When God Alone Carries You Through….

There have been two times in my life that what I was doing was only because I knew that it was the will of God.

The first was marrying my husband, Randy.
The second was leaving the church that we were attending to go forward with the church plant.

I have covered the church plant story here, and here.

But when I mentioned a bit of it to a dear friend, she mentioned that I should write the whole thing.

I don’t share it often.
But….  it is a story of the faithfulness of my God.  It is a story of trusting what I knew God leading me to do, rather than focusing on what I felt I deserved.


I preface our story with the assertion that we do not have a love story.  We have a God story.


We met the day before I started my teaching career.  It was Labor Day, ten years ago.
I had just moved to this town, and was preparing for my new life.  I had an adorable apartment, and was so excited about my life.

I had made one friend who was exactly my age, and she lived 4 towns over.  It took 45 minutes to get to her house, and it was long distance to call her.  The distance between places, and how far away we are from everything was the biggest adjustment to leaving the “big city,” which is only Portland, ME.  (So, not all that big.)

She and I were hanging out, preparing to go shopping in one of the are “metropolitan” areas of Maine.
She knew of a guy that was youth pastoring at a church near me that was looking for a worship leader. Worship was (is) my thing.  So, when he happened to call that morning, we invited him along for the day.   I didn’t really have an impression when we first met.  He was just a guy.

However, after the laughing and joking at Wal-Mart, and the foolishness in Linens N Things, the Lord spoke to my heart and revealed that this man-child was my husband.   For the rest of the day I was just. . . overwhelmed.  Obviously.   I wondered how long I would have to sit on this knowledge before God revealed the same thing to him.

I didn’t have to wait long.
The next evening, after my very first day of teaching, he came to my apartment.  We were sitting in the living room, just talking about everything, when the Lord revealed to him that we were to be married.

What happened next is a bit of a whirlwind….
We were all of a sudden thrust into a relationship, but we didn’t know each other at all.

I learned quickly why the Lord revealed my husband to me in the way that He did.
If it had not been absolutely, supernaturally clear to me,  we would not be married today.  We wouldn’t have lasted a month in a relationship without the absolute certainty that we were meant to be together.

He was controlling, and angry.  I couldn’t predict the mood swings.  I never knew what would set him off.  He was judgmental and sometimes scary.

I didn’t always know if I loved him.
There were times I definitely didn’t like him.

I remember sitting in the closet, crying out to God, begging to understand why He would want this for me.

And I remember Him being there. I remember feeling Him tell me to just wait . . . to trust Him.


And so I did.
And I cried through every dress fitting. (Sometimes they were happy tears. . .)
And my mother didn’t know what to do with me, because she could tell that something wasn’t right, and didn’t know what to do about it.

She wouldn’t have understood.
(She would now. She does now.)

I don’t want to paint the picture as being all terrible . . . we had wonderful times.  We laughed and we laughed.  But the scary and difficult times were. . . really scary. I never felt like I was in physical danger.

But I was losing myself.

Music is a pretty big deal in my life.  If you have been reading for any length of time, you have heard that I am the band director for the small town in Maine where we live.  I play guitar and sing, and lead worship for our fledgling church, which has its first service next Sunday.  I play trombone professionally with two different groups.  Music is large part of my life.

He was was so insecure in our relationship  (I think partly because he knew how angry he was) that he saw every professional event that I attended as a threat.  I would have 8 voicemail messages on my phone after a one day music festival.  When tears didn’t work, he would use anger. When the anger didn’t work, he would go back to tears.

Friends close to both of us saw what was happening, but were powerless to help.
Friends close to just me only saw the shell that I was becoming and tried to help in ways that were not helpful.


(When you are struggling to be obedient to God’s leading, and the world (including your friends)  is trying to get you to do what makes sense?  Not fun.)

Fast forward.  (In this fast forward are some really special times that I cherish.  God answered us every single time we asked for confirmation about whether or not we were supposed to be together.  There is a really cute story about a girl duck and boy duck and a pond.)

Our wedding day was magical.
Seriously.  It was just amazing.

By this point, I was completely in love with my husband, and willing to stand by him until he felt secure in our relationship.  We had worked out a lot of stuff, and we weren’t fighting as often, and he didn’t lose his temper as easily.  Things were really good. We were happy.

It got even better.   The security of the wedding bands around the third fingers of our left hands led to the confidence that had been missing.

We had been married a little over a month when we realized that things really were not okay.

In a “dissociative episode”  (wow, I wish that “googling” things was as prevalent back then as it is now… this would have been REALLY HELPFUL.) my husband had a break with reality and believed that he was being abducted at gunpoint by Arab men, and forced to drive his car down the highway for about two hours.    The police determined that it had not happened, based on evidence — or lack thereof, and we were faced with the very real situation that my husband was seeing things.  He SAW THINGS THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.

The man I had just married was not stable.
You can imagine the things that I was thinking.
Suffice it to say, God settled my heart, calmed my fears.  I dug my feet into the ground, and I stood by him.

We found the name of a Christian counselor, and Randy had sessions with her for about a year.
During that time Randy learned that his childhood was even more painful than he remembered.  He had suppressed a lot of memories of abuse from his father, and neglect from his mother.   He began to see where the anger that he had always carried came from.  He began to heal.

It was a difficult time– he was frequently having nightmares as new memories would surface.  I was trying to cope with the new information regarding my in-laws.  Randy had to deal with his perception of his childhood, relationship with his parents, and the reality.

But as difficult as it was, there was hope.  Tremendous hope.  His counselor was confident that the dissociative episode was a way of his brain taking over to protect him from a dangerous situation.  At the time of the episode, he was working in a restaurant where the head chef was very similar in temperament to his father.  (He didn’t make the connection until afterwards.)  It was very reassuring to hear that his counselor, and other professionals that worked with him believed it was a one time thing.

As he healed, and was able to put some of these issues to rest, a gentler and kinder man emerged.
Ten years have passed since the day that we met, and I am so happy that I believed the promises that God gave me.

The man that used to resent any musical endeavor now brags about the all women jazz band that I play with, trying to get us gigs.  The man that hated anytime that I had to go away for festivals or classes, is now supportive of me trying to get my masters degree.  (I am the one holding off on it for now!)

I am beyond happy with the live that we have, and the blessings that we have been given in our adorable sons.  We are truly a team,

And now, as we embark on the last journey that I would have expected, we are overcome by the grace of our God.  His mercies are truly new, every morning. (Lamentations 3:23)