Chapter 22: It’s Not You, It’s Me.

I am going to introduce you to a new villian in this saga.

And the villian is me.

Yes, I could diligently scrub the entire area with Clorox, the blood would still remain on my hands. I could pin this crime on someone else, and boy isn’t the church awful and look at me the poor victim, but honesty is required for this tale. We all struggle with some darkness, and the only way I eventually overcome all of this (and some of the best – and toughest – advice I’ve ever been given) is to take 100% responsibility for the role I played in everything. It’s like you own a house with a hidden door. The door hangs on an old hinge rusted from years of disuse. In the room behind are your secrets…the room is crammed with old debris, things that should have been gone through, skeletons which need to be addressed and discarded. No matter others can’t see it, YOU know when real estate is being taken up in your head. And you can’t clean up the mess if you refuse it exists. Trust me, I’ve been the bad girl enough to know.

I am working at church behind the information desk when an intense looking woman approaches and requests the doctrinal statement. Well, hallelujah, someone finally knows to check this church out under the hood before jumping in the pool. I wish I had done so. She is a first time visitor, there with her husband. She has a soft Southern accent and has relocated from Texas (warm, balmy, beautiful) to here, Wisconsin (so damn cold in the winter we blow bubbles outside to watch them crash). She is quick witted (yes!) shrewd and intellectual (yes!) and just as hyper as I am (yes, yes, YES!) We hit it off immediately.

She has big, brown doe’s eyes and a beautiful huge whiter-than-mine smile (We joke about this. She burnt her mouth once using too much whitener. Overachiever.) Her brown hair waves to her shoulders when it’s not in a ponytail where it usually is because she’s always busy tearing down a wall, building a set, leading crazy drama games. She is taller than me, as is almost everyone, and has a regal height, like another bestie you will meet after my greatest sin. What really gets me though, is her laugh. I LOVE people who don’t take life too seriously and laugh at everything, the good, the bad, and the dirty. She has a big, boisterous musical laugh and it overtakes her whole body. I instantly fall in love with this Southern belle, and she becomes one of a handful of best friends I have in this world.

To top it off, she is an excellent drama director. She almost immediately spearheads a new drama group, and for a few years, she brings these great, often hysterically funny scripts to the stage, waking the Sunday morning zombie-brained crowd to get them thinking about life. We go to a women’s empowerment conference and talk each other’s ears off till 3 am. We spend endless hours in creative planning. On Easter, we go to her house, and she has made baskets and set up a little party room for my active small children, they love her, too. We spend truckloads of delightful time together, laughing, crying, discussing possibilities.

We become very close, yet there is a darkness smoldering beneath this perfect picture of which I am unaware. She has a marriage that is failing, and underneath all of the good times veneer, she is suffering, but can tell no one. It’s church, and you are only allowed to fix your marriage, not end it. You absolutely cannot leave, even if it’s a heap of hopeless Swiss-cheese rust, up on blocks with no engine and no parts available, dammit you absolutely have to keep pretending that skeleton of a thing is gonna get you somewhere, everything is just fine, thank you very much. I’ll just be over here pretending this thing works.

My friend is doing the one thing in a church you cannot do, especially if you are in leadership.

My best friend… is getting divorced.

I could blame everyone who drilled it into my head that divorce is not an option, what God has put together, let no man put asunder, you need to try harder, pray harder, fast, have more date nights, spend more quality time together, learn their love-language (seriously, some guy came up with this bullshit and it is held up as Gospel. Folks, it’s just a top five list expanded long enough to sell a book.) and buy flowers and candy and all of the happy horseshit that doesn’t work if the core is broken in the first place.

It is the one area in which you are not allowed to fix a mistake.

I am tasked with trying to talk her out of this, the great irony being, as you may recall, I am masquerading my own broken marriage. I’m making it as good as possible, because that’s the Right Thing To Do, and God hates divorce. Hey, if I have to do this, so does she. It’s the rules.

I can remember my jeans and sweater. There is a chill in the air as I drive the ten miles, suddenly wishing it were a thousand, to her house. I am meeting with both her and her husband. I reluctantly pull in, shift into park, and sit. The white railings of her house glare at me, long glowing teeth in the moonlight. I really don’t want to do this. My brain says come on, she just has to stay with her husband, that’s what’s right, but my soul is crying out, come on, Monica, get real. If you had the guts to be honest with yourself, you would do this, too. But I can’t, so neither can she.

The door swings open. Her eyes are red and swollen, she looks exhausted. Her husband looks about the same. I sit with them both in a side room of their beautiful house, now a mausoleum for the corpse of a relationship I’m going to attempt convincing them to Frankenstein back to life. I talk, and plead, and preach. They are both my friends, why can’t they just get along?

I find out years later there are dark things going with her husband on that she has discovered, things she is too embarrassed to tell me, because I am the Perfect Pastor’s Wife and would be appalled. The really sad part is, she’s not wrong. I don’t feel this way inside, but this is how I am coming off, because I’ve been hiding my own shitshow so long.

The solution in church, no matter the offense, no matter what’s wrong, is always counseling and therapy and read the right books and go to a Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage conference, dammit if your marriage is not working, you’re just not doing the right things to fix it!

She turns me down, she is still getting divorced.

In my best friend’s darkest hour, I am not there for her. She is decidedly NOT following God, so I can’t support her in this decision. Per the Bible, I have to turn her over to Satan.

I leave, we are both in tears.

I don’t see her again for 15 years.