Walk Away Wife

Excerpted from The Walk Away Wife
copyright 2011


John Mark—that’s my husband’s name—is the son of a well-known evangelist, the grandson of a well-known evangelist and, as you might expect by his name, was destined to become a leader of sheep from the moment his mother felt the babe leap in her womb. As if his pastoral lineage weren’t guarantee enough, she bound him to the altar with not one, not two, but three apostolic names. John Mark Matthews.
John was raised in a black and white world where every question has an answer and every answer is either yes or no. As a general rule, there are more Nos than Yesses; it is far easier to be wrong than to be right; and according to his sermons God is the Great Referee in the Sky, whose main job is to keep track of our failures. My God, on the other hand, laughs easily, cries over baby birds fallen from nests and keeps a watchful eye out for the next Tom Landry because, like all good Texans, He is an avid Cowboys fan. He is too busy laughing and crying and trying to keep people from killing each other to keep score of who said what four-letter word and which denomination came the closest to getting it right. I’ve often wondered whether my God and John’s God would like each other if they were to accidentally meet some day.
My world has never been black and white: it’s something in between. It is gray and in my experience, most people don’t like gray because it reminds them of subways and fog and wet cement and confusion.
John and I married anyway, in spite of our differences and his parents’ objections, which were numerous and given to us in a bulleted outline form, the first of which was “Do not be unequally yoked.” And then beneath, in case that was unclear, “Christians do not marry non-Christians,” I being the non-Christian. They had other scripture references, but I can’t remember them now.
The first three years were great. We didn’t want to have kids right away, but eventually we got sloppy with the birth control and finally quit using it altogether. We kept waiting for ‘It’ to happen, but ‘It’ didn’t. So we quit waiting, hoping perhaps the fates would be fooled into thinking we didn’t want kids and would make us pregnant out of spite.
The fates did not prove to be so naïve.
Then John declared God wanted him to plant churches instead of children. The imagery in that was vaguely repugnant to me. It still is, but I didn’t say so at the time because we were both hurting and heaven knew I’d said my fair share of thoughtless and cruel things. So John planted churches and I tended the flock into neat little rows like a good gardener’s wife. And somewhere in between the rows we fell ill. I can’t say when, exactly, I just know one day our marriage was no longer about ‘us’. We began to live parallel but separate lives belonging to him and to me. Sure, we shared a checking account and a coffee pot, but we sorted everything else between us: he got the big stuff and the church stuff, I took care of the rest. The only time we were together was in bed and even there we took turns.
By the time our marriage finally died, we were like ships passing in the channel. In fact, conversation became so rare, I lost the skill. I relearned in time, but it was always strange to me after those years of silence, like a foreign language. And so I made it a point to practice as often as possible, for fear if I didn’t I might lose the ability to communicate altogether.
It’s not John’s fault. He’s a good person. I can’t say the same for myself. I struggle with the most heinous thoughts, the worst kinds of longings. During his Sunday sermons I find myself identifying more with the sinners than the saints. I actually prefer their company, perhaps because sinners like to laugh and I discovered too late in life that I am dependent on laughter the way other people are dependent on sunshine, or methamphetamine, or praise. Or maybe it is just because I am so very aware that I am a sinner myself.