Frankly Speaking

I got married to Derwin in 1997. I’d met him during my senior year of high school, and we’d been close friends for three years before he became my boyfriend. By then I’d already been in two bad relationships and had two children. I thought things with Derwin would be different. After all, we’d been such good friends! Plus, he promised he’d be different, better than them. After all, they were only men as he put it. He was more than a man, better than a man. He was Derwin!

It wasn’t long before our relationship began to deteriorate. From 1993 to 1997, we fought regularly and broke up consistently. Our relationship was extremely dysfunctional: He was verbally abusive and disrespectful. I was controlling and bitter. Yet we married in October 1997, and our son was born the following March. Our marriage limped along, hindered by selfishness, dirty fighting, misaligned desires, and an utter inability to communicate on any topic. Our scarred history served as the crumbling foundation for a seriously hopeless marriage.

Despite the constant arguing and fighting, we somehow agreed to move to North Carolina in the spring of 1999. To my own surprise, I got saved that June.  Brimming with excitement and joy over my new faith in Jesus Christ, I immediately began working on getting Derwin saved. It was my job, and if I couldn’t do it then I was a big fat failure!

Things weren’t going as smoothly as I’d planned, though. I shouldn’t have been surprised: As long as I’d been in relationship with Derwin, he’d decried the existence of God and made me feel stupid if I acknowledged that perhaps God might exist. I eventually chose to ignore the potential of His existence and focus on pleasing Derwin. But when I finally met God, it was a drastic turn of events. It was more than just some Bible thing, some church thing. I’d met God! Not chasing after Him wasn’t an option! With this amazing relationship shaking up everything I’d ever known or believed, it was unfathomable that Derwin wouldn’t want to meet Him too.

But the more I talked to Derwin about God, the more he rejected me. The more I prayed, the more he rejected God. I was in church now, and I wanted to be a godly wife and raise my children in a godly home. Derwin wanted nothing to do with anything that looked, or smelled, or sounded like Jesus.

Of course, a believer married to an unbeliever doesn’t necessarily ruin a marriage. But our marriage was already crappy. Differences in opinion are normal in any relationship, but Derwin didn’t know how to disagree without destroying everyone in his path. He fought dirty. He said and did terrible things. On the flipside, I couldn’t bear not having control over the situation. I’d plan ways to get back at him, or I’d sulk, or yell, or even sometimes physically fight with him. All the while I kept careful track of each terrible thing he did, letting those things poison me.

Whenever I’d talk to God about my husband’s behavior, He’d respond, But what about you?

“What do you mean, ‘what about me’?” I’d ask, incredulous. ”Did You see what he did?”

But how did you respond? It’s no good repaying evil with evil.

“Okay, this isn’t fair. How come he gets to act any old way, and I’m the one who has to change? He started it!”

Who is the Christian–you or him? You must concern yourself with obeying me, not with whether Derwin’s obeying me.

This conversation was pretty typical. God wouldn’t commiserate with me about my rotten husband, no matter what he did. The conversation would immediately turn to my thoughts, my behavior, and my actions. Though I understood on the surface why God responded this way, somewhere deeper I resented it. It felt a lot like being a stepchild (which I was)–not loved quite as much as the other kids; not quite a real daughter. My feelings weren’t quite acknowledged; others were more important.

Not surprisingly, things between Derwin and me deteriorated. We’d separated for 9 months in 2001, deciding to reconcile when our youngest daughter was born. I had high hopes for our reconciliation, and I forced myself to behave and be a dutiful wife for God if not for Derwin. But it wasn’t long before I was emotionally and spiritually exhausted from all the mask-wearing. Derwin stayed the same no matter how I behaved, and it all seemed hopeless and endless. Bitterness ate away at my polished veneer. We argued more and more, then less and less as all communication boiled down to brief, ugly exchanges. There was absolutely no happiness in our home.

In January 2005, Derwin packed his things and moved out.

He’d barely closed the door behind him before I called my pastor’s wife. I sat on the edge of my tub sobbing, feeling like a failure–another Christian divorce statistic. She encouraged me to see his leaving as a new beginning, even though it felt like the end of my hopes and expectations. 

Suddenly while I was sitting in my bathroom, I saw a very clear picture in my mind: I saw my own hand, holding a large bag over the edge of a cliff. The bag was my marriage, and it was very heavy. My hand was clenched into a tight fist, and the veins and muscles in my forearm were bulging from the strain. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold it.

Then God whispered, Let it go.

So I did.

Immediately I felt the burden leave my hands, the satisfying relief coursing up my arm and through my shoulders. What the heck was I crying about! Who needed Derwin, or all the heartache that came with him! Goodbye sadness and tears, hello freedom! Thanks, God!

Meanwhile, an 11-foot wide tornado whipped itself into a frenzy on my doorstep.