That first time I heard God speak to me made me want to plug my ears. Though I had been begging for this moment my entire life, it was about to hit me harder than I expected. I heard him say my name for the first time. He whispered how much he loved me but also told me that I didn’t have the right to bail on my husband and my marriage. He gently reminded me of the promises I made those seven days in bed, begging for the lives of my children, and that now was the time to make good on them. He let me know that even in those moments when I didn’t believe he was listening and had only cried out in despair, he was there and listening. He had heard me.
He heard me the day I said his name on the way to the lake in the speeding car with my drunk dad behind the wheel. He heard me when I cried out his name in fear of being alone in that big house. He heard me when I begged not to be the invisible girl at the father-daughter dance. He heard me when I pleaded for the lives of the unborn children whose heartbeats couldn’t be heard. That night as I asked God to take away the hurt, he let me know that I had been given mercy and forgiveness and that now it was my turn. My job, as the Christian—though conflicted—I had slowly become, was to show my husband what true forgiveness and grace looked like. No matter how much it hurt or how difficult it was, God instructed me to stay and fix what I had broken. My instinct had always been to run, even when I knew I was in the wrong, and never back down or admit my faults. But God was about to teach me how to be a humble and forgiving wife, and I was terrified. He was going to show me what being his daughter was all about.
This wasn’t going to be easy. No one would blame either of us if we chose to walk away. But I knew for the very first time that my obedience to God wasn’t about me and what I wanted; it was about loving others more than I loved myself. It was about walking through the fire and coming out the other side rather than turning and running to avoid the pain.
When Brandon got home that night, he walked into a cool house. By the grace of God, our AC had been fixed a day earlier than scheduled. He reluctantly made his way to our bedroom and peeked in the door, checking whether I had fallen asleep or was waiting to hammer him some more about our marriage. The kids were finally able to sleep in their own rooms, but that gave us little comfort. Neither of us knew if that meant he would be spending the night on the couch or if we were going to keep up the act for the kids. I saw the door crack open and, with a transformed heart, asked him to come lie next to me. I saw a hint of relief in his eyes, and my heart broke for what must have been going through his mind. I placed my hand on his cheek and, as gently as I could, simply told him that I was his wife and I wasn’t going anywhere. Whatever we had been through and whatever we were about to face, I was his wife. For the first time in my life I obeyed God and followed his will instead of my own, and my husband and I spent the rest of the night in tears, apologizing for what we had done to each other and to our family. We stayed up for hours finally talking about what was broken and trying to figure out how to fix it.
Two nights later and after more tears and conversations, Brandon asked if he could attend church the next Sunday with me and the kids. I made sure that his request was about what was on his heart and not what he thought I wanted. I no longer wanted him to do what I wanted him to do. I had willingly, though with difficulty, turned my will over to God and trusted whatever path he was going to put us on, no matter what it looked like. I had finally come to a place in my life where I didn’t want to control anyone else or convince them to do what I wanted. I simply wanted God’s plan and nothing more.
That Sunday, only a few weeks after he had told me he would never step foot in church, my husband held my hand and walked through the church doors with me. Our girls led him down the hall to their classroom and showed him where they had been learning all about Jesus. I took him to the dark corner of the worship center where I had been hiding out for over a year, and we sat down together and prepared for the service. Until that day, I was still going through the motions at church, standing when I was supposed to stand, sitting when I was supposed to sit, and blankly staring at the preacher while he gave his prepared sermon. But this day something changed. My husband was next to me for the first time, and I didn’t feel little or alone. When the preacher stood to speak, I laced my fingers through my husband’s and intently listened for the first time. It was as if the preacher had been living in our home for the past few years and knew everything we had gone through. He knew the heavy wounds on our hearts and spoke about forgiveness and grace. He told us about letting go of the past and preparing for the future. His words seemed to be specifically for us and our situation, because that’s how the Holy Spirit works. It was designed for us. God had this planned all along, and in that moment I realized that everything we had gone through was for a purpose. We were now going to live through the hurt and understand why we had made it through the fire. I told Brandon that he didn’t have to do all the “churchy” stuff while there, but he stood when he was supposed to stand, sat when he was supposed to sit, and bowed his head when we prayed. I don’t know what he said to God that day, that’s between them, but I do know that God changed something in him too.
When we got in the car after the service was over and started to make our way to lunch, our sweet little girl, who had just a month before been diagnosed with autism, spoke up from the backseat.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, baby?” he said.
“I sing like God.”
Her voice and faith in God helped me understand that everything was going to be okay. We would survive and thrive through her diagnosis. Our bank account would somehow replenish. With hard work and massive amounts of grace, our marriage would not only make it through the fire, it would recover from the burns and become new and beautiful again. I didn’t know what Brandon’s future in the church looked like, but I knew that God was listening to my prayers. I knew for the first time that God knew my name.
Brandon willingly attended church with us again the following Sunday and, just like the week before, he stood when he was supposed to stand and sat when he was supposed to sit. However, something was different. I watched his mouth move with the words of the music, and when he bowed his head to pray, I could hear a faint whisper. I tried to wrap my head around what was happening and wanted to believe that it was genuine, but God transforming hearts had always been an out-of-reach miracle, stuff that didn’t happen to people like us. On that day, when the preacher gave the invitation to accept Christ, my husband took my hand and told me he wanted to go down front and speak with a pastor. Just twelve days after we stood face-to-face in our kitchen and decided to divorce, we stood hand-in-hand in front of the entire congregation and I watched as my husband gave his life to Christ. I was grateful and envious at the same time. I had spent many days sitting in those pews, pretending to be all in, but I had never fully committed my life to Christ. I stood and watched this man boldly and confidently accept Jesus as his Savior. With a tight grip on my husband’s hand, I confessed my own need for Jesus to live in me. That very same day we signed our name on our membership papers. The church that I had been sneaking in and out of for over a year, the church that my husband vowed to never step foot in, was now our home, and we were both committed to the Lord.
The Softened Heart of the Believer
On September 12, 2010, Brandon and I were baptized together in front of a thousand strangers who were somehow our new family and the people who would watch us grow in Christ. We didn’t know what to expect; we just knew that we wanted to rebuild our family and our lives on a solid foundation. We knew that the center of our marriage would now be God and that we would put him before each other and trust him with the details.
The day of our baptism we took off our old wedding bands and replaced them with new ones. Engraved on each ring are the words “God Be with Us Together and Apart.” We placed them on our fingers before we walked to meet each other in the middle of the baptismal pool and to begin our new life together.
Being a believer in
Christ doesn’t make everything perfect and doesn’t take away every struggle. We continue to tread water more than we want, but now we see the shore, and on it stands our Savior. Hard lessons were learned in the early years of our marriage, and what we learned has helped us navigate through the things we face today. No marriage will ever be perfect and ours is certainly nowhere near it, but we have something now that we didn’t have before. We have a God of second chances and high doses of mercy. Our marriage may face challenges far greater than we’ve ever seen—we have no way of knowing—but now we have a peace that can only come from knowing God. His plan is always good, even through the fires, and that is what we remind ourselves on a daily basis. We will walk through many seasons in life. As Brandon’s wife, it is my role to support him through those seasons, offer grace, and forgive the way I have been forgiven.
I had no idea how much I was going to truly need this transformation in my heart. I had no idea that God had the power to fill me with the ability to forgive on a level I thought was reserved for people with strength far beyond anything I possessed. God was about to start the healing process that I needed to live my life the way he intended. One of the things he needed to change was how small I felt when standing next to the sins of my dad. In order to heal those wounds, God had to expose them and teach me how to forgive. It would be impossible without the grace of Jesus.
nine
On the Witness Stand
My dad remarried when I turned twenty. I didn’t attend the wedding. I wasn’t invited and wouldn’t have gone even if an invitation had miraculously shown up in my mailbox. Even though I still had a burning desire for his approval, the stone wall I had built up around me allowed very few people in, and even fewer people knew my true feelings.
He started over and left me in the dust. He began to build a new family. My brother was born shortly after his wedding and another brother followed two years later. I was comfortable with that. I refused to have anything to do with his new family, not because I couldn’t love my siblings but because being around them meant I had to be around my dad and I couldn’t do it. When his wife became pregnant with their third child, I begged God not to let it be a girl. I was afraid of being replaced and completely forgotten, but they had a baby girl in December of 1998. I was twenty-three years old and done with everything that my dad encompassed. He had what he wanted, and I wasn’t included.
I made a very conscious effort to make sure his life didn’t spill over into mine. I not only cut him off but also avoided him and his new family at any cost. I simply went on with my life as if none of them even existed. He was parenting his children as I was parenting my own. We had weird parallel lives going on that I made sure never intersected.
Then one afternoon in 2006, my phone rang and my stepmom was on the other end. We rarely spoke, and I knew there had to be a serious reason she would dare call me. I hadn’t been kind to her and had very little sympathy for her tumultuous marriage to my dad. She had never been able to understand why I refused a relationship with him, and I refused to explain myself to her. But this day her voice quivered and I agreed to listen. I listened to her for over an hour. She explained to me in great detail what had been going on in their lives and what was happening to my siblings. She told me stories that were all too familiar. I had been so bitter about his new family, thinking he had somehow started over and was doing it right this time, but now I learned that he was no better a father to them than he was to me and my older brother.
She finally got to the point of her phone call. She had filed for divorce and had a custody hearing for the three kids. She wanted me to be a witness, to testify against my father at the custody hearing and do whatever I could to make sure he didn’t get custody of the kids. I agreed without thinking it through or thinking about what effect it might have on my own emotions. I knew without a doubt that no matter how I felt about him starting a new life, I had to defend my siblings who were at his mercy.
The morning of the hearing, I panicked. I was going to see my dad for the first time in many years and in some twisted way, I wanted to look pretty. Nothing about the day had anything to do with me, but I desperately wanted him to think I was pretty. I would be testifying against him in a few short hours and here I was, standing in the middle of my room with clothes thrown everywhere, trying to decide what I looked best in. I was pathetic.
I had given birth to triplets only months before, and my confidence was still recovering from what my body had gone through. Nothing fit right, I had bags under my eyes, and no amount of coffee could make me look fresh and ready. My emotions were running wild, and I couldn’t shake the need to somehow please my dad while crushing him at the same time. I finally settled on a long black skirt, boots, and an oversized sweater that gave me enough room to be comfortable without looking like a complete mess. I gave myself one last check in the mirror, added more concealer under my eyes, and got in my car to drive to the neighboring city where the hearing would take place.
The car ride was twenty minutes, and I fought with myself the entire time. Was I doing the right thing? How could a daughter do this to her dad? Was I going to be an embarrassment to him, or would he be glad to see me no matter why I was there? I couldn’t take my mind off the real truth. This wasn’t about me or about my dad approving of me. But everything in me was so desperate. I had only ever had glimpses of my siblings. We had run into each other at random places in our small town and a few times in a restaurant, but we had never spent any real time together. I figured they either wouldn’t be at the hearing or wouldn’t know who I was. The thought of communicating with them wasn’t even in my head; I was too wrapped up in what my dad was going to do.
I agreed to meet my stepmom in the parking lot across from the courthouse so we could go over what was going to happen before we went inside. As I pulled into the empty spot next to her, I saw three little faces pressed against the window, waiting for me. I slowly got out of my car and all at once, all three of my sweet younger siblings ran toward me. They didn’t carry the baggage and fears that I did. They didn’t harbor resentment toward me the way that I did them. They were excited to see me. Six little arms wrapped themselves around my waist and squeezed as hard as they could. It was as if they knew nothing but absolute love for me, and I knew in that moment why I was there.
I was doing the right thing.
It wasn’t about the outfit I had chosen or the six cups of coffee I had consumed in an effort to make me look awake. It wasn’t about my relationship with my dad or lack thereof. It wasn’t about what he had done to me and the father he had failed to be. It was about saving these three innocent children from even a drop of what he had put me through. It was about not allowing my dad to do to my little sister what he had done to me. It was about them, and I fully accepted that.
I gave them hugs and told them I loved them, and then their uncle came to pick them up. We didn’t want them to be in court while the hearing took place. An attorney on their behalf would be present to make sure they were taken care of in the best way possible. After we watched them drive away we headed into court. My heart was beating so hard that it hurt my chest. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I was terrified to see my dad. I was afraid he would convince me—of what I wasn’t sure—but I knew I didn’t trust myself around him. I was a wreck.
We were led into a side room to go over things with my stepmom’s lawyer before court started. The room was larger than it looked from the outside and boasted a huge wooden table with ten chairs surrounding it. There was a semi-fancy water carafe on the table with a few tall glasses. A massive picture of a landscape hung on the wall opposite the door, making it the first thing you saw when you walked in. The room seemed to be decorated to make people comfortable, but it still felt official.
I stood awkwardly waiting for someone to signal where I should sit. For the first time in my life I found comfort in my stepmom. She was the only familiar face in the room, and I gravitated in her direction. I didn’t necess
arily want her to put her arm around me or anything like that, but I needed her close.
We sat in that room for what seemed like hours, going over details of what was going to happen once we made our way into the courtroom. One of the lawyers asked me to tell him a little about my life growing up with my dad and that was all I needed to spill it all to them. With each new story I told, their jaws dropped a little lower. From a lawyer’s perspective, I’m sure it was pure gold. They were, after all, headed into a custody case and wanted ammo against the defendant. From my perspective, it was a tragedy. Even though I was a grown adult, it still stung each time I talked about it. As bravely as I could I told them as much as I could remember, and they loaded their notepads with enough information to win the fight. I knew it was what I had to do to help my siblings; I had to remove my own personal hurt and ignore the smiles on the men who were elated to have this new information.
After what seemed like the bulk of the day, we headed into the courtroom to begin the hearing. They had informed me that my dad would be representing himself. I laughed at his arrogance. What kind of person represents himself in his own custody case? It was comical and sad at the same time.
Everyone made their way to the front and sat in their designated spots before the judge. I sat as far back as I could, trying to hide from my dad. He caught a glimpse of me and simply went on about his business, assuming I was there to support my stepmom.
When the trial began, his confidence blew me away. How does he pull it off? How does he stand in front of all these people and pretend to know what he’s doing? He’s brilliant. He’s always been the smartest person I know. Had he put in real work, I can’t imagine the levels he could have reached. He was smart, but he was also defiant and thought he was better than everyone. That was his handicap. He thought his good looks, smooth tongue, and quick wit were enough. He had been in so many legal battles that he had become well acquainted with the law and oddly knew more than some lawyers. He was the smartest idiot I’d ever known.
The Con Man's Daughter Page 9