by Trish Ryan
A week or so later, I visited Adam at work and discovered that while he was, technically, a tennis pro, his real job was restringing rackets and handing out buckets of balls at the local courts, for which he was paid $10 an hour under the table. He was considering bankruptcy, after a stint in the hospital ran him aground financially because he hadn’t paid his health insurance premium. He kept what little money he had in his sock drawer, as he didn’t trust banks, and attempted to double his worth with frequent visits to the local off-track betting club. Did I mention that he had a temper? And yet when I told him I was a Christian, and that I wouldn’t be having sex again until after my wedding, he said, “Okay. That sounds a little weird, but if it works for you than I’m fine with it.”
It’s a sign! I thought, triumphantly, certain that he’d never agree to the no-sex thing unless he was sent by God. I conveniently forgot about all the other guys I’d dated over the years, nice men who’d agreed when I said no and didn’t make a big deal about it even without a divine explanation. I wanted a sign, and I saw one. So I ignored all that stuff about not being yoked with unbelievers. He’s Catholic, I reasoned, that’s close enough. I ignored his admission that the last Mass he’d attended was in celebration of his first marriage. He’s interested in spirituality, I assured myself. He’s just never had a chance to explore Jesus before. I can be his chance! I pushed aside all the warnings I’d heard about the dangers of “evangelistic dating,” and the dismal success rate for women who let themselves fall for nonbelievers on the grounds that loving us will be enough to woo men into the Kingdom of God. “It doesn’t work that way,” everyone said. It will in this case was my determined response, as I dove headlong into Adam’s romantic promises. After all, I reasoned, it’s not really “yoked” until you’re married.
They say that an alcoholic can be sober for decades, then pick up a drink, and the physiological result is the same as if he or she has been drinking the entire time. That was what it was like when I met Adam—like I was still married to my first husband, and all the bad choices, violent outbursts, lies, and general life mismanagement I’d held at bay for the past three years landed on me again like an avalanche. It was déjà vu, these conversations about scrambling to pay (or avoid) bills, how I’d done this or that to piss him off. Out of all the men in the world, I somehow managed to find one so eerily similar to my first husband that I picked up right where I’d left off. After two years of following Jesus, I was right back in the same place again—convinced this might be my only chance at marriage, having a family of my own, making something of my life. So despite the warning signs, I grabbed onto it with all my might and squeezed, as if my pressure and determination alone could cut off the negativity in his life and keep it from poisoning mine.
All that summer, we went to different churches. He listened politely to the sermons, then gaped openly as the music played, eyes wide as he stared at our fellow congregants raising their voices and praising God. Sometimes he’d even crane his neck around to take in the full spectacle. I tried—and failed—not to be embarrassed for him, by him. He had little moments of breakthrough that kept me hoping he might “get” the Jesus thing—one Sunday he wrote a prayer request on the little card that came in the program, another week he snuck up at the last minute and took Communion. He even asked me if there was a “certain prayer” you had to say to be a follower of Jesus. I showed him a Post-it note in the front of my Bible, where I’d copied some words about telling Jesus that I believe he died for my sins, then rose again to give me new life, and asking him to be my savior. Adam copied the words onto a slip of paper, then tucked it into his sock drawer next to his life savings. That was the last I heard about it. Adam treated my spiritual hopes the way other guys had treated my dreams of marriage—tossing out just enough interest to keep me believing he might come around, without actually committing or changing anything about his situation. And yet, despite the growing dichotomy between who he was and what I wanted, I got more and more hooked into the fantasy life he painted for me during our long talks over cold beers at our favorite bar next to the ocean. We talked of having a family, of the home we’d build and the work he’d do to establish his career as an instructor. “All I’ve ever needed,” he told me, “is someone to believe in me the way my mother did. Neither of my other wives did that, but I feel like you’re that woman.”
Drawing on years of practice in recasting disappointing declarations just like this, I ignored the thousand-part subtext of Adam’s statement: that it was all about his needs, that his first two wives were to blame for his current state of affairs, that I was the savior he was waiting for—and focused on the fact that God had promised me a husband, and Adam had shown up. I tried to ignore the nagging sense that I’d expected better, that when I prayed those prayers and went hungry on fasting days, the vision I clung to didn’t have this many obstacles to conquer—spiritual, emotional, financial, physical—to get to the life I dreamed of. But then I’d remember Jesus’ teachings about not judging one another, and how he loves even the least of us, and assume that God must want me to believe for a miracle for Adam; that if Jesus had changed Peter from a buffoon to a leader, and Paul from a vicious killer to the author of two-thirds of the New Testament, he could do something similar for Adam. I hoped he’d do it soon, as I hated being the only “spiritual one” in our relationship. I’d never thought the princess was the one who rode in and did the rescuing.
Adam asked me to move with him to Florida for the winter. Why not? I thought, dreaming of warm February days and drinks at the club at sunset. The cold reality of Adam’s economic status drowned out my fantasy, though—he had nowhere to live, and we’d have to shack up with several of his tennis buddies in some hovel near the courts. “Maybe you could get a job as a waitress,” he suggested. Desperate for some sort of movement in my life after two years of stagnation, I considered it. But I didn’t tell anybody; they wouldn’t understand.
“I FEEL LIKE God gave me a picture for you,” Will said to me the following Monday night as we prayed. “It was a football helmet with the word ‘Giants’ written across it.” I looked at him, puzzled. “You know, like the football team,” he clarified, “but I don’t think the football part is important. There was also a tree,” he continued, “and a big hand that came and picked the tree right up and tipped it over, to show that it had no roots. It was sitting there on the ground, but there were no roots keeping it in place.” I had no idea what to make of this. After a long, pause, Will continued: “I feel like these pictures mean that God has big things for you. But you need to put down roots, something to hold you in place long enough to get there.”
“How do I do that?” I asked.
“You stay put, I guess.” Will replied. “You believe the things God has told you, you believe that He cares, you believe that He’s good and that He loves you. And then you wait to see what happens.”
“Oh,” I joked, trying to ease the intensity of the moment. “Is that all?” But inside, I was churning. I’ve never stayed before, I realized that night as I walked across Harvard’s campus to get home. Year after year I’d left, ran, fled when things got hard. Philadelphia, Washington, Connecticut, Cambridge. A big game of hopscotch, each move chosen because it got me out of some regrettable mess or disaster, each fresh new step a geographical cure for the disease of being me. I’d moved eleven times since college graduation, seven of them in the past four years. I wanted roots as much as the next person. But I didn’t want these roots, or any of the ones I’d considered so far. I wanted different roots, better ones. I wanted a husband root, and if God didn’t understand that by now, I’d keep moving. On a spiritual level, though, I was rather out of options. I couldn’t go back to the Course or any of the other practices I’d renounced. Spiritually speaking, I’d reached the end of the line. Geographically, though, I had options. I could follow Jesus in Florida, right?
But when I asked God, He said no. Specifically, He said, If you stay in Cambridge, I have some
thing for you. But you can only get it here, and only if you stay. Okay then.
THAT SUNDAY, DAVE and Grace gave a sermon entitled “Destiny-Shaping Experiences: How God Shapes Our Lives to Be Good.” It was my first time back at the Vineyard in months. The few times Adam had visited the church with me that summer had been exceedingly awkward, as he stared at people during worship and his eyes glazed over uncomprehendingly during the brief sermons.
“Is he a believer?” asked a woman I barely knew, commenting on his strange behavior. She warned me pointedly not to chain myself to a man who didn’t share my devotion to following Jesus. “You’ll regret it for the rest of your life,” she warned.
I’d been furious. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Adam was devoted to following Jesus, I told myself; he just didn’t understand what that meant yet. What I couldn’t fathom was why he at least couldn’t fake it better. “Can you believe she said that?” I’d asked Amy, furiously, recounting this woman’s unsolicited interference in my life. My years of stubbornly demanding the right to do things my way came back full force.
“Maybe she has a point,” Amy said. “He doesn’t seem to be catching on.”
“It’s all new to him!” I protested. “He wants to know, he just doesn’t yet. He’s here, isn’t he?” I crowed triumphantly, as if sitting through the occasional Sunday service was hard evidence of a newfound commitment to Jesus.
My friends shied away from confronting me after that, afraid that if they did, I might leave the church—and Jesus—completely. This was my first time back at the church since those conversations, and I sat defiantly alone, not wanting to field more questions or opinions about how I should handle my life.
Dave started his sermon that day by acknowledging that there was a spiritual battle going on around us. “Periodically,” he said, “we wander from where God wants us to be and need to be ‘wrenched back’ onto a path that will lead to God’s best.” Offering an example from her life, Grace shared about dating a guy in college who was raised in a church but was not at all interested in pursuing spiritual things. He was a talented musician, he drank a lot, and he wanted to move the relationship along quickly on the physical front. Her roommate hated him.
That sounds like Adam, I realized. He was talented, in a certain way. He hadn’t pushed my physical boundaries, but he pushed me to move with him, live together, have kids as soon as possible. And while my friends didn’t hate Adam, I hadn’t given them much of a chance to know him. I kept my worlds separate, convinced they’d clash like oil and water, leaving me struggling to swim through the middle. I dreaded what Grace would say next; obviously, she hadn’t ended up with that guy.
“I was part of an on-campus group of people who were into following Jesus,” she continued, “and I went to a workshop they put on about dating and relationships. I left that day horrified, aware that if my goal was to grow up and marry a man who shared my beliefs, then dating this guy put me on a path away from what I wanted most in life.” She went back to campus that night determined to break off the relationship. “When I walked into the party where we were supposed to meet,” she said, “I saw him half naked, dancing with two other women. I realized where I was headed if I stayed with him, and it broke my heart.
“It was still a few years before I met Dave,” she admitted, “and I had a lot to figure out about how God wanted me to think about myself in relationship to men. But I never regretted getting off the path I was on with that other guy, the path marked with such clear signs of danger to the future I hoped for.”
Dave came back on to the stage to join her. “Just to wrap up—and at the risk of sounding like the hero,” he joked, “how do you see your life now?”
“My life today is a pretty vivid contrast to that story,” Grace admitted. “I’m a happily married woman who loves her life. I feel like all my dreams of love, family, and adventure are coming true, like God gives me a wide and spacious place to play and dream and act. Trusting God paid huge dividends for me,” she continued. “It saved me from the tortuous experience of tossing my heart out before every guy who walked my way, and put me in a position to make my life count for something great. On the whole,” she concluded, “I’m grateful.”
Why didn’t God tell me this? I wondered. Why didn’t He protect me? Why didn’t He intervene when I threw myself before any man who might be a potential husband, raising the stakes of what I offered in each audition while lowering my standards of who and what my “Mr. Right” had to be? But even as I asked, I knew the answer: God protected me as best He could without violating my free will. It was miraculous, I realized, how the violent men never hit me, the alcoholics rarely got me drunk, the drug addicts never shot up or smoked or snorted while I was in the room, and the men who wouldn’t commit always left. God had, I realized, bailed me out time and time again, always making sure I survived no matter how much money I lost or what awful things a guy said on his way out. He protected me in every way I’d allowed, without overriding my grim determination to have things my way. I remembered Pascha’s words: “Jesus doesn’t take over your life. You have to ask him to save you.”
As Grace left the stage, Dave suggested that over the course of our lives, each of us faces two types of destiny-shaping experiences in our relationship with God. The first he called a “Power Encounter,” where we realize that there is a God—that He is real, and that He acts. I remembered sitting in the front row at church when I was five, certain that God loved me, and sitting at that stoplight in Buffalo so many years later, hearing God tell me He had more for my life if I’d give Jesus a chance.
Next Dave described a second type of experience, which called “Allegiance Encounters”—the events that shape what God can and cannot do in our lives. These encounters come, he explained, as we arrive at decision-making points in life and choose to either follow God’s best for us or pursue our own way. “There are four areas where these choices typically appear,” he said, “career, integrity, sex, and relationships.”
“What would have happened to Grace,” Dave wondered aloud, “had she pursued the relationship with the guy in college? Would she have gotten the full life God designed for her? Probably not,” he concluded. “God would still love her, of course, and she could still pray and go to church and live a good life. But God’s best for her would be off the table because she was partnered with someone who wasn’t partnered with God. And without that partnership, God’s best doesn’t work.”
I stared at him, stunned, realizing how heavily I’d gone into wishful thinking about my relationship with Adam, claiming that he was a spiritually viable partner for me just because he came to church from time to time. I’d fallen back into my old model of God, I realized, where I’d do whatever I wanted and assume that God had to bless it, simply because He loved me. I’d forgotten that it doesn’t work that way. Ignoring the warning signs, I’d believed that Adam would come around, that he’d give his life to Jesus with wild enthusiasm, after which God would have to restore his fortunes, his health, his temperament. Suddenly, I saw how close I was to repeating the worst mistake of my life, justifying inexcusable behavior I would never admit to my friends or family because it felt so much easier to be with Adam than to be alone.
This is it, I thought: my allegiance encounter. I’d given God my career, worked hard to rebuild my integrity, and even given up sex when He’d asked me. But I still had a stranglehold on my love life, insisting on the right to date whomever I wanted, believing I could force God to make it work. Now, I had to choose again: God’s way, or my way?
As we stood to sing the closing song, I knew that I was going to break up with Adam. I didn’t decide; I just knew. For the first time, I was more afraid of missing out on God’s best for my life than of being alone. If God is God, I realized, I won’t be alone, because He promised me a husband, and a family. Either all my chips are on that card, or I’m not playing at all. I asked for a miracle—what would I tell Adam to explain my change of attitude?
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nbsp; The next night, Adam called and broke up with me. He broke up with me. He ranted that he didn’t like how I was spending my time, accusing me of not being focused enough on him, on our life together, our future. His tirade came out of the blue, as two days earlier he’d been quite satisfied with our arrangement. He was calling my bluff, I realized later, trying to manipulate me to reassure him of my devotion. But I saw it as my miracle and jumped at the opportunity.
As I got off the phone that night, I saw the situation clearly: Adam offered all of the pain and drama from my first marriage, with none of the perks—no house, no car, no huge diamond to adorn my hand. And yet I’d thought he was God’s answer to my prayers, simply because he’d shown up and asked me out. It never occurred to me to consider that the power that sent him might not be God; that Adam might be a decoy, another temptation to settle. It never occurred to me that Adam might be a test of my allegiance. (Later I read a quote by C. S. Lewis, saying that the biggest threat to God’s best for us is rarely something bad; it’s usually something just good enough to convince us it will do, that we should grab hold of it lest we be left with nothing at all.) It felt like I’d been wrenched back onto God’s path for my life, as Dave and Grace described, but in the gentlest possible way. For the first time in my adult life, I felt like God was celebrating, that He was delighted to have me back. Of course the husband I have for you will know Me, He said. How else will he know how to love you?
Chapter Twenty-one
A Knight in a Shining Honda
Knowing I should probably take some time off from relationships—go back to square one, perhaps, and pray through my dysfunction, heal whatever drove me into the arms of yet another Mr. Wrong—I committed myself to some quality time alone with God.
Two days later, a new guy wandered into our small group and blew this plan to smithereens. He had green eyes. His name was Steve. He looked like someone ordered from Central Casting for the part of “Cute Guy to Help Trish Get Over the Tennis Pro in Scene 43.”