It's All About Him (17 page)

Will L. Thompson, “Softly and Tenderly”

. . . life was changed, disassembled, rearranged
We came together, fell apart
And broke each other's hearts
Remember when

Remember when the sound of little feet
was the music
We danced to week to week
Brought back the love, we found trust
Vowed we'd never give it up
Remember when

Alan Jackson, “Remember When”

I
n order to have a true fresh start, we had to rebuild trust. For, of course, the worst blow to our marriage had not been bad habits or codependency or my indecisiveness. The deepest wound had been the destruction of trust because of betrayal in our relationship. Alan had not been faithful. And he had covered it up.

By this point, as ugly and painful as it was, he had confessed everything. And as hard as the truth was for me to accept, it was the missing piece of the puzzle. I had felt for a while that something was different, of course, but now Alan put it all together for me. Now I knew why, after all these years, he had wanted to actually separate and go our different ways.

It felt so strange and awful. On one hand he was so familiar to me, the man he'd always been . . . but on the other hand it was like he was a different person altogether. I would look at his face, his eyes, his hands, and think,
How could the man I'd known and loved all these years, with whom I'd had three children, have had this hidden part of his life I knew nothing about
?

I realize, of course, that infidelity happens every day. Plenty of people, celebrities and otherwise, break their marriage vows. But, like most spouses, I never thought that it could happen to
me
. I was so full of anger, shame, and pain that I hardly knew which way to turn.

But God had entered into this sad story. He had brought me a long way. He was working in Alan as well, bringing him back to Himself and also to me. And as Alan confessed everything, it was a huge relief for him. It felt so freeing to no longer have secrets he was trying to hide. It was actually liberating to confess his wrongdoings, and to ask for my forgiveness.

I was thankful, in a really painful way, that he had brought it all out in the open. I appreciated that he was courageous enough to tell all and ask for my pardon. After all, if he wasn't repentant, we weren't going to get anywhere in rebuilding our relationship. By “repentant,” I don't mean guilty and miserable. Real repentance is actually freeing; it lifts the burden of guilt. And it's shown not just by words, but by deeds.

WOULD I SMOOTH THINGS OVER IN A SUPERFICIAL WAY, TAKING HIM BACK AND ACTING AS IF ALL WAS WELL, BUT STILL HOLDING ON TO ALAN'S WRONGS LIKE ACES UP MY SLEEVE, TO BE WHIPPED OUT WHENEVER I NEEDED TO TRUMP HIM?

Thankfully, as I'll show in a moment, Alan made real changes in behavior that demonstrated his changes in convictions.

But the first step lay with me, and it was a huge challenge.

Would I really forgive?
Could
I forgive? Or would I smooth things over in a superficial way, taking him back and acting as if all was well, but still holding on to Alan's wrongs like aces up my sleeve, to be whipped out whenever I needed to trump him?

No Denial

My lifelong habit of denial was not going to work in this situation. I couldn't just cover things over and forge ahead, acting like nothing had happened. In order for
me
to be set free, as well as Alan, I had to clearly acknowledge the wrongs he'd done. And then if I wanted to go forward, I had to forgive. There was no escaping it.

I've talked with so many women who can relate to this dilemma. Even if your marriage hasn't gone through a time like this, all of us have been wronged in one way or another. We've all been hurt by others, whether our spouses, friends, relatives, acquaintances, grown children, employers, whomever. But when we hold on to bitterness and resentment, it doesn't really injure the ones who wronged us. It hurts
us
. And it can absolutely destroy us.

There's no one-size-fits-all kind of answer or formula for forgiveness. For each of us, the struggle will be individual. But what I found, in the long run, was that forgiveness was the key to real freedom in my life. It unlocked all kinds of new blessings.

Of course when I found myself confronted with the need to forgive Alan, I couldn't see ahead to the good things that forgiveness would bring in my future. Nor could I relate to what other people had done or not done in similar situations.

All I knew was that if I was really going to do everything that I could do to make my marriage work, I had to forgive completely. I felt anxious and pained by the whole process, but I also felt a strong sense of God's presence. I really knew that
He
was always faithful, even if human relationships weren't. I read in the New Testament, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
¹

I desperately wanted that supernatural peace of God!

So I tried to do what those verses said, step by step. I prayed, pouring out my concerns to God. I thanked Him for the fact that I could even have a relationship with Him. I asked Him to do things in my heart that I just could not do on my own. I asked Him to erase pictures in my mind that tortured me. I asked Him to free me from rage. And I prayed that He would help me to be the loving, forgiving wife that I wanted to be.

I knew I could not be that person through my own good intentions or willpower. I wasn't strong enough. But God was strong enough to do miracles in me, starting with giving me His peace right in the midst of the pain of Alan's betrayal. And He kept the miracles coming, giving me what I needed to be able to forgive the wrongs done to me.

Tenderized

Oddly enough, the more I prayed, the more tender my hard heart became. Something very strange started to happen. I was struck by the wrongs
I
had done and motivated to humbly ask Alan for forgiveness for how I had hurt him.

This was
way
beyond my normal way of thinking. It happened because God brought a familiar part of Scripture to life for me in a new way. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that if you even
look
at someone lustfully, you have committed adultery in your heart.

I'd heard that all my life, but I'd never felt convicted about it before. Now, though, I realized that if I'd felt any moral superiority over Alan because I'd never actually
committed
adultery, Christ's words certainly nixed that. I, too, had been tempted. During my flying career and other times, men had shown all kinds of interest in me. I'd had opportunities to respond to that attention. I'd never given in. But I'd had thoughts and daydreams that failed Christ's tough standard.

Of course there's a big difference in the
consequences
of actual adultery versus impurity or unfaithfulness in one's thought life. But my ability to forgive Alan had a lot to do with realizing that I, too, was in need of forgiveness for a wandering heart and a lack of focused love and communication in my marriage.

As I thought about all this, parts of the Bible came alive for me like never before. For example, I love the story in the New Testament of the woman who came to see Jesus one night when He was having dinner at the home of a religious leader. This woman had “lived a sinful life,”
²
the Bible says. She was determined to see Jesus, and she got into the courtyard where He was dining. She washed His feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, and put perfume on them.

That all sounds quite strange to us. But in Jesus' day, since people wore sandals, and their feet became quite dusty from the unpaved roads, house servants would normally wash guests' feet, using a basin of water, and wipe them with a clean towel.

But this woman did much more. She
kissed
Jesus' feet. She wet them with her tears. She dried them with her long hair and anointed them with perfume. She gave everything she had to show Him how sorry she was for her former lifestyle . . . and how much she loved Jesus.

The religious leaders were absolutely horrified. This was not proper.

So Jesus told them a story. Say that you have two people who have borrowed money, He said. One owes a million dollars to a moneylender; the other owes a hundred. Neither one can pay him back. So the lender forgives both debts, canceling them out.

Which person will love the lender more? Jesus asks.

The one whose debt was bigger and was forgiven more, says the host.

Exactly, says Jesus.
Those who are forgiven a lot love a lot
. “But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
³

As I thought about what forgiveness really meant in my own life, I realized that the same was true for me. If I could begin to see how big and revolting my sins really were in God's eyes, and yet how He had wiped out every single one of them, then I'd have a big love for Him.

The Psalms told me that God's love for me was bigger than I could imagine, “as high as the heavens are above the earth,” and that He had removed my sins “as far as the east is from the west.”
⁴
It's absolutely enormous: I couldn't fathom how high God's love was, nor how wide was His pardon of my sins.

But out of the overflowing gratitude of realizing that
I'd
been totally forgiven, I could follow Jesus' lead and forgive the debts of others who owed me. “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you,” Ephesians 4:32 says.

Now that I had some big forgiving to do, and I had a new sense of God's forgiveness of
me
, I could really roll up my sleeves and put that Scripture into practice. It wasn't just a dry old Bible verse. It was a flexible, freeing life principle.
⁵

Life out of Death

As I began to understand this, one of my watershed moments came, fittingly, on Easter. As the girls and I drove to church on Easter, during the time that Alan and I were still separated, I was thinking about the message that I would hear, like so many Easters before. Christ died to pay the punishment for human sin, so that the wrongdoings of those who believed in Him would be forgiven. It was a truth I'd grown up believing, but had taken for granted in my everyday life.

But on this Resurrection morning, with new life and fresh blossoms bursting forth all around me, the Holy Spirit seemed to speak to me like never before. It was as if Christ was saying to me, “Denise, I died for all of your sins, the ones in your past and the ones that you have not yet committed, so that you could be forgiven for all of them. I loved you enough to do that for you. Even before you were born, I chose to die for you so that we could have an intimate, loving relationship forever! With My help, you can do the same for Alan. If you will follow My example, I will bless your marriage and make it new.”

When I arrived at church, every word of the sermon that day seemed to hinge on one thing—my willingness to forgive Alan, so that real restoration, emotional closeness, and freedom could be ours.

Forgiveness was the first step in rebuilding our marriage. But in order to go forward, day by day, we also had to rebuild trust— and forgiveness and trust are two different things.

Thanks to what God was doing inside of me, I was able to forgive Alan. Though on a much smaller scale, of course, my forgiveness was a copy of Jesus' forgiveness of me. Forgiveness is a grace that is freely given to the offender by the one who's been offended. It's a gift.

MY FORGIVENESS OF ALAN DIDN'T MEAN THAT I WAS BLIND, OR HAD MY HEAD STUCK IN THE SAND. AS WE MOVED FORWARD, I DIDN'T JUST WANT NICE WORDS. I WANTED TO SEE REAL CHANGES IN WHAT ALAN DID.

But
trust
has to be earned. Rebuilding it takes changed behaviors continued over time. My forgiveness of Alan didn't mean that I was blind, or had my head stuck in the sand. As we moved forward, I didn't just want nice words. I wanted to see real changes in what Alan did. I wanted to see different actions, so I could reasonably expect different outcomes.

Thankfully, we were on the same page. He not only
told
me that he wanted to save and restore our marriage. He
showed
me, in tangible ways, humbly doing whatever he could to demonstrate that he was willing to live transparently. No secrets.

It was hard work, but Alan has never been one to be afraid of working hard. For one thing, he was very sensitive to how I was feeling. As I worked through everything going on inside of me, I had a lot of anger, tears, and frustration. If I heard about someone who'd been unfaithful in his marriage, or if there was an adulterous character in a movie we were watching, I'd blow up.

“It's your fault that I react this way!” I'd yell at him. And the good thing was, Alan would not only let me vent, but he also really heard my pain.He put himself as best he could in my shoes, trying to understand and empathize with the thunderstorm of emotions that were flooding the dry ground inside of me
.

He also made changes in his professional life. In terms of his concerts and the many temptations that can come with life on the road, he started flying to every engagement, rather than taking the tour bus.He called me and our children all the time, giving short accounts of where he was and what he was doing. There was never a time when I couldn't get him to answer his cell phone when I called, as there had been before. And almost without exception, he flew home after every show rather than staying out on the road. He broke off relationships with people whose influence might negatively affect his new commitment.

No one is perfect. But as much as Alan's unfaithfulness had hurt me, his willingness to change his behaviors and work hard to make a new start impressed me. After all, he could have taken an easy road. He was a superstar; it would have been easy to go off and hang out with people who would tell him he was just perfect, or whatever he might have wanted to hear. And he certainly would have had thousands of choices!