Limbo

It is such a strange place to be... this limbo of my marriage.

I met Brenda on Leap Year Day 1980. She was on my porch, brought over by a friend, and my heart was struck as if from a pistol.

Twenty-seven and a half years later I am wondering: is it all over?

There are big questions which need answers. Some answers will not arrive soon, they need to be revealed over time, perhaps more time than we have.

Can we survive her two affairs? Can there be trust? Can there be respect? Can there be love?

How do I feel about it? Do I want this marriage anymore?

In a word, yes.

Not because I need someone to feed me, clean my house, to be the yin to my yang, the keeper of the hearth while I hunt the stag.

I want this marriage because I love her. I want this marriage because I think it is best for both of us. I want this marriage because I committed my life to it.

This isn’t about sex, or about my needs. I want her to be happy. I want her to walk beside me into the shadows of old age.

It may not be up to me. It takes two people to make a marriage. It only takes one to dissolve it.

I think she wonders how can I forgive her, how can I live with the uncertainty her straying has caused.

For me this isn’t about trust. For me this is about emotional and spiritual health.

Now before I say another word, it is important I accept my responsibilities, acknowledge my failures.

Sex. I have a low sex drive, somewhat repaired with hormone injections these last couple of years. The inertia of those early years together set us up for a sex life that was not healthy, especially for her. I acknowledge that I have not provided her what she has needed.

Domestic equity. She has done too much of the work in the raising of our children, operating our home, fiscal planning. I ceded too much of my responsibilities to her. And though I can point to changes made over the years, once again inertia, habits of living, have continued to place more on her shoulders than was fair.

The current situation is about emotional and spiritual health. I know I am probably wrong about many of the causes which I think lie beneath her actions, but here are a few thoughts.

She has wondered how I will be able to trust her again. The truth is that her infidelity is a greater burden for her than it is for me. Regardless of the outcome, she will have to live with those consequences. If she leaves me for another she will have to decide what to do with them. No matter what she does, stays or goes, she will carry those choices with her. She will have to decide whether to reveal them or hide them. In revealing them she will be sowing seeds of doubt in every future relationship. If she hides them she will not be trusting that the love is strong enough to bear the truth.

Her affairs provided her something she craves. They told her she is beautiful, that she is loved. They were words and deeds laid upon her which made her feel special, because they came fresh from another (my praise for her beauty and intelligence and large heart have been dismissed for years). Her affairs told her she is desirable, that she is young.

Which leads me to another thought about why she is where she is... that she does not like growing old.

An affair can make one feel the way one does when starting out in life. Everything is swept off the table, there is a clean slate, no history no preconceptions.

I wonder about her... about her physical body... is she approaching menopause? Is this latest affair a way for her to start a new life as her body reinvents itself? Is it a mid life crisis born of the anxieties of aging, of the grief of never having children, of life being something other than she had hoped?

And what of her love for this other man? My gut tells me it is infatuation and lust, not true love. But of course, I am hoping that deep inside her heart is the steady love we have had for each other that is simply awash by the passion of this fresh flood, a flood that will run its course, perhaps pushing her heart into a new river bed that will eventually run dry when she finds that she does not trust her heart with this new relationship, as she did with ours.

My deepest feelings about this affair isn’t about it being the act which murders our relationship, but that it is a symptom of an illness she has.

The failure to keep her wedding vows (and the renewal of her wedding vows) isn’t a death knell of our marriage. It is a fever which has made her spirit sick. Perhaps it will lead to the death of our marriage, but it isn’t up to me to abandon her when she is sick. It is up to me to understand what she needs, to provide what I can to make her healthy, even if it means that it helps her to move out of my life.

I promised to love her in sickness and in health, that includes her emotional and spiritual health.

Can I forgive the hurt I have received from her? Of course. Can I forget the hurt? Probably not. Can I trust her again? Maybe.

How would that work? How could I regain a trust that has been shattered, patched back together, and shattered again?

It depends on her healing. I fear that her affairs are both symptomatic of deep hurts and will damage her future relationships, whether with me or another.

I fear that the hurts of her life, childhood abuse, a sense of abandonment, a loss of a stable childhood which created in her the need to take control, may be behind the affairs. Her alcoholism is another symptom of the hurts springing from childhood injuries and disappointments. Add to this the hurts and disappointments I am responsible for, and then the terrible hurts and disappointments of the death of our first child, the realization of the mental handicaps of our subsequent children, the realization that one of them is dangerously fascinated with fire, the guilt of the loss of our church because of that fire, the burden for caring for a mother who provided her so little care...

I believe that while I bear some of the responsibility for what did not happen in our marriage, I also believe that she has an illness deep inside which flows from those old wounds. She needs healing from those causes which helped her to make such self destructive choices.

In the end, if I can see her healed of those hurts, that she becomes the person she is supposed to be, that she sheds the scales which encrust her heart... that would be a good thing to come of all this After such healing certainly I can trust her again.

It is possible she will leave me. It may be that I will become the elderly bachelor uncle who goes to his grave never remarrying.

I do not exclude the possibility that I may learn to love again. My preference is that in learning to love again it is not with another woman, but with this one who has shared my life from my immature early twenties to now.

A marriage is carried within the hearts of two people. It cannot survive in the heart of only one. Whether or not this marriage survives its current crisis remains to be seen.

Either way, I will put in the effort I need. Help her to heal, help me to grow in the ways I need to grow. If it isn’t enough, help her to move on.

In my mind my wife is lying in a hospital bed. What ails her comes from many sources. Her illness may affect me, affect our marriage. My role is to help her as best I can. I pray I can help her, that we can both find a way to bring our marriage out from this state of limbo and to a garden we can both explore.

Masks

You may know me as “Curious Servant.” It is a name I chose for myself when I first started blogging. I was afraid of letting those in the wide world of the World Wide Web know my true identity.

As if there is such a thing.

The name on my birth certificate, driver’s license, and sundry other documents is William David Greenleaf. When I was little I was “Bill." That lasted until my mid 20s when I shed that appellation for Will, thinking it was a better, stronger, more positive name.

To my students I am Mr. Greenleaf, a name that sums up my identity as a teacher, someone who does not exist outside of the school building (a fallacy which frequently brings shocked recognition at the grocery store or the library).

These names conceal more than they reveal. They provide me superficial identities for various situations. None of them are the true me.

A closer version of who I am comes out when I am with close friends, sharing hidden truths. My Moon Howlin’ buddies gather about once a month to sit around a camp fire and talk about anything that comes to mind, from family to faith, jokes to jobs, music to musings, fears to foolishness. We haven’t gotten together this summer. We need to do that. I need to do that.

There is the identity I have with my wife. It is a truer part of who I am, but still somewhat of a mask, an identity of being sure when I’m not, a touch of bravado, a touch of arrogance, a touch of the petulant child. Still, there is little that I can hide from her that she does not know after living for more than a quarter of a century with me.

There is the identity she provides me. She lets her guard down with me. Lets herself be negative, sardonic. She tends to see the downside of things, or perhaps that is simply the role she plays with me, and isn’t all she truly is.

I think people fall into roles they play for certain people. A common interest, a common joke, and the interactions tend to repeat. There are people I speak to about science, people I speak to about faith. There are those I talk politics with and others environmentalism.

Perhaps that is one reason I like to write these posts. Here I can say what I want, though... even here I tend to group everything around certain themes, certain ideas.

Brenda and I were at the pharmacy, my sleep meds cost more than I would have guessed.

“I guess everything is getting more expensive,” I said.

“Everything costs more than it should,” she replied. “Life is expensive. You can’t afford to live unless you are wealthy or so poor that the government pays for it.”

It was a typical glass half empty sort of comment she often makes to me. Sardonic, pessimistic.

Lately we, well especially me anyway, have been trying to find new ways to communicate, to interact. When she said this small testy comment about inflation I thought, this is typical of the sort of things we say. I would guess she is approaching life differently when she speaks to this other man. I would guess she leaves sarcasm and bitterness out of her conversations with him. I’ve seen her happy, flirty. Just not with me for some time.

It is no wonder she longs to run away. She could be silly, vivacious, and flirty with someone who doesn’t know the mask she has worn for so long.

I know there is more to Brenda than this. I know there are wonderful things about her. I hope... I pray... that we can learn to let each other find joy in the other, let the other grow and find beauty that comes with letting masks fall away.

But I also know that she sees this life we have as a series of eternal obligations and burdens involved in raising children, paying bills, dealing with the mess of life.

I cannot take those responsibilities away. I cannot strip her of the tragedy mask she has worn since our son died, since our other son burned down the church, since the bills and the house repairs and car repairs and the sickness and the drudgery of working and living.

And perhaps I cannot get her to put on the comedy mask that thrills to living and being free and looking with anticipation at the future.

I cannot get her to adopt anything at all.

But I can tend to my own masks. I can be aware when I am putting on a facade. I can wear the superficial mask of the pleasant teacher when it is needed, and I can set it aside when I am with those I trust.

I can pray that my wife recognizes that the masks she longs to wear will not provide her a life of happiness.

I can work to remove the masks I wear when I look at myself, when I tell myself I am who I am not, restoring a bruised ego with self-prescribed empty platitudes. (I have heard it said that there are few things as fragile as the male ego).

So who am I? I suppose I am Curious Servant, the blogger who puts a good face on his struggles and seeks to turn a clever phrase with parallelism and alliteration. I’m Will, the friend of my friends, the husband of Brenda, the father of Jeremiah and Isaac, and of Willy who lives with my King and Master. I suppose a part of me is still Bill, the boy who pretended to be a pirate and a spaceship captain and rode through magical fantasies springing from a childhood mind. I’m also the man who is self-centered and proud of things that are not of my making, or even of my possession, for all I have is merely lent to me (including my marriage). Perhaps I am even Curious Servant, the blogger who thinks about faith and science and art and love and kindness...

So what do I do with the masks? They are useful things, politically useful in keeping a job, in being civil and civilized. But I should be careful of which ones I wear, and when I wear them.

Most importantly, I can remember to toss all the masks into a heap when I am praying to my King and try to see my life, my physical body, my mind, my eternal soul, the way He sees them and live up up to the great love He offers me, despite what I strap to this human visage.

Clear Skin

For years my psoriasis has prevented me from doing many things.

If I used soaps or solvents the rashes would spread across my hands and the skin would flake off. If I put my hands to any use which consisted of vibrations, such as mowing the lawn, running a chainsaw or a rototiller, even hammering or clapping, they would swell and the skin would split. I would leave droplets of blood on anything I touched (imagine handing out papers to students). Even in being careful with what I did or used rashes would spread through my hair, on my ankles, between my toes, itching and bleeding.

It was something which helped me to empathize with the protagonist in Job.

Now, though my stress level is as high as when my son died, the psoriasis is disappearing. It began fading a couple of months ago. My hands didn't split when I mowed or ran a chainsaw. And no matter how much I washed my van or did dishes the rashes faded away. Today there is barely a hint of the rash on my ankle I have carried for over a dozen years. Even the scar from the rash is fading away.

It seems a small consolation to the turmoil in my heart.

My wife says she is no longer attracted to me, she loves another.

I took the advice of a reader who told meto tell her: "Do you even want me to keep fighting for us?"

She didn't answer. I told her I could not stand the pretending we were getting along while we work through legal issues and she secretly calls another man while I am away. She reluctantly said that she would try to find our love again, for the six months it will take to work on these legal issues of our children, but I don't believe her heart is in it.

She told me she didn't see how I could be secure enough to maintain a marriage after what has happened, her two affairs...

"I think those are a bigger problem for you," I replied. "No matter what you do, stay or go, you will carry those choices you made with you. You will have to decide whether to reveal them or hide them. In revealing them you will be sowing a seed of doubt in every future relationship. If you hide them you will not be trusting that the love you have is strong enough to bear the truth."

My skin is no longer painful. But a clear skin does not necessarily cover a clear heart.

Lord Have Mercy

The counseling session was rough. And it had moments that looked like there may be hope.

Would you think ill of me if I confess that I am so weary of it that I feel like simply encouraging her to leave?

I am a flawed person, and there has obviously been many times that I have not seen to her needs, understood her ways of telling me that she was unhappy, that I was failing her. It is gets tiresome, very tiresome, to hear how this is all my fault.

Still, I have been following the advice of a good friend who told me to simply follow I Corinthians 13. Good advice.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. I Corinthians 13:4-7

That particular part of the chapter seems especially important. She said things during the session which I felt were distortions or exaggerations...

Love is patient

There were times where I thought I should point out the things she had done wrong...

it keeps no record of wrongs...

There were times when I felt like I should state how upset I am over what is going on...

it is not easily angered...

There were times when I felt I should interrupt and get a chance to talk (in fact I was asked to step out so she could speak freely, giving her more than half the session without me in the room).

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy...

Isn't that what I want from my faith? That it challenges me to be more than I would otherwise be? If my faith is no more than what I would do on my own, then it isn't very large, is it?

The counselor told me not to keep , my feelings bottled up. That I need an outlet. I didn't say anything about this blog.

He said that I have my foot on my emotional accelerator, revving up the engine, upset, jealous, angry, and I have the other foot on the brake, keeping my voice soft, keeping my actions gentle, keeping my thoughts trained on what is good and right, such as this focus on I Corinthians 13.

On Sunday there was a message on humility. Sheesh. I'm feeling pretty humble right now! (I almost sound proud of that, don't I? Lord forgive me.) My wife wants to run away with another man and the only reason she is even going to counseling is because it was one of my stipulations if she were to stay here at all, and the only reason she is staying here even a short while is because of her great sense of responsibility and obligation to get these boys on their own, and even that is just primarily Jeremiah's need for a group home and the legal issues.

I went to the doctor yesterday. I have only been sleeping four or five hours a night. She gave me some prescription samples and I ended up falling asleep about 11:00 and I slept until 4:45. Almost six hours. Better. Tonight I will try the larger dose sample.

I've been spending some time praying. Praying for help from the Lord. The prayer is in the form of an angel, I'm drawing it on the Prayer Room Wall at our church (which you can see on this post at Job's Tale).

I've had two clear angelic experiences, perhaps three. I believe in beings which do not conform to all the laws of Newton.

Brenda is returning from a funeral for an aunt and uncle, and I wish to wrap this up before she returns.

I just want all of you who are reading and praying to know how I am fairing and to thank you heartily for your kind support.

Love...

Will

(Pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.)

Gloves off

We have been talking about our problems with soft, if hurt, words.

That changed this morning.

I did not yell. I did not say hurtful things. But she took the gloves off.

Once again I awoke at 4:00 in the morning. I could feel she was awake.

“I hope we can learn to love each other again,” I said.

“We should have had this disucssion eight months ago,” she snapped.

Then a torrent of anger poured out. A stream of pent up feminine fury coursed through the room and I tried to answer softly. Thatt grew difficult.

Finally, my frustration was too much.

“All I want is for us to learn to talk to each other with kindness, empathy, understanding. I want to get to a place where we seek to help each other, and find a way tto be happy together,” I told her.

“Well, now I am going to hurt you or I am going to hurt him, and you should have listened to me long ago.” She bit the words sharply annd spit them out one at a time. “He left his wife and it’s your fault.”

“That was his mistake, and maybe yours, not mine,” I said.

She went off to lay on the couch. I lay in bed a few minutes, and then got up, showered, went to the church to pray. I couldn’t believe she was trying to make his happiness my responsibility.

After forty minutes she called my cell, told me coffee was made. That sounded hopeful.

The coffee was there, I needed it, but before I had stirred in a shot of chocolate her anger roiled around the room and I was her target.

I went to work. I remain gentle, but I am not a doormat. I am a servant, but not a receptical for another’s unjust anger.

I stopped by the church on the way home. I prayed a little more. It’s an image of an angel.

I knew that Brenda had to leave to pick up Jeremiah, so I called at 12:30 and went with her.

So, the unsteady truce has returned. I am so tired. I simply cannot keep going on four or five hours sleep each night. It has been nearly two weeks.

We see a counselor tomorrow. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring.

I need to go pray.

"Do not Be Anxious"

Sleep has been pretty difficult of late.

I have trouble falling asleep. I am restless, tossing and turning and waking with a start several times a night. About 4:00 a.m. every morning I open my eyes in the darkness and know I am not falling back to sleep.

Our regular contract calendar begins next Monday, but I started working today. It’s a program called “Jump Start,” designed to help incoming 6th graders make the transition to middle school. We (myself and another teacher) have about twenty kids who have not excelled in elementary school.

Every year there is that moment when I first step in front of a group of kids and for an instant I am anxious about how well I am going to teach. The moment passes. I launch into my lesson, guiding the discussions, the lectures, the activities, while keeping an eye on each student’s reactions and behavior, creating an atmosphere of learning, a space in their minds and hearts where knowledge can settle in.

It feels good to be back at work. For five hours today my marital concerns were pushed aside while I guided my charges along careful, fun, paths of learning.

After work I ran over to the local access cable station and picked up some carpeting and curtains donated for the TV studio I am building.

I stopped by home. Brenda was cheerful, reserved. I became anxious over whether or not she had called the other man, waited for the opportunity, and checked her cell phone’s recent calls. None today.

I do not like that sort of behavior in me. I do not like being sneaky. I do not like being anxious. It seems my heart is always racing just a little, my breath is a little quick.

I knew I needed to pray. I slipped away to the prayer room at the church. I sketched out a new image, began to pray:

I lift up my eyes to the hills
Where does my help come from
My help comes from the Lord
Maker of Heaven and earth
O Maker of Heaven and earth

Your foot shall never be moved
You'll never stumble
Or slip no never
He who watches Israel
He never slumbers or sleeps
No He never slumbers or sleeps

The Lord will keep you from harm
He watches over your soul
He will watch you come and go
Now and forevermore forever
Now and forevermore

O Maker of Heaven and earth
O Maker of Heaven and earth

It’s a song I have heard. I wrote the words into the image on the wall. And then I began to pray spontaneously, writing what came to mind...

The Lord is my salvation. If I ask for His help He will send it. He will never forsake me. If I seek his face he will lift me up with wings like eagles. I will not fear, for the Lord is with me...


I am looking forward to returning to finish it.

When I came home Brenda was on the phone. It seems that Jeremiah’s caseworker may have a place for him to live in a few weeks.

I became anxious.

Getting Jeremiah into a group home is the primary reason Brenda says she is still here. once that is accomplished she is planning on leaving. It was estimated that it would take six months for that to happen. However, moving him out before the citizenship comes through may throw the whole legal situattion into disarray.

I was hoping that Brenda and I could make some progress on our marriage before things came to a head. But, it may happen sooner.

She went to a neighbors for something and that is when I nervously checked her phone.

I slipped off and said a prayer asking for help.

A Bible passage came to mind.

Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. --Philippians 4:5-7

It is such good advice. And it is the sort of thing I usually do all the time. But, with a heart that is always racing just a little, and a breath that is a little quick, it is a little difficult to not be anxious.

None the less. this is direction from my Lord. He is my shepherd, my guide.

Lord, help me to obey. Help me to relax in You. I pray for my wife, I pray for my marriage. I know I cannot control what she does, but I pray that she learns to love me again, that she forsakes this other man. Lord, even now I fall back to anxious thoughts, I return to worry and concerns over which I cannot control. bless me this day Lord, that I may simply be obedient to you. --Amen.

Sunday Evening

It feels like a truce, a temporary pause in maneuvers before things completely unravel.

She stays until we work out the details of Jeremiah’s U.S. residency (an incredibly messed up situation where we are suddenly working on gaining citizenship for our two children of twelve years).

She does not see him outside of work.

We go to a marriage counselor with “open minds”.

We talk to each other with consideration, care.

When the terms of this truce was negotiated I missed the loop hole of her able to call him.

Pretty screwed up.

Whether or not my marriage survives is not up to me.

A kind brother in Christ made two insightful comments to me today:

“It takes two to make a marriage, but only one to break it up.”

and

“You can’t unscramble eggs.”

I have told her clearly that I believe we can work it out. She simply longs to run away.

I have to accept that I can only work on my own heart.

There have been many mistakes I have made, and it turns out that in recent years I have remedied them, just not soon enough to keep her heart.

All I can do is love my Lord, love others, especially her.

Stay true.

Meanwhile, the next few months the plan is I share my bed with a woman who loves another while we figure out what to do with our oldest son and go to counseling.

My marriage has a shelf life.

In church this morning we sat in our seats with plastic smiles plastered over hearts inn turmoil.

I always arrive a half hour early for church to pray with the pastors and then the worship team, to ask for blessing on the morning's events and the hearts of those in attendance.

I pray my prayers, careful not to provide hints of the terror in my heart, the shifting sand beneath the ffoundations of my marriage. One of those in attendance is the one person I trust, the one I have confided in. He gives me a knowing smile and a reassuring hug.

This little post is dry, devoid of the witticisms and clever turns of phrase I love to craft. I am tired and I see that there are many difficult days ahead of me.

But I also see signs of hope. I see occasional sparks of regret and even affection in her eyes.

My psoriasis seems to have suddenly cleared. I am able to do things with my hands that I have been unable to do for a long time. They no longer swell up, split and bleed. The large rashes are nearly gone.

More importantly, I feel loved by a great number of people, those who send me emails, leave me comments, and most especially, pray heartfelt prayers on our behalf.

So, with a deep sigh I toss this latest missive onto my blog and see what I can do to restore peace in my heart and perhaps my home.

--C.S.

The Quiet of God

I awoke early from a bad dream. It was a little after four.

I had been visiting my father... he was going to take us to dinner in Paris.

There was a mess on the kitchen floor and counters: coffee grounds, scraps of food from vegetables and odd little things, which I cleaned up, put in a small trash can.

It was sort of a restaurant, and I went down the short hall to wash my hands. But the Men’s Room was cramped with dining tables, women sitting at them. It was difficult to squeeze through the door, past the tables, around people sitting in chairs. I tried to be polite, make my way through, but people seemed annoyed at my presence.

A little girl was standing on a chair, playing in the sink. I told her I needed to get at the sink and tried gently to push the chair a few inches over. She wavered on the chair, almost losing her balance, and I grabbed her and held her up.

The women started in on me, complaining, and chastising, and yelling.

One woman scolded me that I didn’t know the good that had been generated by the money from the tables put in the Men’s Room.

I awoke.

In waking I awoke Brenda, who went out to look at our fence which we are obsessing a little over, afraid that vandals will deface it again.

Between moments when our bodies requested a visit to our own restroom we spoke about the mess we are in.

Actually, we spoke more about how she felt unsupported in the early years of our marriage, and how that while I have been improving over the last decade, especially the last year, she has felt less and less for me. She told me how she loves this other man and that she is here because she does not wish to shirk her obligations for our children.

We talked for a half hour about my mistakes.

The mood of the dream persisted in my heart.

I told her that I knew we had to deal with these things, that I needed to know them, but that for the past week I have been bombarded by my failures while trying to forget and forgive hers. I told her that, not for the sake of a future together but just for the sake of our own present sanity, we need to have a little fun.

Of course the difficulty in that is the shortage of money and the need to have supervision for our 18 year old son.

So, I am in the Prayer Room of our church. I came here to pray, and found myself looking at the walls, thinking about the time I have spent here. I took pictures of The Lord’s Prayer I did over the past year, and then I took pictures of the rest of the room. I’ll post them on Job’s Tale. But the spirit of prayer, or should I say The Spirit of Prayer, doesn’t seem to be in me this morning. I feel tired and numb and so I sit here writing, tapping at the keys on this laptop.

She loves another.

Why would she stay with me when what I have to offer is work?

And she loves another.

It makes me feel unlovable.

People say nice things about me. So many have visited my blogs and responded so kindly so many times. Could it be that the way I word things, or the way I think about things, is the only thing attractive about me? Could it be that there is something about me in the flesh, as a real person, that people do not like to be near, find grating, abrasive? Could it be that I am unlovable?

I’m listening to beautiful chorale music, spiritually uplifting music.. In the distance I hear the voices of workmen at their tasks in finishing up the rebuilding of our church. The smell of fresh paint is in the air.

And I am alone in this room, hoping to make contact with God, hoping to feel something besides sorrow and loss and frustration and the sense that I am condemned, doomed.

Perhaps it is simply that I am tired. Restless sleep, short hours when I do sleep. A sense that things are falling apart.

Glimmers of hope, small efforts at reconciliation which may be nothing more than her biding time until obligations are met, our conversations are gentler remonstrations instead of shouting, silence in sorrow and loss...

Perhaps it is simply that I am tired. But I feel my strength draining away, my spiritual strength, my prayers broadcast away from my heart into realms beyond these four dimensions and echoing back the ping of a spiritual sonar that something is out there...

But is it the salvation of my marriage or just lessons for me to learn?

My children are almost grown and gone. And perhaps my marriage is as well.

I’m 51 years old. I finally have a very steady career. I have equity in a home. But none in the relationship of the woman I thought I would spend my life with.

I hear people speak of the silence of God. I have felt it now and then, perhaps I feel it now.

But in general I have sensed the Quiet of God. That He is there, and it isn’t that He refuses to speak, is silent, but that I am incapable of listening. That instead of silence it is really the Quiet of God which permeates my world.

If I can just slow down, rest in the grass on the hillside, watch the clouds drift slowly across a deep sky... then I would not feel the need for His voice. I would recognize that I am not a being who needs to have all the control in my life. That I can rest.

I am a servant of the Lord God, Creator of All Things, the Embodiment of Love. I do not need to do manly things all the time. I can simply be. I can rest. I can simply follow.

As a man I like to think of myself as a leader, head of household, guider of my family. But I am not a shepherd really. I am a sheep. I have a shepherd who will guide me. For now, it is simply my job to lie in the grass on the hillside. The shepherd will take care of me.

And what a shepherd He is. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the one who holds all the universe together, and He is willing to suffer for me. And not simply the suffering He did when He crept into this world through the body of a young woman, taught the world about love, and then let the world nail him to a piece of wood in mockery of His trade, but the suffering He endures when I continue to reject Him despite all He does for me. The sins I continue to heap upon His Cross.

What a shepherd He is. Willing to go to great lengths to rescue lost sheep. And willing to take on the forces of darkness, powers so much greater than I, to battle for my safety, my return to His home.

What a shepherd He is. While I am a sheep of His flock, a small lamb, He is the Lion of Judah. A predator of great power.

And He chooses to lie down with me!

I need to rest.

Rest in the Quiet of God.

Dark River

I awoke a little earlier than usual this morning... a bit after four a.m.

I took the dog for a walk. I went down to Molalla River State Park and walked along the river, out into the fields...

This is the same field where the Lord once spoke to me, telling me He understood what I was going through.

The silence was too much. Feeling in the darkness I carefully pulled my iPod out of my pocket, unwrapping the ear buds, placed them carefully in my ears (I have an infection in my right ear) and put some Amos Lee on, soft and low.

Woah, black river,
gonna take my cares away.
Woah, black river,
gonna take my cares away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.

I watched the Willamette River flow through the darkness, as it has for centuries... and I wished I could cast my troubles into it. I wished that I could float away on it... away from the heartache that has me walking before the sun rises.

I raised my hands up to the darkness, singing loud to music only I heard... my dog scampering in the darkness,


and sang my heart to my Lord:

Woah, dear saviour,
gonna take my cares away.
Woah, dear saviour,
gonna take my cares away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.

...and though I felt Him within my aching heart, I heard no reassuring voice, no mighty divine words ringing through my wringing heart...

The song moved on... a musical groaning about loss and heartache and the oblivion men sometimes find in a bottle:

I had tried that a week ago, drinking a half bottle of Merlot... but I'm not the drinking type and as soon as I felt a little tipsy I had set that bottle down and let my aching heart set the tempo for my ragged breaths.

Woah, sweet whiskey boy,
c'mon,
gonna take my cares away.
Woah, sweet whiskey boy,
you're gon,
you're gonna take my cares away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.
Gonna take my cares,
gonna carry my cares,
gonna take my care away.

Amos Lee's song swept up to that fevered pitched of soulful sadness and I sang loud in the empty acres the verse of pleading and prayer:

You're gonna take my bottle, my Bible, my mess.
You're gonna take all of my empty and my loneliness.
Gonna take all of the sadness inside of me,
gonna take it all and set me free.

And I went back home... two hours of walking and praying without a satisfying resolution...

When I arrived home I found that the local gang had tagged our fence, the second time in two weeks.

There was a police officer there, talking to my wife, and writing up the incident. Several cars had also been graffitied.

So I had my chores laid out for me again... a trip to Rodda Paint in Oregon City (they gave me one can free and wholesale price for the second gallon!).

But before I could start our dog had run off and we spent over two hours hunting him down. (He was sorry.)


Soon the task was done, while neighbors dropped by, commiserating and congratulating me on tackling it so quickly (the local paper even came by to get a photo of us covering the blemish left by the foolish young men).


These little irritants, tagged fence, an ear infection, a missing dog, seem a staccato beat to the rhythm of the troubles facing my home on a larger scale.

Yesterday a friend from church emailed me that there are rumors circulating about my wife and our marriage. I feared that it was because of my careless posts on my other blog, Job's Tale, but it turns out the source was simply speculation over her plastic smile on Sunday mornings and her obvious discomfort over the continual reminders of the fire which destroyed our church, the flames sparked by my son.

I am more than a little irritated at these gossips. I am praying to my Lord, going to a counselor, seeking advice and tearing at my own identity to reveal the flaws which have let my wife down, and these women, in the name of being concerned, threaten to discover, have actually imagined correctly, the troubles which plague my home!

The visit to the marriage counselor yesterday went as well as could be expected. On a scale of 1 to 10 she feels only a 4 or 5 to committing to repairing our broken relationship. She wants to go to the person she feels makes her happy, and he isn't me.

The psychologist told her that she would have to choose between him or me, that one can't have two relationships. She is holding this other man in reserve, asking him to wait six months while we sort things out...

Oh...

That hurts so much...

I can see that she is thinking it over, I think she may choose me...

But I represent responsibility and work and failures and guilt and shame...

So I'm thinking about me... for I cannot change her, and wonder what it is I can do to make certain that I see her for who she is... to be the sort of man, the sort of husband, I am supposed to be, even if those changes are not in time for her.

I am the sort of guy who is always holding conflicting, sometimes opposing, ideas in my head, seeking to find solutions where many simply grasp a single paradigm... faith and science, art and engineering, what I think I am and who I might truly be.

And so I am spending a great deal of effort in examining my assumptions, the beliefs I have about the sort of man I am, seeking the honest truth.

And that honesty often hurts.

And so I listen to music that fits my mood, fits my circumstances, moving from classical to jazz, country to blues.

And I see that black river... the one running through my life... and I wish I could float away on its deceptively smooth waters.