Before I share this very personal post, let me tell you that not one of these posts goes up without Nate’s eyes first reading them.
And this post below, especially, I might as well call *our* post, not just mine. I wrote the words, but we both are living them. I chose to be discreet about any specifics here because what may seem like “big” sin to me, in my world, could be very small in yours and what is “big” to you may cause me to shrug. Comparison doesn’t help us to understand what God has for us. This story isn’t about what we’re not, it’s really about who He is.
The dirt floor of the inn got all gritty in my fingernails at twenty-three.
Before then, I didn’t have much patience for mess. In fact, what I knew of mess I avoided so that I wouldn’t need to have patience for it. Christianity — for me — was slick, at least then. It was a tight listand firm boundaries and success of the pious kind. Sunday-shined shoes. It wasn’t just about appearances, though. When the shades were pulled I lived in fear of how one false move might leave my heart destitute.
I was my own keeper.
I expected marriage to be a mere extension of this way of life. The fence was now widened to fit two of us. As long as we both were careful not to make a misstep, our trajectory was good.
But it didn’t quite work that way.
Now Nate’s story is his own to tell. But because of his story, I have a story.
In short, he would fall down. Like the rest of us do daily and hourly — he fell.
The problem is he married a wife who’d patterned her life around not falling and did her best to only fall in secret. There were certain types of stumblings that were within the category of acceptable for her — an occasional bout with pride or a terse word or a judgmental thought — and others that just weren’t. His was of the latter kind.
This girl of his, she unraveled. What’s a girl to do with a man who does what he does not want to do and needs more than just a stern admonishment to get back on the path?
So he fell down and I caved. I judged. I feared. I raged on the inside. All while he broke.
I spent weeks (into months that rolled over into years) consumed with what he wasn’t, lost in the noise that comes when someone you share covers with fails. I started believing the lies he believed about himself — that inevitably led him to that fall.
And while I was distracted, he started a new habit … (Continue reading here, where I’m very honored to share …)
