A Hard Goodbye

    This is one of those posts that I don't quite know how to write. It is one that I wish I had no reason to write. 

    I have alluded to some challenges in my life. Some hard times that I have been facing. I am finally ready to sit down and write about what has been going on. To get right to the point, my husband, Ken, decided that he no longer wanted to be married and he moved to Denver, Colorado the first part of March. The picture above shows his truck pulling out of the driveway on that day.

  Below a picture of his coat hook - labeled "Dad". It is now empty.

    This is something that I had hoped would never happen. I didn't plan for this. But even though I didn't feel prepared I have a God who knows everything that is going to happen and He sees the complete picture and He is with me, holding my hand every single step of the way. 

   I do want to be completely open with so many of you who have faithfully read my blog through the years and have encouraged me in so many ways. So here is a little background to what is going on in my life now...

   Ken and I were both raised in Christian families. Both sets of parents actually met while attending a small Bible college in southern Iowa. They had all 4 gone to school together there. But my parents ended up in Northern Minnesota and Ken's family lived on the West coast so we didn't meet until Ken and I both followed in our parents' footsteps and attended that same small Bible college in Iowa. There we met, fell in love and decided to do life together while focused on the goal of loving and serving Jesus Christ and telling others about Him.

    We got married, Mara was born 9 months later and then the next year we moved to Kansas to help with a church plant there. During out year and a half in Kansas Ken got discouraged and felt that God wasn't listening to him - that his prayers weren't getting through. His faith was thoroughly shaken. From the outside all of us that knew and loved him couldn't really understand what was going on. We tried to support and encourage but Ken didn't seem to understand either and he wasn't willing to talk about it past a few conversations. He put up a wall on talking about spiritual things. What had been the foundation of our marriage and our life was no longer a topic that he wanted to talk about. He naturally quit preaching, leading songs, praying or even participating in any of those things. He did still attend church with me for a few more years but only for the sake of the kids (who don't actually ever remember him going). That was a really hard time and I wondered at that time that if he was giving up on God that he would also give up on me. But he didn't.

   We never had a truly wonderful marriage again however.  It felt like somebody had cut of a leg or an arm. It hurt terribly but over time it healed and it didn't hurt quite so much any more but we still couldn't function the way we used too. We didn't share the same major interest in life and Ken says he basically just walled up to truly living life. We did have a lot of fun together at times. We found other things we had in common and enjoyed them together. My faith was still the center of my life and I shared it with our kids but that didn't stop me from being involved in politics with Ken, building a home together, building businesses together, enjoying traveling and many other fun activities together. We make a really good team.

   I am guessing this story came as a bit of a shock to many of you. I didn't mean to deceive and I never did that on purpose but I also didn't feel that it was my place to make big announcements about Ken's spiritual life or our marriage. I did share very honestly ways I was trying to work on our marriage but I didn't think it was my place at that time to truly share Ken's story. I hope you understand.

   This past year Ken did a lot of rethinking in life. The death of his Dad a few years ago and then Mara getting married kind of made him face some things. He decided that he wasn't happy with life as it was. That having a nice family, a lovely home and a good business wasn't enough to make him happy. When he told me that at first in August I was pretty excited. I was a little nervous too just somehow in the way he said it. The kids and I were all hoping that he was realizing that just being successful in this life isn't enough. That only with God can we have true purpose and peace. 

    Over the course of the Fall we did more talking about deep things than we had in the last 20 years. But at least so far Ken does not want to come back to Jesus. He has chosen instead to get farther away from Him if he can. That means getting away from me, getting away from our home where we pray, read the Bible, sing and have scriptures on the wall, getting away from our community where people assume he is a Christian because he is married to me.

   I have thought a lot about these verses from 1 Corinthians 7 over the last few months: "12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. 16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?"

   These last few months have been a major time of growing for me. It has been a time of truly leaning on the Lord and my fellow believers. The support the kids and  I have received from others in the Body of Christ has been wonderful. As I see and work through the sins and struggles in my own life I am so thankful for Jesus' work on the cross to cleanse me of all that. As I deal with the feelings of rejection God's love just overwhelms me and comforts me and He tells me that I am loved and wanted. 

 I understand these verses in James 1 in a new way...

"2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do."

   Though times have sometimes felt a little dark lately, Jesus is with us, ALWAYS! He is so very, very faithful. I have seen that evidenced in so many, many ways over the last few months. God is so good! I don't understand everything but He does and He is working in our situation just like He is working in yours. I am learning to trust Him a little more each day. I hope you are too.