UNDONE Chapter Three

I’m glad to be back online! We made some very necessary security upgrades on my website, which unleashed a host of web gremlins. We vanquished the last of them (I hope!) this morning, but if they kept you from seeing Wednesday’s  post on an old hymn, Like a River Glorious or Thursday’s post on our mission as believers and reconnecting with it, I’d love for you to check them out. A personal note- On October 1, the church voted to call Jon as pastor. That makes me a pastor’s wife.

 

But now Chapter 3

 

I collapsed onto the bed in the hotel room. That should have signaled the emotional release. I was safe. I was removed from the immediacy of the situation. The tears should have come. But they didn’t.

I felt numb instead. Numb. Empty. Dead inside. Maybe I wanted to keep it that way. Maybe that’s why I flatly refused David’s suggestion that we find a counselor. Deadness was too familiar and the pain of feeling was far too great to risk awakening it.

Besides, there was only one counselor on earth I would even consider talking to, and he’d been dead for fifteen years. David’s father, Phil. Phil had a way about him, a gentleness that made you believe that those promises he preached about were true, especially the promises that God was good, and that He loved you.

Phil cherished his wife, Donna. I’ve seen him catch her eye across a crowded room and his smile would cause her to blush. He spoke her name softly with love in his eyes. I have never understood how God could separate them.

Once, in the early days of their marriage, Donna left him and went home to her mother. Phil drove through the night to be there when she woke up so they could work things out. My husband didn’t even ask where I was going.

I could imagine David at this very moment crying out to God about this injustice, this attack from Satan, this betrayal. He was probably poring over the Psalms, calling for God’s vengeance on his enemies, praying for a change in my heart, praying for my repentance, asking God to help me see the depths of my sin and pull me out of the darkness.

But I wasn’t an addict. I wasn’t scouring the internet right now. I didn’t need to sneak a glance at a picture to get me through the day. No. I was filling the empty spaces from a nonexistent relationship with my husband. Years ago, when he grasped the fact that I didn’t fit the traditional pastor’s wife profile, nor would I ever fit it, that was the end of us. Maybe someday I’ll write a book and call it When the Other Woman is the Bride of Christ.

We both poured the best of ourselves into our work, but he got to claim the high ground because he’s a minister. Then I was supposed to be so thankful for the emotional leftovers that I would be more than willing to meet all his desires. Yes, he was the desire-generator and I was the desire-meeter. That’s called a partnership.

When we met, when we first began to date, it wasn’t that way. In those days, when we talked, he hung on every word I spoke. He valued me, my input, my observations. That was one of the things I loved about him, that he fell in love with my mind first.

I loved the fact that I could be sure he would always be good to me and treat me with dignity and respect. I knew he would never abandon me. I knew he would never divorce me. Even now he won’t. Even though I said I wanted a divorce. David just doesn’t believe in it. In fact, I don’t think he’s forgiven his brother for divorcing his first wife fifteen years ago.

And if he hasn’t forgiven Michael, there’s not a snowball’s chance he’ll forgive me.

 

Read the rest of UNDONE Chapter 3