2/14/07: My Love Story

I recently read on a couple of other people’s blogs their love stories of how they met and fell in love with their spouses. As many of you know, I was divorced from my wife of 8 years last summer. Even so, I couldn’t help but think of our story as I read about others’. So this blog is a rather unorthodox “love story”. Stick with me; I think I’ll be able to leave you hopeful rather than heartbroken. (If not, I just won’t post this…)

I met Crystal when I was 17 years old and she was 15. I was visiting in Paragould, Arkansas at Bro. Bass’s church and she was visiting there for the first time. She had attended a nominal church with her grandmother more out of habit than conviction, but was good friends at school with a girl in Bro. Bass’s assembly. I didn’t speak more than a few words to her in greeting, but something intrigued me about her. Of course, I would never have considered a relationship with someone who didn’t share my faith, but I must admit that she would pop into my mind every so often over the next year or so, and I would ponder whether anything ever came of that little girl in Arkansas. Would it just maybe be possible that she had ended up in Bro. Bass’s church? If so, then maybe, just maybe… could she someday be the one? She had seemed genuinely interested in the church, but it was her very first time there, so I didn’t particularly expect her to be back.

A little over a year later, in February of 1997, I happened into Paragould again on my way to the general meeting in Houston. This time I was privileged to be traveling with Bro. Cager Noles, Eddie Warner, and Jonathan Bruyns. When we got to the church for service that night, I looked around to see if I would by chance spot Crystal in the crowd, but I did not. Oh well, I thought, it must have been just a passing fancy of an adolescent mind. We went on to Houston and had a great time at the meeting fellowshipping with friends. On the way back to Paducah, we stopped by Paragould again to visit with the Basses. We planned to eat lunch with them and then head on back to Paducah rather than staying for service this time. We headed out of town and got about 15 miles down the road when Bro. Noles started having car trouble.

Bro. Bass had to come and pick us up and Bro. Noles’ car had to go into the shop for repairs, and we stayed another night in Paragould and were in service there again. When we got to the church and the people started filing in for service, I was extremely surprised to see Crystal walk through the door. Come to find out, she had been sick with the flu the previous weekend and had not been able to be in service. To my surprise, I found out that she been attending church there that whole past year, had received the Holy Ghost soon after I had first met her, and had really grown spiritually into one of the most faithful young women in the assembly. We spent some time together eating after church with a large group of young people, and then we went back to the church and all gathered around the piano singing church songs together till late in the night. I watched Crystal all that evening and I must admit I was smitten.

A couple of months went by during which I prayed about the situation, and finally I worked up the nerve to call and speak with Bro. Bass about Crystal. (Her father was not a godly man, and I’d never met him at the time; Bro. Bass was really more of a father figure to her than anyone at the time.) Bro. Bass encouraged me to pursue a relationship with Crystal, assuring me that she was a very intelligent, talented, and faithful young woman who really had a love for the word of God. She would often approach him after service asking for clarification of something he had said or with a Bible question that she had after studying on her own. He told me that of all the young women in his church, Crystal was probably the most likely to listen to his counsel and submit to it.

That was pretty much all I needed to hear. I sent her a letter and we began corresponding by mail and talking on the phone as well. I was a student at the community college in Paducah at the time, and Crystal received an early admission scholarship to Arkansas State University, skipping her senior year of high school and heading straight to college that Fall at the age of 17. By late Summer, we were seriously discussing the possibility of marriage and of my moving to Paragould to be closer to her and to finish my Bachelors degree at ASU. I moved the day after Christmas, 1997. On New Year’s Day 1998, we went to Memphis for dinner and I proposed. She said yes, and we immediately began making wedding plans. We got married on July 11, 1998. I was 20 years old, and it was exactly 2 months after she turned 18.

My philosophy on getting married at the time was that if you knew that this was the person you wanted to marry, why wait until you’re older? We were both adults, and mature for our age. Well, looking back, I would now generally counsel young people to wait until they’re a bit older. I realize that is sometimes easier to say than do. I didn’t listen when people suggested that then, either. (Just for the record, I don’t blame the divorce on the age at which we married…many, many marriages that happen at young ages are great successes; this is just a suggestion based on my own experience.)

Well, our marriage was a happy one. We always communicated with each other better than most people that I have seen, we served the Lord together, we read the Bible together, and we genuinely enjoyed being together. I still look back with fondness on our relationship and thank the Lord for the good times that we had together. I told this part of the story to make the point that my marriage was not some terrible thing that I was glad to be rid of. The next part of the story isn’t meant to be just a sad tale…there is a point to this. I sincerely hope that it doesn’t come across as plying for sympathy or as running down my ex-wife. It is solely intended to give my perspective on things and to testify of what the Lord has done through these circumstances in my life. When my marriage died, I lost something that was valuable and good. We really did have a great relationship.

Somewhere along the way, however, things started to change for Crystal. She began to question her faith, her belief in the teachings of the church and even the very existence of God. It’s not something that I ever fully understood. She was solid in her faith at one time. It is sobering and a bit frightening to see someone turn away from God. We would all be wise to pay attention to 1 Cor. 10:12—“Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” The best way that I know to describe what happened to Crystal is that at some point she began to have a growing dissatisfaction with her life that gnawed at her. She began to wonder where she would be if she hadn’t come into the church as a teenager, and eventually she started taking steps, one by one, that led to a situation where she could find out. I don’t know exactly when this started, but I do remember seeing some things in her spirit periodically that concerned me from fairly early in our marriage. By the time we decided to move to Paducah from Paragould in 2004, others had noticed that she didn’t appear to be happy in church anymore.

About a year after we moved to Paducah, she quit going to church. I will spare you most of the details, but suffice it to say that seeing my wife, the woman I loved, slowly give up her relationship with the Lord was heartbreaking. It was like watching the one you love slowly die over a period of months and years, yet being powerless to stop it. Needless to say, I counseled with the ministry several times along the way. I tried to be a good example of Christ’s love for the church in the way I treated Crystal throughout this time. I am just a man, and I’m sure I failed to truly love her as Christ loves, but I tried my best.

Bro. Bernard Lewis frequently says that we human beings are “cursed with the luxury of free will”. Crystal was free to choose her path. I couldn’t make those choices for her. Honestly, before Crystal ever left church, I saw the hand writing on the wall. I specifically remember standing in my apartment crying months before she actually stopped attending church. She had made a relatively insignificant decision not to be in the choir when we were invited to join, but when she told me that she didn’t want to go, it was as if I could see the future stretched out before me. I felt in my heart that the process had started, and that if she didn’t turn around, she would end up leaving the church and eventually leaving me as well. I am reminded of a song that we all should sing to the Lord if ever we find ourselves in a situation where the decisions we’re making will lead us away from Him if we continue:

Lord I need to feel Your Spirit and the joy in my soul,
And the sweet peace that only comes when Jesus has control.
I don’t walk to walk this road; I know where it ends.
Lord I need to feel Your Spirit once again!

Unfortunately, she never decided to stop walking the road that she was on. I could see the end of it (as least as it related to me); others could see it as well, and tried to talk to her. Honestly I think she could see where it was headed too, but she chose to continue down the path. As she grew further away from the Lord, she grew further away from me as well. She told me at one point that if she’d had her druthers, I would have left church with her when she did, but she knew that I wasn’t going to do that. Even if I had, our marriage may have survived a bit longer than it did, but it would have been destined for failure still, because she would have lost all respect for me if I had given up on everything that she knew I believed in so strongly.

We never really stopped getting along. That wasn’t the problem. She just didn’t want to live the kind of lifestyle that I wanted for us, and I was not going to live the kind of lifestyle she wanted either. I still believe that if she had chosen to stay and be content to be my wife, even if she didn’t choose to go to church, we would have settled into a comfortable sort of relationship with time. It would not have been easy; I would have been praying for her to return to God until the day I died (I still do pray for her, by the way), but I think we could have made it work. However, on May 8, 2006, she decided to leave. She filed for divorce shortly thereafter, and it was final on June 20.

The moment that she left, I knew that that was it. I realize that some people separate and then get back together; I just knew that we were not those people. She was not the type of person to make decisions hastily. Many people who separate do so in anger. Often they have threatened to leave multiple times when arguing over the years. Crystal had never once threatened to leave. It was very seldom that we even spoke to each other in anger. We just didn’t have that kind of relationship. Over the months after she left church, we discussed the situation several times, and things were said that hurt, yes, but they weren’t said in anger—just in honest assessment of the situation. It hurt because I knew that our marriage was likely to end soon if things didn’t change, and I didn’t see any desire on her part to make that happen.

Now to tell the real love story in this whole seemingly sad tale: God made Himself so real to me through this ordeal. Before Crystal ever left church, He began to prepare me to face the trial that He knew was coming. I believe that His hand was in the move back to Paducah and the job that I had at the time. He began to strengthen me spiritually for the stormy seas that my ship was bound for. He brought friends into my life who were there for me to cry with and lean on when I felt like I couldn’t make it. He gave people words of encouragement to give me which helped to prepare me for the trials.

In one particular instance we had an outpouring of the Spirit in a service and I ended up getting prayed for in the foyer in the back of the church. This was several months before Crystal actually left. Sis. Kaythern Medley prayed with me and spoke these words to me under the anointing of the Spirit: “There’s a storm coming. You need to be prepared. But you must remember that you have Jesus with you! The disciples were in the ship that night and the storm began to rage and they were frightened…but they forgot that Jesus was in the ship!” The mere words can’t convey the spiritual energy that came along with her message to me that night. I knew that although I was going to face the most difficult trial of my life, I was going to come through it alright if I would just trust in Him!

As I said, I felt like I knew what was coming for some time before Crystal actually left. In some ways, I felt that the waiting and wondering what might happen was worse than the actual fact of her leaving would be. During those dark months of anticipation, I steeled myself for what by that point seemed inevitable. It had become clear that she was no longer happy with our life together; I just didn’t know how long it would take for her to make the decision to leave. I prayed that God would deal with her during this time, and I believe He did, but she wasn’t hearing. I knew that if I preached to her, it would only push her away sooner. So I prayed, waited, and tried to prepare my heart for the worst.

But you really can’t prepare yourself for something like that. When it came, it hit me like a ton of bricks; even if you know that it’s coming, it’s gonna hurt! I’d never really experienced depression until the months after my separation and divorce. Not long after Crystal left, I was getting ready for church in my apartment one Sunday morning, and I just began to cry uncontrollably (I did that many times during those months). I’d never experienced such a deep feeling of despair before. I’ve heard people describe panic attacks before, and this seems to be the only thing that I’ve heard of that sounds similar to what I experienced that morning.

There was a dull ache in the center of my chest. I couldn’t help but cry out uncontrollably. I hurt all over physically. Worst of all, I could not catch my breath. The grief, the fear, and the loneliness that I was feeling all manifested themselves physically in my body and it felt like I was dying. I cried out to the Lord as clearly as I could with the little breath I could muster. Several times, I managed to get out the phrase “Lord, give me peace!”

I honestly don’t know if I can describe the feeling that began to overwhelm me with that plea to God for help. Despair was replaced by peace. Fear was replaced by calm. Loneliness was replaced by the assurance that no, I was not alone! I had His Spirit there to comfort me! I knew intellectually that Jesus had promised to send the Comforter, and I knew that He had given me that precious gift of the Holy Spirit as a child nearly 20 years before, but I had never so needed the peace and comfort that only He can give until that moment.

Even in the midst of despair and anguish over the things that I was facing, God preserved my soul. I could have been bitter. I could have been paralyzed by anger at Crystal, at myself, at God. From before Crystal ever actually left, I prayed that God would keep me from bitterness. He answered that prayer for me! After all I went through, I could still thank God for the marriage that I’d had, even as I grieved its loss. I can still praise God for the very free will that allowed Crystal to make the decisions she did. If it weren’t for that freedom—that ability to choose—that God grants us as human beings, I couldn’t have chosen to live for Him. I cannot blame God for the circumstances that I’ve faced. But I can praise God for what He has done for me and in me through this trial!

I was recently speaking with my pastor, and he pointed out that, as difficult as this has been for me, it has made me a better person. He quoted Eccl. 7:3—“Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.” I’d read this before and had applied it to the immediate heartaches that we face, but the way that Bro. Encil used it made me see another application of this verse. Disappointments in life can fundamentally change one’s heart for the better, long-term. I don’t believe that God caused this to happen in my life, but I do believe that God has used this experience to work something good in me. I feel closer to Him because of this last couple of years than I ever have before.

I have written before about some of the ways that God was there for me during this time, but I just felt compelled to tell the rest of the story here. The greatest love story of all time is that of the love that God shows to His children through His Son Jesus Christ! “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down His life for his friend.”—Jn. 15:13. Jesus laid down his life for me and you! God sent Him to do so, that sinful man might be reconciled to Him. No greater love story could ever be written!