an apartment full of boxes somewhere in dallas…chris and anne are discussing final moving things, including the new living room furniture they picked out last week.

chris: so, when is our furniture getting delivered?

anne: um…i thought you said we were going to wait until we moved up there to order it…

chris: yeah, i said that, but i thought you’d get it anyway!

anne: (mouth hangs open overdramatically)…i was just being a submissive wife! i’m not going to spend a bunch of money without us being on the same page.

chris: i just assumed that what i say has no meaning!

anne: so you want me to order it?

chris: it would nice to have furniture when we get there.

lesson: wives, don’t be submissive to your husbands. evidently what they say has no meaning…

“why would you move to oklahoma? they gave their land away! how dumb is that?” - wes

…and my favorite:

“so, will your teepee have electricity?” - christy

cindy continues bravely sharing her story…

What Now?

Within thirty minutes, a couple of our pastors came over to our house. Their attempts to even speak were futile. I was crying, Chris was scared for his life and they sat across from us hoping they’d wake up soon. After learning the news, they left and I was alone with my husband. I hated him and I loved him and I didn’t want him near me and I wanted him to hold me. I wanted details and he reluctantly shared them. I wanted dates but he could not supply them. I wanted to know why he did this to me…to us. For that, he had an answer.

Pornography.

Seriously? I thought he struggled with looking at a few naked girls from time to time on the internet. I thought he wasn’t struggling with this very much anymore. I thought we were communicating fairly well on this subject. I thought that’s why he met with his accountability group on Fridays. I thought.

I was married to a full-blown porn addict. He explained that simply viewing images of naked women no longer appealed to him. He needed something more. His sickness grew and grew and gave birth to more repulsive desires. Eventually, after years of progression, this sin completely entangled him and he acted out.

As you can imagine, my husband’s resignation was forthcoming. Had he been employed in the corporate world, that wouldn’t have been necessary. But a pastor at a church? (You do the math.) His resignation brought even more death to my broken heart. Not only was our marriage deeply wounded and more than likely beyond repair, my ministry was lost, too. I would no longer be singing on the stage that had become my home in ministry for the past several years. No longer would I be pouring into mentoring relationships with women. Now, I was the one who needed to be ministered to. This role was not something I was accustomed to at all.

Next to our marriage being absolutely torn to shreds, the most devastating part was trying to go about some semblance of a life for the heart of our 3-year old. I tried to hide my tears from him but that was a feat far too difficult to perfect. One day he walked in on me when I was crying and said, “Why you so sad fo mommy?”

What in the world was I supposed to do.

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and, if you’d like a little flowerdust in your day, i have a guest blog posted up at swerve. :)

before cindy and i had even exchanged one word, her story had impacted me. i’ve been good friends, close friends, practically best friends, with a handful of people in ministry who had fallen to sexual sin. it has always broken my heart how, for the most part, the churches and ministries these people had invested into kick people to the curb with a trite “jesus loves you and so do we,” leaving the broken families alone to put together the pieces of their lives.

it just isn’t right.

when i was interviewing at life, they asked if i had questions, and one of the biggest ones was, “have you ever had a ‘moral failure’ on your staff and if so, where are those people today?”

i was told the story of a pastor who confessed to several affairs, and how he was removed from his position on staff, but over the last several years, because of his repentant heart and humble spirit, has been restored and now serves as a leader on their staff.

the church family surrounded him, walked through his consequences with him, and was there to help his family heal.

the way it should be.

cindy is someone i am really looking forward to getting to know better (over diet dr. peppers at sonic). :) she is opening up her life to the public and sharing her story this week on her blog. since we are in the midst of our last week at work, and moving in a few days, i am going to be posting her story here, but closing the comments so you can interact with her on her blog.

here goes:

our story - chapter 1

The day was Tuesday. February 19, 2002, to be exact. Although my husband, Chris, had completed six weeks as the new worship pastor at our church in Edmond, Oklahoma, we’d only spent three nights in our new home. Unexpectedly, he walked through the front door at 9 somethin’ in the morning. Attempting to inch my way through a plethora of boxes, I looked up and saw the face of the man I’d loved for nearly 10 years. And the man who was soon to break my heart. Chris walked toward me and asked if we could “talk.” The look on his face said enough. Something was wrong.

After getting Noah settled watching a Blue’s Clues video, Chris motioned for me to sit on the newly purchased sofa that had arrived just 24 hours before as we were beginning our new life in a new town. My heart began to palpitate as the next several minutes consisted of him confessing to numerous affairs with numerous women from numerous places. I heard the cracking of my heart as he spoke and felt the devastation setting in almost immediately. As if that information was not enough to handle, he also informed me that one of the women was pregnant and he was pretty sure the baby was his child.

You have got to be kidding me. He was not.

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in my head:

fact: chris and i are moving in just a couple-esque weeks
fact: our boxes are pretty much packed
fact: my calendar has never looked so full with goodbye coffees, lunches, dinners, and christmas parties
fact: i am going to miss a lot of people a lot
fact: cats like scratching boxes and ripping them to shreds
fact: there are a lot of people i can’t wait to meet - and to get to know better
fact: i went to church online today
fact: craig doesn’t do a half bad aussie accent
fact: the above fact may or may not be true :) (i kid)
fact: we need to make about twenty trips to goodwill
fact: it is cold outside, so goodwill will wait
fact: the dallas mavericks played an awesome game last night
fact: when i was in high school, i wanted to be the first woman in the NBA (this was pre-WNBA days)

all of the above thoughts went through my head in the last 120 seconds.

i need a nap.

what’s up with you?

I’ve been staring at this screen for an hour trying to think of some clever way of announcing this.

I’ve got nothing. So I’ll just say it.

We’re moving to Edmond, Oklahoma on January 3, and I’ll be working at LifeChurch.tv beginning January 7.

I will have the great honor of working alongside the great Bobby Gruenewald. Fetching his Chick-fil-A; scavenging for Diet Cokes, and hopefully taking all that great stuff his brain creates and putting it into action. At the moment, We are still exploring title options…ninja was already taken, so we’re on a quest….Any suggestions? :)

So how’d all this happen?

A few months ago, you couldn’t have paid me a million bucks to move to Oklahoma. I am a city girl. I am a Texas girl. Oklahoma has horseshoeing schools. And red dirt. And Sooners.

But in June, all of that changed. It started as a simple trip to help with some copy writing for YouVersion.

We had no plans on moving. No plans on changing jobs.

But three days later, we knew our lives would never be the same.

We knew we’d end up there.

We just didn’t know when. Or how.

And it all worked out.

And we couldn’t be more excited.

And we can’t wait to see what the future holds!