A few months later, our divorce
was nearing finalization with the court.
One particular icy night in Michigan’s January, I was lying in the bed of the woman who wasn’t my wife. I had become a joyless, weakened shell of my former, vibrant self.
I remember laying there, on my right side, staring off the edge of the bed through the doorway into the hall where a plugin night light was on. The soft warm glow produced a shadow across that lightly-stained hardwood plank floor.
The edge of that shadow, balancing the light and the darkness, even blending into one another in the center, seemed the perfect image of what was going on inside me.
Darkness is only a thing because light isn’t there. The smallest of lights drives out the deepest of darkness in the space it occupies.
Darkness doesn’t exist in the presence of light.
Like that undefined soft shadowy edge, I had allowed darkness to enter then grow in me, only because I was retreating from life, pulling back from the light.
The farther I went, the darker it got.
Staring blankly into the hallway, it was perfect stillness, the kind that doesn’t allow you to slither through the backdoor of your cowardice.
I could almost hear my thoughts. I was being confronted with myself.
My mind, body and soul were distraught. I was marinating in sadness, pain and seemingly-irreversible regret.
It was like getting trapped in a space too small and tight to back out of, like playing with a Chinese finger trap as a kid. The deeper I went, the more stuck I became.
Like claustrophobia of the spirit – and not only from what I had done. But even more so how I had hurt those I cared about most in this world.
The devastation was real. It was active. And it was expanding. I became destructive to anyone who loved me or anyone who tried.
Tears filled my eyes before spilling across my nose and down my cheeks into the pillow.
There were tears for my wife. There were tears for my kids. I began imagining life permanently separated from them and them from me… my heart just ached.
I felt as though I became pure sorrow. The thickness of remorse pressed against everything in my body and spirit.
I believe I was allowed to feel what it would feel like if I literally became the embodiment of irreversible loss.
If loss could be a person, I was the one it chose to inhabit in that defining moment.
It was at that time and space, next to this person who just months prior I had led into certain heartbreak at that clinic, that I received a message, a distinct impression.
Like the kind you get when you leave the house and suddenly think to check for your wallet, that sure enough, you forgot at home. We’ve all been there.
For me, it was more substantial than a morning commute turnaround. It was a message that to this day, I trust, was from God himself.
As I lie there in disgusted desperation, the quiet but dead serious message hit me without warning in the center of my being and the front of my mind –
“If you keep this up…
I’m going to let you die.”
My mind quickly acknowledged four years of damaging choices.
I immediately had visions of my wife struggling alone raising two kids she was abandoned to raise alone.
I pictured my son growing up angry, hurt and unequipped to live as a man in a world that needs faithful ones so badly.
I even imagined a scene where I didn’t die but was actually worse.
Picture it…
We were at a family holiday gathering about 25 years or so down the road. It was something like Thanksgiving or Christmas.
I had chosen to continue down the path I was on.
Nikki and I were on the bare minimum of speaking terms. My kids were around 30 and had families of their own. The get-together occurred at my son’s house.
A distinct scene materialized in my mind.
One that I can still “see” today. My daughter, Adasyn, and I were alone in the yard. Everyone was inside doing their best to enjoy the holiday, including Adasyn’s husband and three kids. She had become a strong, capable, level-headed woman.
I stood before her, as less. I did not feel equal as a person. I felt like a coward that wore the shame of knowing he was a coward, but wouldn’t change.
The look on her face as she stood with arms folded, keeping warm in the declining temperature, was that of yearning but accepting.
Yearning for a dad she’d never have. A dad that could no longer exist.
And accepting that I made my own decision to leave my family. Now she was making her own decision by guarding her heart and her kids from me.
Our bodies were within three feet of each other, but our hearts were perfect strangers. Our minds disconnected, out of sync.
I barely knew her kids, my own grand-babies. I became like the broken men I had seen growing up. They lived small, self-centered, shattered lives.
Like a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, I was being given a gift in the depth of my darkness. I saw what life would look like if the pattern continued.
Only I wasn’t afraid to die like ole’ Ebenezer Scrooge… I was afraid to die having lived that life.
I was being shown that our future was not set in stone… yet, but that it could be different – by changing who I was being in the present.
That picture of travesty would manifest into reality and become my legacy… if something wasn’t done about it.
In that tear-saturated moment I made a quiet, somewhat bashful determination to keep the promises I had made years ago to the only one in the world who had sworn their life to me, my wife, Nikki.
And to the kids who had no choice about their entrance into this world.
I decided to be the man I was supposed to be. The man I had promised to be.
At my lowest point in life, what would it take for me to be able to do that?
The mountain in front of me was huge… the summit of which was nowhere in sight. Would it even be possible?
I would have to commit to the process before I understood it and move forward on faith alone.
And faith – a tiny, scared, shaky faith, is all I had left… would it be enough to restore that which I destroyed?
To be continued…
Part 3, next Thursday.
Live true,
Adam
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