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- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
"People say our marriage is impossible." Laurie and Matt Krieg are in a mixed-orientation marriage: a marriage in which at least one partner's primary attraction isn't toward the gender of their spouse. In the Kriegs' case, Laurie is primarily attracted to women—and so is Matt. Some find the idea of mixed-orientation marriage bewildering or even offensive. But as the Kriegs have learned, nothing is impossible with God—and that's as true of their marriage as anyone else's. In An Impossible Marriage, the Kriegs tell their story: how they met and got married, the challenges and breakthroughs of their journey, and what they've learned about marriage along the way. Christianity teaches us that marriage is a picture of Jesus' love for the church—and that's just as true in a mixed-orientation marriage as in a straight one. With vulnerability and wisdom, this book lays out an engaging picture of marriage in all its pain and beauty. It's a picture that points us, over and over again, to the love and grace of Jesus—as marriage was always meant to do.
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AN IMPOSSIBLE MARRIAGE
WHAT OUR MIXED-ORIENTATION MARRIAGE HAS TAUGHT US ABOUT LOVE AND THE GOSPEL
This book is for Gwyn, Juliette, and Ellis. We pray that anything Christlike the world reads in these pages matches the reality of your experience in our home.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE
Humanly speaking, it is impossible.
But with God everything is possible.
LAURIE
People say our marriage is impossible. They’re right.
My husband, Matt, and I are in what some call a “mixed-orientation marriage,” meaning that, for at least one of us, our default sexual attraction is not toward the gender of our spouse. It’s toward our same gender. In our marriage, that would be me: my default attraction is not toward men but women. Matt’s is toward women too.
When we speak about our marriage publicly, or one-on-one with new friends, they often respond to our marriage description by cocking their heads like a puppy learning a new command. “I’m sorry, what? I don’t get it.” Depending on how comfortable they feel, they might even articulate their confusion. “So, are you attracted to your husband at all? How does that work?”
The implication is, “Your marriage is impossible.”
It is impossible . . . if we don’t understand what marriage is for.
Underneath the question, “How does that work?” are unspoken questions that expose what we believe about marriage. “How in the world do you have a sexual relationship with your spouse if you aren’t naturally attracted to him? Isn’t the purpose of marriage—or at least the glue that holds it together—sex? And to have sex in a marriage, don’t you need attraction?”
In this understanding, the goal of marriage seems to be the kind of unity that results in the climax of many chick flicks: the couple sleeps together.
It is fascinating to us because no one ever publicly asks Matt if he wrestles with attraction toward me. No one seems to even think to ask it. The implied statement behind the lack of questions for him reveals something of the audience’s beliefs about marriage and men: Matt is a man. He must always be ready to have sex with his wife. Sex fuses marriages together. Therefore, perhaps, he is the one holding the marriage together.
Little do they realize, Matt’s attraction toward women almost imploded our marriage. For five years, Matt hid a pornography addiction that began not because of sexual issues as a result of my orientation but because he bowed to the same idol many do—thinking that sex would bring him the fulfillment he craved.
But it didn’t. It doesn’t. It can’t.
Just because Matt is attracted to women doesn’t mean our marriage is whole.
Just because I am attracted to women doesn’t mean our marriage is broken.
As we speak more openly about our marriage, straight women open up about their marriage struggles too: “When I share my lack of desire to have sex with my husband, other women tell me, ‘Just do it, and then he will open up emotionally to you.’ Or, ‘Pray that God will put passion into your marriage.’ Or, ‘Feel sexy so that you want to have sex.’ I mostly feel guilty because my mind wanders during sex, and I am hardly attracted to him at all.”
We hear the exchange rate for emotional connection. Sex will satisfy him (and get him off my back), and I’ll get what I want. We hear the idolatry. Emotional connection will scratch the itch of my heart. We hear the lack of natural attraction.
Straight men open up about their marriage struggles when we speak too: “I love my wife, but I can’t stop looking at pornography.” Or, “After thirty years, I wrestle with desiring her at all.” Or, “I hear sex begins in the kitchen. I serve her and meet her emotional needs, and then I get what I want.”
Again, we hear the exchange rate for connection. Emotional connection will satisfy her (and get her off my back), and I’ll get what I want. We hear the idolatry. Sex will scratch the itch of my heart. We hear the lack of natural attraction.
The default attractions of these straight people are toward the gender they married, but neither spouse always naturally desires a mind/body/spirit connection with their spouse.
Is attraction really our issue?
Is my lack of attraction toward men what makes our marriage impossible? Or is it that all of our default attractions are toward self, and selfishness is what makes all of our marriages impossible?
I want . . . I need . . . You give me . . . we say.
• • •
What is the purpose of marriage?
Let’s back it up: What is the purpose of life?
Well, as image bearers of a holy God, we are called to bear his image—serve as a visible picture of God—to the rest of the world (Genesis 1:26). We do this when we love each other, forgive each other, and work with one another in tandem with the Holy Spirit to bring restoration to a broken world (Matthew 6:10).
God is one, and we look like him when we are one with him, one within ourselves, and with each other. Then, we invite others into oneness with God. When people look at us, they are supposed to get a sense of the One who made them too. As they see a representation of God and feel a hunger for him, we are to declare him as the One all of our souls crave. In our image bearing, we are to point to Jesus. We are called to make disciples in our living and in our verbal invitations. We are to tell fellow image bearers that there is a Rescuer for our restless souls (Matthew 28:19; Romans 10:14).
So, if the purpose of being human is to point to God and, in so doing, point to Jesus as our rescuer, what is the purpose of marriage?
To point to God.
When a man and woman are united as one through marriage, we become a metaphor of “the way Christ and the church are one” (Ephesians 5:32). Marriage points to both the future and present reality that Jesus Christ wants to marry us, the church. Married people embody the gospel. Married people embody Jesus’ embodied, sacrificial, one-flesh love for us in their sacrificial, one-flesh love for one another.
It is a great mystery.
The mystery is not what I’ve heard joked about at marriage events: A man and a woman grow attracted to each other, fall madly in love, hormones trick them into marriage, and putting a ring on it makes lust Christian-legal. But surprise! They’re in a covenant now (and God hates divorce), so they have to figure out how to get along until they’re dead.
No. Attraction is not the mystery. Falling in love is not the mystery. The great mystery is that Christ wants to be one with us! Marriage simply and profoundly illustrates this incredible reality to an aching world.
“God is infinitely other, infinitely different from his creation. And yet this infinitely different Creator does not hold himself aloof,” Christopher West writes. “God wants to be one with his creation. God wants to unite with his creation. God wants to marry his creation.”1 God wants to marry us! This desire for divinity’s oneness with creation is the theme of the whole Bible—from the first marriage in Genesis (2:21-24) to the final marriage in Revelation (19:6-9).
The purpose of marriage, then, is to tangibly demonstrate God’s marriage proposal to us to our spouse and to the world. He is “the one.” He is our lover. He is our savior. Jesus laid down his life to be one with us, so we must lay down our lives to be one with each other. “Like a bridegroom Christ went forth from his chamber,” Saint Augustine said. “[Jesus] came to the marriage-bed of the cross, and there in mounting it, he consummated his marriage . . . and joined himself to [his Bride] forever.”2
• • •
People say our marriage is impossible. They are right.
But so is yours.
My natural default is toward disunity with Matt, and his default is disunity with me.
Your natural default is toward disunity with your spouse.
And yet God calls us married folk to love him and to make disciples as one.3
Our marriages feel impossible. But they aren’t. Nothing is impossible with God.
My natural default is toward disunity with the church as we press into The Marriage with Christ.
Matt’s natural default is toward disunity with the church as we press into The Marriage with Christ.
Every person’s natural default is disunity with the church as we press into The Marriage with Christ.
And yet God calls us to make disciples as one—to be unified (John 17:20-21).
The Marriage feels impossible. But it isn’t. Nothing is impossible with God.
• • •
Before we begin this impossible-made-possible story, we have some words for a few specific kinds of readers.
People who are single. You might well be thinking, “Oh no, not another book about marriage.” We have found that we are equally as passionate about singleness as we are about marriage and are committed to exhorting the church every time we speak on marriage to see singleness as we believe Jesus does. Married or single—these are the modes in which we undertake the mission to make disciples (1 Corinthians 7:35). One is not better than the other; they’re just different—different modes and different metaphors.
When we married people love each other well, we serve as a metaphor to single people for how God wants to become one with them. When single people love Jesus well and have a beautiful relationship with the church body, they serve as a metaphor to us for how we will all be in eternity. Although this book focuses on marriage, we haven’t and won’t forget you, our incredible single friends.
People who disagree with us theologically when it comes to marriage. If you believe God’s design for marriage and sexuality includes marriage for people of the same sex, we just want to say that we see you. We understand that this marriage conversation is personal, painful, and precious to you and that our very writing of this book may be offensive. We don’t want to hurt you or those you love, but while we may have written the words in this book, we didn’t write the words in the Bible. We are simply doing our best to live out our biblical beliefs and write about how that works practically in our marriage.
We have studied this “What does the Bible say about marriage?” question. The more we have studied, the more we are simultaneously convinced that God’s design for marriage is between a man and woman and the more we are wrecked with God’s compassion for those who disbelieve it. Theology makes us stronger yet softer.
This book you hold in your hands is not going to make a direct argument for biblical marriage. Instead, we are going to show you how two people live out the argument for biblical marriage. However, we will offer you one simple argument and then refer you to other resources.
When the Pharisees question Jesus about adultery in Matthew 19:3-5, Jesus says, “Haven’t you read . . . that from the beginning ‘God made them male and female.’ . . . This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”
In this passage, Jesus links the creation of male and female (“male and female he created them” found in Genesis 1:27) to the one-flesh union (“the two will become one flesh” found in Genesis 2:24 NIV). So what is a one-flesh union according to Jesus here? It is a uniting of “the two.” Which two? Two humans? Two people who love each other? No—man and wife, male and female. According to the Bible, a one-flesh union (what we call marriage) is a uniting of male and female.
Our favorite books to continue the conversation about biblical marriage—and our favorite marriage books in general—are Preston Sprinkle’s People to Be Loved, Tim and Kathy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage, Christopher West’s Theology of the Body for Beginners, and Francis and Lisa Chan’s You and Me Forever. Laurie serves on the board of directors for Preston’s Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender, which offers many great resources that dive into biblical support for one man and one woman in a covenant, one-flesh union for life serving as the definition of marriage. In particular, the pastoral paper, “15 Reasons for the Affirming View and 15 Responses,” is quite helpful for unpacking the arguments.
Our hope is that if you choose to read this—even if you disagree with us theologically—you will at least see we did our best job to share the grit and the glory of it. We are honest. Brutally so.
People who have experienced trauma. This conversation brings us to a trigger warning of sorts. As a licensed therapist, I, Matt, get that some people may not be ready to hear all of what we share in this book. We talk about trauma. And as someone who has experienced trauma, I, Laurie, get that there were seasons in my life when I could not have read something like this. We are not needlessly graphic, but we are honest and we share about the sexual assault I endured as a child. However, we will not take you to those times and let you suffer there. We want to point you to redemption and—we hope—specific ways in which you can walk away from the scenes if you have faced trauma yourself.
This book explores two major areas in Laurie’s life: trauma and her attractions to the same sex. We need to say clearly and up front that we do not believe trauma causes same-sex attractions. Additionally, just because people experience attractions to the same sex does not mean they have also experienced trauma. These two things just happen to both be present in Laurie’s story, but not everyone who has experienced one will also experience the other.
People in mixed-orientation marriages like ours. For those of you in a marriage like ours, we pray that you feel seen—even though your specific journey is unique. We pray that you experience hope, as opposed to the often-dismal foreshadowing Google offers you if you search for answers about mixed-orientation marriages. We pray that you feel seen by the church because straight couples read about our journey and are challenged by our story of an impossible marriage.
Straight couples in the church who want to understand the marriage conversation better. This brings us to the last group we want to address: straight couples. We are so grateful you are reading this. This marriage book is definitely for you.
Why? After taking surveys of couples like us, we believe we have found the greatest unique challenge in marriages like ours.
It’s not sex—you straight couples have your issues here too.
It’s not lust—it’s hard to find a straight marriage unaffected by porn at some point.
It’s not theological quandaries—all believers face these.
Our greatest unique issue is that we don’t feel we can take our specific sex, lust, and theological struggles to you. It can be challenging to find a theologically orthodox friend, therapist, or pastor who is also sensitive to our situation. Our struggles are so similar to straight couples, and yet many of us feel our greatest issue is our isolation. We feel we cannot take our similar-but-slightly-different pain to you.
Why do we feel that way? Some of us have. And many responses have been amazing. (You’ll read about a couple of examples in the chapters to follow.) But some reactions are not always great. Both of us have received the following as marriage advice:
“Just have more sex with him—that will make it better.”
“Just pray.”
“You should leave him and find a wife.”
“You should leave her and find a better wife.”
“Serve her by cleaning the kitchen, and you’ll get sex in the bedroom.”
“I’ll pray for you”—said with terrified eyes. There was no follow-up conversation.
Walking through our version of an impossible marriage has taught us something: We, the church, often do not know how to wisely advise each other when it comes to marriage, period. We are not focused on serving as a metaphor of The Marriage between Christ and the church. We are not focused on dying to our selves and pursuing oneness with our spouses in order to show the world a picture of how Jesus died for us and how we are to die daily to be one with him.
Instead, we’re often focused on communication tactics, sexual gratification, and trying to “fall back in love” or “get the spark back” again. These platitudes aren’t ultimately helpful for any marriage. We need something more than these airy things. We need the truth. We need to stare at The Marriage.
We all do—no matter our marriage type.
We pray that this book—positioned in the middle of the current massive cultural deconstruction of marriage on the whole—will serve as a wake-up call, prompting the entire church to ask: What is the purpose of marriage? Why have we so emphasized sex, communication, and “falling in love” over the metaphor of marriage? Is it truly helping any of us?
Dear straight couples, as you read this, we hope you’ll ask yourselves, “Can I relate to this version of an impossible marriage? How is my own marriage equally impossible? How is it equally possible?” If you find you can relate, it will not only de-isolate couples like us, it will also further unify the church because married people will not be staring at their spouses—we will all be staring at God.
All marriages are impossible.
This is simply our story of the impossible-made-possible because of Jesus.
ONE
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
[Jesus] is always to be found in the thickest part of the battle. When the wind blows cold He always takes the bleak side of the hill. The heaviest end of the cross lies ever on His shoulders. If He bids us carry a burden, He carries it also. If there is anything that is gracious, generous, kind, and tender, yea lavish and superabundant in love, you always find it in Him.
LAURIE
“What do you want?”
A friend asked me the question assuming she knew the answer: You want Matt. You want to be with him.
Did I? Did I want that?
I packed the question into my suitcase of warm clothes as I headed out into the Michigan snow. Our mentor had gifted both Matt and me with separate silent retreats, and it was my turn.
What do you want?
Over the previous year, I hadn’t given myself permission to ask such a question; I simply lived in our fractured home.
When our second daughter was born, a repressed memory came to the surface. It was a blurry one that included sexual assault by a stranger when I was very young. Something about the birth of Juliette jolted my brain into remembering the birth of my younger brother, which happened around the time of the assault. My present life woke up my past life. The memory came back in unwanted flashes paired with panic attacks. I went into a near-catatonic state whenever Matt walked into certain rooms. Matt was not my attacker, but his maleness reminded me of him.
I dug into my spiritual and emotional toolbox to try to solve this ridiculous issue. (“Hello, I love Matt!”) But no matter how much I tried, the memory only gripped me tighter. None of my favorite tools were working: prayer, books, counseling.
As time wore on, the memory intertwined itself with my sexual orientation, intensifying the situation. Matt is scary, the memory whispered. But you don’t like men anyway, my desires for women said.
Since I was very young, I experienced attraction toward my same gender. Girls were interesting, and boys were . . . like my five brothers. They were fun to play G.I. Joe and LEGO with, but they did not draw my eyes or attention. What began as a heart flutter around certain girls turned into a secret same-sex relationship in college.
Matt and I met while I was in such a relationship. It became clear he was interested in me as more than a friend. “Hold up,” I said. “You have no idea what’s going on with me.” I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t identify as gay or someone who experiences same-sex attractions (SSA), or any of the words you hear today. I didn’t even consider myself gay or SSA. I just liked girls, I wasn’t sexually attracted to men, and I was in a same-sex relationship.
Even though I was in quite a bit of denial about my attractions toward women, there was something about this Matt guy that drew me toward him in the midst of my sexual questioning. Our hearts ached over the same things, laughed about the same things, and desired the same thing: to care for the lost and the broken. I was not initially physically attracted to him, but I was drawn to him in other ways, which led to physical attraction.
We started out as good friends. When Matt made his intentions clear, I told him to pray until I was ready to share “what was going on with me.” When I did, he said he saw me no differently—and he didn’t. Charlotte Brontë said, “The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter—often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter—in the eye.”1 Matt’s eyes revealed the truth of his words.
We started dating, and about a month into our dating relationship I broke up with my not-technically-girlfriend girlfriend. (That season was as messy as it sounds.) Matt and I experienced a sweet relationship for about a year, but then I broke up with him too. “God said no,” I told him.
I believe God prompted this move because I needed some major heart work before talking about marriage—which we were. “I don’t want to get married,” I journaled during class one day. “But I do want to marry Matt.” By that I meant I knew that if we were going to get married, it would not be stereotypical—a doting wife and a take-the-reins husband. But I also saw we could be partners as we served God together. We could be friends who made each other laugh, had each other’s back, and worshiped Jesus together.
We did not imagine that even those minimal (though idealistic) dreams would fall like sand through our fingers eight years later.
But if we had gotten married before our breakup? I don’t think we would have lasted a year. I would have cheated or . . . something. But while we were apart, God connected me with a counselor and fellow Christian who God used to take my focus off of both women and men and place it on Jesus.
I became joyful. Hopeful. I was ready to move to one of the US coasts, earn my doctorate, and become a happy English professor while married to Jesus.
But then God called me to an earthly marriage. “I have someone for you,” he whispered.
“No,” I said back. I was always very honest with God. “God, you know my sexual attractions are toward women, but I am willing to surrender those to you daily. I just want to be married to you.”
“But I want you to live out your mission of making disciples as a married woman,” he said.
I paused. “Fine. But you better pick him out for me because that is stressful.”
I didn’t think Matt would enter the picture again. God had said no before.
In his kindness, God brought Matt back. Through our breakup, God seemed to push pause on my love for Matt, gutted my perspective, called me to marriage, unpaused my love for Matt, and then put me in front of him. I reached out to Matt to “talk about something” in an email, and so we met at a Wendy’s over chocolate Frosties. (It was all very romantic.) “I think I still love you,” I said as my shake melted.
“I’m about to meet up with a girl I liked before I liked you,” he said, slowly chewing on a French fry.
“Okay,” I said, glaring at God.
“I’ll let you know,” Matt said.
Then God struck Matt’s house with lightning.
Not kidding. Matt was watching sports on TV in the middle of a thunderstorm and zzzzap. It went dark. Matt was fine, but the strike fried all of the electronic devices in his house. As a poor, just-graduated-college guy, he didn’t have the money to replace it all, let alone begin to pursue this other woman (who lived in another state at the time).
Instead, he visited his parents. “So, I think Laurie is back in the picture?” he told them.
“Laurie? We love Laurie!” They knew my story—all of it—and loved me and us through it.
“But I’m not good enough for her,” he replied. This was a theme of his life and the real reason he was hesitant to pursue me.
“You don’t have to be perfect, son,” his dad said. “Just be teachable.”
One month later we were engaged. Three months after that we were married and ready to take on the world in the mode we are called to make disciples.
But we also weren’t ready. We didn’t understand that yet. The first honeymoon years were sweet—we laughed often together. Then came the dark years of Matt’s addiction to porn, followed by a year of light after he repented. And then, suddenly, our marriage movie cut to black.
Eight years in, after our second daughter’s birth, I couldn’t be in the same room with Matt without my entire body stiffening with fear bathed in rage. I felt like a jaguar. “Get away from me,” I growled. We could not be physically close in any capacity for over a year and a half. My childhood memory saw Matt as a threat, and my sexual orientation offered what seemed to be a peaceful, freeing escape.
Matt was still the amazing man I married—even better. I had watched him grow in mind, body, and spirit throughout the near-decade of knowing him. And I had grown too. But after the memory resurfaced, the easy laughter and friendship that had permeated our dating relationship became harder and harder to find. There were moments, hours, and even days when we felt a springtime thaw, but then something else would trigger me and a blizzard would refreeze my heart.
The frozen, snowy roads matched the state of my heart as I drove to the silent retreat center.
What do I want?
“I need God to wake me up about marriage,” I told a friend before leaving. “I need him to download something fresh . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence like I wanted to: “. . . so that I want to stay married.” Christians don’t say those things. They only think them quietly and announce them publicly to an uproar after building up files of reasons to leave. I had a lot of files.
I did want something fresh from God. I felt I needed it.
After unloading my bags into my room, I bundled up to take a walk in the woods. The winter sun cut through the trees. Snow sparkled, but only my eyes noticed. My icy soul couldn’t respond in worship to the God who made it.
A mile into my walk, I felt the urge to run. Run, run, run. I had been running for exercise all winter, and I wanted my muscles to burn with the faster pace. I want to feel something. Anything. Even pain. Maybe pain could melt my heart. There were times I stared at Matt across the icy tundra in our home and willed my heart to thaw by seeing his sad face. Maybe if I see him in enough agony, I’ll want to change, to stay, to work harder. But even though Matt was kind toward me in the midst of turmoil, and even though he sometimes bared his own raw, shredded soul, it did not tap into my empathy. If anything, I bundled myself up further to protect my own aching heart.
“Where are you going?” I heard in a still, small voice.
“I want to get to the next thing,” I said.
“What is the next thing?” it said.
“I don’t know.” I was afraid of finding out. Leaving him?
Back at the retreat center, I signed up for an hour-long session with a spiritual director. The woman was a kind, earthy type who likely listened to talk radio and ate vegan from her own garden. After she asked a few insightful questions, I shared with her how I came to find a new perspective on marriage. “It’s been really hard,” I said, making vague allusions to having difficulty connecting with my husband. She quoted the Christian mystics, dug into some Scripture about how “from death comes life,” and said, “Sticking it out can bring gifts and even greater joy.”
I thanked her, but I received none of her words. There was a lingering question in the back of my mind. “What if she knew?” What would she say if she knew that my default sexual attraction was toward women and not my husband? How would her advice change? Some friends had offered solutions before, many of them matching the advice I could easily find on the internet: I don’t have to die to myself. My type of marriage is too hard. Sticking it out won’t bring joy. My metaphorical death doesn’t bring life—only more death. In fact, it is itself a kind of assault.
Or maybe I was reading her wrong. She might have swung to the opposite extreme: Pray more. Have lots of sex with your spouse. Just do it. Force yourself. Submit yourself. It’ll fix you. But such an answer would have only been another kind of assault to my soul.
Where was the middle road? Where was the one that upheld the covenant and the purpose of marriage to point to Jesus but also held my experience with tenderness?
Wrapping myself in a blanket, I plopped into a sunbathed chair in front of a corner window. For the next three hours I wrestled with God.
What do I want? I looked out at the still-sparkling snow and journaled.
I’m on the edge of a cliff. Do I stay or do I go?
Do I want to be married?
Do I want to be married to Matt?
No. To be honest? No. I don’t. I’d love to be his friend.
Is that not enough? Is friendship not enough?
I thought of the spiritual director and what I assumed her advice would have been if I had been completely honest with her. Just leave. You have a free get-out-of-marriage card because of your sexual orientation.
Do I get a free pass to exit this relationship because I’m attracted to the same gender?
Do the death-to-self rules change for me because I am who I am?
Is there a different set of guidelines for me?
The world says, “Yes.” The world says, “Start over. Be like other ‘liberated lesbians.’ Be best friends with your husband, but fall in love with a woman. Finally, be you and express yourself the way you need to.”
That’s very tempting. It’s what I want.
But is it what I need?
A prompting encouraged me to flip my well-worn Bible to Psalm 37. I had a sense God was directing me to a certain verse.
Take delight in the LORD, / and he will give you your heart’s desires (v. 4).
Is my heart’s desire a committed relationship with a woman? Is my heart’s desire to be in love? What is my heart’s desire?
Maybe I don’t know my heart. Maybe I don’t know what it needs. Maybe I don’t know what to feed it. Like my kids who think their cravings for sugar are going to satisfy, perhaps I think some human sugar will satisfy.
I looked over at the woods where I had recently run. I recalled the still, small voice asking me where I was going. “I want to get to the next thing,” I had said.
I quieted my unruly will and went back to that moment. The voice kept speaking. “No, don’t go to the next thing. Don’t run away. Pause for a minute. Come with me.”
In my mind’s eye I saw myself sitting on a throne, which I took to be the judgment seat. Instead of deciding good and evil, I knew my role was to decide what would come next in my life. “Do you think you know what is best for you?” the voice asked. I could see who was speaking now. It was an angel. One of God’s representatives—all bright, shining, and peaceful but also serious.
“Um, yes?” I said hesitantly at first, then garnered more courage. “Yes. I do know what is best for me.” I looked in front of the judgment seat. There were a million buttons and slides that made it look like a DJ sound booth. I knew my job was to pick the right buttons in the right sequence to choose my next right step. I instinctively knew that the wrong buttons would yield devastating results. My finger hovered over one, but I could foresee it would usher in the death of my children. I put my finger over another but sensed it would cause a fire that would tear through blocks of buildings. There has to be a less intense sequence to choose, I thought. But I couldn’t find it. I didn’t know the rules for this machine.
“I can’t pick,” I told the angel at last.
“Who can?” he asked. “Who do you trust with the controls?” Of course, I knew the right answer, but the way he phrased it kept me from rolling my eyes. He didn’t ask, “Do you trust God?” He asked, “Who do you trust to lead your life?”
He went on. “Wouldn’t you rather give the controls to someone who made you, made your world, knows the past and the future, created everyone else, is completely unbiased and yet biased toward all of you equally? Not only did he tell you how to live well, he lived it himself, and made a path for us to live it through himself. Wouldn’t you rather have him choose what is best for your life?”
“Yes! But, God . . . but, God!” I stopped talking to the angel and turned my conversation to his boss. I knew he heard me—us. I knew he was involved in this whole stupid thing. “It is so hard! Not pretend hard but like really hard. Not Disney-movie hard but ripping-my-heart-apart hard!”
“I know, Laurie. I know. I wrote it, and I’ve walked it . . . with you. I have experienced the devastation of the broken world and the havoc it has had on your soul with you. I have never left you.”
He was good, but I didn’t let him crack me. “But, God! I would have so many more friends! I would have the type of intimate connection I want.”
“So, that’s it, Laurie? It’s about sex? It’s about pleasure—pleasure I made in the first place—that you want to take out of my design? You want to eat the apple I said no to? You want that tree?”
That made me pause. “But the world! The world, God! The world says, ‘I’ll love you if you come out. I won’t fight you. I will champion you.’ I am so tired, God. So tired of fighting.”
“They said that to me, too: ‘We will love you if you become king! We won’t kill you if you just stop saying you are God. We will champion you if you take over the way we want you to.’”
“STOP IT. Stop. Just stop. You don’t get it. You don’t know this type of pain. This is different. And you are Jesus!”
I waited for him to fight me. “You aren’t even going to respond to that, are you?” Nothing. He didn’t. “God, I know what I want . . .”
“And where does getting what you want lead?” There he was. “Where will it take you, Laurie? Walk it all the way down the trail . . .”
I wrote:
If I was to divorce Matt:
The good: I would be free. I would find someone who loved me and with whom I could have the intimacy I desire. I would be championed by some friends and some Christians. I’d feel treasured. I’d feel like a queen.
The hard: My kids. I wouldn’t want to lose them. I wouldn’t want to confuse them. I’d want them to have Matt in their life. I don’t know how long the physical aspect with someone new would last. I don’t know if the person would love me for me. I don’t know how long it would take until I would be frustrated with her neediness.
I wouldn’t be championed by everyone. I would be despised by some. I would probably become bitter toward them. I would lose some dear friends. If they ignored my pleas that I was still the same person, I would probably write them off as haters who don’t understand. Or I would try to convince them that this is the right way, the Christian way.
I would feel desired. I would feel wanted.
I would remember the days I felt like a queen with Matt: How he looked at me. How he treasured me. I would miss his strength. I would miss his masculinity. His shoulders. I’ve always liked his shoulders—to me they exemplify strength. A covering.
I would probably cover the matching tattoo we have.
Would I go to hell?
That’s a sobering question. But not enough. Or is it? Is it?
I wanted to be done thinking. Done writing. Done wrestling. I sent Matt a text, “I’m not doing well.” Perhaps this would warn him of what was to come.
But God wasn’t done with me. “Laurie, do you want to silence the Holy Spirit’s presence in you?”
I knew what God was alluding to. It was from the book of Jude, which I hardly ever read but happened to read the day before. Certain verses popped out to me as if they were radioactive:
But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ predicted. They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them. (Jude 17-19)
There are those who follow their natural instincts toward ungodly desires because they don’t have God’s Spirit in them.
If I followed my natural instincts for a woman, would I not have God’s Spirit in me?
“Fine. Let’s walk that down the trail of possibilities,” I thought. Everything was on the table. Even my faith. “What does your Spirit actually give me?” I knew I was playing with fire, but in that moment I did not care.
I stared ahead toward this question.
As I did, I suddenly felt sharply cold and terrified. I did not feel like I tumbled into a black hole, but that I was one. I felt like I had just siphoned life out of everything around me but was still hollow. I was dark, freezing, and to-my-cells lonely. My bones were lead, and I could not breathe.
The moment ended, and I gasped.
What just happened?
I believe God allowed me to experience a fraction of hell for two microseconds. Not even the full thing, just a breath of it. It took my breath away and left me shaking.
I looked outside at the sunshine while I panted. I wanted the sun to warm me. Did God just let me experience a fraction of life devoid of him? My eyes were wide as I processed what that meant.
The Holy Spirit isn’t just some Jiminy Cricket guide in our lives. He is all-comforting, all-wise, and the only source of peace. He is God on earth now. If I followed what I wanted . . . it would lead to a life empty of true comfort, wisdom, and peace. It could lead to hell, a restless separation from God, always seeking but never finding that peace.2
“Do you want to silence the Holy Spirit’s presence in you?” He asked again.
“No.”
“Then follow me. Trust me. Come and die.”
• • •
The next morning, I woke up at 5 a.m. to a swirling snowstorm.
Knowing I had received what God had for me for the weekend, I packed up my things and jumped in the car before the sun rose. Gone were the sunshine and diamond snow. Gone, too, was my wrestling with staying or leaving Matt. I was resolved.
I had not decided to go home, kiss Matt’s face, and surrender to a straight marriage. But I was resolved to God being God. I surrendered to him, and I wanted what he wanted. This meant I wanted the life he called me to, the one I covenanted before God and others: a life with Matt and our kids.
I had no idea how he would fix our crumbling marriage. I had no idea whether Matt and I would ever be close again physically.
All I knew was that I did not get a free pass to exit the relationship. There was not a different rule book for me. The death-to-self gospel was equally good news for me as it was for the straightest person I knew.
My arms shook as my car cut through the predawn darkness, the flakes falling fast. I was not quivering from fear of the blizzard but from my very real encounter with a holy God. My arms shook, and my heart felt raw from a surgery no one could see. I needed some recovery.
“God, what will you give me in exchange for this surrender?” I asked while my car slowly ascended and descended the wooded hills. I was still self-focused. I hoped God would tell me something about how we aren’t going to simply survive but thrive.
“Laurie? You will hear my Spirit even more. You will be able to discern even more clearly.”
I guessed that was nice. His words were not what I wanted, but perhaps they were what I needed.
I had a lot to discern.
I had a lot to learn.
• • •
MATT
Laurie texted me from her retreat: “I’m not doing well.”
I knew immediately that this was not a reference to a general malaise about life. We had been in severe marital pain for over a year, and she had become increasingly distant. This avoidance was not the same type I leaned toward in suffering, which was distant, detached—what Laurie called “Planet Matt.” Planet Matt was a landing place for my mind to think about the ridiculous, such as what to do in a real-life velociraptor attack, or to add to my list of dad jokes.
Laurie’s type of avoidance included hostility, which felt like invisible knives pointed at me. If I tried to get close to her in any way—with jokes, conversation, or (heaven forbid, for her) physically—the claws came out. It was often only with a look, but it shredded me.
When she texted that single line, I went back to my word for the year: steadfast. I had chosen it after much prayer, and it seemed to be a theme for this year of suffering. Just don’t move. Don’t get close to her. Don’t get too far away.
But pray, Matt, I heard in a still, small voice after reading her text. Pray for Laurie.
Our oldest daughter, Gwyn, couldn’t sleep. I carried my burden of prayer into her room as I comforted her. “When is Mama coming home?” she wailed.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Mama will be home tomorrow.” I rubbed her back, wondering to myself, Will she? I didn’t know.
As I fell asleep, I tried not to escape to my own planet but instead to stay in a space of prayer. Help, God. Help Laurie. Please, help our marriage.
