A Broken System of Marriage

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Rob

It has been a few weeks since my last post. As you read the following you may understand why. It has been hard to write and will continue to be hard to write. My goal was to have this first post up two weeks ago, we see how well that went. I also plan to have my next post up by Monday…we’ll see if Part II is easier to write than Part I.

Many know our story. Either face-to-face, in group settings or in several news articles, we have had the opportunity to share the story of Against the Grain with literally thousands of people; the success in business, the Sabbatical, how God showed us the lies of the American Dream and called us to provide hope and healing to families who are struggling to overcome abuse, addiction and negative generational cycles. But there is another story. It is much more intimate and has not been made so public. A few have heard it, but most have not.  We have always believed this story would be told at some time but have not felt open to sharing up until now.

To be perfectly honest I don’t like talking about it, but who really likes sharing their deepest pain, their phoniness and their most egregious sins with the rest of the world? It’s much easier to keep everything quiet and let people believe what they will about your past, but Meredith and I have come to realize that this is a story that needs to be told. Not sharing was what got us into this mess and if we had not walked through these events, AtG may have never existed. It was looking back on this time in our marriage that made me realize that my “faith” had been nothing more than a comfortable lifestyle that fit in well with our friends and neighbors. I realized that I had been an imposter. Unfortunately, we often have to be totally broken and emptied before we realize how wretched we truly are.

Meredith and I have both dealt with infidelity in our marriage but this is the story of my failure. You may be wondering “why is now the time to share”?  We have always believed in being transparent with our lives but in the last few weeks, Meredith and I have had several opportunities to speak into the lives of people whose marriages are on the brink of disaster or individuals are recovering from a destroyed marriage. We have shared with them our experiences as a couple and how God healed our marriage. As we have shared with others, the response has held a consistent message – “you all need to share that story”.

So after prayer, questioning each other again and again and then talking it over with our kids; we have realized that now is the time. Over the next several posts, I will share our experiences with this promise…if your marriage is falling apart or you’re trying to recover from the betrayal of an affair, there is hope. We believe that God brought us through this for a purpose and it is our prayer that we can encourage and strengthen others.

It was in the fall of 1997. Meredith and I were actively involved at our church. By all appearances, we were a pretty good picture of a “Christian” family. We were at church every time the doors were open; I sat on a couple of committees, taught Sunday School, played on the sports teams, sang in the choir and was one of the leaders, for our church, for the Promise Keepers Bible Studies. Meredith and the kids were also involved in all kinds of church activities.

We had a well-defined system within our marriage. We were very traditional; I worked, Meredith stayed home with the kids. I mowed the yard, she vacuumed the house. I repaired the washing machine, she did the laundry. I took out the trash, she made the dinners. It was working for our family, but it was also killing our family. Our marriage had become a reliable system, but our hearts and emotions were slipping away. There were other “jobs” in our marriage that fell into the system and held no intimacy.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that all systems are bad. Systems can be good, but it can also be easy and dangerous to fall into a comfortable system. Systems can create easy patterns but can remove emotion and kill intimacy. Transparency can be frowned upon and appearances can become very important. It is also in our nature to make a system work in our favor. Selfishness can thrive in a system.

Relationships, on the other hand, don’t always have easily defined patterns. They are often marked by seasons that are effected by emotions and circumstances. Intimacy and transparency are required and can safely grow in a healthy relationship. In a loving relationship, selfishness dies and serving the other half becomes the priority. Our system wasn’t working and our relationship was dying.

As I look back I am amazed at the correlations I see between our marriage back then and our church life back then. I also see others who may be falling into those same systems. Like us, their lives are a series of rituals, traditions and patterns. They go through the motions but have little emotion. They become isolated while standing in a large group of people. Transparency if frowned upon because appearances have to be kept and the system has to work in our favor. There is no relationship with others and possibly no relationship with God…just a well defined system.

That’s where we were; a great example of the privately broken family because transparency and vulnerability were not acceptable. It was not acceptable at home or at church. We were privately going our separate ways and no one knew; not even us. It was at then that temptation knocked at the door and I ran through with open arms.