traditions; relationship with my son; cats; job.
But I have also lost:
Abuse; fear; anxiety; fear of court; people who are cruel to me; stomachaches; headaches; body aches; confusion; muscle spasms.
And because of those losses, I have gained:
Self-esteem; confidence; peace; faith; creativity; better friends; a new church; a good work experience; healing through EMDR; better understanding of God; different connections; bravery; respect; trust; compassion.
My conclusion:
The net gain is higher than the net loss.
When I became a Christ-follower, I prayed that God would create a new legacy in the generations after me. I thought that was going to look like marrying a godly man and having a whole, intact family. For a long, long time after my divorce, I couldn’t understand why God had not answered the one prayer that was most important to me: breaking the legacy of divorce. But as time goes by, I am starting to see that His ways are higher than my ways, and He does things in a way that is far more effective than I could ever come up with. My way was a smooth road that had no foundation; His way is refining in fire so that the generations after me know without a shadow of a doubt who God is and what His best looks like. He is destroying the legacy of abuse and resulting divorce in ways I never could, so I’ll take the painful loss because the gain is exponentially greater.
Hope, Out of Nowhere
When I became aware that my marriage was over and we began the separation process, I heard the Lord say to me, “Redemption and testimony.” Yes, I did give Him the side eye. But over time, it became clear that those words were, in fact, from the Lord, and I have held onto them like treasure. I doubted Him many times as I watched my family dissolve, my house get sold, and my hopes for the future drain away, but He just kept providing, kept protecting, kept speaking. I can’t deny His love for my kids and me. I know we are loved, even though life is not going the way I had planned.
People know when they are loved. I can’t really explain how; we just know.
But when I go to bed at night, especially on really lonely, hard nights when my house is empty and I miss my kids, I wonder if someone who loved me was next to me, if that would make things better. Time and again I conclude that the answer is “no,” because nobody is my original husband. No one fits in that space. No one else is my kids’ dad. And the loneliness burns because I will never be able to fill that hole.
And then there are those words: Redemption. Testimony. They have already been fulfilled and I can already say I have had both. But recently I started to wonder if there is more.
There is a local family whom I have known a little over the course of homeschooling my children but have gotten to know more since I started attending their church. I’ve been able to work with their daughters through the youth program, and as a result have gotten to know the parents better. Then I met their extended family through sports and other events, and then they started wrapping me in. When I’m with them, my whole body relaxes and I feel like I belong there. I don’t leave with a headache; I leave with a desire to go back. I’m sure they treat everyone like that because that’s what loving people do. I don’t feel special; I feel loved.
I was married for 20 years and spent every Thanksgiving with my in-laws. Well, with the exception of the one just after we were married when my in-laws invited my dad and his wife to Thanksgiving dinner, knowing how they treated me, and I asked my husband if we could not go. I had just had too much and needed a break from them. He reluctantly agreed but stayed angry with me for years that he had missed that Thanksgiving with his family. And for every year following my in-laws invited my dad to Thanksgiving and I went anyway, because “I was the Christian and needed to rise above” and because I didn’t want my husband and his family to be mad at me. The last year I went to Thanksgiving with my in-laws, my mother-in-law declared that they were going to talk about the family will after dinner, and that only their kids (not in-laws) could participate in the discussion. So, after dinner, they all went down to the basement and told us to stay away until they were done talking. We were at my step-sister’s house. Once, my dad made the mistake of going downstairs to get something, and he was immediately told to go back upstairs.
That was the last straw for me. I was tired of waiting for them to be done so everyone could move freely in the house again. I decided to go downstairs and hang out until they were done. I went down and stood next to my seated husband. They all stopped talking and looked at me as if I had passed gas in front of the President or something! I kept standing there, because this was going to affect my life and I had a right to know what was being said. Needless to say, that ended their discussion and my husband—you guessed it—was angry with me for barging in on their business.
And needless to say, after 20 years of Thanksgivings, not one of my in-laws ever asked after me once I was gone. In fact, the first year I wasn’t there, my kids came home upset because no one even spoke my name. They said the family acted as if I were dead.
This past weekend, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the extended family I mentioned earlier came to our church service. I greeted them and then started to find a seat. The dad asked me where I was going to sit and said they would like to sit with me. I told them to go ahead and pick a row, and my daughter and I followed them in. After service was over, the dad leaned over to me and said, “I want you to know that after everyone left on Thanksgiving, we were sitting there talking about how we missed you that day. I want you to know you are loved. You are always loved at our house.”
I thanked him through tears and left with a full heart. As I went about my day, I kept thinking of his words and it was like they were planted in my heart and taking root. No matter what capacity I continue to know this family in, they made me remember what it feels like to be loved. I went to bed feeling a little less lonely and a little more hopeful that maybe that hole can be filled after all.
What’s on Your Throne?
Everyone has that aunt. The one who didn’t have children of her own, so everyone became her child. My husband had an aunt like that, and she was faithful to send cards on every occasion to all of her nieces and nephews, including the married-in folks. Each year on our wedding anniversary, there came the ever-faithful card from Aunt Sue, declaring that “the best is yet to come.” As things got bad pretty quickly in my marriage, I often wondered if there was something she knew but wasn’t saying.
Since my divorce, special occasions have been difficult, but the Christmas season has been especially grief-filled for many reasons. Like so many aspects of my marriage, things were “almost good” and that left me having a family but longing for one at the same time.
There were 10 grandchildren in my husband’s family. The family had gotten large enough that for Christmas we only gave each other stocking stuffers to keep expenses down. I loved shopping for my nieces’ and nephews’ stocking stuffers, even though we were not close with them. When I married into a family of four siblings, I believed I was gaining two sisters and another brother, so every year I shopped with anticipation that this would be the year I got to know them all better. When year after year nothing changed, it became difficult to spend our meager Christmas budget on them and their parents, who made no effort to build our kids’ relationships. One Christmas, I asked my sister-in-law if we could get our kids together, and she answered that they wouldn’t be available until May. That was the year I realized I had nieces and nephews, but not really.
There was the budget we used to save for Christmas every year. We used the good old fashioned envelope system, and each year we had a few hundred dollars to spend. However, by the time we bought all the stocking stuffers for his family, there wasn’t much left for our kids. My husband declared that it didn’t matter because Christmas was special and we were going to blow the budget anyway, and he told me to stop complaining. I worked hard as a stay-at-home mom to respect our money and stay within the budget we had set, but apparently it didn’t matter at Christmas time. So we had a budget and an agreement, but not really.
There was the year my sister-in-law had a new home built because hers had burned to the ground and she lost nearly everything. For a housewarming gift, I made her a beautiful Christmas wreath out of small silver balls that matched her new interior paint. I watched her unwrap the gift, then hand it to her young daughter, who proceeded to pick the balls off the wreath. That was the year I realized I had sisters, but not really.
Fast forward to four years post-divorce. My church had beautiful pop-up Advent books available for sale that families could use for devotionals during the weeks leading up to the celebration of Christ’s birth. I had seen the books in the church lobby but did not buy one because I don’t see my kids every day anymore to do family devotionals with. Whenever the pastor talked about the books, I felt a twinge of nostalgia as I remembered doing devotions with my kids before we started our daily schoolwork.
But as grief began to set in again this season, God had other plans. Remember my friend’s father, who told me I was missed at Thanksgiving? His family invited me once again to join in their festivities to celebrate family birthdays this December. I had spent enough time in the deep south to know that you never show up to a birthday party empty handed, so I went out in search of some small gifts to give the children whose birthdays were being celebrated. I had the same questions I always had when shopping for my nieces and nephews: “What sport does he play?” “What color does she like?” I shopped for these kids I barely knew just as I had shopped for the ones I was supposed to know. I finally settled on some items and went home to wrap them up.
I’m always surprised when I’m with this family. I don’t get an instant stomachache when I walk into their family gatherings. They don’t look at me as if I am invading their privacy. In fact, after most of the people left the party, I stayed and visited with my friends for a while, and they opened up that Advent book from our church to do their daily devotionals. They read and talked and laughed a lot. But one of the application questions stood out to me: What is your Ba’al?
I looked around the room and realized that was my Ba’al. A family. I realized I had put my family on the throne of my heart before God, and that my grief over losing the family I thought I had was overshadowing the relationship God wants to have with me, His child—my true family, even if it’s just Him and me right now. Nothing on this earth will ever fulfill us the way God does, and there is no family that can love us like our Heavenly Father does. That can be lonely in this life, and there might be some close substitutes, but oh! What a family we will one day have!
Perhaps the best is, in fact, yet to come.
A-Ha!
A woman recently asked me if I’d had an “a-ha” moment when I realized the problems in my marriage weren’t because of me. “Yes,” was my quick reply. In fact, I’d had them for about 10 years before it fully hit me that I was not responsible for the all of the arguing and fussing like my husband said I was. There were several small things that came to light over the years, and then one straw that finally broke the camel’s back and freed me from years of confusion.
I remember one time telling my step sister that my husband was giving me grief about going to dance class. I had stopped dancing when we had kids, and 10 years later I really wanted to go back to it. I talked to my husband and he was agreeable to it, so I started taking class again. However, it quickly became clear that the cost of my class was a burden to him. He said he supported my going, but he complained about my being gone and the cost of the class. It was one hour once a week. He, on the other hand, did triathlons, and always needed bike gear, running gear, and swim gear for that. He also made it known that he would be gone early in the morning or after work to practice swimming in the pool at the local school, and while he required me to continue to do all of my duties with the house and the kids, he regularly excused himself from his chores because of his training. When telling my step sister about this, she asked me if I thought he was abusive. Of course I said no because he wasn’t hitting me.
Now I have to digress for a moment. There’s a high possibility that if I repeated this conversation to my ex-husband at this point in time, he would ask questions that, if answered by my step sister, would probably result in making this story look untrue. Then, in his mind, I would be a liar. Let me give you an example. Once we were at the home of a couple we had known for a very long time. We were talking to them about finances and budgeting. They used a great budgeting system, and we were trying to learn about it. My husband said something very rude to our friend during that meeting, but nobody said anything about it. Several days later, when talking to my friend, she said to me, “I almost said to him, ‘You might be able to talk to your wife like that, but you can’t talk to me like that.’” That was the first time anybody had ever confronted me about his behavior toward me.
Not long after that, my husband and I were arguing (again), and I brought up that night at our friend’s house. I told him that the wife had commented to me that she almost told him not to speak to her that way. He asked me if she had come up to me and told me that, and I said yes. So he said “If I call her, will she tell me that?” and I said, “Yes.” He called our friend, and he asked her about that conversation. He asked her if she had come up to me and told me her thoughts about not letting him talk to her that way. And she hesitated. She technically did not “come up to me,” but instead it came up in our conversation. And that small technicality derailed my entire point and made me a “liar.”
Fast forward to a little while after we had gotten divorced. I was talking to a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, and I asked her if she had seen the divorce coming.
“Yes,” she replied, without hesitation. “I heard the way he always talked to you.”
Again, I remember a time when he and I were arguing. It was several years into our marriage and we were having another one of our arguments where I couldn’t even figure out what we were arguing about. I remember feeling the very same way with my husband at that time that I had felt with my physically abusive stepdad. I said out loud to my husband that night, “I feel the same way with you that I felt with Dave, except you don’t hit me.” He laughed it off, but I stored that revelation in my heart.
There were little things like this that happened throughout the years, but one event finally made me realize our marriage was over. We were in Boston for a family vacation. My daughter and I are huge Gilmore Girls fans and we both love school, so one thing we wanted to do on our trip to Boston was visit Harvard University. We had gone to Fenway Park for a tour, and then out to eat barbecue for lunch. When we were waiting for our lunch, our daughter downed a large sweet tea, and she felt quite sick afterward. The rest of us finished our food and we decided to take a walk to see if it would settle her stomach. We decided to start walking toward Harvard, which was a few miles away, and when we got tired we would call a car. So, we started to walk. On our way, we took notice of the little things about Boston’s culture that were unique and that we didn’t see at home. One of those was a park-like area that had exercise equipment on it. We stopped and tried out the equipment, realizing there were little spots like that every few blocks, and that they were places where busy people could go and get some quick exercise on their work breaks. How quaint! We were having a blast, and our daughter’s stomach was feeling better. We walked and walked, marveling at the history and beauty of Boston, and then we finally happened upon Harvard. We had been having so much fun on our walk that we didn’t even need a car.
As we walked, watching our kids ahead of us, my husband got a phone call. He took the call and it sounded like business. Since we were on vacation, I couldn’t understand why he would be taking a business call during that time. He talked for a minute, seemed to schedule an appointment, and then hung up the phone. He turned to me and said, “I have a second interview with the State when we get back.”
Second interview? I thought. When was the first one?
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I didn’t know you were looking for a new job.”
That made him agitated. He explained that he had had a phone interview with the State of Michigan earlier that week, and they were calling him back about the job.
“When were you going to tell me?” I asked.
“I’m telling you right now,” he replied.
I was very confused and hurt. My husband was planning on changing jobs and hadn’t even told me. Since things had been getting worse between us over the preceding months, I felt this wasn’t a good sign.
“I’m your wife,” I said. “Don’t you even want me to pray about it for you?”
Now he was mad. From that point, we barely spoke.
Then I looked up and saw it. Harvard was exactly as I’d pictured it! We walked down to the courtyard and gazed upon the old brick buildings and lush green lawn. There were students milling about, and our daughter and I had our picture taken in front of one of the buildings. Everything seemed fine. Everyone seemed happy.
We lingered for a while and walked around the beautiful campus, but it seemed there wasn’t a whole lot more to see. We spotted a book store and I talked about going to it. Just then, my husband turned around on the public sidewalk and said to me, “What the F**k is wrong with you?”
Whoa! We did not speak like that in our home, and especially not in front of our kids. In addition, I had no idea what he was talking about.
“What?” I asked.
“We walked all the way here and you don’t even want to see the rest of the campus?”
“I thought we were all having fun walking,” I stammered.
He rolled his eyes and huffed away, and I stood staring after him. The kids and I were dumbfounded, but something told me right then that my marriage was over and that whatever made him turn around and swear at me had more to do with him than me. It was like a switch flipped.
But the final nail in the coffin happened when I filed for separation and the court ordered us to see a counselor to determine if our kids needed counseling. What a stupid question. Did our kids need counseling? Who wouldn’t? Our family was breaking up.
Our whole family sat in that counselor’s office, and while everyone was gathered, I asked this question: “If we both want to stay married, then why are we getting a divorce?” To which the counselor answered, “Clearly both of you don’t want to stay married.”
Oh. A-ha.
The Car
My story wouldn’t be my story without mention of “the car” (in my head, I’m hearing “the car” as Jim Carey said, “the claw” in his famous movie, Liar, Liar). I can make jest now, but “the car” really was one of the most hurtful aspects of our marriage. Let’s go back in time to when we had our babies. Back then, my husband had a truck that he’d paid cash for and used on his short commute to work every day. It wasn’t a nice truck, but it was fine for a middle-class, one-income family. One thing he took pride in about it was that there were two others on the road that boasted over a million miles on the engine. We used to wonder if we could hit the one million-mile mark before the body rusted out.
After several years, even though the engine was intact, other parts of the truck started to need replacing, including the brakes. It was at that point he decided he’d had enough and it was time to buy himself a new car. Remember, we were a one-income family, committed to staying that way, as we had agreed we would homeschool our kids. We owned a minivan that we had bought after I had been rear-ended in front of our house with our 9-day-old son in the backseat, and our car had been totaled. The minivan made sense, as we planned to cart kids around for the next 18 years. What he brought home made no sense at all.
He went out car shopping alone and came home with a VW GTI. it was a small hatchback that reminded me of my aunt’s old Rabbit, but apparently, it was a big deal. When he told me what the payments and insurance were going to cost, I gasped! We didn’t have that kind of money! As he saw my shock and anger rise up, he told me that it was the only car he fit comfortably in.
Now, my husband is 6’3“. He is tall, but not so tall that he can’t fit in cars. I thought about our other tall friends who drove sensible family cars that they agreed with their wives on and, as usual, I was confused. And of course, we argued about it. But what good did it do? It was too late-he had already purchased it.
So he drove the GTI and I drove the van, and soon he began calling them “my van” and “his car.” When we were all in the van, he drove, and we were almost never all in his car. In fact, I started to notice that I was hardly ever in his car, unless we were going on a date, which had become rare.
As time went on, I also noticed that he didn’t want me to drive his car. If I ever asked to borrow it, he would tell me I didn’t take good enough care of “my van” to drive “his car.” Perplexed, I asked what he meant by that. He said I didn’t wash it weekly, so therefore I didn’t take good care of the van and could not drive the GTI.
Hmmm….
Most people who got in my van asked me if it was new, even though it was about 14 years old, and I didn’t understand what cleanliness had to do with driving ability in the first place. If my van was dirty, that meant I was incapable of driving well? So, I decided to take the van to the car wash, not because I wanted to drive his car so badly, but because it seemed important to him that I keep the van clean and, to be fair, I drove it A LOT and spent a lot of time in it with the kids and their friends. I could certainly be convinced it needed washing more often. I distinctly remember the warm, sunny day on which I took the van to the car wash. I made sure to take it to the one car wash in town that was acceptable to him, and I proudly pulled the sparkling van into the driveway. However, I quickly learned the goalpost had moved once again. When I told him I had washed the van, he instantly got mad at me for taking it to the car wash on a summer day instead of washing it by hand, therefore saving money. I found it ironic that he was talking to me about saving money while he was driving a sports car, but I digress.
I was stunned. I had no idea how to please this man, and further, I was certain my friends’ husbands didn't keep their cars from them. As confused as you are now is how I felt for most of my 20-year marriage. I started to wonder why he didn’t want me in his car, so one day, when he had taken “my van” to run an errand, I decided to take a peek. Would it smell of some other woman’s perfume? Would I find some horrible secret? I opened the door and everything looked normal at first—a few papers, a fast food bag, an empty drink bottle. Then I opened the glove compartment and found a handheld tape recorder. I removed it and turned it over in my hand. I did not recognize it. I knew he had one in the house that he used to record me when we argued, but this was a different one. My blood went cold. Was this happening without my knowledge? And why? I held the recorder in my hand for a minute before deciding to see what was on it. I was still telling myself it would contain recordings of other people or of a college class. I was still giving him the benefit of the doubt. I pushed the button and realized it was a recording of our last counseling session, and my heart sank. I could make excuses no longer.
You know the rest of the story because you know that we are now divorced, but here is the exciting conclusion of the car saga. As soon as we had separated, my soon-to-be ex-husband, who cared so deeply about his precious car that he wouldn’t let me drive it, used it to teach our teenaged kids-and anyone else who wanted to learn-how to drive a stick shift. It took a long time for me to realize it wasn’t about the car or about me, but about control. And unfortunately, someone needed to hear this story today.
Turning of the Tide
Years prior to that trip to Boston, there came a point in my marriage when I knew that it would be exponentially more difficult to be divorced from my husband than to be married to him. We could not communicate in the beginning, and it only got worse. We were about 10 years in, and some things accidentally came out that he did not want me to know. I was devastated, and he was at a loss for explanation. I couldn’t put it into words at the time, but his response to my anger at what I found out was anger at me, and that was telling of where his heart was. Instead of being remorseful and asking forgiveness, he was angry that he had gotten caught. Things could not go on the way they were, and I did consider divorce at that time. I did not know how I could go on with the new knowledge I had, but I believed that divorce was a sin. Later I realized that the behavior that causes the divorce is the sin, not the divorce itself.
Again I will stop here and acknowledge that if we had this conversation with him, he would assert that he did go to counseling and that I was the one who quit. While that is true, let’s talk about why it went down that way. He did go to counseling-first with a professional, then with our pastor, then with more professionals. He went, but he refused to do the assignments. When we went to a psychologist, who did psychological testing on both of us, he refused to share his results with me. At that point, I found counseling useless. Counseling only works for people who want it.
I prayed, sought counsel, and prayed some more. I did not want to be divorced, and I certainly did not want my kids to go through that. Only a few people knew the details of the situation, and I felt very alone and angry. The first time we tried counseling, he got very sick and we had to stop. By the time he was well, things seemed to have calmed down on the surface, but underneath, the root of the problem had not been addressed.
A few months after these things were revealed, our church held its annual women’s retreat. As I was spending time with the Lord one afternoon at the retreat, telling him about my anger and fear, I sensed Him speaking to my soul with these words: “Don’t be angry with your husbands; pray for them.” Immediately, peace washed over me and my anger faded. Later, as we were sharing in a group, I told the other ladies what I had heard from the Lord and I proposed the idea of having a weekly prayer group where we only focused on our husbands. One lady joined me, and we began praying for our husbands. Women came in and out of the group from time to time, but one woman, the wife of one of my husband’s roomates from college, stuck and we continue to pray every Monday morning to this day. It has been about 11 years, and while her marriage became stronger over the years, mine continued to fall apart.
I was so confused! I knew it was God who spoke to me at that retreat, telling me to pray for my husband. I would not have come up with that on my own in the state of mind I was in. But why wasn’t He listening? Where was He? My marriage never recovered from that moment at the 10-year mark, and I was praying with all my might!
After my divorce, I discovered that many women wonder why their prayers aren’t “working,” but I think we need to have a broader understanding of prayers “working,” I was being told that if I prayed hard enough or read enough books that my marriage problems would resolve. But if the problems were a result of my husband’s choices, how could I be responsible for changing that? I was under the impression that my prayers would change his behavior, and when it didn’t change, I thought God wasn’t listening or answering.
I watched movies like War Room, thinking my life would work out like the main character’s did if I prayed enough. I still hold that prayer for our marriages is where we should start, repenting of our own sins and asking forgiveness, as well as praying that God would speak to the hearts of our spouses. However, when I realized his sin was a pattern and he did not intend to break it, I realized there was nothing I could do to save our marriage. My choice was then between staying together to provide a stable home for the kids while they watched him mistreat me, or asking him to go to his parent’s until we could get to a better place. I thought for sure that if we spent time apart to work on the issues, things would work out.
It took me a long time to realize my misunderstanding of the Biblical marital relationship. It is supposed to be a partnership, not a hierarchy. I discovered that when we pattern our modern, western marriages after cultural indications from the Bible instead of Biblical relational principles, we end up being very frustrated that God is “not anwering our prayers.”
My husband made choices that I thought I could change through prayer. He did not want a partnership, but a hierarchy, and by the time I realized that error in both of our understanding, it was too late. I was easily controlled, and when my actions started to show that I was growing out of that, the tide took a scary turn. I began to realize that as long as I was married to him, I could keep my kids safe and have influence over their environment, so I managed until the day I found the tape recorder in his car.
You know the rest of the story, and I now know that God has answered a lot of my prayers, just not in the way I thought He was going to. In fact, He is turning the tide of my whole family legacy, and the journey is not over yet.
God is good, and He has been listening and preparing me and my kids for our own testimonies to be revealed. I had to lose a LOT more before I began to see that loss can be gain, and the way the Lord has orchestrated my life has had a profound impact on us all.
Dreams, Choices, and Rearview Mirrors
“I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry I put you and the kids through all of this!” He wrapped his arms around me like he used to before we were married. He held me and, with tears streaming down his face, apologized repeatedly, and stroked my hair.
“I don’t know what I was thinking, but I’m thinking straight now and I want to make it up to you. I want to be the husband I should have been. I’ve changed and I want us to be a family again.” Now he had pulled back and I saw the look in his eyes. He was sincere. I knew something really had changed, but it was going to take me a long, long time to believe it.
I was torn. I wanted so badly to be a family again, but I had already made my peace with being divorced and had fallen in love with another man. What would I tell him? How could I make this decision? Of course, I have to take my husband back. I can’t say no to restoring my family. But what about this other man? I am going to have to break his heart!
“And then I woke up crying,” I concluded.
My friend, Beth, and I walked along in silence for a few minutes. Finally, she responded.
“So, let’s play this out. What if that did happen? And what if he really has changed? What happens then?”
I thought for a moment. “I would need years.”
“You would need years. And what if, at the end of ‘years’, he really hasn’t changed?”
“Then I would have lost the other man forever,” I said. “But what if he has and I can put my family back together? My kids would never forgive me if I had the opportunity to do that and I said no.”
Beth stopped walking and looked me square in the eye. “Listen, if that were to happen and he really did change, then he can have a good relationship with the kids anyway. He doesn’t have to be married to you to be a good father.”
Ouch. That was true. I had been putting my life on hold, just in case he realized what he’d done and came back to me. But that was silly. He hadn’t looked back even once, and the chances were so slim that my recurrent dream would come true. I had to stop looking in the rearview mirror.
A few hours later, I was home from my walk with Beth and getting ready for dinner with a friend when I received a text from Carla, the current owner of my old house. That’s funny, I thought, I was just thinking of her! I opened the text and it sounded urgent: Can you call me right now?
Carla never texted me like that, so I called her right away. When she answered, she made sure to tell me her husband was there and I was on speaker.
“I’m just going to get right to it,” she said. “Our kids have moved out and we wondered if you would like to rent your old house.”
I stopped breathing.
Seconds went by in silence. Then tears started running down my face, and I heard her husband, Greg, say, “We know it’s a lot. Take your time.”
When I was able to speak, I said the only thing that made sense: “Who are you people? Who are you to care this much and to be this kind?”
We exchanged a few more words (I don’t even remember what they were) and I asked them if I could just take their proposal and walk around with it, with no more details, just to see how I felt. That was all I could handle at one time.
“Of course! Take all the time you need. We want you to be happy, and if this makes you happy, then take it: if not, then we’ll find someone else. We just wanted to ask you first.”
_______________________________
Crash! My eyes flew open to the sound of thunder and rain outside. I looked at the clock—3am. My sheets were drenched, and as I cleared my vision, I remembered the dream I was having.
“You need to take the baby to the doctor,” my mother-in-law said.
I didn’t believe my baby was so sick that she needed a doctor, but I was afraid to stand up to her, so I got ready to leave. She drove us down to Detroit to an office building with an elevator I had dreamed about before. When my name was called, my mother-in-law stood up quickly, grabbed the baby, and went through the door to the exam room, leaving me in the waiting room, dumbfounded. Again, I was too timid to say anything.
When she came back out, she didn’t have the baby with her, and I finally became very angry. I started yelling at her and asking who she thought she was to take my baby. We went on like that for a while, and then I started looking for my child. I couldn’t find her. I looked everywhere, even going back to the exam rooms where other patients were. I was frantic! I began asking other patients if they had seen my baby, and they asked what her name was. I couldn’t remember!
Crash! It was 3am.
____________________________________
I sat in my car in the driveway of the only home my kids could remember, wondering what it would be like to step inside. I took in my surroundings: there was the pine tree my young son had climbed to the top of the day we moved in, nearly giving me a heart attack; there was the new garage door I had purchased after the divorce, one I could finally open without lifting it manually; and I noticed the shape of the yard, remembering how I almost died on the lawnmower when I caught the swing on the roll bar and the wooden structure came crashing down on me. My eyes drifted to the porch the new owners had built on the front of the house, making it so visitors could come to the front door instead of going through the sun porch at the side of the house. It was much more welcoming. They had done some landscaping around the pole the stuck up in the middle of the front yard to signal problems with the septic system, something that had always irked me because it looked so out of place. Everything was neat and tidy, just the way I had always tried to keep it. I took a deep breath and got out of the car, walking purposefully up the steps to the front porch I had always wanted, and rang the bell.
Greg and Carla met me with smiles, and I complimented them immediately on the improvements. After some small talk, we stood in the empty living room in silence, me getting my bearings and them letting me feel however I needed to feel.
“May I look around?”
“Of course!” they both exclaimed.
I walked into the kitchen and admired the improvements: a sliding door that I had wanted to have installed but couldn't afford, the sink relocated to the corner to make more counter space, the new cabinets and extended counter with an eating area, and the stackable washer and dryer where a built-in shelf used to be. I chuckled as I remembered suggesting every one of those improvements to my ex-husband, who in turn told me I was ridiculous and incapable of thinking things through. Those ideas would never work. I guess Greg and Carla showed him! These people were like an extension of me, turning my house into the home I had wanted, only now it wasn’t my home anymore. How’s that for timing? I mused.
Next, I went upstairs to my kids’ rooms. We had gutted the entire second floor of the small Cape Cod style home to create a hallway to separate the rooms. My ex-husband had built a bookshelf into the end of the hall, and I was so excited about the red backing with the grey shelves. His personality had changed drastically during that project, and those rooms signified the beginning of the end to me. Once he had decided to turn my separation into a divorce, he stopped working up there, even though it was the kids’ rooms and it only hurt them for him to stop. That was one of the first ways he began taking from the kids just to punish me, knowing I would not let the rooms be left unfinished and that I would have to pay someone to do it because I did not have the know-how to do it myself. I felt a tornado of emotions as I looked in the closets and the tiny bathroom. The rooms still looked new, yet they were haunted with old memories—both good and bad—as if they were all stuck in the paint together.
I sat on the edge of the bedframe that still lingered in my daughter’s old room and gazed into the closet, the awkward space a vivid reminder of how hard it was to homeschool and live in that small, clumsily laid out house.
Do I want to live here again? Do I want the old relationships with these neighbors again? Will my kids feel like they are home when they come to visit? Most of all, would my son, who seemed to have erased all memories of me, feel closure if we had more time in this house?
I went downstairs and said my goodbyes Greg and Carla, who told me again to take my time deciding. As I drove out of the neighborhood, I knew I could go either way and that I had to ask my kids how they felt about it. I called my daughter and explained the situation.
“Mom, this might not be what you want to hear, but I don’t think living there again will fix anything. I think we have all moved on, and moving back there would cause us to have to cope again.”
The words of my 20-year-old were eerily similar to the advice of my friends I had shared this opportunity with.
“I want you to do what you need to do,” she continued, “but I want you to know I have moved on and I think my brother has, too.”
After we hung up, I went to the Cracker Barrell down the street and sat with my thoughts and a BLT. I sat there for a long time, looking around at the local restaurant we used to frequent when we lived in that area, and praying God would give me direction.
Suddenly, I remembered my dream about my ex-husband coming back and begging me to restore our family. I couldn’t say yes to him because I had moved on, and it occurred to me that moving back into that house would be like trying to put my family back together. It wouldn’t be the same. It would never be the same. We had all moved on, and we could not go backward. I remembered the dream about losing my baby at the doctor’s office and forgetting her name, and it occurred to me that it was a warning not to put more energy into the fight than the people I’m fighting for. I had to remember my kids, not the past.
I paid my bill, took a deep breath, and left the Cracker Barrell with a decision—I’m going to look through the windshield instead of the rearview mirror. It was time to close the door on that chapter of my life.