A Year Ago Today

A year ago today The Wife and i went to a Red Lobster in Georgia and sat down to discuss either reconciliation or divorce. Truth be told, it could have gone either way very easily. The Church i attend, MercyHouse, had paid not only for the marriage retreat we were at, but for the plane tickets as well -- and i will say right here and now that i do not expect to ever find another Church like this one, who puts their resources and love where their mouth is to people who do not deserve that kind of treatment. We arrived in Atlanta on Sunday, and were done on a Thursday.

We were pissed off and hurt, and it took a long time for us to learn how to actually apologize to each other, which is why the night we went out was so late in the week. For me the decision to stay with The Wife boiled down to this simple point: did i believe unconditional love existed? Which of course really means if i believed that the gospel of Jesus Messiah, God's physical incarnation of unconditional love, existed. Was i a Christian? Why my wife decided to stay, i will probably never know, although my hunch is that both of us recognize that neither one of us would ever find another person like the one we are involved with now. In other words, we were made for each other in a very strange and unique way.

I'm not saying this past year has been some storybook perfect year where we begin to live happily ever after without further conflict. However, the difference of the past year in comparison with the five before it has been startling, like noon day is from midnight. We have tried our best to take what we have learned at the retreat and make it part of how we live our lives. I know that what i used to think was an apology was really an empty joke, and that my love for The Wife has actually grown over this last year. I always say that happiness depends upon circumstances, and my relationship with my wife makes me happy, and is one of the few bright spots in my life at the moment.

I am so grateful. God has had mercy on an entire race -- the human race -- and has offered rescue from the illusions of grandeur we are all have willing fallen victim too, thinking that humanity is somehow the measure of all things. When i think back upon my life it is with the knowledge that i was the author of my own misery, that i have always been, while living for myself, my own worse enemy. I thank God for Messiah Jesus because it was only through His radical action of human sacrifice and resurrection that enabled me to escape the prison cell that i had willingly made for myself. What we call the "Beatitudes" is actually Christ's proclamation of the gospel of grace. Blessed are the morally and spiritually bankrupt beggars, for they truly know just how desperately lost they really are. I is part of the dark night of the soul to realize that i am the guy at the traffic island with the cardboard sign begging for help because i cannot pull myself up by my own bootstraps. It is a time of death, and death is always ugly despite all the well-meaning platitudes about death being just another part of life. There is something stark and obscene and final when death finally comes calling, and it is only a friend when it ends a nightmare of pain and suffering. With a friend like that, who needs enemies? But Resurrection is well worth the death of our selfishness and self-interest, and the gospel that makes Christianity unique is simply this: That Jesus Messiah was crucified, dead, and buried; that He descended into hell; and on the third day rose again. If this isn't true, then like the Apostle Paul says, we are of all people to be pitied, and we should eat drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. I am truly grateful that there is something, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Messiah, that isn't in some way some type of Nihilism...

And i thank God for my wife every day as well.