Through the Deep Waters

For months as I’ve run around the yard here I’ve prayed for divine intervention in my broken marriage, with my kids, and in my case. It dawned on me a few weeks ago that I was missing the big picture. It all made sense in my writing class a few weeks ago.



I was sharing a story with my advanced students. It concerned the call I had placed to my wife from the Goochland Sherriff’s Department. By the time of the call, I’d been arrested, booked and denied bond. I was waiting to be transported to the Henrico Jail. I remember every detail of the call from the precise time it was made, to pushing the buttons on the detective’s desk phone, to the painful exchange of words between my wife and me. It is a conversation that I will never forget. Each detail will stay with me for the rest of my life.


Something else struck me as I shared yet another story with the guys. My wife and sons showed tremendous resilience and courage getting through this trial. I’ve always known they were strong people. But, this situation which was thrust upon them could have broken each of them. Instead, they found the strength to go on.


For all the explaining and dissecting I do of the twists and turns my life has taken, the disappointments and failures, the simple fact is I knew what I was doing was wrong. I justified my behavior in a thousand ways. I’ve come to understand what led me to this behavior, but still, I can’t escape the fact I was wrong.


My ex is a remarkable woman. Yes, I am deeply hurt and pained by her abandoning me. However, she did an amazing job keeping our sons and herself going after my arrest. Our older son still was able to leave, three weeks after my arrest, to study at a university in Scotland. She handled all those details.


Last May, he graduated college with honors. The effort my ex put forth to ensure his college education moved forward was astounding, especially given the daily crises that popped up and her own emotional ups and downs.


She made sure our younger son had counseling. His piano lessons and other after school activities continued without interruption. She insisted that he would continue to live his life as he had before my arrest. Friends from home tell me he is the same happy, outgoing young man he was when our life came crashing down. I can’t imagine how difficult it was for her to tell our kids I’d been arrested. I know as bad as things were for me, I never had to tell our sons their mom let them down.


She dealt with a wide array of fears and concerns that I couldn’t even begin to understand as I sat in my cell at the Henrico County Jail. Jail isolates you from “the real world”. I never dealt with calls from creditors and nosey people in town. I was self-absorbed with my personal problems in the jail. My wife, on the other hand, faced newspaper articles about me. She spent dozens of sleepless nights worrying about our financial situation. Would she lose the house? How would she pay the monthly bills? How would she provide for our sons?


What I did to her and those boys was, well, shitty. Yet, she handled it with steely resolve. Most people saw her strength as she moved forward day to day. I bore the brunt of her anger, and frustrations, and tears. I shouldn’t have expected otherwise. I was the catalyst for the crisis that overwhelmed my family.


Throughout this trial I’ve seen my wife (sorry, I can’t help calling her that) and sons in a new light. As I’ve grown and been changed by this, I noted the changes in them as well. They are stronger and more resilient than I ever could have imagined. Their capacity to survive, to succeed in spite of great heartache, anger, and turmoil, was profound. I only wish they had the same level of commitment to forgive and love.


My ex has a favorite hymn – “How Firm a Foundation”, from chapters 41 and 42 in the Old Testament of Isaiah. In one verse these words appear:


When through the deep waters I cause you to go,
The river of sorrow will not overflow.
For I will be with you
Your comfort to bless
And sanctify to you
Your deepest distress.


Those are words of deep comfort and hope, knowing that whatever confronts us, our God is there and will see us through. I know there were terrible days for my wife and two sons, days they thought were impossible to survive, days when tears and fears and sadness and pain appeared to overwhelm each of them. But, it didn’t. They are three people of amazing faith and courage. I love them more having seen them weather this storm.


I read an interesting devotional take on Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. In a play on the often used chapter regarding love, the writer encouraged you to substitute the word “God” every time love appears in the chapter. “God is patient, God is kind . . . .” On and on the verses in Chapter 13 sing out with a beautiful melody about the elements of God’s feelings for His children.


Then, the writer suggested, insert your own name in place of love. My eyes welled up with tears as I recited: “Larry is patient, Larry is kind, Larry does not act unbecomingly . . . he does not take into account a wrong suffered . . . Larry bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.”


I want to be that “Larry”. I owe it to the people I love deeply, in spite of all this: to my ex and my sons who acted with such grace and strength in a terrible situation. I owe it to my God, who saw me through my mistakes and gave me hope when all seemed hopeless.