Our Marriage testimony; it’s long, but stick with it, there’s a happy ending.

In 2014 and 2015 my marriage was suffering. We had been married for seven years and some unaddressed issues began to create resentment which simmered until it eventually boiled over. My husband had started running marathons in 2013 and was constantly training. He worked downtown at the time and so he arranged his work schedule to be able to leave work at 4, drive to Ladybird Lake and run on the trails there. The problem is though, he would run for 3+ hours at a time. So, to get to work early enough to be able to leave by 4 he was leaving our home in Pflugerville at 6:30 AM and returning home, sweaty and completely spent at nearly 8 PM. On the weekends he would do his long runs (over 22 miles) which he also preferred to do on the trails at Ladybird, so he left before 8 and didn’t come home until after noon.

In addition to the logistics problem of the marathon training there was a thread of resentment about the running that was very personal. Eric had never been a runner prior to 2012. I was the runner. I started running on my own in 5th grade because I wanted to be just like my big sister, Pam, who was a runner. I ran track in junior high and high school, and I ran at Ladybird Lake in college, and even ran (at the back of the pack) with the UT marathon club a few times. When Eric and I started dating, I tried to get him to run with me. He has always been very athletic, he mountain biked, he played basketball, and tennis, racket ball and volleyball, but running? Pfft. Getting him to go for a run with me was like pulling teeth, and on the rare occasion that I did get him out there, he would sprint off super fast without me and then double over, hands on his knees, huffing and puffing. He wouldn’t listen to me about pacing, he didn’t ever stretch, he basically scorned running.

So how did a guy like that get into marathon running you may be wondering. In 2012, when I was pregnant with Vivienne, my best friend, Michelle, and her husband Barrett asked if they could stay with us in April because they had signed up to run the Cap 10K. Of course we said yes, and Eric spontaneously said, “Yeah maybe I’ll run it too.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather at that statement. My eyes bulged, “You’ll WHAT?! YOU?! You want to run the Cap 10K? You know it’s over six miles, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, “but if Barrett can do it, I can.”

“Barrett was in the Marines, he has run long distances many times, you can’t run a quarter mile without stopping for a rest!” but he was adamant.

Maybe he wouldn’t have been so gung-ho about it if I hadn’t reacted with so much shock. But from that day on he trained like a madman, subscribed to running magazines and blogs, started using runner lingo (apparently some people say PB for “personal best” instead of PR for “personal record). I couldn’t join him in training because I was pregnant, constantly nauseated and, at the time, working a full-time job. After he ran the Cap 10K, they all decided to train for the Rock ‘n Roll half marathon in November of the same year. It was one month after Vivi was born, so obviously I couldn’t run it or train for it (and I had never run that distance before). So my husband, who, prior to this, hadn’t run further than a block, within a year ran his first half marathon. I was proud of him, and looking forward to running with him when I was healed up from having Vivienne.

When I did heal and was ready to run, I expected that my husband would take a leadership role and become my trainer, but instead, he didn’t want to run with me. Because he was much further along in his training, he was so much faster than me (honestly even when I’m in shape he is much faster than me), so running at my pace would have been a wasted workout for him. I felt hurt that he prioritized his own training over running together as a couple. It was even more hurtful that, when I did get into shape and asked him to sign me up to run races with him, he placed me in corrals much further back than him, so we didn’t start together. His justification was that he placed me in the corrals that corresponded to my mile time, and while that’s true, I had been under the impression that we were doing these things together as a couple, not separately as individuals. This continued over the course of years. In November of 2013 I ran my first (and heretofore only) half marathon, which I trained for all by myself while pushing the girls in the double stroller. We decided to make it a trip, and flew to Vegas to run the Rock ‘n Roll race that goes through the strip at night. Eric ran his first marathon, and of course, placed me in a corral far from his, and because it’s such a huge race, I didn’t even reach the starting line until an hour into the race.

During this time I had just started being a stay at home mom. Both the girls were preschool aged and I didn’t have MOPS (now called The MomCo) back then. Man, I really could have used it. My girls were super sweet, and I loved being a mom, but I was extremely lonely. With my husband gone more often than he was home, and my best friends all living out of town, I felt seriously isolated. I was by myself every day pretty much from sun up to sundown. I didn’t go to church often because Eric took his rest days on Saturdays and ran in the park on Sundays, so I would have been dragging two grumpy toddlers there all on my own. I made (and often ate) dinner all by myself, did all the household chores (except mowing the lawn and taking out the trash which he still did) and spent 90% of my time with only my daughters for company. We were ships passing in the night.

When Eric and I talked about it, he didn’t want to stop running, and I didn’t want to force the issue, because I didn’t want to take that from him. I didn’t want to be the reason he stopped running marathons. But all the other issues combined caused huge arguments. In April of 2014 we had a really bad one. I packed a bag and threatened to leave with the kids. I didn’t leave, but I left that bag packed in my closet for over a month. And the resentment was unbearable. I felt like a single parent except that someone else was paying the bills. I started thinking, if I got a divorce, I could get a job and put the kids in daycare. I would still be doing it all by myself, but at least then I wouldn’t feel so angry all the time. I went so far as to start researching divorce options, I asked a friend who had just gone through a divorce what she did and how it worked. I asked a single mom friend if she would be willing to be roommates. She said yes.

I didn’t talk to my family about it. My whole family is full of Christians, and my parents (who were each other’s second spouses) were always burdened with guilt over the dissolution of each of their first marriages. I didn’t tell my sisters, who I usually go to for advice, because I was ashamed and I was pretty sure they would try to talk me out of it. I just thought, if I’m going to do this, I’m just going to do it and tell my family it happened. It’s my life, I’m an adult, I don’t need anyone’s permission.

That’s when God stepped in.

It was a normal night, but it wasn’t a normal dream. My dreams are usually very disjointed and nonsensical. They are never profound or filled with truth. For example, in a dream I had a while back, my pet elephant was stolen by circus people and I went searching for him but they had hidden him in the past, so I had to time travel to the 80’s to look for him, but none of the elephants in the past were my elephant. That one was wild. Even though I haven’t worked in a restaurant since 2008, sometimes, when I am stressed, I still have nightmares about waiting tables. But the dream God sent me in 2014 was completely different.

In the dream my best friends and I had just arrived at a beach house for a girl’s trip and we were walking through the rooms, checking out the place. Everyone was talking and happy and excited. We’re all rolling suitcases along a well-lit hallway with windows lining one wall and rooms lining the other. We were talking and looking into each room. We came into one room and as everyone else moved on down the hallway I lingered and just took in the peace of the room. It was quiet, the window was open and I could hear and smell the sea, and feel the salty breeze on my face. It was a normal beach house bedroom, somewhat dated in its decor but still relaxing. I sat down on the bed, and my eyes landed on an oyster that was sitting on the bedside table. Instinctively, I knew there was a pearl inside that oyster and I suddenly became determined to extricate it. I picked up the oyster and pried and pried and pried with all my might, eventually grabbing a nail file to help me leverage it open. When I did get it open, the top half of the shell cracked off about a centimeter from the hinge and went flying. I held the bottom of the oyster shell in my hand, and got down on the floor to retrieve the pearl from where it had rolled, under the bed. It was covered in dirt and hair because it was wet, and as I cleaned it off I realized that the pearl was pitted, dull, and clearly not finished forming. At that point I looked at the oyster and realized that it was dead. I had killed it. The mechanism that caused the pearl to form, was now lifeless. There was no putting it back and taping it up and repairing the damage I had done. The oyster shell was cracked, the oyster was dead, and the pearl would never be whole. It would never be complete. There was nothing that could be done, and it was my fault.

That’s when I woke up. I woke up crying, like, sobbing. I have never ever felt that much regret in my life. I didn’t know how, but I understood what the dream meant: The oyster was my marriage, and the pearl was my family. If I violently broke apart my marriage, my family would never be complete, and would never heal from it.

I have thought so much about this in the ensuing years and one thing that stands out to me today is how, when the oyster shell broke apart, part of the top shell was affixed permanently to the bottom. I was only able to open it by breaking the top shell. I believe Eric is the top shell, and I’m the bottom. I’m the base. As the mom, I formed the foundation of the family at the time, the girls were still very dependent on me. He is our shield, our top shell, who protects and cares for us, and I fully believe he would have fought with everything he had for our marriage if I had filed for divorce.

When we were dating, at the very beginning, we broke up for a time. That’s another story, but he worked to win me back, I always like to say that he was in it to win it. He took it slowly, didn’t pressure me, showed up with flowers, texted and called often, and eventually we got back together. Before we got married he told me that he never wanted to get divorced, because his parents had been through divorce and he found it very traumatic. He didn’t want his kids to experience that.

So, back to 2014. I wish I could say that that dream just magically fixed our marriage. It didn’t. What it did do, was steel my resolve, I was going to do everything in my power to remain married. Don’t confuse this resolution with any kind of benevolence on my part, no no, my thought process was I’m going to do my due diligence, and if we still get divorced, then that’s on him. I still wanted to get divorced, but I wanted it to be his fault.

So I began communicating my dissatisfaction and resentment to him, and, though it took multiple repetitions of the same conversations, little by little, he began to understand. He didn’t change much at first, and my anger would ebb and flow. The real breaking point came in May of 2015.

In May of 2015 a close friend of ours was having a birthday get together at a bar in Houston, so Eric and I packed up the girls and drove out there. The party was on a Friday, so we decided to drop the kids at my parent’s house so they could see their grandparents. I didn’t want to spend long at home because I hadn’t been telling my parents about the state of my marriage, and my mom is something of a clairvoyant when it comes to her kids. I knew she would know. But I thought, we’ll just drop them off, I’ll touch up my makeup and we will leave, but within five minutes of being at her house, that little bloodhound sniffed it out. She picked up on our marital troubles, specifically that I was checked out. When she figured it out, she did this thing that I have always hated. She came up to me and put her arm around me and held me tight, all 5’5″ of her, head tilted upward to speak God’s truth directly into my ear. God’s truth is not always easy to hear. I don’t remember what she said exactly, because I was fuming the entire time. I thought, just as I suspected, she’s on his side, if we do get divorced she’ll choose him, I knew it.

We got into the car and started driving, and although he tends to be a little oblivious to my moods normally, I could tell that Eric sensed that I was upset, because he was handling me like you would handle a live grenade. We had a 45 minute drive to get to the bar where the party was, and I had my arms crossed, eyes glued out the passenger side window, mouth set in a hard line. Obviously, I couldn’t talk to him about why I was angry, and I couldn’t call my friends and vent while he’s sitting right next to me, so I was just stuck, stewing in my anger. Finally, after 15 or so minutes of silence Eric asked me what was wrong. “You want to know what’s wrong?” I growled, and then let loose all about my resentment over the running and being left at home all the time with the girls, and being left behind even when I did train and run races with him, and how I felt like he was acting as if his only responsibility as a husband and father was to pay the bills, and how my mom has no idea what it’s like living with him and the emotional neglect I was feeling being married to this utter robot of a man who, seemingly, couldn’t care less if I shriveled into a prune as long as it didn’t cause him any inconvenience. I ranted and raved the whole rest of the ride to the bar. For half an hour. When we pulled into the parking lot he just sat there for a minute with his hands in his lap and his head down, and then quietly said, “Is this how you really feel? I had no idea.”

“I don’t know how you could possibly not know, this is not the first time I’ve told you these things,” I said.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

And he meant it. I could tell he finally heard me. He heard, he listened, and he understood. That realization broke the ice that had crusted over my soul and I was flooded with relief. That night Eric and I made out at the bar basically the whole night. Like teenagers. Like it was our first date. After we went back to Austin we continued to work on our marriage, but this time we were working together. Within a few months our marriage was thriving, and in December of that year we became pregnant with our son, Trevor.

Some time after that night in May I remember talking to my mom, and she told me that as soon as we left her house, she and my dad had hit their knees praying for us and they prayed for us every night for six months straight. I am fully convinced that their intercession is what saved our marriage. It was such a gift that God gave to my parents to take a part in restoring my marriage. He used the excruciating experience of divorce in both their lives to redeem my marriage. Their fervent prayers broke through a barrier that I had erected and that Eric was unwittingly trapped behind.

When I think of what my life would be like if I had gotten a divorce ten years ago, it’s frightening. I wouldn’t have Trevor, and I would have had to weather the death of my dad in 2017 and the death of my best friend, Michelle, in 2019 without my husband or son. Who knows how the divorce would have affected my daughters, but statistically I know that girls benefit from having a present father. While this time in my life is a hard place to revisit, I wanted to share this story, in case it helps others. To be clear, Eric was never abusive in any way, he had no addictions, he was never unfaithful. Those would be valid reasons to consider divorce, but I never felt like I had any rock-solid deal breakers. Still, a great many couples cite irreconcilable differences and dissolve their unions, and that could have happened to Eric and I, if not for the undeserved grace of God, and the irrepressible prayers of my parents.

Since that time Eric and I took part in ReEngage at my church, which has further helped to strengthen our marriage. I know it’s not perfect, because our marriage is made up of two imperfect people, but I hope, no matter what the future holds, that Eric and I will continue to cling first to God and second to one another.