It could have ended, but instead it began

"I'm not sure you'll want to go in there."

Hearing those words, my world as I knew it ended. It was 1987. Hard to believe it has been twenty years.

I was in the Navy serving on submarines. My wife had just picked me up at the pier upon my return from three months at sea. As we got to the front door of the condo we were renting, she spoke those understated, euphemistic words. As I write this I can still feel a sense of trepidation and nervousness as I place myself at that moment. Wow. I can hardly believe the unsettled feelings I am having now just thinking about it, and I am on the verge of tears.

That period of my life is a bit of a blur, but its impact is monumental, so please bear with me.

I learned what she meant as soon as I entered the condo. She had moved out all of her stuff and she said she herself would be moving out at the end of the week. Shazam!

I still don't know why she did things the way she did. I had heard many horror stories of sailors coming home to all sorts of unimaginable situations. Locks changed, lovers moved in, houses and bank accounts cleaned out and no trace of the wife and kids, those sorts of things. Thank God she didn't do that. She stayed the week and she picked me up at the pier. It could not have been easy for her. God bless her for that much.

To say I was blind-sided would have been a gross understatement. Yes, in retrospect I can say that there were warning signs, but signs only do any good if they are in a language you understand. The idea of her leaving was as foreign as the idea of, well, something I cannot even imagine right now. Perhaps sprouting a diesel engine out of my left ear and living the rest of my life in a U-Haul truck.

It was probably the most desperate time in my life, certainly one of the two most painful emotionally and three or four most momentous. But for the grace of God, I wouldn't be here now.

I spent the next week begging, pleading, sighing, crying, trying to understand. I probably shouted and raved, I don't know. By turns I felt like imploding or exploding. I could barely function. I don't know how I got to work or performed my duties. Part of that work involved standing watch on the submarine for a few days until the other crew took over and eventually left port. I remember a night in particular that still haunts me.

That week I stood watch in the missile compartment of the submarine on an overnight watch. It was a very quiet place at night, and I stood watch armed with a pistol. In a very detached way I remember thinking to myself that it would be easy to end it all. I had the opportunity and the means. I started imagining what the other watch would think when he came by and found me. I started imagining what the newspapers would say. There had been two accounts of members of the military in the last year or so who had committed suicide in the area. I kept handling the gun, feeling it, looking at it, thinking about it. We kept them unloaded, the clips on our belts. I don't remember ever loading the pistol. I don't know what stayed my hand, though I like to give credit to God. It was a very close thing.

My life was such pain, desperation, hopelessness, and lack of control. I felt that life had ended for all intents and purposes. There was nothing to hang on to, no light at the end of this tunnel. The person who felt that any problem was solvable, who had ultimate faith in the power of intellect, could not solve this one. It involved another human, and that person had free will. Nothing I could do could make her stay. No appeal to logic or intellect or promises to change or pleas for time could change the fact that my wife was going to leave. In desperation a few nights later I turned to God.

I spent many sleepless hours on the couch, pleading for God to make her stay, trying to bargain. I'd do anything He wanted. Go to church, read the Bible, whatever He wanted. Just make her stay. Needless to say, it didn't work, and I felt just as miserable.

I am realizing now that the remarkable thing was that I could have said "well, obviously God doesn't care, and this proves that He is of no use to me." Instead, I took the road less traveled by, and it has made all the difference.

I reasoned that I could not control my wife, nor did I really feel it would have been a good thing even if I could. To compel her love me would have been meaningless. Why would I expect God to do differently? If he compelled her to love me in order to grant my prayer, it would be the same thing. I couldn't control her through my own devices or through God's help, and if I could it wouldn't be fair to her. I could only control myself. So I had to accept that she would leave. Score one for logic. Now how do I accept the unacceptable? I changed my prayer strategy and asked God to give me the strength and courage I would need to deal with her leaving.

Click! Prayer granted.

Almost overnight, I felt I could breathe. I wasn't going to collapse in on myself. I could live if she left. The Navy therapist I was seeing wondered what my secret was and said I should bottle it for others.

Some skeptics might think that I just grew emotionally enough to deal with it out of necessity, survival mode kicking into gear, and that God was not the means by which I was able to deal with things. All I can say is you are giving me way too much credit for that time in my life. To attribute any degree of emotional maturity to me at that stage in my life is to give credit where credit is not due. I am barely capable of emotional maturity now.

So I said to myself "Wow, maybe there is something to this God thing after all." And that leads to the next question: Does God really exist, and is He relevant to me?

Stay tuned.