It's All About Him (14 page)

Isaiah 43:16, 18–19

T
he old oak tree on our property changes with the seasons. In the fall it is warm and mellow, standing tall in a thicket of golden trees. In the winter its leaves all fall. It looks dead and stark against the cold, gray skies. In the spring it sends forth tender growth, and green leaves return to cover its naked branches. In the sweltering summer it offers cool shade beneath its big canopy.

When I look at that big tree, or consider the flocks of cherry trees that dot our pastures in the spring, like lacy lambs, I think of seasons in my own life.

The separation from Alan was like winter for me. It felt cold and dry as a dead bone. But under the surface, down in the very marrow of who I was, God was actually growing something tender and new in me. His Spirit was flowing, and springtime was coming.

I felt like the description in Psalm 1:1–3:

Blessed is the [person] who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked . . .
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in season
And whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

In a worldly sense, plenty of people would give me “wicked counsel” about Alan.

“Just get what you can,” they'd say. “Get the best lawyer money can buy, and take Alan for everything you can get.” Others would tell me, “Let Alan know that you don't care. Make sure he sees you with someone else.”

They meant well, but besides sounding like we were back in high school or something, these bits of advice were actually unhealthy ways of looking at the situation. They were all about retribution and gain, fueled by rage.

Not that I hadn't considered them all at some point!

But I had seen women who'd been wronged get to the point where any conversation with them seethed with bitterness and rage. They were always negative, unable to move past their anger to a new start.

No Baseball Bat

Anger came quite naturally to me. At one point I threw all of Alan's remaining clothes into the back of a pickup truck so a friend could dump them at his rental home. If he was not going to live with me, then I could at least have more closet space.

More often I beat him up with words. (Thankfully, I never did take a Louisville Slugger to any of his vehicles' headlights, as Carrie Underwood sings in her hit song about revenge, nor did I dump his music awards in the lake.)

But as time went by, a miracle happened. I found myself drawn by God's Spirit into a different response altogether. It wasn't me, as if I became a great heroine far above normal human reactions, Saint Denise of Nashville.

No, I just found that the more I pursued my new relationship with Jesus and the more I explored the Bible, the more my attitudes were changing. It was incredible: I saw the words of Psalm 1 beginning to come true in
me
, of all people. I was finding my “delight” in God's Word.

Instead of my thoughts running like a gerbil on a wheel when I went to bed at night, I'd pray out loud. I'd proclaim God's promises for peace and His love to my empty bedroom. After all, it wasn't like I was keeping Alan awake; he wasn't there. But I wasn't alone. God was with me. And the Bible wasn't a big old dusty book . . . it was God's love letter to me. I could go to sleep in peace as I grabbed hold of His truths in my mind and meditated on them in my heart.

As I did this, I became more like that “tree planted by streams of water” that Psalm 1:3 describes. Drawing my nourishment from the Bible, sustained by God's fresh love, I was growing stronger in the perspective of what really mattered. Faith. Hope. Love.

After all, we become like whatever we pursue. When I'd chased after what other people thought of me, I'd ended up hollow and flimsy, my identity as fleeting as a fashion trend. As I chased after God, I actually found my true self.

AS I CHASED AFTER GOD, I ACTUALLY FOUND MY TRUE SELF.

I was also reading tons of Christian books. I read
A Love Worth Giving,
by Max Lucado, and underlined the sentence that read, “There are seasons when God allows us to feel the frailty of human love so we'll appreciate the strength of his love.”
¹
Though I never would have chosen the sad season of separation from my husband, I found that it drove me to the Love that would never let me go. And the more I got into God's powerful love, the more it changed me.

Snipping and Clipping

I was also going through some changes that were, shall we say, a little more superficial.

Soon after Alan left, I sang a few verses of the old song “I Will Survive” and took myself off to the salon. I'd had long, blonde hair ever since Alan first laid eyes on me. “Cut it off!” I told the stylist. I shut my eyes while she clipped and snipped, and kept them closed while she dusted me off and someone came along with a broom and swept all my long, golden locks away to the trash. Then I had them add platinum color to it, just to put it over the top.

MY HAIR WAS ALMOST WHITE, IT WAS SO LIGHT, AND APPROXIMATELY HALF AN INCH LONG. I LOOKED LIKE JOAN OF ARC, OR MAYBE A PLATINUM VERSION OF DEMI MOORE IN
G.I. J ANE
.

Eventually, since I needed to drive home, I opened my eyes. My hair was almost white, it was so light, and approximately half an inch long. I looked like Joan of Arc, or maybe a platinum version of Demi Moore in
G.I. Jane
. I looked like I had joined the Army.

I marched home. Fortunately the girls loved me whether I had hair or not . . . especially Dani, who was about six months old. I guess her vision wasn't fully developed yet.

Only God Knows

During this surreal time that Daddy was gone and Mommy was crying, laughing, going to Bible study, and cutting off her hair, all of us drew great comfort from baby Dani. It was so soothing to simply tickle her and make her smile, to hug her and kiss her and know that she loved me unconditionally.

Like me, Dani had been a twin. Months before, at my eleven-week checkup, I had my first ultrasound. Alan was with me, and he noticed that there were two “peanut shapes” inside me. He asked the nurse if there were two babies, but she didn't really answer.

“I'll get the doctor to take a look,” she said. When the doctor looked at the screen, he confirmed that there were indeed two babies . . . but one was not viable. “This is what we call a ‘disappearing twin,'” he said gently.“It happens every once in a while.”

For whatever reason, the little fetus had stopped growing. While Dani's heart was beating strong, her twin's heart had gone still. His tissue would eventually break down and be absorbed into the uterine lining.

The joy of celebrating the one baby, and the grief of losing the other, seemed like it foreshadowed the extreme roller-coaster of emotions that my heart would experience in the coming months. I often thought sadly of the twin who disappeared. Would Dani have had a twin brother like I had? I didn't know why he didn't grow. Sometimes I wondered if having twins during this period of terrible stress would have been too much for me to handle. Only God knows.

But the mystery of it all reminded me that God is far greater than I can imagine. I can't understand His ways. In sorrow and loss, as well as in joy, I always have a choice to make. I can choose to believe that He is good, and in control, and to trust Him . . . or I can try to manipulate every outcome and rigidly try to control my own life. During this sad time of separation from Alan, it was becoming clearer and clearer to me that I couldn't
say
that I trusted God to be in charge of my life and then grab back the steering wheel whenever I didn't understand what He was doing.

Special Because . . .

One day at Bible study, Jane told us we were doing a craft for the day. We did not argue with Mother Jane. She got out sheets of clean white paper, and we all took a sheet for each of our children. I started with Mattie. At the top I wrote, “Mattie is special because . . .” and then I listed ten wonderful things about our oldest daughter.

But the first thing on the list was not about Mattie, per se, but about God.“Mattie is special because she is a child of God.”

Then I made a list for Ali, starting with “Ali is special because she is a child of God.” Then I made one for baby Dani, though she could not yet read.

Then God nudged my heart. I asked for another sheet of paper. This one was for my husband. At the top I wrote, “Alan is special because he is a child of God.” Then I listed other reasons why Alan was loved, including the fact that “he is a great father,” because he was. And is.

At any rate, I made these four plaques, put them in eight by ten frames, and hid them for my family to find. Later that day, Alan happened to stop by to pick up something from the house.

ALL I KNEW WAS THAT FOR SOME REASON I HAD A NEW STRENGTH AND FREEDOM INSIDE, AND I WASN'T AS INTERESTED IN CLINGING TO ALAN TO FIND OUT IF HE WAS GOING TO COME BACK TO ME.

“Daddy!” Mattie yelled after she'd hugged him hello,“Mommy made us each something! She hid them in our closets! She made you one, too!”

Alan went upstairs and looked in his closet. He came down holding the plaque to his chest. I didn't know what he was thinking. All I knew was that for some reason I had a new strength and freedom inside, and I wasn't as interested in clinging to Alan to find out if he was going to come back to me.

But I
was
interested in letting him know that God loved him, no matter what. I knew that as a songwriter, Alan loved words, and so I wanted to communicate with him in a way he could appreciate. The simple words on his little plaque showed him that something was changing inside of me. It was because I was rooting my life in the “law of the Lord,” as Psalm 1:2 puts it. I was drawing my identity from God, not from Alan, and not from the world around me. It was wild, and I'd never felt so free.

Later Bobbie told me, in her truthful yet supportive way, “Denise, when I first met you, you were such a weak, needy person. Now you're becoming this strong, creative woman who devours the Bible. You're radiant. You're amazing!”

During this period, Alan often came and went. He'd stop by the house to get more clothes, or something he'd forgotten, or to trade whatever he was driving for a different car. One day he came to get something, and I was in the kitchen, sitting on the floor with Dani and playing with her.

Usually if I knew Alan was going to come by, I'd do my hair—what was left of it—and try to put on something cute.Old habits die hard, and I wanted to look good for him.

But on this day I had on an old warm-up suit. No makeup. I was playing with Dani, tickling her and making her laugh, fully in the moment, and I was only vaguely aware of Alan, his long frame standing in the doorway. He just leaned there, watching us. And then the next time I looked up, he was gone.

The next day, Alan called me.

“Denise,” he said, “yesterday when I was watching you on the kitchen floor with the baby, there was something different about you. It was like you had this warm glow all around you.”

I was floored, but I knew my “glow” wasn't from me. It was from God's presence in my heart. As I was living in a day-by-day way that was plugged into His power,He was the one lighting up the kitchen.

When Alan finally spoke again, I heard an echo of the boy I'd met in high school.

“Nisey, could we go out for a date this weekend?”

“Okay,” I said.

Chapter 16
TAKING SMALL STEPS

What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear,
Leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Elisha A. Hoffman,
“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5–6

A
s I dressed to go out to dinner with Alan, my thoughts whirled around like a snowstorm on a windy day. Staring in the big mirrors in our master bath, I applied eye shadow.
How could Alan dare to ask me out when he was so sure that we weren't right for each other
? I asked the mirror.
Hasn't he said, on and off throughout the years, that something just wasn't right? How can he suddenly be questioning his decision that our marriage was over? Is he just pouring salt into my raw emotional wounds
?

I didn't know if my heart could survive the evening.

But as I put on mascara, I thought that at least I knew by now what my heart was feeling. I knew I wanted to be with Alan more than anything. Up until now, we had talked very little about the prospect of staying together. But all the weeks of being alone had really made me realize how much I did love him, how I longed for his touch, how I still wanted him as my lover, my friend, and my companion for the rest of my life. I had nothing to lose, really, if I went to dinner with him, and everything to lose if I didn't go because I was afraid I'd be hurt.