by John Lynch
“Yeah, I’ll do it. But you gotta promise you’ll listen to me when I do it… even if I’m wrong.”
“I’ll try, Jennifer.”
“No. No trying. Promise me, Dad. Promise you’ll listen and you’ll stop.”
And so I give my daughter a promise I just broke today with my wife.
“I promise, kid. But I may fight you at first.”
“As long as you listen and stop.”
I nod my head. “I can do that.”
“Oh,” she says. “And it can’t be three coughs. I don’t do that.”
“What can you do, then?”
“I could whistle.”
“All right. What would you whistle?”
She thinks for a second. “I could whistle the happy birthday song.”
“That would be subtle. All right. That’s it, then. Whenever I hear you whistling the happy birthday song, I need to just back off and shut it down until I get some objectivity. I like that. I’m in.”
We shake hands with great exaggeration.
We’re both looking at each other now, fully engaged.
“So, then, Jennifer…”
“Yeah?”
“What is my signal when I want to ask if you did your homework?”
“Nothing. Our signal will be nothing. Because I always do my homework. I’ve always done my homework, and you never, ever need to ask.”
“Point taken. That’s what I’ll do then. I’ll… do nothing. And you’ll know when I do nothing that means I don’t have to bother worrying about your homework.”
“Exactly.” We both laugh. She’s now got her feet up on my knees.
We sit there for a while, saying nothing. We are just enjoying being dad and daughter. I finally break the silence.
“Well, I’m going to go write a note to your mom.”
“That’s a good idea, Dad.”
“Hey, kid. Thank you for doing this.”
“You’re welcome, Dad.”
We both stand up at the same time, and she gives me a hug, something I cannot remember receiving from her since she was a little girl. It takes me a long time to let go of her.
“Good night, kid.”
“Good night, Dad.” And she almost bounds up the stairs to her bedroom.
I stand there for some time in the dark. How long has she been wanting to tell me all that? Lindsey and I have an incredible daughter. Just another piece of my life I’ve been putting at risk. Geez.
I am caught off guard with tears. I just trusted my daughter with me. Then almost involuntarily, I whisper out loud, “Lindsey, I can do this. I can do this.”
I find my way into the living room and turn on the muted green reading lamp at Lindsey’s desk. I forage through the drawers until I find some nice stationery. I sit down and words begin pouring out.
Lindsey,
You usually get up before me, so I hope you read this before you see me.
Well, I did it again, huh? I hurt you again. I betrayed your trust… just as you were starting to risk again. I know saying “I’m sorry” won’t work. I know I need to keep asking you to forgive me when I go out and do the same things over and over again. I really hate what I did to you today, Lindsey.
I think this is going to take a while. If you even let it go that far. I’m realizing there’s stuff inside me—anger, screwed-up thinking, a bunch of junk from way back—that may take a while to get any better.
I didn’t see it today… until it was too late. I really thought you were trying to sabotage the lunch. I know—crazy. Afterward, everyone around me let me know I was utterly and totally wrong. Andy said a while back, “When seven people tell you that you’re drunk, you might want to find a place to lie down.” I knew, even while you were downstairs in Cynthia’s car, that I had missed it completely.
I’m so sorry, Lindsey. You were just being you, which is wonderful. They all liked you so much. It was me they weren’t so crazy about.
I sat at work tonight getting nothing done, really afraid that this time I may have finally scared you off. I’m asking God to let it not be too late. Here’s all I can promise: I’m believing that God forgives me, even for today’s craziness. This is all new to me. Even at this moment, it is so hard for me to dare allow myself to believe it.
Andy is about the wisest person I’ve ever met, and Cynthia has been his mentor. She really likes you. If you wanted to meet with her, I’d be good with that. And you can tell her anything you want.
Enough. Only this: I am so sorry for embarrassing you and making you feel like you aren’t enough. You are everything to me. I am not well. You are the health and strength of this family. By the way, you wouldn’t believe the conversation your daughter and I just had. She’s an incredible girl. That’s all about you, and God.
Lindsey, I’m asking again for your forgiveness. I am trusting Him to help me make things right. It’s all I know how to do.
Love,
Steven
I fold the note and place it in an envelope, write her name across the front, and put it on top of the coffeemaker. Then I quietly crawl into bed next to my wife.
The next morning, I wait until she’s had time to get to the coffee and read the note. Then I walk down the stairs and stand just outside the kitchen. She is still holding my note when she notices me. She makes no move, but a kind smile slowly works its way over her face.
“Thank you, Steven. I loved what you said.” She says the next words as though she is risking a lot. “I’m here with you in this… . So, do you have that phone number for Cynthia? I think I would like to call her.”
“There Ain’t No Together People, Just Those with Whiter Teeth.”
(Thursday Afternoon, June 4)
Lindsey and Cynthia spent last Thursday afternoon together and have seen each other a couple of times this week. Each time, I get a little uneasy about what they must be saying. But a couple of phone calls to Andy and Carlos have helped get my thinking relatively straight again.
So here we are, back at Bo’s. This time it’s Lindsey’s idea. She’s catching the group up on what we’ve been talking through this past week.
“Steven and I have struggled in our marriage for a long time. Three weeks ago I was contemplating divorce. I’ve thought about it before, but this time I was actually playing it out in my head—where Jennifer and I would move, what kind of job I’d get. It was awful.”
I’m listening, imagining how hard—even last week—it would have been to let her say those words to this group. To anyone. But now it doesn’t seem that bad.
Cynthia laughs softly. “Steven, do you realize how amazing it is that you can let Lindsey say this to us?”
“Yeah, I guess. But it’s pretty hard to sit here and be… pitied,” I say.
“Oh, man!” Carlos responds. “No one at this table pities you. No one. We’re all really sad she had to feel and think that junk. But look where you are. Surrounded by a table of friends getting to love and respect you like never before. You’re letting us in, man. This is it. This is the good stuff. We’re so proud of you.”
Andy nods. “Every one of us at this table has stories of failure and immaturity like yours. Remember, all of us are learning to be convinced that if we have a safe place, where the worst about us can be known, the cycle of shame from old dead issues can be broken.”
Cynthia adds, “I really think there is this great secret payoff for all those who give others permission to see behind the mask.”
Once again she is awkwardly close to my face. “You find out the thing you feared the most never comes true. In fact, the opposite happens. You actually get to be known. You find out, in your vulnerability, that the real you is validated and loved.”
Keith joins in. “When I was hidden, everybody was paying for it. Even if they didn’t know it. Everybody was being robbed of the best of who I was. Even when I was on my game, I couldn’t give you the real stuff God put inside me to give away. People wanted to love me, but they couldn’t; people
wanted me to love them, but I couldn’t. Everybody lost.”
Carlos jumps in. “Keith, you’re on it, man. The goal is not just someone’s exposure, but their freedom—so everyone gets the best of you. That’s the deal.”
Lindsey says, “Sometimes at church it feels like the ones who look all cleaned up are the admired ones. If you dare let someone know something wrong about you, it’s like you’re suddenly a second-class citizen, part of the leper group. You know what I mean? Who would dare let anyone in with those stakes?”
“You must have been attending my old church about five years ago.” Carlos laughs. “Maybe you don’t recognize me. I was thinner.”
He stands up and pulls in his stomach.
“No, Carlos, it wasn’t your church.”
“A lot of churches,” Carlos answers, “resemble that remark, Lindsey. But like my dad used to say, ‘There ain’t no together people. Just those with whiter teeth.’ ”
Cynthia stands up. “I think I was one of those people who could have made you feel that way. If we’re not careful, we can do it here too. A well-dressed woman of maturity like myself can give the false impression of being above the common faults and failings of others. So, I guess it’s my turn.”
She takes a long drink from her water glass. “It’s been nearly twenty-five years.”
Cynthia then sets her glass back down on the table. “Keith and I had struggled for some time. We were married young and had almost no support base or instruction. Keith was a hotshot navy pilot. We spent two or three years in some of the hardest places in the world for a marriage to survive.”
“Cyn and I had no clue,” Keith says, reaching over and grabbing his wife’s hand, her bracelets jingling. “We grew up in the same town in Kansas. I had known Cynthia since I was six. At some point, on one of our times home from college, we just realized we were in love.”
“He told me he knew since fifth grade that we would get married.”
“After college Cynthia and I got married and were immediately stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. Then Annapolis, San Diego, back to Norfolk, and the Gulf Coast—all within two years. We just thought everything would work out, somehow.”
“It didn’t,” Cynthia adds flatly. “I was unhappy and depressed. Oh, and I was sure to let him hear about it all the time. I didn’t know how to make friends with military wives. Most of them were so… well, military. And they thought I was some kind of hippie art kook. And Keith was away so much of the time.”
Keith takes over. “I was spending more and more time in town with officers just as young, stupid, restless, and frustrated as I was. I started telling Cynthia I was held up after work for briefings with the commanding officer or some such bunk.”
Cynthia looks down at Keith. “After a while I knew he was lying, but I couldn’t bring myself to face it. I wonder now how may of the lies I helped him create. The poor guy couldn’t win. When he didn’t come home, I was miserable and let him know it. When he did come home, I was miserable and let him know it. Oh, I was a regular witch.”
“Most of you know the rest of the story,” Keith continues. “Trouble knows how to find someone hanging out in the same room. It was one night, one stupid act. It was never about being in love with another woman. I was just so immature and disappointed with my life. I gave myself permission to do something very wrong, and somehow, at least in the moment, almost felt vindicated in doing it. And, of course, I hid it from her.”
It’s hard to believe I’m sitting here on this deck, listening to these two sharing something as intimate as this.
“We drifted further and further apart,” Cynthia explains. “Our double bed seemed like three king-size beds.” She stops for a beat before she continues.
“Then one evening, at a going-away party just before we were being transferred yet again, I overheard an offhand remark from a pilot friend of Keith’s who’d had way too much to drink. I confronted Keith when we got home. He confessed. I came completely undone. Whatever illusions I’d had of a happy marriage dissolved in that instant. I felt anger, embarrassment, disgust, and fear, all in the same moment. I was suddenly a victim. And Keith represented all that destroyed my childhood dreams.
“Oh, and I was hurt that God knew and didn’t let me know sooner. So I was a victim with no one to run to.”
Keith’s eyes have clouded with emotion.
“It tore me up to see what I had done to her,” he says. “I grew up in a Christian home, but I think that was the first time I ever took God seriously. I cried out to Him, day after day. I got help from a base chaplain and his wife. I repented to God and to Cyn. It was an incredibly wrenching experience. But I gradually grew to believe that God had forgiven me. Cynthia and I tried to get back to some form of normalcy in our marriage, but even after a long time something still wasn’t right.”
“What was it?” Lindsey asks.
“I became convinced I was a better person than Keith. I reasoned that I never would have or could have done something like what he did. I was better than that. I was a better person.”
She is walking now behind Keith’s chair.
“And I held it over him. God was freeing him from bondage, and at home I was retying all the knots. I thought I had to be in control to get my life back. And so I thought my job was to keep him in a perpetual state of penance.
“It worked. He became convinced that in order to regain trust, he had to take the abuse of my arrogant superiority. I leveraged that control over him in a hundred ways. I used it to manipulate his behavior and ensure that he never forgot what he owed me for staying.”
She sits back down, her ringing bracelets the only sound on the deck.
“And slowly life leaked out of my husband. He became a well-behaved, compliant little boy, always trying to stay out of the doghouse. I couldn’t see that I was robbing myself of my husband a second time.”
Cynthia looks directly at Lindsey. “My dear new friend, I fear there are thousands of husbands and wives living in similar prisons. One fails, and the other finds control by never letting the other feel free and restored. It destroys two lives. One is kept pitifully pinned down while the other is trapped in arrogant blindness, allowed to ignore their own debilitating issues.”
Lindsey has been very quietly taking this all in. “So, what changed?”
Cynthia looks steadily at Keith as she responds. “One evening I was looking at my husband. He was sitting across from me in our living room, watching television. I happened to be browsing through a photo album, looking at pictures of the two of us. One picture was from soon after we were married. He was full of life, mischief, and playful affection. And oh, dear, he was so handsome! He was messing with my hair, looking at me with such confident delight. It looked like he was about to say something funny or take me in his arms and dip me, or tell me about some exotic place he was going to take us on leave… .
“Then I put down the album and stared at the stranger on my couch. He looked old, empty, and tired.
“Over time I had succeeded in convincing him that he wasn’t the man in that picture. I’d taught him he was a hollow failure whose highest aim should be to try, over a lifetime, to earn his way back into my favor. For years I’d seen him as weak and in need of my control. In that moment I gained a glimpse of how much I had hurt him, forcing him to become that hollow man. But I wouldn’t allow myself to stay there. For I had lost the ability to allow myself to hurt for him. To do that, I’d have to face my own sins. Oh, and, dear one, I was not ready for that. But from that moment on, it began to haunt me.
“Eventually God sent me an older woman who had the courage to ask, ‘So, Cynthia, how does Keith’s failure reflect on you?’ In a moment I realized that my own deep shame had caused me to be publicly embarrassed by my husband. The pain from his actions had left a long time ago. I wasn’t a victim of his sexual failure; I was the victim of my own shame. My friend began to help me uncover the lies that would cause such a distorted nine-year-long response.”
>
A waiter has been refreshing iced tea glasses around the table. He is taking his time, drawn into the story.
“Thank you, Cynthia,” Lindsey says, reaching out for my hand. “I do not want to go down that road.”
Cynthia puts her hand on both of ours. “That’s why we’re here.”
I feel a wave of gratitude for this place, for these people. “I’ve got to believe,” I say, “there are a whole lot of people who need friends like this.”
“No doubt,” Andy answers. “The writers of the New Testament talked a lot about it. They actually imagined churches that would be this way.”
I answer quickly. “Not likely. I’ve never seen churches like that.”
“I have,” Hank says, coaxing ketchup out of a bottle with a french fry.
“You’re kidding yourself, Hank,” I say. “Church doesn’t work that way. They’re institutions. And what self-respecting pastor would hang out with a crowd like this? Too much risk to his reputation.”
Andy tilts his head and says, “Well, now, that’s odd, because I’d swear I see Carlos here almost every week.”
Carlos says nothing; he just grins back at me.
“I’m sorry, Carlos. That was a stupid statement. Sometimes I forget you’re a pastor.”
“So do I,” he responds. “It’s something I’m working on, though.”
“But you’re not like this at church, are you?”
“What do you mean?” he asks, genuinely puzzled.
“Well, I just mean, how do you reconcile, I mean, how much does your church know about some of what you shared with me that day a while back. You know, I mean… they don’t know about the way you are around here—do they?”
Carlos is suddenly very serious. “Steven, do you think we’re doing something wrong here?”
“What?” I ask.
“Is Jesus happy with what goes on here in this little gig? Is this right and good, what we’re doing?”
“I think as right as anything I’ve ever done.”
“Then you tell me, Steven, why wouldn’t this be fit for a church?”
I go silent, not wanting to make a bigger fool of myself.
