{This is the final piece in a three-part series:
I. When I Called God a Cheat and Ran Off with a Married Man
II. Living a Life on the Run }
I remember leaving the family counselor’s office. I remember the fake flowers in a pot, and the window slightly open to an early spring breeze. I remember tucking my hands between my legs, my heart pounding in my chest, and hearing him say the words,
“I will never be faithful to you.”
I felt a mix of pity, anger and fear.
Something like a light turning on in the middle of a very, messy room.
Like trying to breathe in a coal mine, searching for the canary.
I sat stiff. He stepped out. The counselor leaned in on the edge of her seat, took my hands and said these simple words…
“It’s ok to let go. You can’t change a man. You can let go.”
I knew about the girl he was seeing at the time.
I knew about the other women along the way.
And the wedding band on my left finger branded me as a fool.
I walked quietly out of that building, climbed into my SUV, cranked up Lucinda Williams’ “Joy” and let the ring silently slip off my finger onto the floorboards of the dusty Mazda.
——-
That was a year after the first discovery. A year after reading text messages by dawn. A year after heartbreak, his and mine. A year after us trying to make something work. A year of fighting and screaming on a back porch, counseling and prayer, more affairs, more tears, and more ultimatums at dawn. And after a year, he asked me for a divorce and I signed my name.
——-
I couldn’t change him, I knew this. I couldn’t fix our home, I knew this too. I couldn’t make him to want to be the father my daughter needed. Or make sense of the mess we had unraveled out of our own hearts over the previous five years. I couldn’t fix any of it.
——-
A month before our divorce was finalized, on a dusty road in Uganda, near the roots of a Jackfruit tree, I heard the voice I knew I had known my whole life. Whether it was the absence of noise, or the crucible of my heart, it was the dust of a Ugandan road that brought me back to the scriptures I was running from. Grace and the Gospel became a safe house for my storm-battered soul. In a slow, deep moving breath, I found that not only was the Father running toward me, but he was on the other side of the path I had traveled so far down. My God was not the accuser nor was he some head-nodding, it’s-about-time guy who made me feel embarrassed about the road I was on. In fact, I found more joy and confidence in finally being able to admit that I was incapable of making everything right.
And under a tree I wept. By twisted wood, and in a broken heart, I found that maybe Grace was more amazing than I could ever imagine. By the shadow of branches that hung heavy with fruit, I found the message of the Cross again. Covering me, hanging low with ripe fruit for the ones who find themselves crawling in the dirt, barely able to stand, parched, hungry, desperate.
——-
Have you ever been a prodigal coming home? It’s an amazing thing to me. As one who indulged in my own way, and found that it only left a bitter aftertaste, the journey of repentance left no time to analyze anyone else’s sin. The things I thought would condemn me and scar me were the very things that carried me to understanding the Gospel. Repenting and asking for forgiveness even from people who did me wrong felt a lot like freedom. When I stopped expecting other people to “do me right”, and instead realized that Jesus did it right, and in Him my joy was complete, it was a lot easier to weep, write, ask, let go, walk away and find the birds singing again.
So I wrote letters.
I made phone calls.
I burned letters and closed doors,
and thanked God that somehow he could make all things new.
I sobbed snot and tears with my brothers in foreign cities and at kitchen tables.
I sat silently with my sister and we navigated the things we cannot change by words of grace and love.
And I let the story come full circle. I sat with my hands shaking and my heart pounding outside the doors of The Village Church. It was the last place I could remember feeling the sharp fork in the road of the choice between what I needed to do and what I actually did. I walked through their front doors, four years later, sick to my stomach. I awaited a meeting I was afraid to meet scoldings, finger-wagging, and full of “we told you so”s. Instead I was met with the love of brothers who cried with me, held my bleeding heart in their hands, and reminded me that the Grace of God cannot be outrun.
And then, with the curly-haired, now two-year-old daughter singing in the backseat, we headed north.
To the towns where my name was whispered with rumors, some true, some not. The places where I would be sure to run into those who knew my story and demanded an explanation.
And I still feel the ache. Eight years of feeling jagged, dirty, used. I feel the shame. The stigmas. The labels. The assumptions.
Adulteress.
Divorcee.
Single mom.
When my daughter longs for a father, I see again everything I cannot fix. When old friendships still wince at my name, I know that some wounds may not ever heal as I wish they would. When conversations happen and rejection is poured into my lap, I feel all over again that what was once desirable in me is now crumpled up and easily tossed aside.
And here is where I land with you today, my dear Deeper Story friends. Here is where I stand with shoulders back, chin quivering and say, God holds. God redeems. God rescues. And sometimes, when it all feels like too much, He bends low and draws near and sweeps close. I look in my daughter’s green-gold eyes, my heart bursts with joy and I know, even now, that the grace I’ve been given is unmerited, immeasurable, undeserved.
When parts still feel shattered and sharp, I remember the jackfruit tree. I remember the tree that held the twisted man. I find comfort in the dust and remember that after the worst of the worst, and all of the beauty withered away, He didn’t say — Now comes the hard part.
He said, It Is Finished.
