and still more.......

It was somewhere during this most difficult time that a young man moved to the community as a vet in the largest vet practice in town. He was different from anyone I had known before. He talked of a personal relationship with God that was intimate and engrossing. He thrived on talking about Jesus as though he were a friend and most of all he exuded a joy that eluded me. One fall day when the pain was so great I could bear it no longer I got down on my knees in my dining room and cried out to the God that I had all but abandoned. Truth was I was angry at him. Everyone repeatedly told me that my husband was gifted from God…his ministry certainly seemed to be blessed by God. I couldn’t reconcile that with our day-to-day life and had decided that if God was blessing my husband then I didn’t want anything to do with God. But that fall day I was desperate enough to try him one more time. I told God through the tears that I didn’t understand what it was that Greg had but I wanted it and to please take anything in my life that was standing between me and the Lord’s active presence in my life. No sooner had I uttered those words than I quickly added on a postscript to please not let anything happen to my children. I didn’t think my emotional health was strong enough to live through anything happening to them but I offered up everything else in my life. As was my habit at the time I then set about planning God’s answer for him. I don’t know why I thought God needed my help…or why I thought I COULD help…goodness only knows things were a mess. But I always wanted to help so I figured out that my husband would take a sabbatical from ministry. We would have time to reunite as a family and we would be very poor but we would grow back together and things would be great. Somehow in my warped head of rule keeping I knew that marriage was for better or worse for life and I assumed that everyone played by those same rules. I was wrong. On the day after Christmas 1990 I was packing our bags to return to Texas after spending the holidays in Colorado at my parent’s home. My husband had just gotten the latest Max Lucado book and he had gone to bed early the night before pleading a sore throat. He was going to read the book and he asked for notepaper to take notes. He was an inveterate note taker and that request wasn’t the least bit unusual. I checked all the rooms for any shoes or new toys that we would miss at that precise moment when it was too far to go back and get them. No toys, but there lying on the floor between the wall and the bed was that ML book. I reached down to pick it up and the papers fell out. I picked them up, shuffled them a little to get them back inside the front cover when I noticed the words “My Darling”. An apology note I thought to myself…for any of a hundred neglects and so I sat down and began reading. I hadn’t gotten much beyond the first paragraph when it dawned on me that this wasn’t making any sense and only a little bit farther when it became painfully clear that the letter was to one I would have called my best friend. From my husband. The boat I had been riding in was rocked in a wild storm that completely caught me by surprise. The oars were washed overboard, I couldn’t see the shore and I didn’t know how to swim. Those days were the most gut wrenching I had ever experienced. In one decision by my now ex husband, I lost my identity (Preacher’s wife), my house (preacher’s home), my financial support and my church family. For 16 years I was the preachers wife.. 16 years I had lived in 3 different places. 16 years removed from the community I’d wanted to spend my whole life in. It was no longer home. Daddy had gotten sick and for me and 3 kids to move back home would have been a financial hardship. My kids were Texans! Through a series of events God led me to believe he wasn’t done with me yet in that little community.