Category: Project 52

It’s time for Project 52, Week 42!

(This picture was taken October 10, 2006, which seems to be the exact day Tim caught up with me in height!)

42 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 42 — June 14, 2006, to June 14, 2007.

Last time, I covered the moment of truth when my husband confessed he’d been having an affair the entire previous year and a half – and that before that he’d had a plan to kill me. That happened four days before I flew to Virginia with my kids Jade (then called Josh) and Timothy. Josh was going to start college in Florida in October, and Tim was getting ready to start seventh grade. Steve flew to Japan to join the US Air Force band there.

Moving Day was August 18, 2006. I was shell-shocked, tired, and overwhelmed. Kathe and Darlene picked me up at the airport. I remember that Darlene’s 2-year-old Michelle was along, but I don’t remember if her older son Ryan (who must have been about 5) was along – if he was, he didn’t start telling his life story like Michelle did. I don’t think Kathe’s boys Tim (my Tim’s age) and Ben (a little older than Ryan) came, because there was only so much room in the van.

And Darlene put us up in her basement for six weeks while we waited to find a place and for our household goods to arrive. There was a bedroom down there for me and a bathroom, and my kids slept in the larger basement room on bunk beds.

In fact, here they are on the lower “bunk.”

Here are Darlene’s adorable children:

My calendar is just full of errands those first few weeks. I had to buy appliances, like a microwave. (Different voltage in Europe, so we’d been using some loaner appliances or I left electronic things with Steve.) I had to register Tim for middle school. And find an apartment. I had no income on my own, so to apply for an apartment, I had to fax an application to Steve in Japan to co-sign. I got a library card at Reston Regional Library and used the internet there. (Darlene had dial-up, which I used sometimes.) I needed to buy a car.

I remember that in those first few weeks, I lost my cellphone (after I had shifted it to work in America) and also lost Darlene’s spare house key. I felt like a basket case.

But it was good to have the support of my friends. I went to Gateway Community Church starting on August 20, 2006. And two weeks later, on September 3, I went to my first Sunday evening small group meeting. Darlene and Kathe both went to Trisha and Phil Sallee’s small group. The whole group welcomed me. I remember we were having a discussion, and Kathe’s husband Joe was talking, and I thought, “I know Joe! This isn’t scary!”

That Home Fellowship Group had started a nice tradition of doing service days at each other’s homes. On Labor Day, they went to Kathe’s house and did some deep cleaning work. (I don’t remember what we did, actually — It was basically whatever the host thought would be helpful.)

And on September 6, 2006, Timothy started 7th grade at Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon, Virginia. He had already gone to middle school in 6th grade in Sembach, Germany — but 7th grade was the start of middle school in Virginia. So at least all the kids were new to the school, the same as him.

On September 9, Josh flew to Japan to visit their Dad. Steve wanted the kids to get to visit, and since Josh’s college classes didn’t start until October, we worked it out to happen then.

The last week of September, I began my own grad school classes online — tricky since I was still dependent mainly on library computers. One of that first quarter’s classes, “Action Research,” was essentially Introduction to Statistics, a class I’d taught many times. So it seemed silly that I was required to take it, but it wasn’t so bad having an easy class my first quarter. But the rest helped me get excited about becoming a librarian.

I took the Gateway to Gateway class to become a member of Gateway Community Church on September 30, 2006. And we finally moved out of Darlene’s basement into our own apartment on October 7. However, we still didn’t have our household goods from Germany. Darlene and Matt loaned us the mattresses we’d been sleeping on, and some other furniture they’d picked up for us. (I’d bought an entertainment center for $100 from a neighbor, for example. And someone had put some furniture out by the curb.)

I don’t know why the kids had to distribute their stuff all over the floor when we had so little there, but here they are in our new apartment.

And on October 14, after we’d only been in our apartment a week and before we got our household goods, Josh left for college in Orlando, Florida, sight unseen, at Full Sail University, to study film.

I remember that in the airport Josh’s suitcase was too heavy – so Josh took out the plush bathrobe they’d gotten me to buy for them and wore it! With the beard and long hair and bathrobe, Josh looked like pictures of Jesus.

Our household goods finally arrived on October 17 — and on October 18, Timothy and I flew to California!

The excuse was my 25th high school reunion. However, they’d had a big celebration the year before, in combination with the Class of ’80. So not too many people came. But it had also been 3 years since I’d seen my family.

It was funny, though — the staff at Rachel Carson Middle School weren’t nearly as understanding about taking a family trip in the middle of the school year as the school staff were in Germany, when they realized that the opportunity to take trips was more important than mere schoolwork. So they gave me a hard time, but I arranged it anyway.

Here are my Brethren High School Class of ’81 classmates who made it to the reunion that year. Happily, Ruth and Darlene were among them. (Spouses not in this picture.) This is Frank, Brenda, Stacy, Becca, Daphne, Delphine, Karen, Darlene, me, Ruth, and Dan. It was lovely to catch up with these folks. Since I had moved away from California relatively early, this was the first reunion I’d attended since the very first one.

But when we got back home — we were surrounded by boxes and disassembled or broken furniture. (Those were the worst packers of all the ones we’d ever had in our Air Force moves. But remember I’d been way too distracted to oversee their packing — the day they came was the day Steve confessed.) Here’s how our apartment looked. It was overwhelming.

However, November 4, 2006, was the day Gateway truly became my family — the Home Fellowship group came over and helped me unpack! They put my bookshelves back together and filled them. (Not a small task!) They put our beds back together and took the borrowed mattresses back to Darlene’s. They put my desk together. They put my dishes in the cupboards. They hooked up my stereo and TV. It had been so overwhelming — and they brought order to the chaos, even though most of them still didn’t know me real well.

I’m planning to gloss over most of the rest of the year. After I wrote the last post, I found myself wondering why why why I kept praying so long and so hard (we’re talking years) that Steve would come back to me.

There were a lot of reasons. A big one was denial. It took me a long time to grasp – let alone believe – that my husband had an affair, let alone that he had a plan to kill me.

And I was in the habit of loving him! I wasn’t able to just shut that off. Many would argue that if I loved him, I should want him to be happy — and he said he’d be happier unmarried. The only trouble with that was that he didn’t seem even the slightest bit happy. And he was walking away from the church and God. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that would lead to his happiness.

I admit I’d gotten the idea from Rejoice Ministries, who told the story of their founders. Charlyne Steinkamp prayed her husband back after they were divorced two years, when he was getting ready to marry the other woman. As they said, if I didn’t pray for my prodigal, who would?

And Steve was on the other side of the world. He’d moved there to get away from me. He did call Timothy every night. We soon got cellphones, so he could call Timothy direct. But I could pray earnestly for Steve — and that’s pretty much what my quiet time notebook is filled with that year — but I did not have to live with him.

I mentioned that once I found out Steve had an affair, it was much easier not to believe him when he explained how the whole thing was all my fault. But that did not have that effect on Steve. It seemed he was working all the harder to explain to me what a terrible person I was and how no one could live with me and how he was done trying to put up with me.

And money was a problem. When I moved, of course I lost my job, which was only half-time. I was taking classes full-time. At first, we both got money out of the joint account. But Steve started putting less and less money into it — and then pretended that was his whole paycheck. When my rent checks bounced, he blamed me for ruining his credit. I tried to cover them with a cash advance on my credit card, which he never did pay back.

He actually used the line “How dare you accuse me of hiding money?” not knowing that I’d looked back on our history and learned that if he used that line, it was a certainty that he was doing that thing. I told him, with great concern, that he needed to go to Accounting and Finance because they obviously weren’t paying him the correct amount. He was getting $2100 housing allowance for me and the kids in DC, a single housing allowance at the Japan rate (which I could look up), Basic pay (which I could look up) and a meals allowance.

It was a mess while I was moving in and having to buy supplies. And a car. Eventually, we worked out that he would give me $2800 per month, my housing allowance plus a small portion of his basic pay. He started pressuring me to find a job.

And it wasn’t easy to find a job. When we’d moved, I’d hoped I’d be able to work from home for my brother Jeff, who had a business writing software for graphing calculators, making them much more intuitive. But his business didn’t end up doing well enough to be able to hire me for the amount I’d need to make. I applied at libraries, but had no luck.

Oh, and I do want to say that Steve didn’t pay a penny for my grad school degree. I got a scholarship. I got several units waived because of work experience. I took out loans – which I am still paying off, but will finish with in 11 more months. And my Dad paid the remainder and for textbooks. (Thank you, Dad!)

But we still managed to have some fun that winter. Josh was home a little extra over Christmas break because they got to skip one of the required courses because of AP credits. This was after already having won an award for being an outstanding student (not about grades but about being impressive!)

My brother Robert came to visit while going to a gaming convention (where he won!) and we spent a snowy day in DC.

But at the same time, I was super worried about Timothy. His life had basically come apart. He’d lived in Germany from the time he was 2 to the time he was 12. Now he had to leave the place where he’d grown up and his friends and everything familiar. His Dad had moved to the other side of the world and his big sibling had moved to Florida. Now it was just him and his struggling mother.

Steve did call every day from Japan – but it wasn’t the same.

At school, I did get him into Geometry in 7th grade and honors classes. His teachers raved about him at the parent-teacher conferences. But he was showing a lot of signs of depression. Some days I couldn’t get him to get out of bed.

One thing I noticed though was that he did better when I got more time with him. So I wasn’t in a hurry to get a job on top of attending school full-time. (Online classes, but still full-time work.)

Some time that winter, when I had threatened to take computer time away if he didn’t get out of bed (I didn’t know what to do!), Tim said, “Maybe I should just kill myself.” I’m not sure I have ever been more terrified than when I heard those words.

But — we got through it. What actually cleared up Tim’s depression was when Steve’s parents took Tim with them over Spring Break to Japan to visit Steve. When Tim came back, he no longer seemed depressed. And I was so relieved.

And not too long after that, I got a job! And it was at Sterling Library – only a few miles from my home. It was 20 hours per week as a Youth Services Assistant. It was fantastic to be working in a library again! I began working for Loudoun County Public Library on May 17, 2007. I was finishing my third quarter of graduate classes, and I only had four classes left, so my plan was to take two classes each for summer quarter and fall quarter and finish in December 2007.

So God’s timing was perfect. As far as I was concerned, it was just lovely that I didn’t get the job until the degree was almost finished — and until after Tim was getting settled and was better able to handle some afternoons and evenings on his own.

I was still attending church and small group and being loved on regularly. I was praying earnestly for my husband and “standing for my marriage.” I was reading daily encouraging emails from Rejoice Ministries. But mostly, God was comforting me. And I was getting many reasons to smile.

Something significant happened in church on April 29, 2007. I’m going to write out the description I wrote in my Quiet Time journal.

Not only were the Rejoice Ministries emails encouraging me to listen to God’s voice, but folks at Gateway Community Church also talked about doing this. To be honest, that wasn’t really part of the tradition I grew up with. When I was a Biola student, a popular book was called Decision Making and the Will of God, which taught that as long as it doesn’t go against Scripture, God doesn’t really care what you do.

But that year I was 42, I was desperately seeking God. I was still being told that I was an awful person. And I was trying so hard to return that with love. I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to forgive Steve when he hurt me — but almost as if he couldn’t hurt me if I tried hard enough to forgive. (Only, he had more power than anyone to hurt me, actually.)

On April 29 in church we sang the song “I can see clearly now” with Christian words put in. We’ve never sung it again. Maybe because I took a copy of the words? I’ve got them posted at my desk still.

And here’s what I wrote on April 30:

Father,

I want to record the amazing thing You did for me yesterday.

Back in November 2005, the week after Steve told me he wanted a divorce, I was driving to the conference in Paris. I was praying earnestly about the conference in Paris and about my marriage. I looked up, and there was a rainbow over my path.

I thanked You, Lord, and said I’d take it as a sign that the conference would go well and my marriage would be healed.

The conference did go well, incredibly, wonderfully well, with bright, sunshiny days even in November.

Afterwards, I told people about the rainbow and that I hoped it was also a sign that my marriage would work out. And soon after, while I was thinking about this, I saw another one.

So yesterday, when we sang “I can see clearly now…”, it was natural that I thought of Paris. Here are the words:

“I can see clearly now,
the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

“I think I can make it now,
the pain is gone.
All of the bad feelings have disappeared.
Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for.
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

“You’ve opened my eyes and I can see the Light.
You’ve opened my heart and I can see the Way.
You’ve opened my mind and I can see the Truth.
I’m feeling a bright, bright…
I’m sensing a bright, bright…
I’m believing a bright, bright
Son-Shiny day.”

As I sang the second verse, I thought about this whole crisis in my marriage. Then here’s how my thoughts ran:

“I think I can make it now, the pain is gone.” – Yes, my heart is so much lighter than it was, I AM gonna make it!

“All of the bad feelings have disappeared.” – Well, not ALL of them, but they ARE on the way out.

“Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for.” – Ah! Remember the rainbow I saw just before Paris? I took it as a sign that both the conference and my marriage would turn out beautiful. And it really did come true as a sign of a wonderful week in Paris! I hope it’s also a sign that my marriage will be healed and become a thing of beauty!

“It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day” – Remember how incredibly sunshiny it was in Paris, even in November? It was so beautiful. That was such a gift of God. Wouldn’t it be neat to pray for a rainbow right NOW? But that would be silly, and not really fair. Of course God can’t give me a rainbow now. I mean, come on, we’re inside! Besides that, it’s already bright and sunshiny, so there’s no way a rainbow could even shine through the back window. This isn’t the sort of day when rainbows appear. But it would sure confirm that my marriage is going to be restored. Well, I’ll just thank Him for a bright sunshiny day and the wonderful memories from Paris. I won’t test God by asking Him for something impossible.

We kept singing. After that song, a lady (Susan Foose) walked in and chose a seat smack in front of me, 2 rows ahead, with no one in between us. So as she stood and sang, I had a direct view of the back of her blouse.

Her blouse was colorful and pretty. It had an Eiffel Tower on the back. I noticed it, because I always notice the Eiffel Tower and think of Paris.

“Look, Timmy! How pretty! It’s Paris!”

But before I could nudge Darlene and point out the beautiful blouse and explain why I love Paris so much from that conference there, it dawned on me that the shirt didn’t just portray Paris. – It was an impressionistic RAINBOW over Paris!

Just when I had thought God couldn’t bring a rainbow inside, He did exactly that. I was completely blown away. I don’t doubt it any more. That was far too specific, too carefully crafted especially for me.

God is amazing. I can imagine Him smiling as he sent that rainbow inside, just for me.

The timing was incredible. Paris. A rainbow. That strange thought that entered my head to pray for a rainbow. And the way she chose a spot directly in front of me.

Let it be known: God can even bring a rainbow inside! And He’ll do it when He knows His child desperately needs some encouragement. And wow! He let me know He cared about me that much!

Dear Reader, reading that now, I’m still taking it as a sign! Not that my marriage would be restored, but that my life would be restored and become something beautiful. There would be Beauty and Joy in my life again.

It’s gonna be a bright, bright, bright, bright Son-shiny day!

It’s time for Project 52, Week 42!

42 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 42 — June 14, 2006, to June 14, 2007.

Last time, I covered through Saturday, August 12, 2006, and my going-away party with Sembach Library folks.

The 13th was my last day at church and Sunday School in Germany. And on Monday, August 14, the movers came.

I’m not sure where the kids were. We may have arranged for them to spend those days with friends. Steve’s stuff had already been shipped to Japan on the 10th. (This was a convenient way to officially divide up our possessions. I tried to get Steve to take more than he did, in fact.) On the 10th after the movers left, we had all gone bowling together — Steve was treating me much more kindly that last week we were on the same continent.

On the morning of the 14th, we were waiting for the packers to arrive, and we were talking in the basement. I’m not sure what got us started, but Steve admitted to time with Amy when I hadn’t realized it. I asked if he had been at her house that morning I’d seen him drive on base behind her, and he said, “Sometimes she let me spend the night.”

And then he admitted – with a little smile — that they had been having an affair since that ski trip he took in February 2005.

But she had broken up with him the month before when – I like this part of the story – he found out she was cheating on him. [This was when I found out that, even though she was 9 years younger than him, they did have something in common!]

She was now dating a guy in the band who was the same rank and was actually single. I suspect that when they broke up was when Steve started acting nicer toward me. He said that he thought it was lame when Amy told him that she didn’t think he could handle knowing that she was seeing someone else. And Steve actually saw the parallel and decided it hadn’t been fair for him not to tell me because I “couldn’t handle” it.

After Steve told me, I kept saying, “I thought I was crazy! I thought I was crazy!”

But Steve didn’t want me getting my hopes up. He told me that our marriage was so Over, they should invent a new word for Over. [Never mind those vows about “till death do us part”.]

But he also told me that years before, he’d had a plan to kill me. He’d purchased the tool (a knife for trimming wood) and was going to use it the next time I asked for a backrub. It was when I was getting lots of headaches. He thought “we’d all be better off.”

I tried to joke about it. I said, “Any time I wanted to kill you, I felt sorry for the boys. It would be awful to have one parent dead and the other in jail.”

He answered, “Oh, I had a plan.”

Why didn’t he do it? “I decided to work on the marriage.”

Part of the scary thing about this was that, even going back over Project 52, I haven’t been able to figure out when this would have happened. He was doing lots of wood-chopping when we lived in Gundersweiler. He told me he did that to get out of the house and away from me. I think I remember him showing me a knife and making me really uncomfortable in the bedroom when we lived at Sembach. But I never ever ever had even the foggiest notion such a thought would cross his mind — let alone that he’d make a plan. I really didn’t know him like I thought I did.

And the next day, he said he only told me this to show me that the marriage was bad.

[Excuse me? A plan to kill your wife isn’t a sign of a bad marriage.]

Well, I talked with my friends at the library. I talked with my close friends via email. It seemed that No One At All was surprised that Steve had actually had an affair. Which made me feel all the more Incredibly Stupid.

I think that Steve was pretty quickly sorry he had told me. He did say something about he realized I could use this against him. I said I would only do so if he took me to court.

He tried to get me to not tell anyone about the plan to kill me — he only told me that so I’d know how bad the marriage was — but I felt much safer with him knowing that my family and friends knew!

Days later, I got on the plane with Tim and Josh to move to Virginia. There were tears in Steve’s eyes when he said good-by.

The book NOT “Just Friends” says that discovering betrayal causes trauma. Well, this was a whole new level of trauma.

Steve had his affair from February 2005 to July 2006. He had told me literally thousands of lies in that time. My mind was reeling and spinning over past events, trying to figure out what really happened when. And thinking of all the times when I’d been tempted to track him down and about what I would have found. And thinking of all the times my argument was totally valid but he had shut me down with lies. And thinking of all the things he said were my fault.

And this is what cleared up my problem with guilt. Steve had been blaming me from the start for not being a good enough wife.

But you know what? I don’t care what your spouse does! You simply do not have to have an affair. An affair is never the betrayed partner’s fault. So I was no longer tempted to believe Steve when he blamed me.

I wrote a letter to Steve on the plane, which was never intended to be sent. I also started reading an excellent book called When Your Lover Is a Liar, by Susan Forward. And I wrote out 5 pages of “How dare you” questions for Steve on the advice of that book. This was for me, to try to process the anger and betrayal.

I was already pretty firmly committed to following the example of Charlyne Steinkamp, though, and “standing for my marriage.” My reasoning was that the only way Steve would ever come back to me would be if he had a complete and total change of heart and complete repentance. But at the same time, I was glad to be on the other side of the world from him for awhile.

Besides, while Steve was blaming me for everything I’d done wrong in the marriage, I’d kept insisting that nothing is unforgiveable. It didn’t seem quite fair to turn around and say, “Except that! That is not forgiveable!

My quiet time verse on the day I found out about the affair was Psalm 119:115 — “Away from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commands of my God!” It seemed lovely and appropriate for the time when we would move to opposite sides of the world. (And I don’t make apologies for calling adultery and plans for murder to be evil.)

But all mixed up in this was that I still loved my husband-as-he-was. I still missed being married to my best friend (or the person I thought I was my best friend). I was very, very sad.

And I wanted to pray him back because he sure didn’t seem happy. And I loved him. And we had so many good years together before the world turned upside-down! (Or I thought they were good!)

So — I arrived at Dulles airport in Virginia on August 18 completely distraught and preoccupied and befuddled. (That first month if I could go 15 minutes without thinking about Steve, I really felt like I’d accomplished something.)

My cell phone didn’t work in America. And I couldn’t figure out how to work the payphones. Who knew that you had to dial the area code now even when you were calling from the same area code? But somehow, Kathe and Darlene found me. (Maybe Kathe came in to find me?)

When we got into Darlene’s van, 2-year-old Michelle, Darlene’s daughter, started talking to me like a long-lost friend! (She’d never met me before.) And Josh, Tim, and I moved into Darlene’s basement for the next 6 weeks while we waited for our household goods to arrive.

And I will talk about Virginia next time. That was quite enough for tonight! [I may go have a good cry.]

It’s time for Project 52, Week 42!

42 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 42 — June 14, 2006, to June 14, 2007.

During these hard years, I’m trying to frame my reflections by asking the question, What was the Lord doing?

And this was the summer we left Germany, on August 18, 2006, 9 years and 9 months after we arrived.

But a whole lot happened in those last two months.

I mentioned last time that Steve got himself sent to Japan unaccompanied so that I could not follow him, even though I had planned to move wherever he was stationed next so he could be near Timothy. But once he did get the assignment to Japan — I had to decide where to go.

I didn’t want to go back to Los Angeles, where my family was and where I’d grown up. I had decided when I was 5 years old that I didn’t want to live in Los Angeles! And I had never changed my mind. (It’s a nice place to visit, though.)

But — two of my best friends since 3rd grade, Darlene LeVault and Kathe Barsotti, had both ended up in northern Virginia, near Washington, DC. I had visited their church a few times when I visited and thought how much I wished I had a church like that. Besides that, the church met in a brand-new beautiful middle school (Rachel Carson) which served the district where Darlene lived, and Tim was starting 7th grade. And I had a soft spot for Washington, DC, since that’s where I was born.

Mind you, if then my four youngest siblings had already moved to Portland, Oregon, I would have seriously considered that. As it was, the only Oregon connections were many of my Mom’s relatives, whom I didn’t know too well. But in Virginia, I had two people who had been good friends basically all my life. I needed friends!

In fact, I’d always thought I’d be heartbroken to leave Germany. I was indeed heartbroken, but it wasn’t about leaving Germany. I was ready to be closer to my friends.

Now, I wasn’t planning to stay there forever. I figured I’d lick my wounds a couple years while Tim was in middle school. I was very much hoping Steve and I would be back together by the time Tim started high school. Or maybe I could get a librarian job at an Air Force library in Europe and go on my own power!

I was very worried about money. Back in 2005, when Steve was first talking about leaving me after I’d found out he was seeing the other woman, I asked him if I needed to find a full-time job. He told me that even if he left me, he’d still support me. (I guess he was feeling generous, but that’s a line from The Script.) By the time he actually did tell me he was going to file for divorce, it was too late to get a full-time job while we were still in Germany. And of course I’d lose my job when we moved away.

But when I talked with Finance, it turned out that if we got on Steve’s orders where I was going with the kids, then Steve would get a housing allowance for himself in Japan at the single rate and a housing allowance for the kids and me in DC at the with dependents rate. So — basically the Air Force would give him $2100 per month for my housing.

Another factor in my life then was that sometime in 2006 or late 2005, I’d started following RejoiceMinistries.org and getting their daily emails, “Charlyne Cares.” Those emails encouraged and sustained me, reminding me that the Lord was with me.

But they also gradually moved me away from the idea that if someone in a marriage commits adultery, you should get divorced. Now, I still believed Steve wasn’t having an affair, even though I knew for certain he had been spending time with another woman behind my back. So I didn’t think all the reasons he gave — about how awful I had been — were sufficient reasons to break our vows and throw away 19 years of marriage.

Charlyne and Bob Steinkamp told the story of how Bob had left Charlyne and divorced her. After some crazy times and anger, she’d been convicted to “stand for her marriage.” She told Bob that she’d still be waiting for him when she was eighty in a rocking chair! And after two years, when God was working in Bob’s heart all along, God answered Charlyne’s earnest prayers, and “her prodigal” asked her to marry him again.

Charlyne’s story spoke to me. I could do that! I would pray Steve back!

It maybe sounds a little nobler than it was. I was not interested in anyone else, after all. In fact, after reading The Script and hearing stories from friends and library customers that were similar to my own, I was rather mad at men. I’d joke that the men I was attracted to were the men at church who were devoted to their wives — and if they were ever attracted to me back, they would quickly become repulsive to me!

And honestly? Some time to myself was looking very nice by now.

I’d decided the day after Steve told me he was getting a divorce that I would become a librarian. I’d applied to study online with Drexel University to get my Master’s in Library and Information Science. I had to do some hard thinking about whether I should start full-time or not. If I went full-time, I wouldn’t be able to work full-time when I moved, but the more quickly I’d get my degree. On top of that, if I went full-time I’d be eligible for scholarships.

So I applied to go full-time, and was accepted on June 28, 2006. I got a Bettina H. Shears scholarship which helped offset the costs. In June I was still getting the financial aid applications in. I took out some student loans (which I will finish paying off in 11 more months!) That would start in September. Part of the reason I’d applied to an online program was that I applied before I knew where I’d end up. But also, after my years teaching math, I couldn’t quite handle the thought of being on the other side of the podium and being in a college classroom as a student. It turned out that online classes suited me perfectly. (And I’d taken an online writing class a couple years before and loved it, so I wasn’t surprised.)

Reading my quiet time journals from that time, I wasn’t as obsessed and devastated by all that Steve was doing any more. And my health was settling down somewhat. I was thinking about what I was about, and that was refreshing. I read a book called There Must Be More Than This, which talked about uncovering the hungers behind your soft addictions (like Killer Sudoku). It made me think about what I really want from life.

I still think I nailed my hungers:
A hunger for beauty (to create it and appreciate it),
A hunger to connect,
A hunger to understand,
A hunger to matter.

Okay, a lot of Bible verses are coming up. But these were important over the next years.

First, some time in early July, I was driving home from Ramstein and asking God for a sign that Steve would come back to God and come back to me. And I was thinking about that rainbow I saw on the way to Paris. And how the trip had indeed been wonderful. And as I was praying, I saw another rainbow!

On July 5, I wrote:

I believe that You gave me a sign when I asked for a sign that Steve would come back to You and come back to me.

So — I want to live as though that will happen, focusing on growing and preparing to be a better wife.

I was going to make the most of the time living single.

The next day, I did it — I did the most baby Christian thing to do: I asked God for a verse for Steve and opened my Bible and pointed. Now, the truth is that my finger landed on verses about repenting. But I lifted my eyes just a couple verses and got the verse I claimed for Steve. Here’s what I wrote about it on the 7th.

O Father,

In spired by Charlyne’s testimony, I asked you to give me a verse for Steve. You gave me Isaiah 55:4:

“See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander of the peoples.”

Before that, it says:
“I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.”

Father, make Steve a witness, a leader and commander of the peoples.

[I so wanted to believe the best of my husband, to see him become someone I was proud of. I knew he could be, because he had started out our marriage that way.]

You continue,
“Surely you will summon nations you know not,
and nations that do not know you will hasten to you,
because of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.
Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts. [This is where my finger actually fell.]
Let him turn to the Lord,
and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.
‘As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth.
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.’
You will go out with joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed.”

Amen, Father. I believe that You will do a great work in Steve’s life. He will be a witness, and a leader and commander of men — and it will be to the Lord’s renown.

Dear Reader, it simply wasn’t a stretch for me to believe Steve would change so drastically — because he already had! When Steve married me, he honestly did love me. So if that love could turn to hate, why should it not change back? God could certainly do that.

Buoyed up by the words of Charlyne Cares, that’s what I was going to earnestly pray for. Though I was becoming more and more thankful for some time apart, on opposite sides of the world.

The next day, July 8, I wrote this:

Beautiful!

Right across from the passage I quoted yesterday are these words:

“For your Maker is your husband —
the Lord Almighty is his name —
the Holy One of Israel is your redeemer;
he is called the God of all the earth.

The Lord will call you back
as if you were a wife deserted and depressed in spirit —
a wife who married young,
only to be rejected,’ says your God.
‘For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with deep compassion I will bring you back.
In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,’
says the Lord your Redeemer.”
— Isaiah 54:5-8

Steve and I were still sharing a mailbox on base. We’d both bring the mail home, whoever happened to check it. The next day, July 9, 2006, I took out the mail and saw a letter addressed to Steve with the return address of a lawyer in Illinois.

I opened the letter.

It was informing Steve that a petition for divorce was filed against me. And I saw the terms. Steve was planning to divorce me on the grounds of “mental cruelty.” And he was asking for full custody of our kids! (Though he would have filed this before he got the assignment to Japan.)

I put the letter back in the envelope and closed it. It was sticky enough, you couldn’t tell it had been opened. I wondered if Steve would tell me what he was doing. (He didn’t.)

However, I was looking at that same page in Isaiah again — and God gave me this passage:

“No weapon forged against you will prevail,
and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
and this is their vindication from me,” declares the Lord.

Oh, Father,
Steve may decide to pursue a divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty. If he does, he can’t possibly win — It will only serve to bring about my public vindication.

Thank You, Father, for this verse, and thank You for the respite coming.

Dear Reader, I didn’t know it then, but for the next five years or so, every time Steve mentioned a lawyer or taking me to court — this verse would somehow pop up in my life. It was uncanny, and it was beautiful. I very much believe that this verse held God’s promise to me.

I later went to Ramstein’s Legal Services — and the same sweet older lady lawyer was again there on her reserve duty from North Carolina!

She told me that to serve me with papers in Germany, the papers would have to be translated and given to the German police to serve to me. She also told me that if this didn’t happen before I moved away, Steve would have to start over.

It did not happen. (Steve later told me he was going to “fire” that lawyer. The first of three lawyers he used and wasn’t happy with.)

And I got an interlude later that month. My friend Jeanine got married! She was the band wife who’d shared a job at the library with me a few years before. Now she had been divorced from the band member, and she was marrying a German national at one of my favorite castles, Burg Rheinfels on the Rhein River. (Steve and I never did spend a night in a castle while we were in Germany. I envy Jeanine having her honeymoon night in one!)

I went to the wedding by myself, but the next day Jeanine and Sven hosted a castle tour and Rhine cruise. I brought the kids to that — sort of our family good-by to the Rhein River.

And sometime around that time, Steve started being a whole lot nicer to me.

I was still working at the library, still meeting monthly (one last time) with the Sembach Writers’ Group.

And Timothy turned 12 years old! So he lived in Germany from when he was 2 years old to when he was 12 years old.

Sometime in this last month was when our pastor at Faith Baptist Church in Ramstein preached a sermon on the passage in Mark 7 where Jesus heals a deaf and mute man. It’s a weird passage. Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ears and then spits and touches the man’s tongue – and the pastor pointed out that Jesus was speaking to the deaf man in sign language, telling him what he was going to do. And he said that God speaks your language. And I realized that my language is books. And Scripture.

I started crying. By then for months God had been bringing to me at the library exactly the book I needed and exactly the verse I needed. God was walking with me.

And Steve started being nicer. On August 6, I wrote this:

Father,
Thank You for the good things that happened this weekend. — That I let Steve have his say and didn’t get defensive, and said, “I respectfully disagree.” instead of telling him how wrong he is.

Then yesterday, he invited me to join him at Silke’s for dinner [He’d run into our landlady from our first apartment in Germany and she’d invited him to dinner.] — the first time he’s eaten with me since November.

Thank you that You will supply our needs in Virginia — a good place to stay, a good job. Thank You that You will supply the money.

You will uphold me — not Steve, not the Air Force.

And August 12, 2006, was my going-away party from Sembach Library. And it was wonderful! I know that pictures exist, but apparently they weren’t on my camera, so I can’t find them right now, alas. But many of my favorite library patrons were there as well.

They showered me with gifts — a commemorative plate among other things. But they had a butterfly theme about new life and a songbird theme because I do love to sing.

And my dear Elfriede — who I’d worked with for 8 years — gave a speech about me — and I just found the speech! And at the risk of sounding vain, I’m going to copy out that speech. Since that was coming off the low point of my life — a speech full of praise from someone who I love dearly was incredibly encouraging! So I’m going to copy out the whole speech and think about my dear Elfriede and our years working together. Elfriede had long said she’d write an anthem for me. This speech was just fine!

It is about 10 years ago, but in my memory, it seems to be like yesterday, that Sondra and her toddler Timmy on hand, entered the Sembach Library. Nothing at that moment revealed that she would join the caravan of Band member wives, who made it a tradition to become a library staff panelist. But her love of literature soon became evident and made her a perfect applicant.

The more I came to know her, the more I recognized her strong personality. Her mathematically educated mind enabled her quickly to design waterproofed statistics about library manpower versus working time and productivity, which she forwarded to the higher echelons. The recipients seemed to be impressed and her figures became a matter of consideration during critical times for the future existence of the library. A similar strong fight, based on crystal-clear formulas, she won over our MCN-book allowance, which number she was able to keep constant.

Once, I was amazed and confused alike, as Sondra was able to tell me within a minute or so, on what weekday I was born some 50 plus years ago — which made me wonder, who needs Nostradamus, if knowing Sondra.

Apropos Sondra : she is very particular with her name. She made it clear from the start, that she would not accept any variations of it besides Sondy. On her book reviews page at the internet, she refers to Sonder as a German term for the word special. And that is what Sondra is: a very special person and colleague. Can you imagine how excited she must have been to end up unexpectedly in a village with the same name during one of her trips across Germany??

Sondra visited about 170 castles during her tour in Europe. She could be a castellan of them all. I bet she knows all the secret chambers, walls, double doors, dungeons and hideouts in them all. She knows the characters, who housed there, and all their secret stories. And if there is something like a reincarnation, or life after death, Sondra will be reborn as Lady Godiva with a laptop.

A trademark became her fabulous book reviews, which are available at her website sonderbooks.com. They are legendary and a calling card, not only for the Sembach Library, since she states the books which are available here, but also for the brilliance and creativity of the entire military library staff around the globe. Although her favourite genre are Fantasy books for Young Adults, each book which makes her stop and smile, she considers a special one.

An excerpt of her book list covers all subjects from A-Z. Some noteworthy titles are listed as follows:
A – Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons; B – The Beggar King & the Secret of Happiness; C – Countdown and Crown Duel; D – Duty & Desire; E – Emily of New Moon; F – Feed; G – The God I Love; H – How to Remodel a Man; I – Inside the Kingdom; J – Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell; K – To Kill a Mockingbird; L – Letters to a Young Therapist; M – The Myth of Laziness; N – Northanger Abbey; O – Of Paradise & Power, and The Oracle Betrayed; P – Pooh & the Philosophers; Q – The Queen of Attolia; R – Render Unto Caesar, and Rumpelstiltskin’s Daughter; S – The Soul of Capitalism; T – The Tears of the Salamander; U – The Ugly Princess and the Wise Fool; V – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; W – The Wolves in the Walls, and The Wizard at Work; X like Unexpected Magic; Y – The Year of Secret Assignments; Z – is for ZOOM and MANY MORE TO COME!!!

Before mentioned A-Z additions reflect only the smallest selection of all the hundreds of books Sondra has read and reviewed. But writing an in-depth and intelligent review of each of them requires a broad horizon of knowledge. This resulted in some sophisticated discussions between us about Zeus and the world, as I used to say, which means subjects like politics, philosophy, and religions. One of her reviews moved up my innermost deeply, and made me feel softer and be more understanding toward certain religious beliefs and their interpretations, which no priest was able before! I honestly believe that Sondra would be a perfect critic of the NYT book review edition. Sondra, whenever you need a fiery recommendation – you know where to find me!

Yes, I confess that I am a fan of Sondra, and whenever we both became entangled in a discussion with a customer, I introduced us as follows: This is Sondra, my Mercedes-brain, and I am her VW!

Sondra’s goal is to become a published author; therefore, she attended a couple of writers’ conventions in Paris and Bologna, where she was able to net first contacts with the professional writers’ world. And I know, there will be a day, where I will receive her book with a dedication just for me.

A buffet of fate required Sondra to pass through a deep valley of sadness & tears, but now she has reached a point, where she sees a light and hope shine for her. And I say: Go for it – all options are yours! I hope you will be courageous enough to take all your chances and walk with your head held high through all the doors hold open to you. I hope, Sondra, that you pretty soon will say with conviction: “Mine is the world!”

Sondra, I always told you, that I would write and sing an anthem about you. Please take my speech as an alternation for now. I will work on it and will sing it over the phone for you one day, I promise!

Thank you for being such a great co-worker!!!

Elfriede Moehlenbrock
12 Aug 06

Whew! That speech still lifts my heart and brings back so many good memories with Elfriede!

That’s a good stopping place. Working at Sembach Library was one of the truly great things that happened from my time in Germany (and from my marriage!). The next week the movers came, and Steve confessed what had really been happening the previous year and a half and we flew to opposite sides of the world…. But this is a good place to stop tonight.

I decided to take a new song by MercyMe as my theme song for Project 52.

Because God did not answer my desperate, earnest prayers as I hoped He would.

But He was faithful.

He was good.

He was compassionate.

And He brought great good into my life beyond what I asked or imagined.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 41!

41 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 41 — June 14, 2005, to June 14, 2006.

During these hard years, I’m trying to frame my reflections by asking the question, What was the Lord doing?

And tonight I’m hoping I can finish up Year 41, the most difficult year of my life.

Last time, I got through to the end of 2005, when my husband told me he wanted a divorce and moved out in order to establish residences that were separate and apart. He was hoping to get a divorce in six months, which would send me back to America three months early, and before our oldest graduated from high school. But that would only happen if I agreed to a divorce. If I did not agree, under Illinois law (the last state where we’d lived together before we moved to Germany with the Air Force), we had to live separate and apart for two years. Basically, I figured that if Steve still wanted to divorce me in two years, then I had given it a good try. At the same time, we didn’t know which state we’d be in after two years — so it was hard to say what the requirements would be.

On our anniversary, January 3rd, I got Steve a gift and left it for him. He’d be coming to the house that day. But he refused to take the gift and left me a note that he wasn’t going to accept any gifts from me because he’d filed for divorce with a lawyer in Illinois.

But what was the Lord doing?

One of the next things was the perfect book for that time literally showed up on my desk at the library. (I processed the new books, so this wasn’t miraculous by itself — but the appropriateness and the timing I do think of as miraculous.)

I wrote in my quiet time journal on January 11, 2006, “I’m amazed by how You keep on bringing exactly the right book into my life at exactly the right time. Thank You, Father. This time it’s You Don’t Have to Take It Any More, a book about overcoming resentment with compassion.”

I’m not going to repeat what I wrote in the review, but I so wanted to respond to Steve with compassion. He was still getting angry with me and still baiting me. We couldn’t seem to have a conversation any more without anger flaring up. Dr. Stosny taught me — with practical techniques — how to channel my anger into compassion.

And it’s not about gritting your teeth and taking it. His techniques are based on acknowledging and recognizing your own core value — and that was something I desperately needed to reinforce. I was feeling quite worthless about that time. And my anger was coming from that place. Dr. Stosny teaches you what to think about to feel more valuable and has a process to go through when you get angry that will give you compassion for yourself that translates to compassion for your spouse.

It sounds rather vague and nebulous — but it’s actually completely specific and practical. And helped me tremendously. It helped me stop fighting and it really helped me felt better about myself.

I even took selfies (with a regular camera) after I got a haircut!

Here’s an affirmation I took straight from Steven Stosny’s book:

I am worthy of respect, value and compassion, whether or not I get them from others. If I don’t get them from others, it is necessary to feel MORE worthy, not less. It is necessary to affirm my own deep value as a child of God and a unique person. I respect and value myself. I have compassion for my hurt. I have compassion for the hurt of loved ones. I trust myself to act in my best interests and in the best interests of my children, which will ultimately be in the best interests of my husband.

This book was so effective, Steve later asked me why I’d changed, that I didn’t seem as angry. Yes, Dear Reader, he deserved anger — but this was a good thing. He wasn’t nearly as able to tear down my feelings of value. Which made it easier to not respond with anger. Even though it was still an awful time, and I missed my husband-as-he-once-was terribly — I was starting to feel less beaten down.

Another nice thing happened in January. I have a note that a man from a couple I knew — he was one of Timothy’s teachers and she was a friend from the library and yoga class — took me aside and talked with me about the time he cheated on his wife. It was about ten years earlier and they were now more in love than ever. Here’s what I wrote about that conversation:

He said that for him, the overwhelming emotion was shame. He said that everything Steve’s said to me was coming from shame.

He also told me that the novelty of the other woman wears off. Also that I’m doing the right thing getting a life and making plans for if he leaves.

He, too, said that their marriage is better than ever. And that he is so glad that his wife stayed.

Father, thank You for the encouragement when I so needed it.

I liked it when he said that Steve’s trying to be a jerk, but he’s not very good at it.

It meant worlds to me that this man cared enough about me to encourage me, confiding about when he messed up.

But the next adventure of the start of the year was medical.

Back on the day in November when I’d seen Steve drive onto base right behind Amy, I had a doctor appointment and they were investigating previous problems — and found a “non-healing wound” on my cervix. They did various tests. It was not an STD (Thank God!) and it was not cancer, but it was growing. I was referred to a German gynecologist.

[Okay, how symbolic is that to have a “non-healing wound” on my cervix when my husband left? They never did find a reason for it.]

And let me just rave for a second about German doctors. I grant you, it was weird to go to a man for gynecology. But he had an ultrasound machine in his office! This meant he could take a look at the time and see what was going on. Months later, I started getting ovarian cysts — and he took a look with the ultrasound and knew that’s exactly what it was. When I was there again later, there was no cyst, but he pointed out the extra fluid that showed it had burst. A couple years later, I had an ovarian cyst again in America, and the gynecologist put in a referral so I could get an ultrasound done at a different facility by an ultrasound technician who would send the results to my doctor to report to me. By the time I had the procedure, the cyst was long gone! (But I knew exactly what it felt like from my experience with the German doctor.)

But the cysts came later, around May. In January, besides the non-healing wound, I began getting severe pelvic pain. The doctor decided to do surgery.

This happened at the same time Steve was behaving toward me with extra coldness. So I was going to have surgery in a German hospital with no moral support from my husband.

On February 7, my quiet time journal reads:

Psalm 118:13
“I was pushed back and about to fall,
but the Lord helped me.”

Father, today was a very hard day. Steve told me yesterday he sent in a signed and notarized petition for divorce.

And I’ve been having lots of pain possibly related to my cervical wound. And I left my car at the library because I had lost my key — so I couldn’t go to choir even if I wanted to. [Later it turned out I’d put it in my jacket pocket! Oh well.]

Father, I am pushed back and about to fall. Please don’t let me fall. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

I started feeling bad enough that I was taking a lot of time off work. With Valentine’s Day coming up, I was feeling discouraged and sad, so I got an idea. I asked all my girlfriends whom I had contact with via email to send me Valentines for Valentine’s Day. I needed the affirmation badly — so I decided to ask for it.

They didn’t come in time for Valentine’s Day — I hadn’t gotten the idea soon enough. But that way, they came by the time I was going in for surgery on the 20th, which was when I needed it all the more. My favorite was that my friend Patricia actually quilted a little flowered bag for me. It’s the perfect size to hold a Bible and journal. I still use it every week to take those things to church.

Steve did drive me to the hospital for the surgery. And was pretty awful to me. But I managed not to engage in a fight.

As I was going into surgery, I still remember the way the doctor squeezed my hand and told me not to worry. The doctor found adhesions in my uterus and removed them — which explained the pain I was having. We also don’t know how I got them — probably from giving birth to Timothy, which was a difficult birth, and they used forceps. But why it took so long to cause pain? It felt like a physical manifestation of what was happening in my life.

But a nice thing about German hospitals is that they keep you there until you are actually well! Blood tests found an infection, so they kept me there three nights and took very good care of me. Steve brought the kids to see me once, and some other friends came to see me and brought flowers.

Oh, and in a bizarre little excursion, a week later the kids and I got to go to a World Cup preliminary soccer game, the U.S. vs. Poland, at the Kaiserslautern stadium. I was still really sore and moving stiffly — and it started snowing during the game! I don’t remember how or why we got tickets, but it was a whole lot of fun to attend. And then we all got snow days the next two days.

And look! I got another book with perfect timing! This time it was NOT “Just Friends,“ by Shirley Glass.

That book gave me several key insights. The first was the idea that even if sex wasn’t involved, this was obviously an emotional affair and a betrayal. (To acknowledge that to myself was huge. Mind you, sex was involved, but I still didn’t know it.)

But it cast so much light on my situation! For one thing, she said that the amount of trauma depends on how much the betrayed partner was expecting it. I was not expecting it one bit.

But she also shows why the aftermath of finding out about the “secret friendship” (aka emotional affair) was so hard for me — It kept going.

She warns you that it will be nearly impossible for the betrayed partner to heal if the threat continues.  “Trust has to be earned.  Safety has to be reestablished.  This is not an overnight process.  Just as the involved partner cannot flick a switch and turn off all feelings for the lover, the noninvolved partner cannot shift from betrayal to unquestioning trust in an instant.”

If the involved partner says they are “just friends” because they didn’t have sex, he may believe that he should be able to continue this friendship.  Dr. Glass says, “If the contact continues, the threat continues.  It’s like a recovering alcoholic who continues to go to happy hour after work every Friday.”

It was too bad that it was way too late to discuss what I’d learned with Steve. But on the good side, the book had a long section on healing and recovering — including a part about recovering alone. I liked these lines:

No matter where the energy comes from, the process is the same.  Let go of the hurt and the anger, and get on with your own life.

There is no revenge as sweet as living a joyful life.

I didn’t go back to work until March 7, and then Josh had their Senior year Brain Bowl competition March 9-10.

Steve was able to go to the final day of competition and took the kids out to dinner afterward.

And then Josh turned 18 years old!

And toward the end of March, I went with Marta, a friend from the Sembach Writer’s Group, to a small writers’ conference the day before the Bologna Book Fair. Tickets on Ryan Air were cheap, and we split the hotel costs.

Here I am pointing out my friend Kristin’s published book!

In March, I learned that Steve had volunteered for a tuba opening with the Air Force Band in Japan.

I had planned to follow Steve wherever he was stationed next so that he could be near Tim. I was very upset that he hated me so much he would go so far from his son just to get away from me.

Steve’s Mom said to me “It will all work out for the best,” and I got mad. That’s not what it says! It says in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” How could it possibly be the best when someone makes a BAD decision?

[But, Dear Reader, here’s a spoiler alert: Things ended up working out to be very good indeed for me and for my kids.]

Here’s what I wrote 11 years ago today, on March 31, 2006:

Genesis 50:20-21
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done….
So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.”

Father,
I know I’m taking that second verse out of context. Yet I’m taking it as a word from You, as an “unmistakeable touch of grace.” You will provide for my children and me.

Lord, it looks like You’re leading me to live near Darlene and Kathe for awhile. Thank You! Thank You that even though it’s such an expensive area, You will provide for my children and me.

Thank You, Lord. Open doors and show me the right way to go.

Timothy, in 6th grade, competed in MathCounts that year.

And sometimes God spoke through people. I was very upset about Steve going to Japan, and wished I could stop him. It seemed unfair to Timothy. I’d prayed that it wouldn’t go through — and it was going through. Since Steve had quit attending church, now I was attending a Sunday School class that was very supportive. At church one day, a lady who was divorced and in a second marriage told me, “You need to let Steve go.” I resisted the message. But the next day I wrote this:

Dear Father,
You’re really giving me messages, aren’t You?

Yesterday I had just finished emailing to my siblings why the message “You need to let Steve GO!” was so annoying.

Then I opened the email from Patricia — and she said, “You need to let Steve go!”

So I got to thinking that I really do need to let Steve go. (She can be taught!)

I do believe that Steve will come around some day. But he needs this quest to happen on his own.

Father, I trust Steve into Your hands.

One thing God did change about the Japan plans, though, was that Steve signed up to go unaccompanied, for 3 years. But then budget cuts happened — and the chances were good that the Japan band would be cut and would no longer have a tuba slot. So it looked like Steve would only be there six months. (It turned out to be a little more than a year.) But it was not 3 years. In fact, it was just enough time for me to process the big news he told me just before I went to America and he went to Japan. (But that’s for next week.)

In May, my job sharer Kim was moving back to the States. Which meant I got pictures of my wonderful coworkers!

Here’s Kim:

Kim and my dear Elfriede:

Our boss, Helen, the Librarian at our library (and the fifth librarian I’d worked under!)

Kim and me:

What was the Lord doing? Well, He was working in my heart.

Here’s what I wrote on May 12, 2006:

Psalm 119:58
“I have sought your face with all my heart;
be gracious to me according to your promise.”

Father, I have sought your face and I am trying to seek Your face.

Father, I’m not sure I’ve forgiven myself for the times I didn’t respond to Steve as You would have me do.

But I am sure that You have forgiven me.

Father, You are being gracious to me according to Your promise.

Even Steve going to Japan may be part of Your graciousness to me. I won’t have to face him day-to-day.

And getting to live near Darlene and Kathe will be such a blessing!

Thank You, Father, for those many, many unexpected touches of grace and small miracles.

And I continued to have physical challenges. Ovarian cysts started happening after the uterine adhesions were removed. But I was getting a clue. Here’s what I wrote on May 25:

Psalm 119:71
“It was good for me to be afflicted
so that I might learn your decrees.”

Father, although I’m not going to say it’s “for the best,” this whole awful trial is definitely working out for great good. Thank You, Father.

There are two lessons You seem to be trying to teach me.

Last night I listened to Christel Nani’s CD. Maybe I learned what the three “slamming doors” in my pelvic area represent.

That’s the seat of our relationships with our significant other, as well as our creativity, sexuality, and relationships with finances.

She said that this is mostly shut down by manipulating — that doing anything to get the person you love to act a certain way is manipulation.

Not only have I, for the past year, been desperately trying to get Steve not to leave, but I do a lot of manipulating in all of my love relationships — and especially over the years of my marriage with Steve.

So this time while he’s in Japan can be a time for me to work on unconditional love — love without trying to get him to do anything….

Some time that year, Josh got rejected by the three colleges they applied to — and I learned that Josh had never gotten anyone to write references for him, even though I am absolutely sure Josh could have gotten glowing ones. And I felt terrible — I’d been so distracted by my own troubles. (I had made sure Josh got the applications sent, but didn’t find out this detail until it was too late.)

However, Josh applied to Full Sail University in Florida. Yes, they’re a for-profit school. But I think it worked out well for Josh. It is sort of a vocational school for the film industry. But they go to school year-round — and Josh was able to finish a Bachelor’s degree in Film in less than two years.

But that was still future. On June 9, 2006, Josh graduated from Kaiserslautern American High School

I’m going to close out Year 41 with a list I made on May 1, 2006 of things I thought God had said to me, now that I was listening to His voice:

“Our God delights in turning hopeless situations around.” (This was from a sermon.)

“Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

“Wait for the Lord and keep his way.
You will be exalted to possess the land;
when the wicked are cut off, you will see it.”

“He does not treat us as our sins deserve,
or repay us according to our iniquities.”

“I will provide for you and your children.”

“They should always pray and not give up.”

“Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.
He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with him.”

So that takes us to June 14, 2006. I had two more months left in Germany, and then would start a new adventure.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 41!

41 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 41 — June 14, 2005, to June 14, 2006.

For these difficult years, I’m trying to answer the question: What was the Lord doing?

Last time, I covered the incredibly wonderful trip to Paris that happened soon after my husband told me he was filing for divorce.

When I got home from Paris, on November 10, 2005, Steve told me that he would be sleeping somewhere else in order to establish a separation. My journal entry says that Steve still thought we could be divorced in six months.

Going back in time a little bit, here’s the email I sent to my sister October 25th, after Steve told me he was filing for divorce:

Well, I went to Ramstein Legal today.  A wonderful
older lady saw me.  (And Steve knew I was going
there.)

I wondered what would happen if I did NOT sign a
separation agreement.  I wondered if I would lose any
rights.

The answer is absolutely not.  I could lose all kinds
of rights if I do sign an agreement.

In fact, an “uncontested” divorce in Illinois only
takes 6 months.  A contested divorce takes 2 years of
separation–including separate bank accounts.  So he
can’t possibly divorce me while we are still in
Germany.  (A German divorce sounds like it would give
me better terms, but it would take 3 years of
separation, not living under the same roof if the
divorce is contested.)  I will absolutely not sign
that there are “irreconcilable differences.”

So–It will basically depend on where we move after
this, and what the laws are there.  He cannot get an
Illinois divorce unless we stay overseas, and he
cannot get one of those in less than two years.

So we will see what happens next.  At least time in
the same house gives him time to change his mind.

Oh, and if I gave him a separation agreement, though
adultery would still be frowned on by the military, it
would give him leeway to have any other sort of
relationship with whoever he wants.  There’s no way in
the world I want to do that!

So I was really encouraged by the meeting with the
lady.  I think she gave me good advice.  She advised
me that I have all kinds of rights, and that I should
absolutely NOT give him a separation agreement unless
he should offer me practically all his money for the
rest of his life!  Anyway, if he does offer me an
agreement, I should bring it to them first and find
out if it’s anything more than I would be entitled to,
anyway.

I also found out that legally, the military REQUIRES
him to support me as long as we are legally married.
So that gives me two years of that, right?

This email gives some clues why I didn’t want a divorce. First, though, I still believed Steve that he was not having an affair. I believed that in that case divorce was wrong.

Unless Steve was an unbeliever. I Corinthians 7 does say, “If the unbeliever wants to leave, let him do so. God has called us to live in peace.” I knew Steve was a Christian when we married. His sister told me the story of when he accepted Christ as a child. I didn’t want to think of him as an unbeliever. Since he seemed to be turning away from God at the same time he was turning away from me — that made me all the more want to win him back.

Though Steve was filing for divorce because he said that I was too awful to live with. Now, I had bought a lot of guilt over this whole situation, agonizing over everything I said to or about Steve. But even in my guilt, I knew full well that I hadn’t given Steve Biblical grounds for divorce. If he ever got in a relationship with anybody ever again, he was going to need to learn to forgive. Why not learn it with me, instead of throwing away 18 years of marriage?

But also — There was no way I wanted to be sent back to America in the middle of Josh’s Senior year. We were due to leave in August anyway. The only way Steve could get an Illinois divorce was if I signed an agreement. There was no way I was going to sign.

Why did I still believe Steve that he wasn’t having an affair? Yes, he’d looked me in the eyes and told me he wasn’t right at the beginning of this, the same time on March 14 that he “confessed” to “living a double life” and seeing Amy behind my back. (And he thought that shouldn’t bother me since he wasn’t having an affair!) During the summer, it became more and more clear he was doing this again. My friends kept seeing him out with her around the base, and then I walked in on him eating lunch with her on a day he’d picked up her parents from the airport.

The main tool Steve used to throw me off the scent was indignation. I remember one day we were in the kitchen making a meal. I’m not sure if it was before or after Steve had moved out. (He still came over often. He’d read to Timothy at bedtime three nights a week, and he’d cook dinner for the kids on the nights I worked late or had choir practice or yoga.)

Anyway, whatever we were discussing, Steve said, “We haven’t exactly been nice to each other lately.”

I was flabbergasted and speechless that Steve would equate him seeing another woman behind my back with me being angry with him for seeing another woman behind my back! Yes, I’d been angry with him that summer. But I was bending over backwards trying to be “nice” and get him back into the marriage.

After a moment of silence trying to process his statement, I said, “At least I’m not the one who’s cheating!”

Steve got furious with me. He looked at me and said, “How dare you accuse me of having an affair!” Did I know it’s a crime in the military to have an affair? The person with seniority would get kicked out of the Air Force! That’s fraternization! Is that what I was accusing him of? And then he walked out of the house and drove away, too angry to be around me any more.

Dear Reader, I’m afraid I sent him an email and apologized for my words!

[About a year later, I bought a book called When Your Lover Is a Liar, by Susan Forward. I learned about this technique. Looking back, any time Steve had said to me, “How dare you accuse me of…” that was precisely something he had done. So I took note when he said, “How dare you accuse me of hiding money!” at that time.]

But in 2005 — It was still an effective technique to completely fool me. There were many times I thought about that day and that Steve would not have gotten so angry if he were actually having an affair.

However, now that Steve wasn’t sleeping at our house, what would stop him from having an affair?

Well, honestly, I was taking comfort in the official Letter of Counseling he’d gotten warning him to stop the “Appearance of an Inappropriate Relationship” with Amy.

Steve claimed that they were “just friends” and that being seen in public with her over and over again and eating out with her was a friendly thing to do and I was horrible to get mad at him about it. Well, there was something comforting about learning that I wasn’t crazy in thinking this was inappropriate — the band leadership thought so, too.

Now, it must have been after Steve moved out, but I found out Steve was still seeing Amy. My calendar says that after I got back from Paris, I had 14 straight days with a headache. I was seeing a doctor on base at Sembach. He said that he was qualified to do a nerve block procedure. I had an appointment the next day at 8:30 am about another problem, and he could do it then if I still had the headache — but I would need someone to drive me home.

So — I told Steve I might need him to drive me home at 8:30 am the next morning. Would that be okay? He said Yes. (We lived 5 minutes from the base.)

I don’t remember why I didn’t get the procedure done in the morning, but it was probably that my headache finally felt better. I was going to call Steve when I got home to tell him he wouldn’t need to take me home after all.

As I was driving through the gate to go off base, I saw Amy’s car just coming on base. (I’d learned her license number awhile before.) And then, right behind her — Steve’s car!

Okay, I’ll grant you this was not hard evidence that they had been together. They could have coincidentally driven to the gate at the same time. At this point, I devised an elaborate scenario that Steve had maybe walked her dogs with her before work. (He’d done early dogwalking sometimes when he was walking her dogs when she was away.)

Now, I wasn’t completely stupid — but I’d heard Steve the night before on the phone with his friend Jerry arranging to spend the night at Jerry’s house. I hadn’t heard Jerry’s voice, but the conversation was pretty convincing. On top of that, Steve told me some time or other that when he went to Jerry’s house, he tried to leave before breakfast, so he wouldn’t impose on Jerry and his wife. Now I figured I knew where he was going for breakfast.

But I was upset. Okay, let’s be honest. I was enraged. I so wanted to call him up and say sarcastic things. And I was hurt that he apparently had completely forgotten I’d been planning to ask him for a ride at 8:30. Good thing I hadn’t gotten the procedure done, because he wouldn’t have been there.

But I also wanted to tell him that I really hoped they hadn’t walked into the squadron together. The Letter of Counseling was supposed to be a warning. He wasn’t exactly following it was he?

Now I did figure out that calling him when I was so angry was a really bad idea. And it was pretty sure not to do anybody any good.

But then I started stewing. The lawyer had said something about if we were separated, then Steve could do whatever he wanted. So instead of calling Steve, I called Joe, the first sergeant.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best idea I ever had. I did tell Joe I didn’t have any evidence that Steve was still seeing Amy. But I wanted to make sure they knew we weren’t legally separated, and I wanted to find out if that made any difference.

Joe said it didn’t matter at all what was happening at home. And he was going to have to talk to Steve because Joe had seen him with Amy during a band trip the previous week. That was when Joe explained to me that this was totally apart from whether Steve was even married. He wasn’t supposed to be showing special preference to a Senior Airman when he’s a Master Sergeant. It’s bad for the whole squadron.

But what was God doing?

Well, another helpful book came my way. I didn’t check it out, and just looked through it at the library, so I don’t even remember the title. But it was written by a woman who had been a mistress in Paris for a few years. She said that wives should never ever be envious of mistresses. They are in a miserable position! The wife gets the best of everything. The man isn’t even proud to be seen with the mistress. The wife gets the house, the kids, the financial support. The mistress gets leftovers.

That gave me a new perspective! It helped me feel sorry for Amy more than be angry with her. After all, Steve was still spending many evenings and weekends at my house. I’ve always liked public displays of affection because I want my man to be proud to be seen with me. Well, whatever their relationship — Amy wasn’t getting any of that.

I know it was around that time, because in my quiet time journal on November 18, I say, “Thank You for the book I picked up last night that reminded me that Amy’s in a miserable position, with far more reason to be jealous of me than I have to be jealous of her.”

And then Steve’s parents came to visit.

When Steve told me he wanted a divorce, I said okay, but now you have to tell your parents. When he said he was moving out, I said okay, but now it’s public information, and I can tell anyone I want. (In fact, I was upset when he didn’t change his phone number on the band roster right away, because someone called me with a message for Steve and I started crying when I told that person that I didn’t know where Steve was or if I’d see him.)

So Steve’s parents wanted to come at Thanksgiving to try to be supportive. When Steve asked me about it, I said that it would be okay, but it would be much better if they didn’t stay in our house. I guess Steve thought that was because he was sleeping in the guestroom — but really it was about dealing with guests. In the back of my mind, I was hoping that maybe talking to his parents — who surely didn’t believe in divorce when there wasn’t adultery — would help Steve come around.

After Steve moved out, a few days before they were to arrive, Steve’s Mom told me not to worry about cleaning. I said, “Well, I won’t, since you won’t be staying here.” Then Steve’s Mom said that Steve had told them since he was in a hotel, they might as well stay in our house. I guess his thinking was that now the guestroom was free. It was too late to even argue.

But the visit was really hard. Steve’s parents tried very very hard not to take sides. But this was their son! Steve told them that we were having so many fights, it was bad for the kids.

But the worst thing that happened was that Steve got an official Letter of Reprimand for the Appearance of an Inappropriate Relationship on the day that his parents arrived. And, again, he believed it was my fault.

It turned out that Joe had told him I called.

So — I called again and asked why Steve believed it was my fault. Joe said if Steve said that, then he was delusional. That the letter was based entirely on what Joe had seen with his own eyes. The weekend before, Steve had gone to a restaurant in Winnweiler, he said to hear his friend Jerry play a gig. Well, Amy was also there. And so was Joe.

Steve was indignant. Said he only talked to Amy briefly when she walked up to him. (Joe said that he was onstage and it was 45 minutes.) Steve said Joe was lying. (Right.) Anyway, all this didn’t come out at once, but in back-and-forths.

But the really awful part was when I was driving Steve’s Mom somewhere, and she said to me, “We’ll never forget the look on our son’s face when he said he got in trouble at work because of his wife.”

OUCH! [News flash: Steve was lying! I knew that even then — though I am pretty sure he did believe that I was lying about what I’d said to Joe and that it was my fault.]

But that was hard.

I tried to explain to Steve’s parents that it was not, in fact, my fault. They just said that I shouldn’t be talking to Steve’s first sergeant at all. And yes, I started feeling guilty that I had. [Oh, Sondy! In my quiet time journal just after Steve’s parents left, I say, “Last week’s incident reminds me that I’m not blameless in this divorce. It was a terrible thing to talk about Steve with his first sergeant. Lord, please redeem this situation.” Not so terrible, Sondy — not so terrible.]

However — Something very good came out of all of this. After his Letter of Reprimand, Steve really did stop being seen in public with Amy. And that helped ease the pressure on me — and those repeated stabs through the heart.

Oh look! A bright spot! On December 15, I took the GRE to apply to library school! It was a computerized version, and I found out my score that day — and again did very well. Alas! They had eliminated the “Analytical” portion of the test on which I’d gotten a perfect score when I took it in 1985. There was an essay portion instead. (And that took longer to grade, but I did well. Not perfect, but well.) I do remember that one of the essays was if there’s any value to critiquing art or only in creating art. Well, I am a book reviewer! I took that one on with enthusiasm.

But what was the Lord doing?

I was shopping at the Base Exchange with my kids for Christmas gifts, and a book called The Script caught my eye. Maybe it would be good for Josh, who was interested in scriptwriting.

Then I saw the subtitle: The 100% Absolutely Predictable Things Men Do When They Cheat!

Dear Reader, I cannot stress enough how much that book helped me!

When I opened the book up, at least half of the “lines” of the Script I had already heard come out of Steve’s mouth! “I like living alone.” “You’ll be better off without me.” “I’m going to take care of you.” “We’re not having sex.” (I’m afraid I still believed that last one.)

In my review of The Script, I didn’t say I was talking about my own husband. But I sure was.

I’m going to repeat here the ending of my review. Because it was SO important in opening my eyes and helping me stop feeling burdened and loaded down with guilt that Steve had left me.

Why did I go into so much detail about this book?  (Yes, I did leave a whole lot out—It’s still very much worth reading.)  Why do I think this book is so important that I will be recommending it to anyone and everyone whose husband has left her and/or whose husband has been unfaithful?

Fundamentally, the Script is about calling something evil something good.  It’s about saying that something that is wrong is really the right thing to do under the circumstances.  It’s full of lies and founded on lies, but the man is also lying to himself.  He wants to think of himself as a good person, so he doesn’t want to face up to what he’s done and what he’s doing.

The Script does give me some compassion for that man.  He didn’t set out to betray his wife and his vows and all his values.  He’s desperate to convince himself that he hasn’t really done that.  And it’s going to come out of his mouth in lies and deception.

To be perfectly honest, and at risk of sounding radical, I believe that the Script was designed—by Satan—to deceive.  And the number one person it’s designed to deceive is the man himself.  It says he’s a good person who’s doing the right thing.  He may be a good person, but he is NOT doing the right thing.

This may even help you to forgive your husband.  You can try to see the Script as the Enemy of both of you.  Or the one behind the Script, if you believe there’s a real devil.  Your husband wasn’t trying to hurt you.  He is a good man, but he’s been horribly deceived into doing some bad things.  If he plays out the whole Script, he’s going to end up worse off than you are, having done some terrible things, but not able to face up to them.

It’s crazy-making for the wife.  She can know in her head that, while she hasn’t been the perfect wife, nothing that she’s done isn’t covered by “for better or for worse.”  She knows that what he’s doing is wrong and unkind.  She knows that marriage and love is about forgiveness and that if he can’t work things out with her, he’s going to have trouble with any woman.

There’s nothing in the world that wounds a woman’s self-esteem more than her husband telling her he doesn’t want to be married to her any more.  As he continues to tell her, over and over, in many different ways, that his leaving is essentially her fault, her self-esteem will start to plunge even further.

Her husband will keep telling her things that she knows are not true.  After awhile, it’s easy to start believing them.  That’s why women being divorced need books like this as a reality check.  That’s why they need to talk to their friends again and again, to be sure they’re not actually crazy.  Yes, his actions are wrong.  Yes, it is set up to make him look good and make it look like it’s all the wife’s fault.  No, the Script is not telling the truth.

This book will help you to understand what’s going on and not think you’re crazy.  It will help you see what is really happening.  You’ll be able to cope when you’re unwillingly trapped in The Script.

And maybe, just maybe, men will read this book and realize that following the Script is a fantasy world that does not end happily for anyone, especially not the Hero.

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Whew! And that book did all those things for me.

I don’t know when I started, but I think I must have been getting emails from Rejoice Ministries by then. They were tremendously encouraging, too. Rejoice Ministries is a ministry that encourages you to “stand for your marriage” and pray your spouse back. It was founded by a couple who were separated for two years before the prodigal came to his senses and returned.

The one thing that made me uneasy was that I believed you should get divorced if there was an affair. They taught that divorce is always wrong. That you should Stand for your marriage until you’re old and gray and in a rocking chair. After all, you want the father of your children to come back to God. If you don’t pray for him, who will?

So years in the future when I did think it was time to get divorced — then it was hard to shake those voices. But at the time, they were very encouraging. They helped me not respond with anger.

And best of all, the teaching from Rejoice Ministries encouraged me to listen for God’s voice. To hear what He had to say to me.

Oh, but the reason I think maybe I was getting the emails already back then, was that they clearly taught that the enemy of your marriage is not your husband. The enemy of your marriage is the devil. He’s the Enemy of both of you.

But then, I got another wonderful trip! At first, Steve hoped I could take the kids to Berlin over Christmas break, while he had to do some work with the band. It was our last Christmas in Europe, and he wanted them to get to travel. Well, Berlin ended up being too expensive, but we got an inexpensive Ryan Air flight to Spain — and got to visit our dear friends Audrey and Tom in Rota, Spain, right on the beach!

They’ve been in this story before — at Biola University with me, my housemate in L. A., as newlyweds in our small group in L.A., then in Philadelphia when we were in New Jersey. Now they were at Victory Villa in Rota, as missionaries to the military — at the same place where they had met many years before when they were both in the military stationed in Spain! So I went to visit them with the kids.

And this is the view from our room!

We took a walk into Rota.

And I touched my 166th castle!

In the middle of our trip, we spent a day at Gibraltar! It was fun to be somewhere where English was spoken. (I hadn’t realized it’s a little piece of the British Empire.)

We took a tour through caves and fortifications on the Rock of Gibraltar. And there are monkeys on top!

And here’s the view when we got back to Victory Villa that night.

Once again, the trip was a small part of why I was so encouraged by this trip. It was the people, my dear friends Audrey and Tom. They had a good talk with me about it all. These were people who loved me and loved Steve, too.

Audrey told me she always remembered what Steve told her when Josh was born, that the best thing he could do for his children was love their mother. Audrey was mad at Steve. Which was somewhat therapeutic for me.

But they encouraged me and uplifted me and reminded me that God really does work all things together for good.

And at Gibraltar, it was lovely just to have some fun sight-seeing again.

Well, it’s late. I think I’ll be able to finish Year 41 in one more post.

Looking back now, things did get easier once Steve moved out. And much easier once he started hiding his relationship with Amy. The next adventures, though, were medical….

It’s time for Project 52, Week 41!

41 weeks (and one day) ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 41 — June 14, 2005, to June 14, 2006.

Last time, I covered the start of the hardest year of my life. My husband was having an affair, but kept telling me they were friends and if I were a supportive wife I’d be happy he was spending time with his friend. More and more incidents happened when I found out he was seeing her behind my back. (After all, he couldn’t tell me or I would get upset!) So finally, at the end of October 2005, he told me he was going to file for divorce.

But — remember how a full year before, I’d learned about a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Advanced Writing Retreat in Paris happening in November 2005? I really wanted to go — and Steve said he’d pay for my trip, but we’d have to postpone the family ski trip we had been planning for that Thanksgiving. Eventually, he said we couldn’t afford it to be a family trip, so he’d go alone — and that was when he started his affair (I found out much later).

However — now it was time for the Writer’s Retreat at the Abbaye de Royaumont! And so began the best vacation of my life — smack in the middle of the worst year of my life!

The background was this: In 1999, I’d gone to an SCBWI Writer’s Retreat at the Abbaye de Royaumont. When I went, I prayed that I’d make some friends who were also writers. I wanted some people in my life who understood my drive to write children’s books. And that prayer was answered! I got started there in an email critique group with Kristin Wolden Nitz, Vicki Sansum, and Erin MacLellan. We emailed regularly, and all three of them had gotten published in the intervening years. (It was my turn — some day. Now I want to wait until after I’ve been on the Newbery committee.) We called ourselves the Sisters of Royaumont.

As it happened, all four of us were able to go to the 2005 Retreat! And Vicki arranged a place to stay so we could spend some time in Paris together before and after the retreat! So I was in Paris November 2 through 10!

Remember also that the week before was when Steve told me he wanted a divorce. And the morning after he told me that, I woke up and decided to get my Master’s in Library Science and become a librarian.

Early on the morning of the 2nd, I drove myself to the train station in Kaiserslautern. (From there, it was a straight shot to Paris. About 5 hours.) I was praying hard as I drove. Praying that it would be a good conference. Praying that the Lord would walk with me as I tried to be a librarian and a writer. Praying that my marriage would be restored.

And then I looked up — and there was a bright rainbow right in front of me, over my path.

I decided that maybe it was childish and silly — but I was going to take it as a sign that the Lord would answer those prayers.

And wow — was the conference ever good! And maybe the specific thing of my marriage being restored didn’t happen — but I feel like light is shining on my whole life at this point. In retrospect, I’ll take it as a sign that There would be joy for me! Yes!

And as soon as I got there, my friends enveloped me with love. They let me talk incessantly about Steve and all my confusion and pain. And I just felt loved.

Kristin didn’t arrive as soon as the rest of us. But here are Vicki, Erin’s friend Robin, Erin, and me having dinner that first night.

Something I noticed right from the start: Frenchmen are far, far more likely to flirt with you if you visit Paris with girlfriends than if you come with your husband and two sons. And at that point in my life, it felt wonderful to have handsome French strangers flirt with me!

The next morning we started out with a visit to Montmartre.

Somewhere along the way, we picked up Kristin and visited Notre Dame.

Here are Vicki, Kristin, and Erin, having lunch across from Notre Dame. (That was the meal when I lost a crown. But it didn’t hurt, and I got through the week without it.)

Then we visited the gargoyles! I’d never been to the top of Notre Dame before and loved this.

Here I am, filling the bell tower with my great height!

Across the street from Notre Dame, I had to get a picture at the street named after the famous mathematician!

Erin wanted a picture with the truckful of bread we found!

And that night we went for a walk, skipping together and singing songs from musicals! It was so good to feel joyous!

We were at the Louvre, looking at the pyramid, when we turned around and saw the Eiffel Tower. “It’s Sparkling!!!”

And then — the writer’s conference at Royaumont started!

It was planned to be a working retreat, so we each had private rooms. The first few pictures were taken in the morning out my window of the lovely grounds.

Later I went for a walk myself.

There’s Kristin, writing away!

In the middle of the conference, my quiet time notebook had me looking at these verses from Psalm 112:

Even in darkness light dawns for the upright,
for the gracious and compassionate and righteous woman….
She will have no fear of bad news;
her heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.
Her heart is secure, she will have no fear;
in the end she will look in triumph on her enemies.

That sums up what I got from that trip and that conference. I took as my icon for the trip the Arc de Triomphe. I was encouraged that I would triumph!

This was my room:

And I went for a walk at night, too.

Another sunrise from my window.

And the conference itself was inspiring. I was thinking about and excited about being a librarian and a writer. I was excited about the future — whether or not my marriage was ever restored. I was surrounded by wonderful book people. I even got a work session with an editor and she agreed to look at my manuscript of my second novel!

Here are Erin and Kristin taking a walk while I was inside working this time.

Here’s a Group Shot of all the writers at the conference. Can you find me?

This one features Erin and Kristin.

And here we are — the Sisters of Royaumont!

Our last morning at Royaumont!

I love this candid, because it shows just how much fun all us writers were having!

Here is Erin with author Franny Billingsley, who was attending the conference, too.

And here we are again!

Almost time to go. Here are Erin and Kristin.

That night, we visited Erin’s friend and Kristin got novel background material from her Finnish husband.

Robin and their parrot:

I think Kristin had to leave the next day, but we roamed Paris.

At the park by Victor Hugo’s house.

I mentioned last time that the Spring before — after I found out my husband was seeing another woman — I got depressed and lost more than 20% of my weight and was down to my high school weight of 105 pounds. Basically, I was skeletal. So — my friends decided to fatten me up! And there is no better place to be fattened up than Paris! Let me just say that aspect of the trip was fantastique!

We went to the Musée d’Orsay.

I think it was Vicki’s tip to eat lunch in the tea room, which was pretty much the most elegant place in the world.

Our last night in Paris, we visited the Eiffel Tower.

L’Arc de Triomphe:

The Eiffel Tower sparkled while we were standing underneath it!

So, what was God doing in my life November 2-10, 2005?

Mostly, He was filling me with hope for the future, whether or not my marriage was restored.

I was excited about becoming a librarian. I was energized about my writing. I’d been encouraged by people who loved me. I’d gotten to talk out all my frustration and pain and fear. I’d been fattened up! I heard fantastic speakers and attended wonderful workshops about writing. I’d been surrounded by book people. I’d seen beautiful Paris and realized that whatever happened, God would help me Triumph!

Maybe Steve’s motives weren’t the best in giving me that trip to Paris. But without question, God used it for good.

That trip was such an amazing blessing! In the middle of an incredibly hard year — God gave me an interlude that energized and inspired and uplifted me!

It’s time for Project 52, Week 41!

41 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 41 — June 14, 2005, to June 14, 2006.

Okay, I’m starting Week 41 a little early. I have plans for next Tuesday night, and I’m not sure how long it’s going to take to cover Year 41, so I thought I’d start this weekend.

In Year 40, I covered the fateful day when I learned my husband was spending time with another woman behind my back. I believed him when he looked me in the eye and told me he wasn’t having an affair. I found out later — much later — that was a lie. But he apologized, and I thought that was that, and we could work hard to fix things. Though I sank into a deep depression when my efforts didn’t seem to go anywhere and nothing I could do seemed to help.

Year 41 was, without question, the hardest year of my life so far. It’s hard to know how to approach it.

But a good friend asked a question which I’m going to use as my frame for telling about this year: Where was the Lord in this?

And that question reminded me of Hosea 2:14 —
“But now I am going to allure her.
I will lead her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her.”

Because, looking back, the Lord was with me every step of the way. He brought me into the wilderness — but His love drew me closer to Him even as I was facing rejection from the person I loved most.

So — what was God doing during Year 41? Let’s talk about that, instead of focusing on the various ways I got hurt.

The first thing I saw God do very soon after my birthday didn’t happen in Germany. In Virginia, my dear friend Darlene, who I’d known since 3rd grade and who shows up over and over again in the story of my life — stopped breathing in the night. Her husband Matt did CPR and the paramedics came and took her to the hospital, but she was in a coma.

Kathe was there on the spot and forwarded me the church emails. The church rallied round and was praying for Darlene. But on Saturday, June 25, I read an email from Pastor Ed Allen that they didn’t think Darlene was here any more. The doctors thought the brain activity that was left was just random. So on Monday, Matt was going to have to make the hard decision whether to turn off life support. But Pastor Ed urged everyone to keep praying.

I remember that our family went to see Star Wars Episode 3 that night — and I started weeping at Padme’s death. She even looked somewhat like Darlene! And Darlene had a one-year-old baby, Michelle. (I did not believe that Padme would have given up and died of a broken heart once she saw her babies!)

But when I got home and checked my email — Darlene had woken up! I also remember weeping for joy the next morning in church during the singing.

So that was a big thing the Lord did that year — brought Darlene back to life. How I hoped He would also bring my marriage back to life!

I can see something else God was doing just from glancing at my quiet time notebook. Now I was spending time with God every single day. No more missing days here and there. I was turning to God in desperation — and in that time, He showed me His love.

The entries during the summer go up and down. Here’s from June 16:

Father,
Why do you pour out Your blessings at some times but not at others?
Lord, yesterday Steve was kind and loving, despite my headache. Tonight he’s hard and cold and drinking a whole bottle of wine….

A lot is about me — that I would not be critical. That I would be able to show Steve love. That our counseling sessions would go well. (We’d usually fight on the way home.) Steve didn’t seem happy. At all. I developed a theory that he was deeply depressed and I went on websites for people whose spouse is depressed. I so wanted to be there for him. Here’s the entry from June 22:

O Father,
Please help me.
I’m so afraid. Steve spent last night in a hotel. He’s said he’s probably not going to go to church with us any more.
O Father, please work in Steve’s heart.
Please bring him back to you and to me.
O Lord, let Your Spirit fill me. Help me to know how to be there for Steve. Help me to know what to do and to say….
Please hold me firmly in your love.

Oh wow! I took Josh to the airport on July 2, so that means he went to Ireland again that summer. (I hadn’t remembered he got to go one more time.) It looks like I picked him up again on July 31 — when a lot had changed.

In late May, Steve had started walking Amy’s dogs when she was out of town. I didn’t like it, but I asked to go with him to do it. By the end of June, Steve refused to bring me along.

We did a last family vacation to Apeldoorn in Holland on July 3 and 4. Steve had brass quintet jobs, but we were able to drive up as a family. It didn’t go well. In the night I reached out to Steve, and when he turned away, I gave a little sigh — which infuriated him.

We went to the Dolfinarium there. And a wave hit my camera — and it never worked well again. I bought a new one not long after.

On the way back — after years of me navigating for Steve, including times when he had told me how much he appreciates my navigating — we had a big fight about navigating. I’d accidentally put the map in the trunk, and the computer directions I’d printed out got us lost. And he wouldn’t stop to get the map out of the trunk.

And that was our last vacation together ever.

And I’ve got to figure out how to gloss over that awful summer.

My friends started seeing him on base out with Amy. Steve would say he suggested to several band folks to come to lunch. That was the same day he “forgot” to wear his wedding ring.

When I was upset about it, he said that I was argumentative and didn’t want him to have friends.

Where was the Lord? I see that July 8, I’d already found the verse in Isaiah 54 — “For your Maker is your husband — the Lord Almighty is his name — the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth….Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you.”

Steve stopped telling me if he’d be coming home for dinner. But he didn’t want me to call work and “check up on him.” He didn’t want me to email him any more at all.

And shortly after he asked me to stop sending him any emails, I went into the band building when Steve had forgotten his ID — and saw a funny joke email from Steve posted on Amy’s desk.

I told Steve I’d like to be treated at least as well as his friends — and he said that he treated all his friends better than he treated me.

Oh — another thing God did that summer was help me find my network of girlfriends. I didn’t have many local friends at that time — but at the end of March I’d emailed my two closest sisters Becky and Wendy, and then my three best friends — Kathe, Darlene, and Ruth. But I’d also added onto the list people who didn’t know Steve — who wouldn’t think any less of him for it. I included my writing buddies, and some new friends from the Sembach Writers’ Group. I included a friend I’d made who used to volunteer at the library and whose travel blog I followed. It turned out about ten years before, her husband had an emotional affair. But they were back together. She had a lot of wise advice. We still email regularly.

Writing to these friends so often helped me keep from over-reacting.

I was trying to reach out to Amy — and that seemed to make Steve furious.

Remember: I still believed Steve that she was the friend he needed. I figured if she was Steve’s good friend, she’d want to be friends with his wife. She could help me try to get Steve out of that depression.

Steve told me he didn’t want home stress to confront him at work. He didn’t want me to go to any band events or be around any band people.

There was a going-away party for one of Steve’s friends at Amy’s house. I thought it would be very rude for me to stay away. He was adamant that I should not go. I almost went anyway, but we ended up neither of us going. Who knows what I would have found if I had gone?

Steve did keep on getting found out — my friends kept seeing him out with Amy, or at the laundromat washing dog hair off his clothes. I thought that was God, and I still think so. Though I was also spared from finding out it was an affair.

And who knows what I would have done? She was a Senior Airman and he was a Master Sergeant. He could have indeed gotten kicked out of the Air Force if it had been found out.

I don’t know what God was doing at the time — but I do know that, years later, I’m glad how it all worked out.

I was able to resist the temptation to track him down. I don’t know how many times I was tempted to drive to Amy’s house and see if he was there. I never did. And that’s a good thing.

And God started bringing good books into my life, exactly the books I needed. I worked in a library. And one of the first tremendously helpful books I found was The Divorce Remedy, by Michele Weiner Davis. I wrote the review in December, after Steve had moved out. But I read the book in July. I’ve got an entry in my quiet time notebook where I resolved to follow the Last Resort Technique:

1) Stop pursuing. (I’d been pursuing so very, very hard!)
2) Get a life! (My plan was to focus on my writing and my work and be good to myself.)
3) Wait and watch.

This technique — and all the advice and comfort in the book really helped my sanity that summer. Not that I really managed to stop pursuing — but I do think I managed to tone it down!

(And remember: Steve was having an affair. He was telling me that he was working on the marriage — but he had already checked out. I didn’t know it was an affair, so I thought there was still hope.)

I also had to learn to find my value and worth in myself, with only negative reinforcement from Steve.

One thing that helped with that was I FINISHED MY PRIME FACTORIZATION SWEATER on July 25!

I’d been working on it for years. But finishing it made me smile, even in a really hard summer!

I explained the sweater later on my blog, so here I’ll just show the pictures I took.

Then came Timothy’s 11th Birthday!

And that, I’m afraid, was the day that Steve moved out of my bedroom for good. He didn’t consult me about it, just didn’t come to bed. And I was so afraid to be seen as being critical, I didn’t dare say anything. (No wait a minute — the second night, I went downstairs and saw him on the couch and made a sound of sadness — and got yelled at for doing that.)

Here’s what I wrote about that:

Wow, it hurts when Steve sleeps downstairs.

Talk about rejection.

He looks so sad now. Almost constantly frowning, and his face is sagging. His eyes are red and there are bags under his eyes.

He says he’s not depressed; he’s resentful.

Perhaps it will help if I think of him as wrestling with forgiveness. I hope he is. There are even indications that he is.

But he doesn’t want to sleep in the same room with me. And I’m afraid to breathe and wake him up.

It was so twisted. Every time I’d find out Steve had been with Amy — even when I believed they weren’t having an affair — because that meant he was preferring her to me — I felt like I was stabbed through the heart — but I didn’t dare make even a whimper of complaint. I was somehow believing that this was critical and wasn’t respectful. That I hadn’t forgiven him. That I was too prone to anger.

Here’s what I wrote on August 6:

O God, help me!
I found Dalmatian hair again — on our bed, on Steve’s bag, on Steve’s clothes, on the rug in the hall, and on the guestroom bed.
O God, today’s counseling. I don’t know what to say.
O God, I don’t want Steve to leave me.
Is the verse I need: “If the unbeliever wants to leave, let him do so. We are called to live in peace.”
O God, I was going to try to talk about forgiveness, to try to make restitution. What now?
O God, I want our marriage to be saved….

Well, by the next day, Steve had convinced me the Dalmatian hair was nothing — still in the back seat of his car and getting all over everything from a time he had walked dogs when Amy was out of town. He’d driven them to a path in the woods in his car and the hair was still there.

And I felt wrong for getting upset about it!

But the big enormous conflict happened at the end of the summer, August 25. I was planning to take the kids shopping for school clothes at the BX at Vogelweh. But Steve asked to use my slightly larger car. He eventually said that someone new in the band wanted help moving some stuff.

The next day, Steve got up early and went in to work. I was ready to take the kids shopping, and thought I’d suggest that we could have lunch together after shopping. (He must have said something about the person was moving near Vogelweh?) But the person I talked to didn’t know where Steve was — he wasn’t at the band building.

So — I took the kids clothes shopping. Afterward, we were going to have lunch and then do the grocery shopping. And look! There was my car in the parking lot next to Subway! We could have lunch with Steve!

Well, I wasn’t too surprised when I walked in that, sure enough, Steve was having lunch with Amy. (She was attending Airman Leadership School at the time, which was located near Vogelweh.) But the surprise was that — her parents were there.

Because Amy was attending Airman Leadership School, Steve had offered to pick up her parents from the airport when they came to visit.

Well, I was livid! But I’d made myself a resolution to wait 24 hours before I confronted Steve. So after introducing myself “I’m his wife” and having Steve buy the three of us lunch, I sat with them and chatted icily sweetly. Steve and Amy were pretty quiet, so I chatted with her parents.

That night I wrote, “Father, You are clearly working. I could not possibly have caught out Steve so neatly in his lies.
Father, please continue working. Soften Steve’s heart. Help him to feel Your love and my love.”

I have to interject here: I do think that these many times that Steve got found out — that God was giving him chance after chance to change his mind.

I’ll say no more about that, because this is my story not Steve’s. But I do believe God was working in Steve’s life as well as in mine.

I do think I was growing! My desperation was much less. Here’s from the next day:

Dear Father,
Well, Steve admits to no wrongdoing when he lied to me and met with Amy and picked up her parents.

He is going to continue meeting with Amy and maybe even continue lying. He doesn’t think I should make a fuss about him having lunch with a co-worker.

And he’s very angry with me.

So what do I do?

Lord, I still want our marriage to continue. At worst, I would stay married to him and co-parent our kids.

I don’t think he’ll divorce me while we’re in Germany. That would mean breaking up our home during Josh’s Senior year….

If we do get divorced, we’ll need to put aside anger and resentment. So I might as well practice that now.

I need to do as the book The Divorce Remedy recommends and completely ignore his relationship with Amy — to put all the energy I might spend thinking about them into other things….

And the kids started school! Timmy started 6th grade, Middle School, and Josh started 12th grade, a Senior!

On the second day of school, I wrote:

Today Timothy said he likes Algebra! He liked being the fastest, even though he was the youngest and smallest! I’m glad. He felt awkward being there yesterday.

Josh is still walking tall as a Senior. He said someone told him he looked like he’d grown — I think he’s simply holding himself tall. It’s nice to see him so happy with life.

One thing I really don’t like in my next set of entries is I keep on talking about my mistakes — mostly where I gave Steve an inkling of how hurt I was feeling. And he found out how many people I was writing to and got upset about that. And I’m reading in what I was writing that I was taking on a lot of the guilt about how I was responding.

In September, we took a trip to Europa Park in honor of Timothy’s birthday. Steve almost refused to go, but I convinced him to for Timothy’s sake. Here’s what I wrote about it.

Labor Day was rough. We went to Europa Park in honor of Timothy’s birthday. We did have a good time.

However, after awhile it got to me that Steve was avoiding sitting by me or touching me. I felt like I was poison.

We talked about it in counseling. He still thinks that he should not be too nice to me, or I will get my hopes too high. But it gets to me after awhile.

However, I think we both enjoyed being with the kids. Josh danced in the yodeling log ride line — and then boasted about how he got everyone in line to stare at him!

Timothy didn’t want to go on too many rides — too bad, since he liked the ones he did go on. And he did prefer to ride with Dad, so it was good that Steve came along.

After the counseling appointment, I wrote:

It was rough, because we ended with Steve mad at me. So I was discouraged most of today. I wish Steve wanted to be with me.

However, something significant was said. Steve thinks it’s not a matter of forgiveness — It’s that we’re just not right for each other. For example, I need to talk and he hates conflict.

That always makes me wonder where in the world he thinks he’ll find a woman who doesn’t need to talk. So I asked him.

He said, “I’m not thinking about another woman. I want to be ALONE!” That actually relieves me. If he doesn’t marry someone else, there’s always hope. I can wait him out.

He says he’s tired of emotional turmoil. I wish he’d see that it could be reduced with kindness.

[Dear Reader, I did eventually get over that desire to wait him out! And notice how he so neatly reassured me by saying he wanted to be alone. It does make you wonder if he was getting some pressure from the other woman, too.]

Though the next few days, he was much kinder to me. For awhile.

And that Fall, I started going to Yoga class one night a week, and still had Choir practice one night a week. Yay! I was getting a life! I was friends with the yoga instructor and my friend Suzanne, the wife of the first sergeant of the band, was also attending. It happened in Winnweiler, which was where Amy lived.

The first night I got there, and Suzanne told me someone else from the band was attending. Did I know Amy?

So — each week at yoga, I got to practice being gracious. In my most spiteful moments, I’d think to myself how sad Amy must be that she was so fat. (I had lost more than 20% of my weight in the first few months of our marital crisis. I simply wasn’t hungry. I got down to my high school weight of 105 pounds. Don’t worry — I’ve gained it all back since then! But it was fun while it lasted.) But all in all, yoga was great for me. A good practice thinking peaceful thoughts and the exercise was good for me.

And in September, my journal entries are excited and happy about my writing and about getting ready for PARIS in November! (More on that!) I finally got myself a laptop so I wouldn’t have to wait my turn on the family computer. (And it was time to stop writing to my friends on the family email account. After Steve started reading what I was writing, I opened the sonderbooks account.)

And then things really went downhill. On September 29, Steve wasn’t home yet when I left for yoga, even though the plan was for him to feed the kids dinner. But I went ahead to Winnweiler. I had trouble finding parking, and as I was driving around the village — I saw Steve’s car coming toward me leaving the village. I rolled down my window and greeted him. He said he “went for a walk.” I asked, “With Amy?” And he said Yes.

Of course, he’d gone for a walk after work several times in the past three weeks — so I was pretty sure it was with Amy each time. This meant he was walking dogs with her again behind my back. It broke my heart the first time. Why did he think it wouldn’t break my heart this time?

Amy wasn’t at yoga that night. The instructor kept saying to notice what you were feeling. Well, what I was feeling was heartbreak. But I managed to keep it together the entire class. Only I was shaking in some of the positions. My friend Suzanne, the first sergeant’s wife, tried to give me tips afterward to help me not shake — and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I started sobbing.

This really worried Suzanne. She urged me and urged me to tell her what was wrong. I said I couldn’t. But she said, “You can tell me.” And that she wouldn’t tell her husband. So finally I poured it out.

I did confront Steve when I got home.

Here’s what I wrote to my email support group. I was getting some perspective.

I assumed that this meant that every time in the last
few weeks when he came home late, that he was with
Amy. It turns out that it was only tonight, now that
she’s back from ALS.

He was really mad when I said he was lying to me
(after yoga). Because he told me what he was doing as
soon as I asked. Whatever! But it was a bit of a
relief to know that this wasn’t what he was doing the
past several weeks. He said he hadn’t seen her during
her six weeks at ALS.

Anyway, he told me that the reason he doesn’t tell me
ahead of time is that I will want to talk about it
“like this.” I tried to explain that I was upset
about the deception, not about the walking with Amy–I
did say that he is welcome to break her heart.

I was completely calm and did not raise my voice while
talking with him, but he’s furious with me and said he
doesn’t want to talk about things and he doesn’t like
spending time with me. (I DID cry hard at the end of
yoga–but yoga helped me feel calmer about things.)

I’m still not leaving. Yes, he’s treating me like
dirt. Yes, I deserve much, much better than this
treatment. So I am going to continue to focus on my
activities and not let him ruin my happiness. I do
believe that God will take my revenge for me, if Steve
is indeed wronging me. He promises especially to take
up the case of “the wife of your youth” if a man
betrays her. So I am going to try to forgive and
repay the evil with good and leave room for God’s
wrath.

I’m giving myself a pep talk here. I’m not nearly as
strong as I’m trying to sound. Believe me, I did some
hard crying tonight, and a lot of the yoga moves got
me shaking when they might not have otherwise.

I do believe that if Steve is the sort of person who
would leave his wife, then I am much better off
without him. But I don’t think he’s that kind of
person, and I so, so hope that he will choose to love
me again and treat me as a wife should be treated. I
think we’ll both (and definitely our kids) be better
off. But I know that if He rejects me, God will bring
good out of it, and make me a much more beautiful
person than before.

Tonight I’m not reproaching myself about anything I
said. I think the bottomline reason Steve got mad is
because he knows he treated me badly. But he
certainly doesn’t think so.

I don’t think he’s going to fall for Amy (If he does,
they deserve each other!)–so this kind of behavior is
bound to hurt her–and that’s fine with me! It does
hurt me, but I am going to try to forgive to keep it
from being lasting hurt.

OKAY–ENOUGH already! 🙂

Sigh. Things were deteriorating.

But to add to the fun — when Suzanne got home, her husband asked why she was so late. She said that Sondy was really upset. He asked right away, “Was Amy there?” Suzanne had no clue about Steve and Amy before that night — but Joe knew exactly why I was upset before she told him.

And then — Steve got a letter of counseling for the “Perception of an Inappropriate Relationship.”

I had sent Joe an email saying that Steve and Amy had not done anything inappropriate. Please do not do anything, because Steve would blame me. Joe said that it didn’t matter what was happening at home. People at work were complaining. He sent the letter of counseling completely based on what was going on at work.

[I hadn’t realized at all how strict the rules against fraternization are in the military. I thought since Steve wasn’t having an affair (or so I thought), he couldn’t get in trouble. But apparently, a Master Sergeant isn’t even supposed to be special friends with a senior airman.]

And yes, Steve was completely convinced it was my fault.

Oh look! In the middle of these comments about the letter of counseling, I see that my dear co-worker Elfriede took me to a long lunch and bought me apple strudel and told me she loves me.

Here’s Elfriede! Elfriede always told me she was my fan. It’s good to have a fan! Especially when you feel like you’re doing things wrong.

And then, on October 25, 2005, I wrote this:

O Father,
Steve told me last night that he has finally decided to divorce me.

O God, I so hoped he wouldn’t do this. Now it sounds like he’s even willing to divorce me before we move, forcing me to go back to the States.

Lord, give me wisdom. I don’t want my signature on any divorce documents. But I do want custody of Timothy and for Steve to keep his promise to support me. Give me wisdom, Lord.

Thank You, Father, that You will watch over me no matter what. Help me to be loving, not vindictive. Help me to be a better person through this. Thank You for Your great love.

The “promise” I was referring to was that back in the Spring, when Steve was already talking about leaving me, I’d asked him if I needed to find a full-time job. He’d said that even if he left, he’d still support me. (My friends said I should have gotten that in writing, and they were right!) But by this time — It was too late for me to find a full-time job. We were due to leave Germany the following August and I actually wasn’t allowed to apply for anything with so little time left. Plus, I was going to lose the job I did have in August.

The next morning when I woke up, I made a decision: I would become a Librarian!

I had been thinking for at least a year that when we moved back to the States, I’d focus on my writing full-time. But now that I knew I’d be needing a full-time job, I didn’t trust that I could find anything with my Math Master’s, so why not get a Master’s in Library Science and become a full-time librarian? The more I thought about it, the happier I was with the decision.

So that’s another thing God was doing — this career I love was a direct result of getting divorced.

The next day I went to the Ramstein legal office and talked to a wonderful lawyer who was an older lady. She was tremendously encouraging. And she explained that Steve couldn’t possibly divorce me before we left Germany. We’d be under Illinois law — and under Illinois law you have to be separated for a full year before you can file for divorce. We didn’t have a year left in Germany. So that really eased my fears of getting sent back early.

And — I’m going to have to stop there tonight. But the next thing that happened in the worst year of my life was the best trip of my life — the SCBWI Writers’ Retreat in Paris! I’ll talk about that in the next installment.

I’m not sure I’ve communicated in this post how much God was with me, walking me through. But He was, He was, He was.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 40!

40 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 40 — June 14, 2004, to June 14, 2005.

I’m doing it in pieces. This morning, I covered the revelation that my husband was spending time with another woman — walking dogs with her, watching movies with her — behind my back.

He looked me in the eye and confessed with the words, “I’m not having an affair, but…” And so much that followed was pretty much a direct result of my belief in this lie.

I mentioned that I’d always thought I’d immediately file divorce from my husband if he had an affair. Well, at the time I had very black-and-white thinking about divorce. Since I believed him that there was not an affair, I very strongly with all my heart believed that divorce was WRONG.

(Okay, there’s also the element that if I divorced him, I’d lose my job and get sent back to America. And it was Josh’s Junior year of high school!)

But yes, I was still devastated. I think that surprised Steve a little bit. I mean, he wasn’t having an affair, just needed a friend. What was my problem?

Here’s what I wrote in my quiet time journal the next day, March 15:

Father,
I feel like my heart has been stepped on, splattering a room full of blood.
When I get busy, I forget about it for awhile.
Then I remember, and pain actually catches in my chest.
I feel so horribly needy, and I feel sure Steve must hate that. But I so desperately want him to love me! So much! And I’m so afraid that that makes me unlovable.

Why do I feel like Steve dislikes me?

Any little criticism now revives all my fears.

Steve said people are defined by their biggest fears. My greatest fear is that Steve won’t like me.

I’m torturing myself by thinking of how his eyes lit up as he left me — to go to be with the dogs and Amy. He barely talked to me those last three days of his trip — and then he went to Amy’s house to watch Mulan. It makes my stomach sick when I think of it.

Now I don’t know what to do. When is it supposed to stop hurting? How do I find out what Steve’s thinking? How do I make him happy? Is it possible?

Oh God, I need HELP!!!!

I just feel so despairing. How can I ever regain his love? How did I get it in the first place?

I so want Steve to be happy.

Why did he hurt me so much?

What should I do? What should I do?

Steve was apologetic at first. I don’t think he’d realized how hugely I was hurt even if I did believe him it wasn’t an affair. But he didn’t sound like he’d enjoyed living a double life. I thought that was that. The secret was out, and it was done.

I did write to Amy at her work email address the next day. I don’t remember everything I said, but I do remember some of what it included. I said, first, that Steve had assured me that absolutely nothing romantic had happened between them — but I really needed to hear it from her as well.

After all, I didn’t want to, when I saw her at band functions, feel like scratching her eyes out.

Notice everyone: This is NOT a threat at all! I believed I was talking to someone who was a “friend” to Steve! A “friend” would want their friend’s wife to know that everything was aboveboard and friendly! A “friend” would not want the wife to think they were making on move on her husband! A “friend” would completely understand and want to defuse that completely natural anger they had unwittingly aroused!

For all I knew, Amy didn’t even know that Steve hadn’t told me he was going to her house. So I explained to her that I didn’t know, and she really should ask him in the future, because she wasn’t helping his marriage.

I told her that Steve had said he needed a friend, so I should thank her for being there for him.

But I also said that, if a married man asks to come over to your house at midnight, a friend says No. So I couldn’t really call her Steve’s friend.

She didn’t answer. The next day or so, Steve found out that she had been crying. Later, he came to me saying that Amy had suffered abuse in the past, so she was upset by my threats of violence!!!

I asked him why she would be upset by my letter if there was nothing romantic between them. He then admitted that she had told him she had “feelings” for him. I asked if they’d done anything romantic at all — even held hands? He assured me that no, they hadn’t.

Though at that point all I could think was, I TOLD you so! I TOLD you she’d fall for you if you went on romantic walks with her! See! I was right all along!

Steve asked to go to Amy’s house to talk with her. I said okay, and I sent her a note saying that I knew he was going, because of course now she would want to be very careful not to see him behind my back. I actually apologized for my earlier note! (Which I regretted before long.)

Steve said she told him to go to hell and that he’d put her in a bad position, and she wouldn’t let him in.

Well, that was fine with me. (Though Steve said I didn’t want him to have any friends.) Okay, so I all the more thought it was done. Steve was seeing this “friend” behind my back, but he’d apologized and I’d explained to her that it was behind my back and now she was mad at him anyway.

So I was wary, but I thought it was done.

However, Steve did start telling me all the ways I’d let him down. Everything I’d done wrong over 18 years of marriage. According to him, three times, I had said, “I hate you.” I remembered one of those times. It was in our first year of marriage. I had apologized for it. (Steve never told me how many times I’d said “I love you” over the years.)

He also said that three times I’d threatened to leave him. I only remembered one of those, too. It was during a recent argument. I’d said, “Maybe I should just Leave!” What I’d meant by that was Maybe I should do the horrible thing of leaving the house in the middle of an argument and drive around for an hour. I did not mean divorce. But when I explained that to Steve, he continued to insist that I’d threatened to leave him three times.

And he had many other grievances. But there was a big disconnect there. Remember, Steve was having an affair — This list of things I’d done were his reasons why that was totally justified.

I believed Steve had “needed a friend” because I had not “been there” for him. Well, I could fix that! I would hereby “be there” for him and satisfy his every whim!

One of his complaints was not enough sex. Well, I could definitely fix that! (And Steve traveled a lot. I wasn’t satisfied with the amount of sex in our marriage, either.)

Steve gave me a little speech about how he shouldn’t really have sex with me now, but he couldn’t turn it down. That was incomprehensible to me. I figured that sex was one thing she wasn’t getting, and I was going to make the most of that! Though there were times in the coming months when Steve actually got mad at me for initiating sex when he was tired! Should have been a big, big, big tip-off, but I still believed that he wouldn’t look into my eyes and lie to me.

That part is almost amusing now. But the truth is, I went into a major depression.

It turned out that the migraine preventative I was taking, Neurontin, can actually cause depression — if you have a reason to be depressed. I didn’t figure this out until much later, though.

But here’s what I wrote in my quiet time journal on March 17. I hadn’t realized this happened so soon after the revelation.

Thank You, Father.

As I was praying to you out on our front doorstep, crying out to you in agony, You suddenly took away my neediness. You told me that if Steve left me, that would not be the end — that You would give me someone new to love me, and my life would be beautiful.

Actually, what I “heard” clear as could be in my mind was “Steve will leave you, and…” Well, I didn’t listen carefully after that, I was so horrified by those first words and was saying, “No, Lord, please No.” But — it really did fill me with peace. And tell me that there was joy ahead. That I should NOT end my life. (And that’s how bad I was.)

My journal entry continues…

Father, I don’t want that second-best wonderful option. But thank You for helping me to stop being a quivering bundle of neediness. Thank You that You reminded me that, even though I am flawed, You made me a wonderful person with glorious possibilities.

Then, yesterday, Steve began doing wonderful things for me. He introduced me [when the Brass Quintet played at the middle school] as “beautiful and wonderful.” And he played, just for me, “Simple Gifts,” the song he played on the day he asked me to marry him.

He really did that. After the concert, when people were milling around, he played Simple Gifts. To me.

He’s making it very clear that he’s choosing to stay in love with me.

However, three days later on the 20th:

Today Steve and I spent a couple of hours talking. He worked hard to convince me that we have a bad, unhappy marriage. Father, he had plenty of evidence.

Lord, I tried to think of our marriage as a good one. We have lunches together. We talk to each other. Steve brought up all the times we’ve caused each other pain. He seems ready to jump on little things and show me why that proves we’re incompatible. Even his band friends have told him they wonder why we’re together.

Lord, he convinced me. He doesn’t sound like he has much hope for our marriage at all.

Father, I always like to look on the bright side. Steve still thrills me. We hadn’t fought in awhile. So I thought things were okay.

Lord, please help our marriage to heal.

Help me to know what changes I should make that will help me to be a better wife. And help Steve to trust those changes and to be able to forgive the past.

Okay, wait a minute. I glossed over Josh’s 17th birthday on the 19th.

It was a Saturday, so we went to Holiday Park that day.

And the next week, was Josh’s Brain Bowl competition, a couple hours away. That year, Josh’s team got 2nd place!

Steve went to Georgia, the former Soviet republic, the next week, which was a fantastic trip for him. But I remember crying on the phone with him. He was already talking about moving out.

And here’s my quiet time journal on April 2nd.

Dear Father,
I feel soooo rejected tonight. Talk about up and down and up and down. Any time I feel encouraged about our relationship, Steve pushes me down again.

He won’t tell me he loves me. When I talk about how he loved me when we were married, he talks about the fights we had. He seemed to think they were worth it then.

[He actually said that he’d decided to stop lying to me, and that was why he wouldn’t say he loved me any more. I clung to that and reasoned if he wouldn’t even tell me he loved me, then he was telling the truth about everything else, too! But it was selective truth.]

He’d worked out all these reasons why we should split up. He seems disappointed that I don’t agree.

Lord, I’m wrong to be angry. That will NOT win his heart.

[Oh Sondy, Sondy, I’m not so sure you were wrong!]

He’s rejecting me, and he’s rejecting You, too.

Thank You for the progress today and yesterday. Thank You that he’s giving me three months. Thank You that he sees that things are not the way he thought he had them figured out.

Lord, help Steve to want to fix things.

Right now Steve doesn’t want to read my notes; he doesn’t want to read to me; he doesn’t want to have sex with me; he doesn’t want to go to church with me; he doesn’t want to kiss me.

Lord, Steve is hurting. Put compassion in my heart toward him….

I see from the next entry that Steve was already talking about not attending church any more. I tried switching churches — we went to the bigger Faith Baptist Church near Ramstein. They had a better Sunday School for the kids. Steve went a couple weeks — and slept through the sermon. Then he stopped altogether.

However, Steve did agree to go on the Rome vacation I’d already booked. Josh’s Florence trip started on April 5, and we flew to Pisa on April 9. (That was actually where we met Josh.)

But the day before the trip — when I was busy packing and getting ready — Steve spent a few hours because he “needed” to take Amy’s dogs to a kennel. There had been a sudden change of plans for a Brass Quintet tour that Amy was on, and she hadn’t had time to take them.

I hadn’t even known they were friends again. And I did not see why Steve should spend his time helping her when I needed his help getting ready for the trip. But Steve got mad at me for that reaction.

We did, though, have another wonderful trip. Lots of tension between Steve and me, but fun times, too.

I only got really sad once on the train when Steve sat on the other side of the aisle from me and the kids joined him. I felt like poison.

But anyway, here are some Rome pictures!

One of the awesome things about going after Josh’s AP Art History field trip was having Josh explain things about various works of art during our trip. We saw some amazing museums where I couldn’t take pictures. We especially enjoyed the Museo Borghese.

We finished with a few hours in Florence.

Things continued to be very rocky. But I arranged for Timothy’s friend’s mom to take him on a weekend and for Josh to stay with a friend — and I made plans to visit Steve on his tour in England, now that he was a MSgt and got his own hotel room. I came for a free day they had in the middle of the trip and spent the night before and after.

He showed me Ely Cathedral, where he’d performed many concerts.

Sigh. But on that trip, Steve had openly brought along a book with tips for having better sex with women. I actually thought he was reading it to improve our relationship! I read a bit of it myself. Yes, I feel very, very, very stupid about this. But also angry that Steve was so confident he could fool me — and he could — that he didn’t even hide those things. He also didn’t hide a book he’d purchased called Seduction that he kept in his bedside table drawer. It still didn’t even compute that he was having an affair.

Mind you, I was relieved that we didn’t even see Amy while I was there. Somehow, I thought band people saw more of each other.

We also went into London and visited the British Library, where Jane Austen’s manuscript brought tears to my eyes.

And we visited the British Museum.

So, we had a nice trip — but things weren’t going well. I’d keep trying. We’d keep having setbacks. I was in a very deep depression.

Toward the end of May, Steve said that while Amy was out of town, he’d agreed to walk her dogs. He thought I would have no problem with that, since, after all, Amy wasn’t there.

Well, I wasn’t going to argue with anything Steve said. Because that would make me argumentative. But I was not happy about it. However, I did say that he could do it, if he’d take me along. Then at least I’d get some time with my husband. And I could see for myself that Amy wasn’t there!

Still, my depression was very deep. But four things helped get me out of it.

The biggest help was the least spiritual. Remember how the migraine preventative I was on could actually cause depression? I eventually switched to an antidepressant I’d tried before as a preventative, Zoloft. (Okay, now I can’t find starting Zoloft written in my calendar, so maybe this happened later. But eventually, it really did help, both my depression and my headaches.)

Another big help I mentioned when I told my story. My quiet times were happening in Psalm 103. More about that in a bit.

Another big help was that Kathe came to visit! She brought her kids, Tim and Ben, and her Mom, Patti. I had a wonderful talk with Patti. Her own husband had left her in a very similar way when she was about my age. So to see her vibrant and active and happy, traveling in Europe was inspirational. (Both Kathe and her Mom had left their husbands back at home.)

We took Kathe and her family to our favorite castles, of course!

First, Burg Falkenstein.

Then Altenbaumburg.

And of course Burg Rheinfels!

But — the thing that helped most to pull me out of depression happened on Kathe’s birthday, June 4, 2005.

I’d been singing with the German-American choir all this time? Well, they had a concert on Kathe’s birthday in the gorgeous old Cistercian church in Otterberg. (It looked like a cathedral, but technically wasn’t one.)

Anyway, two days before the concert, our soloist got sick and lost her voice. They asked me to step in and sing the solo.

It was perfect! I didn’t have any time to be nervous. And if I did a bad job — well, I hadn’t prepared.

I don’t remember what song it was, but I do remember that it was a Christian song with encouraging words that really helped.

And what do you know? It turns out you can’t stand up and sing a solo while feeling like you’re worthless. It just can’t be done.

Mind you, Steve managed to miss the solo. He drove Josh to their prom that night. Kathe’s family and my Timothy were there — and Timothy came home with a fever! But we had cake for Kathe after the concert — and I was just encouraged and uplifted.

We were still struggling along. We had started going to marriage counseling. Free on-base marriage counseling. I think when I got where I was thinking about thinking about suicide, Steve thought it would be good to get me in there. And I had convinced myself that Steve’s problem was that he was depressed. (Hadn’t he been telling me how much he needed a friend?) So I wanted to get him to see a counselor. Anyway, at the beginning of the counseling, I was still hoping it would help. But this was an Air Force officer, so it’s not like Steve was ever going to tell him the truth about his affair.

The counselor did enroll us in a Communication Class for couples.

I’ll end with a hopeful note. Here’s what I wrote in my quiet time notebook on my 41st birthday, June 14, 2005.

I’m 41 today.

What will my 42nd year hold?

I’d like it to be the year that my marriage is restored.

Father, even if it is not, I know that You will remain faithful.

And today I’m hopeful. Steve is sweetly working to give me a happy birthday. He can’t come to the Couples’ Class today, but that gives us a reason to start meeting weekly — the first time, I’ll go over what we learned today.

Lord, please restore our marriage this year. Draw Steve back to You. Help him to feel how greatly You love him. Help both of us grow to be the people You created us to be.

The verses I’d like for my 42nd year are Psalm 103:8-14 —
“The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth
so great is his love for those who fear him,
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.”

Father, thank You for Your tremendous love. Thank You for Your faithfulness. Thank You for the love You’ve put in my heart for Steve. Help him feel Your love for him.

I’d also like for this to be the year I become a published author. But so much more than that, I’d like my marriage to be restored.

I’m afraid, though, that things were about to get much, much worse — before they eventually got much, much better.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 40!

40 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 40 — June 14, 2004, to June 14, 2005.

Last time, I covered the start of that year, right up until the time that my husband started having an affair.

No, I didn’t know it was an affair. I found out in August 2006 — so a year and a half later.

Anyway, the previous November, I’d found out about an SCBWI Writers’ Retreat in Paris. I so wanted to go! But it was expensive. So my husband generously offered to give me this gift. The one catch was we’d have to put off the family ski trip we were planning for over Thanksgiving.

Steve really wanted to go on a ski trip. He grew up in upstate New York and loved to ski. Me? Not so much. So as it approached, he said we couldn’t really afford a family trip. Why shouldn’t he just go alone? After all, I was going on the Writers’ Retreat myself. It made sense to me.

But that week, Steve was terribly sick with the flu. Here’s my journal entry from Thursday, February 10, 2005:

Steve’s going skiing this weekend. He wanted to feel that he has interests and activities and a life outside work. The only trouble is — He’s terribly sick with the flu. Since Tuesday, he’s had a bad sore throat and earache and a fever. He’s gone to work anyway, though his co-workers say he looks terrible. I guess he figures if he can work while he’s sick, he can certainly ski while he’s sick!

His train leaves at 5 am tomorrow for Innsbruck, Austria. He’ll get back at midnight on Sunday.

Make no mistake about it, I urged him to put off the ski trip, since he was so sick. But he was adamant. However, I really worried about him. It didn’t help that he didn’t call until Sunday. I didn’t have the phone number at his hotel. He’d said he’d just find a place once he got there.

From my Quiet Time journal on Saturday:

Lord, watch over Steve on his ski trip. Draw him to You. Call his name. Let him have time to think about the life You have for him.

On Sunday, I was in Psalm 91. This was before he called.

Father, I know from Psalm 91 that You are watching over Steve.

So I refuse to worry about him or let my imagination think up things that could go wrong.

Lord, I ask that You watch over Steve on his trip. Let him get a chance to call me. Speak to Steve, Father. Get his attention. Help him to be the man You made him to be.

Let Steve be energized and invigorated, with new excitement about his life.

Thank You that You hear my prayer and answer.

Let our Valentine’s Day be a beautiful time of growing closer together.

Truth check: Much later, Steve told me this was when their affair started. I’m afraid it gave me a certain satisfaction to realize that when they started out, he was sniffling and coughing and very sick.

Anyway, Monday was Valentine’s Day. I see we went out to dinner and a movie, but I don’t remember what movie. There was a USAFE Awards Lunch that day, and Steve the award of Senior NCO of the Year!

We had some more beautiful snow that month.

On March 5, I was excited because I booked us a vacation in Rome over Spring Break. That year, Josh’s AP Art History class was taking a field trip to Florence at the start of Spring Break. (Coolest field trip EVER!) Our plan was to meet Josh in Florence when that trip ended and take a train to Rome, then Pisa, then back to Florence, finishing out Spring Break.

That same day, Saturday, March 5, Steve started a week-long trip to England. I think it was just the Brass Quintet. I’m pretty sure his co-worker Amy was not on that trip.

They were due to leave in the afternoon, at 3:00. So when Steve said he had to go to work early (He was Director of Operations.) and left around 10 am, I stooped to begging that he could stay home a little longer to be with us. He gave a funny little smile (which still haunts me) and said No, he had a lot of work to do.

After he left, I discovered he’d left his credit card at home. I was willing to bring it to work. I called him two or three times at work, but got no answer. Around 2:00, someone else answered, but they said he wasn’t there. I left a message that his credit card was at home, but he didn’t get the message in time to pick it up. It was odd.

I asked him about it on the trip, and he said he’d done some shopping for food for the trip. That didn’t explain being gone from the office four hours, but I didn’t argue. Just figured I’d missed him somehow.

That week, it turned out my Dad was going to be coming through Germany again! We made plans to pick him up at the airport in Frankfurt on Friday and bring him back to the airport on Sunday

Steve was due to get back from his trip on Saturday at midnight. I didn’t get to talk with him a lot on that trip. (It was always hard on trips going through the hotel operator.) When we talked on Wednesday or so, he said he was going to have to do some work at the office after he got home on Saturday night, so don’t wait up for him. I started stewing about that. I was going to ask him to come home right away, since we’d be driving my Dad to the airport the next day. But I didn’t get a chance to talk with Steve again before he got back.

We had a quiet weekend. After I picked up my Dad, that was the night of the Parent-Teen Brain Bowl competition. The families of the Brain Bowl team come and compete with the kids, for practice for the big upcoming tournament. On Saturday, I think we just walked around the lovely fields. There may have still been snow on the ground.

Saturday night, I couldn’t sleep, waiting for Steve. I was anxious to see him after a week away. I tried calling the office two or three times, but never got an answer. I thought about driving to the band building to find him, but didn’t want to leave the house with everyone sleeping.

I finally went to sleep around 2:30 am. I woke up when Steve came to bed and checked the clock. It was 3 am.

We skipped church the next day, and took my Dad to the airport around noon, while the kids stayed home. On the way back from the airport, I told Steve, “If it were a novel, and a husband wasn’t where he said he’d be multiple times, that would be a sure sign it was an affair.”

He asked, “What do you mean?”

I explained that multiple times I’d called his work and he wasn’t there. (I was also thinking of the day he’d left for the trip, which still hadn’t been explained adequately, but mostly the night before.)

Steve looked me in the eye, and he said, “I’m not having an affair.”

I explained that I knew that, but I’d sure think a character in a novel was dumb if she didn’t suspect an affair in my situation.

Steve said he’d been really sick to his stomach the night before, so had spent a lot of time in the restroom. (Hmmm. Thinking about it now, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was very true.) That didn’t begin to explain how many many times I’d tried to call him. And it didn’t clear up my frustration that I’d never gotten to ask him not to work late that night. I was really missing my husband after his week away. But I didn’t want to complain about having such a hard-working husband….

That day, all my calendar says is “Nap.”

The next day, Monday, was March 14, 2005. I had a day off (still working 20 hours per week at the base library). The kids were at school and Steve was at work.

When I made my bed, I noticed a whole lot of white hairs on the bedspread. Those were Dalmatian hairs.

[Edited to add: Over Christmas break, while Amy was out of town, Steve had offered to walk her Dalmatians, and did it with me. (I think there was no point in hiding this, and he may have still been hoping I’d be willing to get a dog. I was happy to have the outing with him.) That was when I’d learned that Dalmatian hair — little short white hairs — gets all over EVERYTHING.]

But I’d vacuumed while Steve was on his trip. (Yes, it was a month after Christmas break! Don’t judge!) These were new Dalmatian hairs. On my bed.

Calm down, Sondy. If he’d been with Amy the night before, there’d be Dalmatian hairs on his coat.

I checked. There were Dalmatian hairs. But only a few. Probably still leftover from before?

But I then looked at the laundry he had in a basket downstairs from his trip. (He’d started doing his own laundry after trips. Some time or other I’d complained about having lots of laundry to do when he got back.) Well, in the basket underneath some other clothes were a pair of socks — completely covered in Dalmatian hair.

To say I was devastated is putting it mildly.

My husband was having an affair!

No! There must be some mistake! This wasn’t possible! We loved each other! He was committed to me!

Well, I called Steve at work and said, “We need to talk!” There was urgency in my voice.

He promised to come right home at lunchtime. I had an hour where I was sure my husband was having an affair.

I’d ALWAYS thought if my husband had an affair, I’d divorce him in a heartbeat. In fact, in the 90s, I’d despised Hillary Clinton because she hadn’t divorced her husband. I thought surely she only stayed with him because she was power hungry.

But when it came down to it, I was far too bewildered to want divorce. I didn’t believe it could be true. Steve must not understand that I loved him! No, we could fix this!

When Steve walked in the door, I showed him the socks and cried.

He looked me in the eye and said, “I’m not having an affair….”

[Dear Reader, everything I did and said in the next year and a half was filtered through the fact that I BELIEVED my husband would not look me in the eye and lie to me.

I was wrong.]

He continued, “… but I am living a double life.”

He said that he’d continued walking dogs with Amy, and he’d started going to her house and watching movies. That night, they’d watched the movie Mulan.

[Yes, Dear Reader, I believed my husband when he said he was at a young woman’s house from midnight to 3 am and they only watched a movie. This trust also has the effect of making me feel pretty darn stupid.]

He said he needed a friend because I hadn’t been there for him.

I was catching a bad cold that day already. I learned that doing lots of crying feels pretty much the same as having a bad cold. Also, a broken heart actually physically hurts. Who knew?

Here’s what I wrote in my Quiet Time journal on March 14:

“Light is shed upon the righteous
and joy on the upright in heart.”

Father, I need some light and some joy.

Today I found out that Steve has been lying to me in order to spend time with Amy. He apologized; I forgave him. But I feel cut to the quick, heartbroken and worthless. I feel like this means that even my husband can’t love me.

Father, Steve says he does love me. Steve says that partly he lied to me because it seemed like our relationship was getting better. But that was a lie, too.

Oh, Father, please help us! Please let my husband love me. Please help us to be best friends again. Father, You made me. Help me to remember that I do have value to You.

Lord, give me love and forgiveness toward Steve. Help me to be there for him. Help him to turn to me.

Lord, Steve is hurting so much. Please, please draw him to You.

You see, Steve said that he’d really needed a friend and I hadn’t been there for him. What I heard is this: Steve needed me! And I wasn’t there for him! Oh, I was so ready to make up for that!

And I need to get to work, so that’s going to be it for this installment.