"If you're really gonna cut my hair would you please, please take your time..."

Title: Haircut

Artist: Athenaeum

Album: Self-Titled (Green Album)

Last night I had a great, relaxing time hanging out on the front porch.  Matt, Angela, Ian, Will, Sarah, and Lindsay were all here at some point.  Heather and I love having people and entertaining.  We talked about everything from music to comic books, from kids and marriage to silly things like hair cuts.

Will is currently working on getting licensed as a cosmetologist.  I have talked to him before about cutting my hair, which anyone who knows me knows that I take it seriously.  The song reference tonight doesn't have a youtube video.  Athenaeum are/ were a post-grunge rock band from North Carolina.  I say it like that because there have been reunion shows and I like to think that the band will eventually cut another album.  Unfortunately, the only way to hear a sample of this song is the one minute snippet on itunes.  If you get a chance, check it out.  It's a fun little song and the band has a great pop/rock sensibility.  

Long story short after a long busy morning, I made it back to Harrisonburg in time for Will to give me a haircut.  He did a great job!  I even got a compliment from a former hairdresser this evening.  I don't know if he reads this (or will read it at any point), but he will be my guy from now on.  And as long as Heather never has to sing "Beauty-School Drop-Out" to him... I will not be the only one who feels that way.

This past week has been very busy, frustrating and exhausting.  The next few will probably be just as hectic, but, c'est la vie!  For now I wanted to post the testimony that I gave back in December at our church.  We have a quarterly Sunday evening service with a guest speaker.  What I am about to post is my side of the story.  It is the short version of the events that nearly led up to a divorce.  By the grace of God, we made it through and through a long painful healing process, my wife and I have come out with a stronger relationship than either one of us could ever imagine.  The following is what I used to stay on track as we spoke to a small, loving and supportive group of family and friends.  So without further ado...

"My life has been a whirlwind. As I look back at 30 years I have a lot to be thankful for... But it hasn’t been a walk in the park.

Growing up I was sent to church. Rarely did I have my parents with me. I understood the concept of Jesus' work on the cross but saw it as more of a fairytale. My mom and dad professed Christianity, but didn't attend church. My sister and brother went with my on the church van that picked us up every week. I don't remember why, but when I was around 12 years old we began attending a different church. This time I was at a church with friendly people and a small group of youth that I began to care about, but never felt the closeness of a family. In a way I felt like an outcast (which I imagine my brother and sister felt as well because within 3 years they both stopped attending). I continued going every week, not really knowing why. My attendance began to dwindle to going only one or two Sundays a month. By the time I turned 18, I was rarely out of bed in time to go.

In the summer of '98 I graduated from high school. I had plans to take a year off and save up money for school. A year later I was no closer to that goal. I was living on my own... Paycheck to paycheck. My relationship with God had been all but forgotten. My life was run of the mill. I had no desire to attend church and classified myself as agnostic. I knew there was a god, but I was unsure of where he was.

I got into "debates" with a friend who was an atheist. This really pushed me to proclaim Christianity. I realized that I didn't know Christ. Did I do anything to remedy that? No. Did I have any reason to? Not really. I was young and attempting to put my life together. I figured I could go to church when I had "settled down".

It was in this time in my life that I met the girl who would become my wife. Not knowing this, I did not handle the dating seriously or properly. I am four years older than she is... This made a huge difference. We were both in different places in our lives and we both made horrible decisions. After dating for a few years we had driven each other away with little hope of reconciliation. We broke up.

God had other plans... Although we didn't recognize it at the time, God had called us back together. We were blessed with a baby boy, Logan. We didn't get back together. We dated other people. We spent little time together and what time we did spend together was spent arguing about who was more wrong.

The atheist friend that I "debated" with had moved to Canada for school and come back to the area. I ran into him one night and noticed him carrying a Bible. I was very confused, so I engaged him in conversation. He told me about his conversion and how Christ had worked in his life. This was the first time that I had talked to someone who was having a personal relationship with Jesus. It really stuck with me.

I don't know exactly when, but one night in the year Heather and I were broken up, I got a call from this friend. He asked if I had a bible (I was visiting the bookstore I worked for at that moment). He gave me 1st Peter 1:3-9 and told me that he didn't know why but he felt that I could use that scripture at that moment. He was right, and God knew why.

Heather and I got back together, many bad decisions later, and tried to make a go at it. We were falling back in love. Logan came along and the love grew. I started to go to church most Sundays. I could feel God moving in my life. I became more active in the church, attending events and exploring my views.

Heather and I were approached in a loving, Christian manner to address our unmarried status. We were called out as sinners. This was a tough thing to hear. I didn't want to be pushed into marriage, especially knowing where we had been. Both my parents and her parents had divorced and remarried, which is something that I was against. I didn't want that to happen to me. At 25, I had friend that had already divorced once and saw no need to go through that.

The thought of marriage had crossed my mind, I had even looked at rings and put down a reserve on one (oddly enough only to find that the jewelry store I went to had been robbed and the ring I was going to get had been stolen).

We lived together, raised Logan, and built our life. Something WAS missing though. I felt convicted. God kept telling me to marry Heather. I let my will get in the way for long enough. I took a leap of faith and proposed. Of course she accepted and the planning began. We became a true family on June 3rd, 2006. That day God showed me how he worked. After years of being apart, my family, some of whom hadn't spoken in nearly a decade, came to our wedding. We made it... Right? End of story? Wrong!

We had a wonderful honeymoon. We set up a household, notice that the word "Godly" was not mentioned there. We had the premarital counseling that taught us how to do it. We had a basic knowledge, and to anyone outside would have seen it as that. We attended church regularly. We prayed at night with Logan. It was, outside looking in, a Godly family.

Heather and I had nights out together, we had some good times, but I worked a day job and played music sometimes four nights a week. Heather had a good job, but I was selfish. That is how she saw it, but not how I saw it. I thought of it as making money.

Things were hectic and life kept getting faster and faster. Heather graduated from National Business College. A few months later she started to search for a new job. The company she worked for found this out and eventually let her go. Her best friend graduated from JMU. Her friend, Stephanie was getting married. I was out a lot, I had stress from my job and there was a bunch of tension building. We had so much going on in our individual lives that we rarely talked about OUR life.

Then, Mother's Day weekend 2008, something changed, drastically! There was something wrong and I didn't know what it was or how to fix it. I had a sinking feeling and it wouldn't go away. We started arguing about little things. These petty little fights would last all night, sometimes days! Then I got a phone call from a musician friend of mine. He asked if everything was alright between Heather and I. Trying not to admit any problem, I lied. He went on to say that he had seen Heather out with "some guy" and that they looked "like they were together". I played it off. She had told me that she was going out with her friend to celebrate her graduation. I got a feeling in the pit of my stomach that nearly made me physically sick. Overwhelmed with emotion I closed myself off to her.

I was too upset to really function; I started to journal again (something that I have always done in troubled times). I called friends and family seeking advice. I knew what was happening, but I didn’t know how to deal with it. My world was falling apart and all that I could do was watch it fall around me. I called and texted Heather, I couldn’t get up the nerve to ask her about it because I knew that she would not tell me the truth. Even if she would have I was not ready to hear it. Unfortunately, I knew that eventually I had to do something.

I had let thoughts build up in my head and every time that she left to go anywhere I wondered if she was actually going to see him. I got overbearing with all the calls and texts. After a while it got to be too much. I didn’t know where else to turn, so I made a call to ask for help and for prayer. I called Janet and blurted out the whole story. She gave me some Godly advice and prayed with me over the phone. I felt God move in that moment. I didn’t know what He was going to do for me, but I felt the peace that Philippians talks about. I was still very uneasy about the whole situation, but with that tension there was peace in that moment.

We had quite a few sleepless nights after I got the courage to confront her about what I knew. I asked her to delete the guy’s number and not to call him again. She agreed, but I didn’t trust her. Things had gotten so messed up for us that neither one of us trusted the other anymore. From there it seemed to grow more and more tense for the two of us.

A few days and arguments later, I went to the book store and poked around. While I was there I picked up a book called “Vintage Jesus” by Mark Driscoll. It looked cool and seemed to have a lot of scripture references in it. It asked the big questions that everyone has about Jesus (who he is, why he came, was he really God? etc.). I bought the book and started reading it. I checked out the website for his church. I started to listen to his sermons on my mp3 player. I was hungry for what God had in store for me.

Meanwhile, things kept getting worse for Heather and I. She would stay at her karate class late and tell me that she was talking to her mom. That did not sit well with me for many reasons. One night I was talking to a very close friend of mine on our front steps. We were talking when my phone went dead. Not too long after that, Heather got home from her class and I walked out to her car. I asked to use her phone to call my friend back. She handed it to me and got her karate gear out of the car. I motioned for her to take her stuff upstairs and I would be done with my call in a few minutes. She refused. He didn’t answer my call so I left a message. Something told me she was hiding something from me. As I held her phone in my hand I asked her why she was being so protective of it. “Do you have something to hide?” I asked. “If I go through your messages will I find anything from his number?” She said no, so I began to scroll through her phone menu. Before I could get to her recent messages she came barreling at me. I was literally knocked to the ground. She wrestled me for the phone, but I never let go of it. When we stood up it was there in my hands… messages and messages from him.

There are very few times in my life that I have felt that helpless. I had been struggling and fighting to keep our marriage together and it was evident that she wanted out. In that moment I did not ask her to leave kindly. I told her in very harsh terms to get out of my house. I told her that she was to go upstairs, pack her bags and go. There was no longer any reason for her to stay with me if she did not want to be there. I felt numb as I said those things. I didn’t cry, I barely flinched.

Heather begged me to let her stay. I knew that, other than his house, she had nowhere to go. She wouldn’t go to her grandmother’s house because she’d have to explain what happened. For the same reason, she couldn’t go home to her mom. Neither of them knew. I can’t tell you why we didn’t start to legally separate that night. But I can tell you that the Father’s hands were all over it.

We sat outside until nearly 3:00AM talking and hashing out where we were to go from there. Nothing was set in stone, but she was going to stay and something was going to change. I don’t think that either one of us could have ever predicted what was going to come next.

Like I said, I started listening to Mark Driscoll while I was at work. I was hungry for God’s word. Mars Hill Church was in a sermon series on Doctrine at the time. It was (and probably still is) over my head. I struggled through the end of the series and there was an announcement that Pastor Mark was going to do a sermon series on marriage from the book Song of Songs. One evening I told Heather about it and asked if she would listen to it with me. She agreed, but I could tell that it was with a tinge of skepticism.

Day by day, we worked on our marriage. I started to hear God speaking to me more clearly. I went from telling God what I wanted to becoming submissive. As God was fixing our marriage, I started to pray that he allow me to set up our household like He had ordained. I asked that, if it was in His will, I have a new job. That blessing came almost immediately. We began to pray for another child. Another prayer answered in short order (although Heather would probably not say that considering the nine months it took to get there). God was moving in big ways for us. Providing at every turn and answering prayers.

There has been a call put on my life by the Savior. I have a hard head and I don’t always listen to Him. But I know that He is faithful even when I am not. My testimony may not be the harshest thing that you will ever hear. It may not be the most moving statement of God’s work. I pray though, that God uses my story to touch someone. And as an addendum to that prayer I pray that God will make my kid’s testimonies boring.

One day I will have a talk with Logan about where I have been and the work that Jesus did in my life. One day Heather will have a similar talk with Maggie. Soren Kierkegaard says “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forward.” But if we define where we want to be at the end and keep that in mind we can live our lives forward. So as we look towards Heaven and sitting at Jesus’ feet, we can begin to live out our lives so that one day, we can see that come to fruition.

I look at the passage from 1^st Peter and see the fires behind me. I know that I am not pure, but I know that the Father is refining me. Thank you."

Thanks for reading, and until next time...