The Very Worst Missionary

by Jamie Wright

  Just before I walked down the aisle to marry him, I slipped into a dimly lit bathroom for one last look in the mirror. I checked my makeup and twirled a loose strand of hair into a curl, adjusting the plastic comb that held a long ivory veil at the back of my head. My dress was kind of wonky, since I’d made the mistake of buying it from a clearance warehouse in San Francisco’s garment district about three weeks after I’d given birth. It could be taken in only so much, so on my wedding day I stuffed my bra with two pairs of socks, straightened the loose fabric that rippled around my rib cage, and called it good.

  This was it. In ten minutes I would marry my four-month-old baby’s daddy and the best guy I’d ever dated. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that it was Steve. I mean, I could have gotten knocked up by any one of the many dirtbag loser alcoholic wannabe rock stars I’d slept with, and been stuck with that guy forever. But somehow I’d lucked out and gotten stuck with Steve. At that very moment, my great big small-town boy was waiting for me to meet him at the altar, so I pushed every guy who’d come before him out of my head and offered myself a congratulatory smile. It was a tiny acknowledgment of triumph on my wedding day, like a cosmic wink to say, Girl, you dodged a bullet.

  When the wedding song played, I made my way to the front of the church, where I promised my heart and my soul and the rest of my life to the nervous man-child sweating in a rented tux by my side. With tears in our eyes, we stood face to face, hand in hand, and repeated our vows to each other. It was all the standard stuff—the traditional better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or health, until somebody kicks the bucket, followed by an exchange of rings and a quick prayer. We sealed the deal with a kiss, which had the loud, smacking quality of a child kissing their grandma on the lips. It wasn’t sweet or romantic or even jubilant; it was just awkward.

  As the short ceremony came to a close, someone handed us our baby in his own tiny tuxedo, and the college football team chaplain pronounced us “Mr. and Mrs. Wright” for the very first time. I will never forget looking up at my brand-new husband in the soft golden light of the church and feeling like I had to be the luckiest girl who ever lived. And honestly, I probably did dodge a bullet on my wedding day…but I stepped on a land mine.

  * * *

  Barely an adult, Steve was in no way prepared for marriage or fatherhood. It took him about five minutes to resent having a wife around all the time, and he found the baby’s constant needs bothersome. But worse, my easy, unconditional love for our infant son jabbed at a deep-seated insecurity in Steve. He didn’t want to share his wife’s affection, not even with his own child, and his resentment was obvious to pretty much everyone but me.

  I worked full time, took care of our little guy, and dutifully made excuses for Steve’s extreme mood swings and simmering rage. He was tired; he had a lot on his plate; he was stressed from school and sore from football. On the nights the anger radiated in waves off my new husband’s broad back as he turned away from me in bed, I allowed myself to believe I deserved it. I’d let the laundry pile up and the kitchen was a mess. I’d forgotten to call the plumber. I’d spent too much on groceries. It was, quite frankly, easier for me to carry the burden of his emotional issues than it was for me to admit that maybe marrying him had been a huge mistake.

  I’m still not sure if I was unable or just unwilling to see it, but it would take me years to finally accept that Steve was not the perfect man I’d unfairly made him out to be.

  The thing is, I really needed Steve to be a good person, because I thought that made me good. My self-worth was so dependent upon him being a great guy that I ignored the kinds of red flags that would have sent any self-respecting woman running as fast as if her own ass were on fire. But I wasn’t self-respecting, I was Steve-revering, which in the long run wouldn’t prove healthy or helpful for either of us.

  I remained blind to his character flaws for years, blissfully ignorant of his brokenness and consequently of the depth of brokenness in my own marriage. But that’s not to say either of us spent time pretending to be deliriously happy. We found plenty of shit to fight about.

  The first time we decided to get a divorce was just a few months after our first anniversary. I can’t remember if the argument started over the laundry or the dishes or money or parenting or what to watch on TV or where to get takeout or who ate the last of the ice cream, but it was definitely one of those things. What started it doesn’t even matter; we needed only a tiny strike to spark the bonfire of bitterness and resentment between us, a blazing circle of accusations and indignation that continued to burn hot until one of us finally announced we were done. Done. That’s what you say when you decide to get a divorce. You say, “You know what? I’m done.”

  Or if you’re really, really serious, you say, “That’s it! We are done.” I was done with his antics and he was done with my garbage and we were just…so…done.

  Our fight that day was huge, and we both played the “done” card, but I had an office party that night, and we’d already spent $80 on tickets (which was like $450 to us at the time). Once things calmed down, the babysitter was on her way over, and rather than send her home, we decided to go ahead and go to the stupid party. We agreed this would be our last night out as a couple, and then tomorrow? We were so totally done.

  It was a theme party, a luau, with a giant pig roasting in the ground and hula dancers and Polynesian drummers and everything. Everyone was dressed accordingly in Hawaiian shirts and puka-shell necklaces and tropical-print dresses with leis. As far as office parties go, it was a pretty good one, but it was still an office party—180 coworkers who knew one another only through weekday small talk, now making even smaller small talk with their coworkers’ spouses.

  We had driven to the party in silence, putting on fake smiles as we found our assigned table and greeted a few of the other guests. We were there to make good on our eighty-dollar investment and to give our poor toddler a break from his angry, stressed-out parents, but we had no intention of having any fun at all. Since small talk with strangers is the most horrible kind of torture, it seemed like having a terrible time would be easy. The problem is? Steve and I are just kinda fun together. We can’t even help it.

  We usually like the same food and hate the same people, so a catered party with a roasted pig and a tableful of goobers we’d just met was, like, the perfect combination to make us both wonder if maybe we weren’t done after all. You simply can’t moan in ecstasy with someone over the sheer deliciousness of a certain appetizer and not wonder if you need to spend the rest of your life together. And you can’t squeeze someone’s thigh under the tablecloth when your department head’s husband takes off his shoes to show you his bunions without thinking about how maybe, just maybe, you’d be better off growing old with that thigh nearby. These feelings were undeniable, and we slowly began to emerge from the fog of our big fight.

  But it was the hula-hoop contest that saved our marriage that day. Neither of us is all that great at hula hoop, so our chances of winning were slim, but there were prizes, and we both love prizes, so we signed up for the “most creative” category and hatched a plan. When the spotlight landed on us, I hiked up my cocktail dress, and Steve lifted me up over his head to straddle his shoulders. Together we stood like a totem pole made of white people, and I twirled three hula hoops around my neck while my giant of a husband spread his arms wide, Christ the Redeemer style, throwing shade all over the competition with his massive wingspan.

  The crowd went wild!

  We took home the grand prize that night: a blue plastic pitcher with a set of four matching tumblers on a serving tray covered in sea horses.

  We won.

  And we weren’t done.

  See, the problem is, Steve and I were pretty much made for each other.

  I don’t mean that in a soul-mates kind of way, unless by “soul mates” you mean people whose psychological disorders play exce
ptionally well together. You know, like when a girl who uses sex to feel loved falls in love with a guy who uses sex to feel numb. Or when a guy who strives for success in order to feel valued falls in love with a girl who finds her value in supporting his success. This is how, between us, we carried a psych ward’s worth of dysfunction into our marriage. At the time, I had no idea that buried underneath his accomplished exterior, Steve was just as broken and scared and sad and hurting as me. In the decades ahead, I would come to understand that, while my insecurity turned inward in the form of self-loathing and the core belief that I was undeserving of love, his insecurity turned outward. He searched for validation by performing for affirmation, believing that love was a competition to be won and that he could be loved only if and when he earned it.

  Basically, we were a walking marriage crisis.

  But we were also babies with a baby. We had a family, and bills, and chores, and sports, and friends, and work parties; busy lives that helped us to forget that just under the surface everything was not as it should be. And while we were really bad for each other—like, possibly the absolute worst for each other—we genuinely loved each other in our own silly, broken ways.

  It’s nothing short of a miracle that our marriage survived and has continued to survive for more than twenty-three years, day by day. Sometimes minute by minute. Sometimes one hula-hoop contest at a time.

  * * *

  Who would have imagined that someday that same train wreck of a couple would end up as Christian missionaries in Costa Rica? Certainly not us. And definitely no one who knew us. But it was, at least in part, the difficulty of marriage that set our souls to searching for something…I don’t know…more.

  I warned you this is not a finished story; it’s a messy work of redemption, a peek into real life in progress. Thankfully, we’ve both developed into quite different people since those rocky early years, mostly thanks to a great many hours of therapy. But we’ll probably have to fight off the lies in our heads until the day we die. Even when we’re old, we’ll still be doing the daily work of growing up.

  Marriage is just so fucking hard, and we’re all looking for someone to tell us it won’t always be. We want someone to encourage us to hang in there with a promise that it gets better. And maybe right now you’re as desperate as I have been at times for someone to tell you that the deep, dark issues lurking behind your closed doors can be prayed away, easy as pie, and your life and your partner and your heart will be restored, as good as new. But I’m not gonna lie to you. The truth is marriage is a shit ton of work, and as far as I know, it never stops being hard.

  Wow. Can you tell I’m in a really bad mood right now? Someone kept stealing all the covers last night.

  Anyway, if there is a formula for the perfect relationship, I certainly don’t know it, but I can tell you this: I fought for my marriage for many, many years before I realized I’d been fighting the wrong battle entirely. I was fighting to be loved and to be wanted and to be worthy in the only way I knew how, which was by fighting to be Steve’s wife, when I should have been fighting to be me. Early on, I didn’t understand that the best thing I could have done for my husband, for myself, and for our marriage would have been to show us both that I am my own person. I make my own contributions to the world, I carry my own significance, and I am infinitely loved by a good God.

  So I am good, not because of Steve or despite him but entirely apart from him.

  And I’m not done.

  The first time I walked into a church, I might as well have had a red bull’s-eye painted directly over my heart. You couldn’t have picked a more perfect walking target for somebody’s next “intentional relationship.” I was scared and sad and deeply wounded, and I was looking for someone to tell me that life would be okay.

  One Sunday morning when Steve wasn’t home, I made my way to the church closest to our house, nervously checked my little boy into the kids’ program, and sat alone in the very last row, as near to the exit I could possibly get. I was there not out of curiosity or even genuine interest but out of sheer desperation.

  Growing up, I’d heard over and over again that Christians are losers who don’t know how to live their own lives. I was told Christians are pathetic dummies who need a crutch to lean on because they can’t stand on their own two feet. I was taught to see Jesus as a leader for people who couldn’t think for themselves and needed to be told what to do. So as a confused nineteen-year-old with a child I didn’t know how to raise, a husband I didn’t know how to love, and a life I had no idea how to live, it seemed like maybe I should meet this Jesus, the God of pitiful weaklings who are limping along without a clue.

  Turns out they were right. Jesus was exactly who I needed.

  Much to my surprise, I found a sense of belonging in church and unexpected joy in the pursuit of faith. In those early days I was like a rescue puppy: precious and needy, dying for love and affection, begging for reassurance. I was ready and willing to be trained by the first family who would take me home, and that family was the church. I lapped up their attention and they were kind and gentle and gracious, teaching me the rules and showing me how to behave, and for a while I was content to simply perform.

  Sit. Stay. Good Christian.

  * * *

  As a straight, white, middle-class stay-at-home mom, I was an ideal fit for the suburban church. I mean, it was almost like the church was made for someone just like me. The music was catchy, and the band played long enough to accommodate late arrivals. Sermons were short and sweet, and the offering was timed perfectly so that checks could be written and stuffed into envelopes before the basket passed by. The children’s program was perfectly safe and spotlessly clean, with rooms segregated by age and decorated in adorable kid-friendly versions of terrifying Old Testament stories: Noah’s ark, David and Goliath, and Jonah and his chubby pet whale. So cute. Overall, the church experience was organized and comfortable and free from distractions—which happened to be exactly what I wanted for an hour every Sunday. Oh, and there was coffee!

  It took me a little while to learn the special language and the secret codes of churchiness, and some things took a little bit longer to figure out than others. Like, when the worship leader cried, “Lift your voice!” did he mean my actual voice? Because I was 95 percent certain no one else was singing. The music was so loud it was impossible to tell for sure, but I could have sworn they were just moving their mouths. So I compromised, mouthing the words with lightly audible vowels and just a whisper of an S every now and then. (For the record, this is still how I sing in church.) Fortunately, I was quicker to pick up on other things. Proper Sunday attire, for example, meant basically nothing too slutty and nothing you borrowed from a homeless person. Of course, that unspoken rule was easy to grasp, because everyone knows that the church is no place for whores and hobos.

  Church was like a club, and the rules of the club were simple: Dress this way. Use these words, but do not use those words. Go here on Sunday morning and there on Wednesday night. Be appalled by this, and this, and that, and them (but especially them). Get indignant about so-and-so and offended by such-and-such. And, above all, act like everything is okay (even if it’s definitely not), because you have Jesus and Jesus makes life pretty. The good Christians conformed to these rules without question, and when they talked about maturing in their faith, it seemed like what they meant was obeying the rules with more consistency and breaking the rules less often. To sit and stay was their endgame, and I thought it was supposed to be mine.

  I was in it for the long haul.

  The only thing that could have made this foray into the church world better would have been if Steve had been in it with me. By then his job as a sheriff’s deputy had him working every Sunday, so I was on my own as far as church was concerned. I could go or not go; he didn’t really care either way….Ha, just kidding! Steve was super pissed when I started going to church. In fact, he for
bade me to give the church money, being sure to let me know he thought it was all brainwashing, bullshit, and propaganda. I couldn’t really blame him. He’d grown up heavily involved in a local church but walked away in his teens after a married pastor ran off with a married congregant, leaving two devastated families and a stunned congregation in their wake. Years later, Steve was still pretty bitter about it, but his distaste for organized religion didn’t do a thing to discourage my weekly church attendance.

  I respected Steve’s opinion, but Jesus was blowing my mind. And to be honest? I loved being in the club. Despite my husband’s ever-rolling eyes, I did everything I could to look and sound like the good Christians did. I tuned my car radio to the Fish, hung a little gold cross around my neck, and I even cut my hair into a classic Christian mom bob so people would know at a glance that I was in the club. Whenever possible, I used my new Christian vocabulary. I wasn’t lucky or wealthy or healthy anymore; I was blessed. I didn’t hang out with people; I had fellowship with them. If someone lost their job, it wasn’t because of company-wide layoffs or because they were just a shitty employee; it was the hand of God closing one door to open another.

  Once, in an effort to use, like, every single Christian word I’d ever heard, I took my baby sister to Carl’s Jr. to evangelize her over Western Bacon Cheeseburgers and onion rings. She was like thirteen, and I told her all about sin and sanctification and redemption and resurrection and how she too could have a place in heaven for all of eternity. When she got up to use the restroom (probably hoping to escape through an open window), the old ladies in the booth next to me leaned over to pat me on the back and tell me I was doing a good job. They were obviously in the club and had recognized me by my words. Or maybe by my hair.

  Anyway. I intentionally relationshipped my sister so hard that day, she didn’t really want to hang out with me after that. I might have considered that perhaps it was my gross evangelism tactics that had pushed her away, but I didn’t. I just assumed she was busy, congratulated myself for planting seeds, and went on with my life.