not knowing how to walk through it or where to find God in the midst of it.
I had become a believer at the age of ten when my older brother Mike became a Christian and introduced the family to Jesus. Joining a Young Life program helped me to maneuver through the chaos of my childhood yet left many holes in my understanding of how to process the negative things that happened to me. I was left with many small and large spaces in my heart. I found anger and bitterness gaining a foothold and growing within those spaces.
You would never have known it when you met me. I was the happy-go-lucky captain of the cheerleader squad who loved Jesus with all her heart type of girl. Yet there were things growing underground in my soul that I was unaware of.
While the details are unique, my story is not radically different from many others—especially in how it played itself out. Most people who struggle with bitterness in the present can trace the roots to the past. In my case, a dad with huge expectations and a pressing personality, accompanied by a physically present but almost emotionally absent mom, left me with plenty of space to grow angry and bitter.
I never anticipated that I would eventually face that fork in the road and be forced to choose either bitterness or forgiveness. I often tell people that by the age of twenty-two I was living the dream, in a sense. Perhaps it wasn’t the typical American dream of a big house and a lot of disposable income, but for a young woman who grew up in a rocky home, my life felt very safe and good.
I was married to a wonderful man who served as the church administrator for a church that he and my brother Mike had planted in Kansas City. The Lord was moving in a unique way. The church was growing, and my husband had great wisdom in the business end of the church. In that season of godly success, we felt the Lord speak to us about moving to California to team up with John Wimber and the Vineyard movement.
After two years with the Anaheim Vineyard, we went to Malibu and assisted Ken Gulliksen with a work there. It was not easy, but it was rewarding. God was present and we were happy to be a part of it. At the end of our three-year stint in California, we returned to Kansas City where, rather than resume his work in administration, my husband began to travel with a well-known prophetic musician. Their music opened doors across the nation and for seven years he traveled while I stayed home, worked in the church, and raised our children.
Although I would not have said it at the time, now I recognize this season as the beginning of the end for us. Travel can lend itself to a lack of accountability, and the customary standards that we had lived by for years began to slide for some in the band. I wondered if perhaps I was just old-fashioned or perhaps unreasonable, so I largely kept quiet about it. When they came off the road, I would hear stories that concerned me; but he was a good man, and the Lord continued to use him.
After twenty years of marriage and full-time ministry, things took a radical turn. It was late in 1999 when he walked into the living room and announced calmly, “I want out.”
I was confused. I wasn’t sure what he wanted out of. I assumed it was our ministry roles he was looking to get away from. “You want to leave the church?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “I’m not talking about the church. I want out of our marriage.” That was not what I expected. I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. In my confusion, I asked him to stay in our home through the holidays, as if somehow a few short days would help all this make sense. It didn’t. He left our home on December 31, 1999.
Our family went into a spiral. Within twelve weeks, my teenage daughter was so depressed that I often had to keep an all-night suicide watch on her. My teenage son developed a sudden and dramatic drug habit that would contribute to moments of rage in the home. My younger son dealt with the chaos by turning around and walking away, spending long hours in his room. I remember at the time knowing that somehow I needed to be caring for his needs, but also felt overwhelmed with the other two who were acting out so strongly. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, the child in crisis gets the care, and the quiet one often slips through the cracks.
My life went from church meetings and ministry opportunities to twelve-step meetings and clinical psychologist appointments. While I was having an internal crisis of my own, I had to muster the strength to carry my children through theirs. It was one of those times you are grateful the Lord does not give you much warning for, because you’re not sure how you would have reacted had you known it was coming. My own life shifted as well. I went from a ministry spouse to a single mom. I went from an influential member of a church staff to a bit of an oddity. I stepped down from the groups I was involved with, but the staff and many of my friends were unsure how to relate to me. They had me in a certain box, and when that box broke, it wasn’t obvious where I should be put. I was as confused as they were. My known world became the great unknown.
It’s important to say that years later, our three children are all doing well and serving the Lord. Considering what they endured and how unprepared I was to handle it, the fact that they are doing well is one of the greatest demonstrations of the grace of God that I have encountered. We did not get here easily or quickly. In fact, it was a long and winding road.
My own crisis and that of my children forced me to explore what I knew about God and answer hard questions about my own heart. I knew that I was the one at the fork in the road. As a pastor’s wife, I had watched others walk this road—many of them poorly.
I could choose bitterness and blaming others, or I could choose redemption. My own choices would impact many people, including my children and the body of believers I was in community with. For the first time in my life I really understood how alone one feels standing at that fork in the road.
I would need to make a choice, and the ramifications of that choice would radiate out like ripples on a pond for years to come.
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