Now Is Not Always

The world is so much softer today than when I was a kid. I take my three boys, two preschoolers and one toddler, to the park and I can’t help but chuckle to myself. Not only is the ground not covered with concrete or pea gravel, but it’s not even hard. Stepping on the artificial turf is almost like stepping on a springboard. All the playground equipment is softer too. What ever happened to polished steel slides and rough wood posts? When I was a kid, you left skin behind on the slide and if you didn’t come home with at least two splinters, you weren’t playing hard enough.

I think what stands out the most is the merry-go-round. My boys have the luxury of sitting on solid seats with backs to lean against and the spinning mechanism is limited somehow. I might have enjoyed that as a kid. As it was, I didn’t like the merry-go-round very much. Instead of making them as safe as possible, I’m convinced that whoever invented the ones we had in the 80’s and 90’s must have wanted to see kids fly. Oh, it pretended to have “safety features”—the diamond grid on the base that was supposed to be non-slip, the trench surrounding it was supposed to be safer because it wasn’t paved. I can tell you from experience, packed dirt can be just as hard. And that metal frame was just thick enough that a child’s hands couldn’t wrap all the way around it.

It never failed. When us smaller kids got on the merry-go-round, there would always be a teen around who would think it funny to spin it so fast that we had no hope of holding on. They’d laugh when we went flying, rolling into the dirt, too dizzy to walk straight. Many years later I’d find myself on another merry-go-round, but it wasn’t one I could just jump off of.

My marriage had never really been that great. We married way too young. She wasn’t even out of high school yet and I had only graduated the year before. It was never easy, especially after she got into her early 20s and developed severe bi-polar. It was like having to walk on eggshells all the time. I never knew if she was going to be happy, angry or just too depressed to get out of bed and it could change multiple times a day in the blink of an eye.

But that wasn’t her fault, and I was still determined to make it work. And for several years, I did. We went to counseling, both as a couple and individually. Sometimes it was helpful. Most of the time it wasn’t. By the time our third child was born, I was doing pretty much everything. I was the one to make sure the kids were up and ready for school and picked up on time afterwards. I was the one who made sure they were bathed and fed and relatively happy. She tried, but most of the time she just couldn’t manage it.

By year eight, I really thought we were going to be okay. The kids were getting a little older. Our careers were finally headed in the right direction. She seemed happier than she had in a long time. Maybe that’s why I was so surprised when my brother-in-law called me and broke the news. He backed out of an affair with my wife and I needed to talk to her about her fidelity.

Suddenly I found myself right back on that merry-go-round that I hated so much as a kid. This time wasn’t a sadistic contraption of steel and ball bearings, it was a whirlwind of emotional turmoil that threatened to break my heart instead of my bones. After everything we had been through together, years of counseling, tears and healing, three children under the age of seven, a career that was finally starting to look positive and she threw it all away.

I left the office without saying a word. I was in charge, so it wasn’t like I was going to be in trouble, but it still wasn’t like me to leave without telling my secretary where I was going. Truthfully, I just didn’t have the words to explain. It was like someone had torn my soul from my body, turned my heart to stone and my blood to ice. It was simultaneously the most agonizing emotional pain I had ever felt and yet the numbest I had ever been.

I don’t remember the trip home. I walked through the door to find her sitting at the table, messing around on her phone. This was before iPhones, before smart phones of any kind were the norm. I should have known by the amount of time she spent texting that something was off, but I was oblivious.

I don’t like conflict. I go out of my way to avoid it and even the thought of it makes my adrenaline kick in. I knew I had to say something, and I knew it wasn't going to be comfortable, but I didn’t have a choice. By the time I sat down next to her, I was shaking with a combination of rage and hurt, confusion and regret.

I still remember what I said even though it was so long ago.

“If our relationship means anything to you, you need to tell me the truth. Have you been cheating on me?”

I expected a look of shock, perhaps even a look of confusion. I can’t tell you how desperately I had hoped that she would laugh it off and assure me that she hadn’t been cheating and that my brother-in-law was just making a bad joke. Instead, the look she gave me was exactly the look my children would give me if I caught their hands in the cookie jar.

“How many times? How many people?” I asked her.

It took her a moment to think about a response. Instead of giving me a name, she wanted to know who told me. I didn’t think my heart could shatter into any smaller pieces but when she said that I knew immediately that this wasn’t a one-time thing. It was only after I told her about the phone call that she began to count. Eight. Not eight times, eight different men over the last few months and a couple times per week minimum.

There was nothing else to say. I turned around and walked out. If I didn’t take a walk, I was going to end up doing or saying something I’d regret. It was several hours before I came back home. She had picked up the kids from school and there was pizza on the table. I tried to pretend like nothing was wrong for the kid’s sake, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat a single bite. When your world is spinning that violently, the idea of eating makes you want to vomit.

The worst part is that I knew it wasn’t just the end of our marriage that was on the horizon. If I couldn’t find a way off this devilish ride, I was going to lose everything. For the next few months, we tried to work things out. More counseling. More tears. We were in ministry together. I knew that once the truth got out, as it inevitably would in a small, Iowa town, it would be a scandal. We resigned before that could happen.

I thought the worst was behind us at that point. We moved to Arkansas to be close to her grandparents, where she felt safe. If you’re thinking that was a stupid move on my part, you’d be right. In Arkansas, you have to be a resident for 60 days before you can file for divorce. I was served on day 61.

I had held on to that spinning torture device as long as I could. Those papers were the final push that sent me sprawling into pure despair. Broken isn’t the right word. I was beyond that. Broken still leaves room for the hope of being put back together. I was shattered into countless pieces.

In just a few months I had gone from being a senior pastor and administrator to working for eight dollars an hour detailing used cars. I had gone from what I thought was a stable marriage to being a divorcee. I had gone from living in a place I was loved and respected to a place where I had no connections whatsoever, and for those of you not familiar with small towns in the south, you don’t just show up and expect everyone to accept you. In a small town like the one in which I found myself, it was all about who you knew, and I didn’t know anyone.

And I was stuck there too. Sure, I could have left the state. I could have packed up what little I had left and headed back to somewhere I felt more comfortable, but that would have meant leaving my kids behind and that was something I simply could not do.

The thing that hurt the worst was the injustice of it all. I hadn’t done anything to deserve any of this. I was a good husband and a good father. I provided for my family. I had a job I loved. Yet because of her selfishness, her promiscuity and narcissism, everything that I valued had been stripped away and there was no getting it back.

I was alone and it wasn’t going to get any better any time soon. The darkest moment was when I got the eviction notice. We had been living in a home her grandfather owned. Within days of being served papers, I received an eviction notice giving me only ten days to find somewhere else to live.

Those may have been the darkest days of my life, those ten days. I still went to work because I needed the money but that’s all I did. I’d get up just in time to throw on some clothes and work for eight hours. Then I’d come home, take a cold shower and spend the rest of the night sitting in the quiet until it was too dark to see before going to bed and doing it all over again.

I might not have made it through those days without my parents. Even though they lived in a different state, they refused to let me give up. They put me on their phone plan—I couldn’t afford the one I had before any longer—they helped me find an apartment and supported me financially while I got back on my feet.

The night I moved into my new apartment was the first day of the rest of my life. I didn’t even have a shower curtain yet, so I had thrown a sheet over the curtain rod to keep the floor from getting soaked. It was the first hot shower I’d had in weeks. I didn’t have any soap yet either, but that shower wasn’t about getting clean.

I sat there in the yellowed tub, the water so hot it should have been scolding my skin, but it wasn’t. Somehow the physical pain grounded me in the moment. I prayed. I cried. I burned until the water ran cold and then I shivered. It was miserable, but I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to get out of that tub until God and I had a talk. All the emotions I had been damming up for months exploded out of me in moans and wails and snotty sobs.

I won’t lie to you, I blamed him for everything. Why had he allowed this to happen to me? I had been nothing but faithful. Sure, I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t deserve this. If he really cared about me, why did all this happen? It went on for what seemed like all night, though in reality it was only an hour or two.

It didn’t stop until there were no tears left to cry. My throat was hoarse, both from sobbing and screaming. My head pounding with the kind of pressure that only builds up with an ugly cry. I had let it all out. I blamed God, accused him of not caring. I had called him unfaithful. I had pleaded with him to just let me die.

It wasn’t until I sat there shivering, the cold water pounding over my goosebump-ridden flesh that my mind finally quieted enough for me to hear him. It wasn’t an audible voice, but it was a familiar one. Not the voice of God, but the voice of someone I loved and respected very much. Not words of scripture or novel words of comfort, but words I had forgotten. “Now is not always.”

The words were like sunlight on my frozen soul. I had never been in a place this dark before, but I had been in places that seemed at the time nearly as hopeless. It was during one such time that my friend and mentor had given me that advice. Now is not always. As dark and hard and unfair and unbearable as it is right now, now is not always. It won’t last forever. The storm will pass.

It still astounds me today that in that moment, despite the cold water, I felt a warmth come over me that I could not explain, and with it, the first semblance of hope I had felt in months. It was as if God, despite my anger and accusations, had come and wrapped me in his arms. I turned off the water.

It would be a long time before I would really be okay, but something changed in me that night. I had hope again. I was finally able to start moving forward again. In the years since that night, God has restored to me nearly everything that was taken. It hasn’t been easy by any means, but I have a wife who loves me more than my ex ever did. I have three more children, three little boys who keep me on my toes. I’m not back in full time ministry, but I do preach more than I ever thought would be possible again.

So, if your life is spiraling out of control. If you find yourself on the chaotic merry-go-round we call life and you just don’t know if you can hold on any longer. If you find yourself in a place so dark that you don’t know if you’ll ever see the light again. Remember the words my dear friend told me. This pain is not forever. The storm will pass. And most of all, don’t ever, ever give up. Now is not always.