The path to the Jesus I know now was a long one.
This is part one of five.
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Marriage is, on its best day, two flawed people trying to make something bigger than themselves. I am here to tell you the Anthony and Brittany of 2012 were two deeply flawed people.
It was definitely not love at first sight for us. What I felt for Anthony when I first decided I wanted to marry him was not love. It was safety. He made me feel secure. When he told me his entire life story without even taking a breath on our first date, he ended with “I know who I am and what I want. I have no desire to leave where I’m at. I’m in this because I want a wife and a family. If you’re not interested in that, I’ve had a great time but I don’t want to go out again.”
I didn’t hesitate to say that I was all. in. I hadn’t previously been able to articulate what I felt like I’d been looking for my whole life (as old as you feel at 19), but everything he said was exactly it. He had plans, and an answer for everything I brought up. I joked that that’s why I dated someone 6.5 years older instead of a guy my age who was still figuring things out.
I felt like I had always been at odds with my identity. I wanted to make a life I didn’t have growing up, but I didn’t see a clear way to do that. But this guy? So confident in who he was. So passionate when he talked about our future. He made me feel like the questions I had, the things I didn’t know didn’t matter—I could see myself going along with whatever he thought and calling it Biblical submission. It would make me so happy to one day become as sure of myself as he was.
We thought this dynamic was “cute.” I, the newly saved, new to this way of living, ready to shake off my past, looking for a hero. He, the guy who’d never known anything else, who had everything in place for a godly life except the girl. A recipe for success! Almost everyone agreed it was a perfect match with perfect timing.
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I treated my parents pretty badly that year. Everything i didn’t like about myself, I blamed on them. I wanted so strongly to immerse myself in a new way of life, convinced that this would finally be it. This would finally be the place I belonged; being married and building a life here would be the way to satisfy that out-of-place feeling I’d had for as long as I could remember. I looked at distancing myself from my parents as a step in that journey. This was encouraged—if their beliefs are holding you back, let them go! Don’t make them a part of your everyday life. My family felt like a mess I could opt out of, and being 1200 miles away made it even simpler.
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Everybody seemed so happy for us; our pastor didn’t even make us finish pre-marital counseling because he felt like we were ready. We were married seven months after our first conversation; two days after I turned twenty. The honeymoon felt like relief that we’d made it and surreal that it actually happened—I was so excited to get home and let happily ever after keep falling into place.
I don’t know at what point, if any, most newlyweds start wondering if they’ve made a mistake. For me, it was the end of the third week. Every day, I worked 7a-2p. Anthony worked 5a-6p. We ate supper. We went to bed. All day Saturday we worked on our church bus route, and all day Sunday we went to church. And that was it. Before being engaged, we would talk for 2 hours (after 9 so the minutes were free) every. single. night. Before we got married, we spent time at his parents’ after work each day. Now that we had all the time and access to each other, now that we were allowed to be truly alone for the first time ever…we’d run out of things to talk about.
Except the house. We could talk about the house, and how I really wasn’t great at cleaning it. How it didn’t make sense that I had 4 extra hours before he got home and still didn’t always have supper ready. We could talk about the money that we didn’t have; the money that I spent in my 4 extra hours instead of keeping the house up. We could talk about laundry and how my not doing it promptly was messing with his morning routines. We could talk about his job, all of his route guys I recognized by name. We could talk about every detail of every problem he’d fixed that day, what problems he would fix the next day. What problems he would run to the office to fix over the weekend; we’d be interrupted, of course, by phone calls and emails that absolutely could not wait. I couldn’t remember what we talked about before marriage. But those were the only things we could find to discuss now—until 8 pm of course, because he’d somehow lost the ability to stay up any later. Even the free hour or two we had on Saturday nights, we’d usually spend watching a movie. I wasn’t allowed to talk during those, though, and he wasn’t good at hiding his irritation while hitting the pause button.
It didn’t take long for the majority of these talks to happen, you know, loudly. It’s almost as if we yelled at each other to compensate for the real silence between us. The real connection and conversation that is necessary for survival (let alone happiness, comfort, whatever…) it did not exist. We went round and round over the stupidest things. Then we’d go to bed angry and hurt, because getting up on time for work was more important than trying to figure it out. We never texted each other throughout the day, except for the times I’d give him a heads up that supper would take longer or the laundry was on the couch to try to lesson that blow when he walked through the door.
I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Why could I not figure out how to take care of these things for him? I followed all the steps I’d learned in Bible college and still never measured up. I concluded it must be a heart problem…I obviously had some deep rooted sin in my life to work through. I prayed, I cried, I read the Bible. I did all the things. I’d have a good few days and then get right back in the rut. I knew God was displeased with me. I knew I could never be clean hearted, pure-motived enough to truly repent and receive the forgiveness/help I needed from Him. And Anthony? He had always lived right, so obviously he had a better relationship with God than I did. He’d been taught the steps to a holy life way longer and more often then I had. He had such high expectations that whenever I’d bring up something he did to hurt me, he’d beat himself up for days. He’d lose sleep, he’d be miserable, apologize over and over. It made me feel terrible and usually I could never justify something making him feel that way, so I stopped bringing things up.
I looked at it as my cross to bear. This was my penance for my past—you know, the past where I wore pants, listened to rock music, took communion once at an Assemblies of God church, and had a steamy thought or two about Jake Gyllenhaal. I was convinced God had me in this marriage I didn’t enjoy to a guy who deserved way better and this would be the rest of my life. If I could just do enough things on the God checklist and do them well, I could eventually earn some happiness and maybe even real, authentic, love.
This is no way to live.
It seems absurd now to look back on. How could someone put themselves through that for any length of time, much less…years.
It. Was. Years.
I’ve always lived a double life. I know exactly how to become the person expected of me, I know exactly how to keep the facade intact and be praised for it. Never is too strong of a word, but real authentic connection in relationships has been so rare for me that I didn’t come to expect it as a basic standard.
2013: morning sickness at this and every other gas station in Kilgore
In addition to just regular life things that make the beginning of marriage challenging for everyone, our first four years involved a rare pregnancy complication (traumatic emergency birth/PPA/PPD), two parents with cancer (diagnosis/treatment/remission/reoccurrence), a chronically ill baby (appointments/specialists/tests/false diagnosis), epilepsy (months of 5+ daily seizures, medications, tests, special needs, unhopeful prognosis), secondary infertility, two parents with nursing home/hospice stays, and one parent’s death. I’m not explaining to say we had it bad or haven’t been blessed. I’m explaining that life was hard. That life was intense. And when you’re mentally unhealthy, emotionally unhealthy, relationally unhealthy, and no time to even notice you’ve got stuff to deal with: you become a numb, empty shell of a person.
That was me in 2016. My mother-in-law’s passing felt like relief. She was no longer in pain, and while we were left here, at least we could try to move on. We had high hopes for the new year. Nothing much had changed in our marriage, but Abbott’s seizures were under control. I started a design business that made me extremely happy. It made other people happy, brought in a ridiculous amount of money for that scale, and I was good at it. It made me feel valuable and Anthony was supportive.
Until I became obsessed. Working with high-paying clients is enough to push anyone over the edge, much less someone in such an unhealthy headspace. I took on more than I could handle. I spent every waking moment working and justified it because the money was so good. I made so many rookie mistakes; and while that’s how you learn, it doesn’t mean there aren’t real repercussions. My obsession resulted in me driving it into the ground. I made people so upset. I refunded thousands of dollars I’d already spent. I watched what I felt like was the only good thing in my life go up in smoke. It broke me.
I had left God at some point over the years. There was just too much guilt. I couldn’t get anything right. I couldn’t be useful, I couldn’t be the type of person He wanted. At some point, i pushed away the few close friends I had for various reasons. I was a stay at home mom without a car, my only other connection with people was church. I’d never found community there because I’d never felt like I’d belonged. I mean the facade I tried really hard to keep up couldn’t even keep me from being an outsider. People talked down and occasionally preached against things that were a core part of me, so I couldn’t even try to be myself. No one can connect with you when you’re hiding so much. I wasn’t mad or resentful at anyone for it. I just thought it was a problem with me. I thought who I was, the way I thought, the dreams I had, the things that made me happy and the things that made me feel worthy were all wrong. I didn’t think I could ever work hard enough for God to give me His seal of approval. Why. Try.
The worst depressive episode I’ve ever had occurred right along with my business folding. I always have a depression cycle (or several) in the summer time. But this one was bad. Of course, I didn’t recognize it as such at the time. I just internalized it with more guilt and tried to disconnect. Depression’s a sin, got it. If God is even real, He’s further away from me now, got it. This is my life to suffer through the rest of. I was 23. That felt like way too many years left.
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I spent a few days trying to decide how to do it. I came up with a half-baked plan. I went round and round the guilt of leaving Abbott without a mom, the burden of Anthony picking up the pieces, the potential years ahead of continuing to be unloved and miserable.
Something made me hesitate. It wasn’t brave or noble because I recognize now that it wasn’t from me at all. But I decided that divorce would be better than suicide; that I’d pack for my parents’ house and take Abbott with me. Anthony would scream and yell but he’d let me go…and we’d go.
I didn’t plan out a speech or anything. The “thing” as we now refer to it came on the tail end of an argument I don’t remember. But as long as I live, I’ll never forget the next few moments. We’d calmed down, I started crying. We sat on opposite sides of the bed. I said, “I’m depressed,” and he didn’t roll his eyes this time.
All of it came out. All. Of. It. I told him every thing he’d ever done that had hurt, I told him exactly how the way he’d treated me the last four years made me feel. I told him the way I felt about myself and God, and that I didn’t feel like he loved me. for. me. —just the things I could do, and consistently failed at doing anyway. I told him I wanted to kill myself to find a way out, but had decided that I would leave him instead. Anthony listened without responding or reacting. I expected to walk out and more or less never see him again.
He came to sit down next to me. I looked in his eyes and understood he was seeing the real me for the first time. I braced myself and he said, “I don’t understand. But I love you. And I will do anything, become anything that you need me to be, because I cannot lose you.”
I don’t know if that comes across to you as too simple or cliche, but know that to me, it meant everything.
Everything.
I had ripped him to shreds. I layed everything out overlooking any of my own blame. I challenged the way he was raised and the way that he thought and the things he believed, and he still didn’t ask for an explanation. He didn’t give conditions. He didn’t make me defend anything. All of my brokenness and shame and bias and selfishness…the realization he didn’t know who he’d been married to…and he loved me anyway. He didn’t have to decide to. He already did. And our problems? He was going to fix them. HE was. He didn’t ask me to figure out my own mess or even suggest we work on it together. HE just loved me.
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He kept his word. He spent the next few months intensively examining everything he said and did. He covered me in love. For me, the floodgates had opened, and I ruthlessly told him everything I needed and called him out every single time he messed up. I screamed and cried and he returned it with an inhuman amount of tenderness. He held nothing back, and we excavated some deep, deep problems. We no longer shut down at 8pm…we dealt with things quickly and didn’t stop until we were both at peace. He changed things I hadn’t even thought about. When I made mistakes, he forgave quickly and never even jokingly held them over my head. He listened. He put effort into getting to know me. He made the first moves. For the very first time—because I was always the initiator in our dating relationship—he pursued me. He went after my heart. And while it was a natural result, he never once asked me to do something or be something in return. He just asked me to trust him, to let him into the real me. After four years, I finally could. I am changed because he loved me, and he loved me first.
Carrying the knowledge of what we’ve been through to get to this point…it changes things. It changes everything.
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It was slow and painful and quiet, but this was the place I started dismantling my own walls. The idols of who I’d made God out to be started to crumble.
Continued in part 2 here: I’m With You
