Undone Page 4

  Peace.

  The day before surgery, I begged God to relieve my fear. Instead, he relieved a weight far heavier: unforgiveness.

  Like both the foolish son in the distance and the grieving father on the front porch, the story hinged on one split-second decision.

  Reject or receive? Refuse or restore?

  And for the grace of the Father who’d done the same for me, I chose life over death. Forgiveness over fear. For both myself and those who’d failed me.

  And found my way home.

  CHAPTER 5

  Till Death Do Us Part

  Time is

  Too slow for those who wait,

  Too swift for those who fear,

  Too long for those who grieve,

  Too short for those who rejoice.

  But for those who love,

  Time is eternity.

  Hours fly, flowers die,

  New days, new ways pass by,

  Love stays.

  — HENRY VAN DYKE

  (in Sarah McElwain, Saying Grace)

  I LOVE ANESTHESIA MORE THAN DESSERT.

  No, really.

  I slipped into surgical unconsciousness like a baby in a warm bath, too drugged and warm and soft to feel the least bit embarrassed about my scantily clad self. Bliss, I tell you. Absolute bliss.

  No, really. The last time I slept that well, I was floating in amniotic fluid.

  Happy, oh so happy. For an hour or two.

  And then I woke up. With a fat, mammoth tongue big enough to make me choke. And fully aware of my scantily clad self. In a moment, the sweet fog of ignorance disappeared and reality slapped me wide awake like a doctor’s gloved hand on my backside.

  I’d had surgery. For cancer.

  Cotton filled my mouth. The nurse asked if I wanted ice chips and pain pills. I nodded, mouth and throat too sore to croak out a simple “Yes, please.”

  I needed Troy. Frantic, I searched the recovery room. IV poles. Other half-naked, unconscious patients. Nurses bustling, doctors conferring. But no sign of my husband.

  For the next hour, I slipped in and out of sleep. At one point, the nurse handed me a paper cup filled with pills. I’m not sure how I choked them down, but it involved no small amount of drooling.

  Again, sleep.

  Minutes later — or was it hours? — the nurse had me dressed and sitting up in a chair, signing discharge forms I couldn’t read. My eyeballs were still flying high in the happy swirly place of anesthesia heaven.

  And then he came. Troy. Close enough to touch. Tender, concerned. Holding my hand.

  I don’t think handholding ever felt as good as it did that day. His hand swallowed my smaller one in its strength. However lost I’d felt before he showed up, I found myself in his grasp. I knew he had me. Regardless of what the next days and weeks of recovery looked like, he wouldn’t let me go. I gripped his hand like the human lifeline it was.

  Within minutes, the nurse pulled up with a wheelchair and helped me in. I’d normally refuse this embarrassing sign of weakness. The surgery had been on my mouth, not my legs. I could walk.

  Only I couldn’t. I had noodles for legs, a cannonball for a head. Troy lifted me like a doll, and I melted into the rolling chair. And both the nurse and my husband wheeled me to the front doors. There my parents waited with the same look of concern and worry I’d seen in Troy’s eyes. They tried to mask it, show only cheer and positivity. It was a good thing. I needed hopeful faces. I’d felt enough fear for all of us.

  By midafternoon, we were on our way home through the streets of downtown Denver and toward the quiet of suburbia. I slept most of the way, occasionally nudged awake by the feel of Troy’s hand reaching over to grab mine, his thumb rubbing reassuring circles on my skin.

  Halfway between the hospital and home, in a brief waking moment, a single thought poked through my fog like the sun’s rays through a cloud.

  We almost didn’t make it, Troy and I. Our marriage had been a gamble against the odds. From the first day, an impossible endeavor. Every day since, it had demanded more sweat and tears than I could’ve imagined.

  I squeezed my husband’s hand.

  Unable to speak, but determined to hold on.

  I was the pastor’s wife before I was Troy’s wife.

  Twenty-one years old and living the dream.

  I must’ve been in middle school when I started praying for my one-day husband. Whether it was the result of a Sunday sermon or the guidance of my God-loving parents, I believed praying for a husband was the surest way to hit the fairytale-family jackpot. That and going to a Christian college. So I prayed until I was eighteen, and then went to Christian college. The Christian girl’s foolproof plan to land the perfect life.

  I met him my first week on campus. I a freshman and missions major. He a junior in music ministry. During a school-sponsored event, I found myself watching a Disney movie under a canopy of stars with this six-foot-two, talk-dark-and-handsome upperclassman.

  Holy happily-ever-after. I’d hit the jackpot.

  What followed over the next three years felt like a dream come true. A shared love of music, old movies, and classic books. A heart for ministry and a desire for a big family. A friendship and an on-again, off-again romance that culminated in a storybook wedding in front of hundreds of our closest friends and family. Idyllic. Perfect. Everything I’d spent a lifetime praying for.

  It took less than a month for the mirage to fade.

  I’ve long held this part of my story close to my chest. It’s difficult, private, and I have a beautiful son whose light birthed out of that darkness. Besides, more than twenty years have passed. Time has, no doubt, altered my recollection of events. All I know is God worked a Lazarus-size healing, and I’m reticent to return to the tomb.

  But I will say this. In the end, addiction destroyed my marriage. And I was too immature and disillusioned to know how to handle it. During that handful of years, I became a person I’d never wanted to become, drowning in anger, loneliness, and despair. Afraid to expose the darkness destroying our family, I isolated at home, alone. I cried more than I smiled, screamed and begged more than I talked. Even when I gave birth to a son, Jacob, hope remained out of reach. For no matter how hard I tried, no matter how worn my knees from pleading with God for deliverance, I could do nothing to save the marriage and man I loved.

  Six days before Christmas and six years after our wedding, while holding my baby boy, I watched my pastor husband — and my dream — drive away for the last time.

  When you are raised to believe in the covenant of marriage, few things devastate like the ripping of divorce. “God hates divorce” is a phrase I heard nearly as often as “God is love.” But how was I to reconcile the two? Could God overlook his hatred of divorce to still love me? Could he see me beyond my scarlet D? I doubted it.

  The judgments and stigma that seemed to follow such a breach didn’t help. Overnight I’d become anathema, an example of what others wanted to avoid. Friends didn’t know what to say, so they stayed away. Old college friends called to quote Scripture and save my wayward soul. Former family members treated me like I didn’t exist. My previous value and potential appeared to be lost in my divorced and single-mom status.

  To my relief, our church embraced us, allowed me and my son to stay long after my husband was gone. Like a long exhalation, I sank into the safety of that church family with gratitude. I needed a safe place to heal and learn how to be a single mother.

  Still, shame followed me. How could I blame the judgers when I judged myself? Hadn’t I committed the unpardonable? My evangelical upbringing raised me to believe, without question, in the permanency of marriage. “Till death do us part” stood as sacred as the Ten Commandments. I’d failed the most critical of callings.

  It took me a decade to forgive myself and exchange the “divorced” label for a “grace” one. Almost ten years to learn that God’s love is indeed strong enough to redeem the heartbreak of divorce. Until then I mothered and worked
with a desperation known only to those who believe they’ve failed their children in the worst way.

  There, in the messy middle of my penance, I met Troy. A divorced, single dad of two small boys, three and five years older than my son. We attended the same small church plant in the southern suburbs of Denver, Colorado, and his story was as unwanted and devastating as mine. Two single parents in a congregation filled with traditional families.

  We stood out like steaks on a vegetarian’s table. The makings of a natural alliance.

  It took more than a year of friendship to cross over into something resembling love. Even then our affection bloomed from a broken and lonely place more than from a whole and healthy one. I had no intention of dating or marrying again. I didn’t want to get hurt again, and neither did he. In spite of myself, I began to again dream of a kitchen table filled with people. I imagined family vacations, baseball games, Christmas mornings, and bedtime tuck-ins. With a Prince Charming in place, I could resurrect my dream of happily-ever-after.

  Two years after we met, we married in an outdoor ceremony overlooking the Rocky Mountains. With three little boys — four, seven, and nine — holding our hands.

  “Now we’re going to be a happy family,” my nine-year-old stepson said on our wedding day. I loved that he held such hope for our family, and I believed him. But neither of us had any idea how difficult remarriage with children could be.

  A “blended family,” they call it, which I find laughable now. Five individuals thrown into a high-powered electrical kitchen appliance along with the frozen ruins of two divorces nobody wanted. And we think that’s going to blend? Stepfamilies do not blend like peanuts into peanut butter or strawberries into smoothies. They blend like nails and screws. Regardless of high hopes and good intentions, there’s a good chance someone’s going to get hurt.

  Which is what happened. To all of us.

  The truth is we entered our family already broken. We all do, traditional families and stepfamilies alike. But more so the families that survive divorce and loss and attempt to heal themselves by creating new families.

  The day of our wedding, the five of us showed up dressed in lace and pearls, slacks and ties. But behind the pressed and polished costumes, each one of us bled. Our divorces had ripped us in two, adults and children alike. We mourned even in our joy.

  I knew the statistics, understood that the odds of success were not in our favor. But it took the real life after “I do” to help me understand why. Marriage is hard work, even without the added obstacles of stepfamilies. But add parenting schedules, split holidays, complicated relationships with exes, legal battles, and children caught between two opposing parenting styles, and you have quite a mess. And that was only the beginning.

  The years of so-called blending weathered each of us — weathered me — like the cushions on my outdoor furniture. I was worn, frayed around the edges, covered with holes. Weary from the struggle and again disillusioned by marriage, I became a lesser version of myself. Negative. Dissatisfied.

  This isn’t what I signed up for, I remember thinking more than once. It was too hard, without enough good days to make up for the bad ones. Now I understood why second marriages often end in divorce. Faced with the impossibility of our task, I could see only the losses, the many ways our family and marriage didn’t measure up to the dream. And I wanted the pain to stop.

  It all came down to a choice. Not so much a single, profound moment of decision but a long slow revelation over months and years. I could not sit as a spectator to my marriage, warming a bleacher seat while criticizing the bad plays and bad calls. Complaining about the unfairness and failure. That would lead only to misery.

  Instead, I needed to leave or cleave. To walk away or play ball.

  I decided to stay. To invest. To try to become a better version of me, rather than a lesser one. For starters, I paid more attention to what was beautiful and good than to the handful of things that were wrong. I stopped voicing every frustration and dissatisfaction. Swallowing my negative commentary — both internal and external — I offered words of affirmation and encouragement. Rather than drag my marriage and stepfamily around like a plan-B obligation, I started to speak of them — and to believe it — as a gift. They had been a gift all along, of course. A miraculous redemption of too much loss. It just took me a few years to push through the pain and see them as such. The healing had to come before the receiving.

  I had no idea that years later, when I was buried by the fear of cancer, the man and marriage I once feared were a mistake would become the relationship I needed.

  I fell back in love with my husband the Christmas after cancer.

  Those first days postsurgery passed in a nauseated, medicated blur. I don’t remember much, but I remember how Troy kept a log of my medications, doses and times, to make sure I didn’t overdose (both thoughtful and wise). How, in the middle of the night, he stumbled to the kitchen to get a cup of applesauce to ease my nausea (again thoughtful and wise). I remember the sign he taped to the door with “I love you!” written in fat red letters, and how he guarded me from well-intentioned guests who asked questions I couldn’t answer.

  “She can’t talk,” he reminded them, then shooed them out the door and me off to bed.

  And I remember how, when the thoughts and pain tormented at the end of each day, he’d crawl under my covers and pull me close.

  “Tell me again,” I begged. “Tell me it’s going to be alright.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Michele. You’re going to be fine.” How many times did he say those words?

  During those moments, when the fear choked and the tears flowed, I remembered how close I’d come to walking away. Like the panic that follows a near car accident, I shook with awareness. It could’ve turned out so differently.

  It has been said, “A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.” I now understand what this means, and how wise and true the words are. A marriage isn’t made of lace and pearls, slacks and ties. Nor can it be polished to a perfect shine or wrestled into submission. But it can be built one “I’m sorry,” “I forgive you,” and “I love you” at a time.

  Early in our relationship, Troy’s uncommunicative, unemotional, stubborn self frustrated and wounded me. I wanted more from him, needed more. But as I faced the possibility of death, I started to see the flip side of his flaws: the loyalty that grew from his stubbornness; the unflinching faith that quieted his emotions; the peace his wordless presence provided. The same qualities I’d before resented — and that would likely irritate me again — made the bedrock that supported me as I learned to live again.

  Author and philosopher Sam Keen said, “We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.”5 Yes, that’s it exactly. Against all odds, Troy became the dream the middle-school girl had prayed for.

  Prince Charming? No. Ten years of marriage had revealed the fairytale to be nothing but fluff. He was — is — real. Human, flawed, and quite infuriating at times. But he wasn’t riding off into the sunset and leaving me to endure this alone. He was standing, loyal and true, right next to me.

  Holding my hand.

  Till death do us part.

  CHAPTER 6

  In Pursuit of Peace

  I’ve wanted your nearness like air.

  And, somehow . . . you have done this . . .

  It is terrifying.

  And wonderful.

  . . . as if a fog has lifted and I see clearly for the first time . . .

  The beauty and wonder in this place is almost more than I can bear.

  I’m overcome.

  — JOURNAL ENTRY, December 27

  I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD WHEN I DISCOVERED GOD IS REAL.

  Not a real thought or idea. But a real person, as tangible as the worn and frayed stuffed kitty I clutched under my arm.

  My memory begins well into the evening, after, no doubt, a burning Arizona sunset. A favorite aunt and uncle reclined on th
e teal-and-green-patterned sofa, one of the seventies’ regretful productions. My toddler brother annoyed me from his perch on the shag carpet. I remember the adults’ easy conversation and my thrill at being allowed to stay up and listen.

  Until I heard the words no child wants to hear: “Michele, it’s time for bed.”

  Banished. The horror! My oppressor — the man I called Daddy — couldn’t have delivered a more devastating blow. In the span of a few words, I went from queen of the castle to cast-out pauper. To go to bed meant to miss out on the evening’s fun. By morning, my aunt and uncle would be long gone. Thus I did what any child does in such a life-altering and utterly unfair situation.

  I threw a fit.

  Here’s where my memory grows fuzzy. One moment my father ordered me to bed. The next I’m buried under the covers in my darkened bedroom, crying deep gut-splitting sobs. Only vague images sit in between, including a tantrum worthy of Scarlett O’Hara. I’m pretty sure I deserved an Oscar.

  I didn’t want to go to bed. But that’s not the only reason I cried. I’d failed to say goodbye. In the drama birthed of my disappointment, I’d turned my back on my aunt and uncle and stomped to my room. There, alone, I felt nothing but regret.

  That’s when my five-year-old self prayed. Sunday school teachers had told me about the big God in heaven, how he listened and cared. How I could talk to him about anything at all. I believed them.

  Dear God, help my aunt or uncle to come into my room. So I can say I’m sorry. And goodbye. Please, God. Please!

  It was a child’s prayer, simple and selfish. I didn’t want to feel the pain in my chest anymore. Over and over, I said the same words, eyes squeezed, tears rolling. Please, God, please! As if I could will him to work out my grief with the fervency of my wish.