Fireproof

It's easy to get off the trail in life--you know the one you dream about for hours, days, months, and years. Maybe it's an individual dream, or maybe it's something bigger--the dream of sharing your life forever with someone more important that anyone in the world.

I am being forced to realize how hard the road can sometimes be and how easy it is to give up on the dream, especially when its with someone you love and care about. When you make those dreams, you rarely account for real life and the decisions that come with it. Flowers are easy, but dealing with the every day problems of life are hard, especially when you come from parents with strong convictions. You often get tricked into believing there is only one road, when in fact there are many.

Time goes by so fast, and you often put aside the things that stand out and made a life unique when the threat of the real world comes knocking an bring you down. Times are hard right now, but that's no excuse. Love should be able to overcome these things, but sometimes the weight bears down too hard, crushing most of the life out of something and it's time to heal, forgive, and strengthen.

It's been nearly 18 years since I came home from the army. I was a cocky kid, as you know I love to be right, and my military training made my focus narrow. I have tried to relax, but I am also a student of B.F. Skinner. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I need to try though for the people in my life.

When I got back, I caught the eye of the most amazing woman in the world. The only woman who I think has ever really loved me. She did it for 17 long years apart after an acquaintance lied about me leading to a phone call not under the best of terms. We all make mistakes when we hurt. I am just as guilty.

Fortunately, our paths would cross again, and the spark that was found the night shortly after I came home from the army was still there. It was a amazing, and I dreamed for the first time in years. She brought out the best of me, or was it God that brought out the best in me as he brought this blessing back into my life.

We found our strength in God. We read the Bible together, prayed, and we discovered what real love felt like, and it was simply amazing. We must also realize that what God gives us can be easily taken away if we don't continue to thank God for his blessings. And soon after the word I do were said in a little park in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, we let the negative into our lives and we dwell on it.

We stopped worshiping together as our beliefs in denominationalism, mans rules of how the Bible is interpreted, fracture our foundation. Soon it was family issues that we could never find the answers to because we stopped looking for the answers through prayer and scripture. Our marriage fell apart quickly before our eyes, and Sunday mornings that were once filled with conversations of dreams, family, friendships, and God, soon became the Sunday run for a Starbucks mocha Frappuccino and an apple fritter or breakfast burrito. The vacuum cleaner grasped in her hand rather than the Bible, and the water hose in his rather than her hand leading their modern family into church.

Soon came all the issues that we once thought we were above. The bills started piling up and we got behind only adding to the tension. God who once replaced materialism soon was sacrificed over the false hope that materialism could make us happy again. It didn't. It made things worse. Soon the loving body language that people once envied, became stiff, stressed, and in the end lost. We pushed God out the door.

Sure we tried on some weeks by reading a few scriptures if we found time past Americas Got Talent or writing blog content in hopes of saving the world. We may have wound up in Church. No one was saved by it. In fact, we destroyed nearly everything.

Now the woman that I loved enough to wait on for 37 years of my life seems a stranger to me. I want so badly to tell her I love her more than anything in this world, but it's no longer that easy.

So many people are offering advice. Some say separate for six months and see how you feel at the end of it. Others say divorce, while others say do what it takes to work things out. Not one of them has said what we really need to do.

Do we love each other? I know I do, and it seems from what I know she loves me. Still not one person had really come out and said it until this morning at 3:30 when I had the revelation that I needed to wake my friend Jim up in a dream. I awoke from my light sleep, and I knew why I needed to talk to him. I knew exactly what he would say because I saw his ship sinking just over a year ago. I saw the pain and I see the happiness now.

The revelation wasn't in the phone call. The revelation came before I dialed. We needed to rededicate our lives, our love, and our marriage to God. I knew that as I lied in bed wondering I should call Jim.

It took three tries to finally get him to hit the green talk button. I finally heard his voice and a great comfort came over me. For some reason I knew early this morning that my answer was going to be confirmed in this phone call. Yet, I still had no reason to know why.

It turns out my friend had a secret that he has shared with no one up until 3:30 this morning. It's one of those things that happens for a reason, and you are shamed by it. It's a wake-up call, so to speak.

As I sat crying on the phone to my friend knowing I have failed my wife, her children, and my God, I heard the identical tale coming from his lips. He went through the same experience that I had, and he assured me my marriage could be saved and made better.

I sit here writing this hoping only one person actually reads all the way through it. It's a detour from the norm, but it's all I have to save my marriage and tell the woman who I call wife that I love her more than anything in the world. I am sorry I failed in so many ways, and I admit that I was wrong. I was wrong for turning from God and his plan for our lives. I did that for all the wrong reasons, mainly for comfort, and I have found more discomfort in my decision. So many people are telling us what to do, but unless we ask God to help us both find forgiveness and put us on the right path, we might as well walk away. We have talked all we can. We have tried marriage counseling. We never went back to what worked when we were happy.

I am ready to fireproof not only my life but my marriage and the relationship with her children. We have become like dry timber in the forest, and the lightning strikes of evil set our hearts ablaze. It never had to be this way, and we both moved away from the one promise we made before our marriage--to make it Godly. Now, our forest has been burnt black but there is still a fertile piece which hasn't been charred and ruined. If you have faith, won't you pray. Pray for us. Pray that we may receive God's blessing and build our marriage like my friend and others have built theirs. I don't want to walk away from this woman.

I want the walks in the park that we once enjoyed while holding hands tightly. I want to take more date nights and cuddle on the couch more. I want to go to the bed and breakfast and relive the night we were married, when I looked into your eyes and knew you were mine. That meant more to me than I know you got out of it. I always communicate better on paper than in words.

If I could I would tell you I love you as you awoke this morning, and I would hold you as the sun came through our bedroom window. You would know then what I know now. We can make this work. We can heal. We must do it through God, especially if the letter you wrote me on Wednesday was the truth--that you too don't want a divorce. You are an amazing woman, and I am very lucky to be a part of your life considering the chance meeting of so many years ago. I am not willing to leave that memory bleeding to die. It's time we asked for forgiveness and ask God to direct us so nothing, not even the devil himself can destroy what God has joined together.

I am not saint, I am not easy, but I do love you. I am willing to ask God to direct me to help make you the happiest woman alive. If it's not to be in your heart, then I will leave in peace with my sincerest best wishes that you find the happiness you deserve. Without handing it over to God, we will never have given it a true chance and you and I both know that.