Forgiveness Archives - call me pasturescott

A Desperate Prayer From A Broken Man

The ruins at Barnsley Gardens, Adairsville, GA

Nietzsche said “if you stare into the abyss too long, the abyss stares back at you.”

Today’s post features a man who stared into his own abys-mal heart and knew at once his hellish iniquities were taking hold of him.

Being a politician with a mistress is nothing new (blue dress, Oval Office, anyone?). The litany of world leaders who either hid their extramarital pleasures or openly flaunted them is uncomfortably legend. While some presidents preferred blondes, only a few went so far in the cover-up to commit murder. That we know of.

But there’s one whose abysmal act we know, every sordid detail. He wasn’t some unregenerate despot, or a power-mad, sex-starved tyrant either. He’s the storybook country bumpkin who made good, largely because his heart so eloquently spoke the native tongue of the better angels of our nature. His folkloric life as pure as poetry and flawless in character captured the love and imagination of a nation.

Until the fateful day his office took a backseat to his libido, that is. Until that twilight hour he coerced a young married woman into satisfying his unchecked lust, the power of his position leaving her with almost no choice. Then, as the age-old story of “could see that coming” goes, got her pregnant. All of it, every spiral stair descending, leading him to the psychopathically illogical tidying-up of ridding himself of his rival, his friend – the innocent, faithful, endearingly noble husband. Poor man is murdered without ever really knowing why. Ironically, the culprit will himself write in his own memoirs about being betrayed by a close ally, a companion, a friend once upon a time. I wonder if he thought back to his own treachery.

James 1:15, The Message
Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.

No, this isn’t some Hollywood script, but rather ripped from the ‘more harrowing than fiction because it’s true’ archives.

Remember, this is a good man.

A military hero.

A prolific statesman.

His tenure as a global leader is the standard by which many others have themselves governed.

And yet this startling figure holds a very, very dark secret. His interior universe is as black as pitch and he will come face to face with it in the aftermath of one of history’s most courageous interventions. So far, only three people know of the deed: the offender, the woman, and the man responsible for carrying out the murder.

But there’s a fourth.

And it is this man who is tasked with the unenviable responsibility of approaching this unhinged, unpredictable, unsafe potentate in the privacy of the ruler’s own fortress to accuse him of these federal crimes. He had insider information and it was time to tell it – some nine months removed from the scandal.

Nine months, give or take. The perp has to be feeling the coast is clear and the proverbial dust has settled, surely. To confront him now is the most dangerous thing a subservient can do, albeit a spiritual adviser. Still, bearing the burden of a Higher Mandate, the man entered the king’s quarters.

And spun a yarn.

And raised the ruler’s blood pressure.

And blind-sided the man.

Thou.

Art.

The.

Man.

If you’re keeping score at home this is all eleven and twelve chapters into the Old Testament book of (as The Donald might say) Two Samuel.

Suddenly:

The universe is stopped dead in its tracks.

The future of the dynasty hangs in the balance.

(Not to mention, the future of the man in front of the king is in question.)

The next words out of King David’s mouth saved the day:

“HAVE MERCY ON ME, O GOD!” (Psalm 51:1)

I believe the fifty-first psalm happens in the immediate aftermath of this divinely-enacted confrontation, before the baby’s illness, David’s fasting, and the newborn’s tragic death. Likely, this is the dark night of the soul that David must go through on the very night of his exposure.

There are many things that strike me about this stanza, about the despair, shame, and bloodguiltiness of the ‘found fugitive’ and the language of his tortured heart, but none more revealing than what he journals in verse ten. David cries,

“Create in me a clean heart…”

The word he chooses is used in the opening stanza of the Bible, yea, the opening line. What follows is a chaotic, unformed earth, swirling with torrid energy and untamed sea; darkness nests there. Brooding over the surface of the cataclysm is the Spirit of God…

When David’s smothered cry erupts from this refrain, he is begging Elohim to do in him what the Trinity did then: a 7-day creation-remedy of order to his own chaos, life to his death, light to his darkness, reproduction to his infertility, regeneration to his impotence, Immanuel to his isolation, harmony to his dissonance, hope to his despair, and restoration to the mess he’d made of everything and everyone.

And he needed it all in that very hour, not 168 hours, or epochs, or eons.

The thing about the creation week is that it begins with Light and ends with Rest. The Light spoken of is not simply ‘daytime’ but rather a supernatural Light akin to ‘shekinah’, the glow on Moses’s face, and the First and Final Light that is alone necessary to irradiate Heaven.

David imagines his own soul as no different from the bleakness of Genesis 1:2. His interior universe is devoid of supernatural Order and Presence and his worlds are spinning out of control. Stability is lost. It’s a felt darkness and such darkness has spread its tendrils everywhere and his heart has become haunt for jackals and demons. Break through, O God! Daystar, come penetrate the blackness of my heart! Remove the veil that separates! (day one)

The polluted king needs his oily atmosphere to get a true spring cleaning and fetch the precious moisture of heaven so he can breathe in its oxygen again (day two).

He seeks evidence of life – nothing he can manufacture himself, mind you, but the seedlings of grace that grow from the regenerated soil of his heart, much like the “hair of Samson’s head [which] began to grow again” (day three).

In David’s personal (re)creation week, he longed for motion and cycles to begin again, the sensation of ‘getting off the schneide’ and propelling forward, as the pages of an ever-turning calendar, rather than the stultifying paralysis of living under the weight of what he’d done (day four).

That long, dark night of the soul brought dreams of (dare he hope) the dance of life returning: the playfulness of being in the Creator’s heart and in harmony with His plan, enjoying the variegated pleasures of Elohim’s imagination, the teeming throngs of accessible mercies that populate and thrive in the geography of his private world, and the fulfillment of a blessed life (day five).

The sixth miracle (in his ‘Genesis-week’) for which the penitent king cries is for the dignity and integrity of his soul to find its renewal so intimacy with the Almighty can be restored. He misses the ‘uprightness’ of standing in the Presence of his Creator, re-imaging himself not as an earthly king but a Kingly man, fully under the reign of Another (day six).

Then, and only then, can this storm-tossed king with undefended heart know real shalom (“the Bible’s shorthand term to describe a flourishing creation, a[n inner] world that realizes everything that God desires for it.”¹) and soul-rest: at peace within and fully reconciled on all sides…but especially to his True North from whence his being comes (day seven).

What David did was no light thing, and what he asked was no light thing either. He asked for the same power and authority (and will) of Elohim that occurred in Genesis One for all corners of endless galaxies in His creation to come to bear for himself. Such a thing would require an epic response to the void and darkness he had inflicted on his own heart.

I’ll go you one better.

The travesties of David’s sin took place in – give or take – a week’s time, from lustful compulsion to murderous cover-up. He asked for a God-week to mercifully rectify his mess.

What you and I came into this world as co-conspirators of and complicit in was far more than a human’s weeks’ worth crime spree, but an eternity of treason against God. Such a mutinous charge required a Lamb to be chosen and (in the Godhead’s mind) “slain before the foundation of the world”² – in eternity past!

Think then on this: we needed our own God-week to reconcile and rectify our own account, but not a Genesis One week. We needed a Gospel Week that went from Sunday to Sunday, from presentation as the Passover Lamb through to inspection as blameless, slain on the most holy altar, then raised to overcome sin, death, and hell.

Hopefully you and I will never be in a position as David to be so bereft and bankrupt we have to beg God for a Genesis One Week in a single hour lest we die. But know this: if we ever do, there is no sin greater than God’s grace and the mercies of God are more eager to forgive and restore than we are even desperate to ask. And sometimes, the way forward is to go back.

Bask in this, beloved: from supernatural Light to eternal Rest, you are loved.

¹ James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love, p. 48

² Revelation 13:8

Advent Podcast #3: God With Us Misfits

This week, on ‘The Pasture’s Podcast’ for Advent:

Jesus told her about heavenly water and said it’s just for her. It can’t be bought or earned. It’s given by the Ladle of Grace. Once offered, though, Truth kicked in:

“But you have to tell the truth about yourself.”

Don’t you love how Jesus doesn’t rub her nose in it, belabor the point, or look down His high and mighty nose at her?!?

She confesses.

He nods.

Tells her “you’re right.”

And yet…she doesn’t feel condemned – though she might have suffered a pang of shame and self-guilt – but Jesus quickly segues to:

“so what are we going to do about it?”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

So You’re Contemplating An Affair? Hold Everything.

Can a man [or woman] heap fiery coals [of forbidden lust] in their lap and not be burned?

– Prov 6:27

May you rejoice in the wife of your youth…may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love.

– Prov 5:18,19

I know.

This is quite a departure from the usual fare on my blog.

Maybe it’s because my wife and I have been counseling young couples in view of their wedding day for months on end and we’re in ‘protect your marriage at all costs’ mode. Maybe it’s because of statistics like: 20% of marriages include physical affairs, that wives are beginning to catch up to husbands in terms of infidelity, or that only 30% of marriages that have been sabotaged by unfaithful spouses actually survive.

Whatever it is, I felt it an important enough issue to cast light upon, you know, just in case you thought this was a non-issue for you, or worse, if you’re being drawn into temptation’s lair.

If you are, may I share with you one of the best articles I’ve read on the matter? I’m not at all sure if the author is a follower of Jesus, all I know is her analysis of an affair – from the inside and from both sides (cheat-er and cheat-ee) and on the other side of them, is at once a hard fist to the gut, insightfully honest and a woeful tale of regret. Perhaps even a dash of hope.

I only recently spotted this on a link during an online search but it was written five years ago by Wendy Plump and first appeared in the New York Times’ Style section.

NOT long ago, the friend of a friend spent the night in a hotel room, which is sometimes what you do when you find out your spouse has been having a yearlong affair. His flight was sadly predictable — it’s all many of us are capable of after discovering such a betrayal — though I am sure he now realizes that mere movement is not a fix for that kind of agony.
I know this for two reasons: No. 1, I have had an affair; No. 2, I have been the victim of one. When you unfurl these two experiences in the sunlight for comparison, and measure their worth and pain, the former is only marginally better than the latter. And both, frankly, are awful.
I recently offered my cheated-upon view of things to my acquaintance, who has returned every night for a week to that hotel because he cannot bear to look at his wife. A couple of years ago I offered the other side to a friend when she was considering having an affair.
Start, I suggested to her, by picturing yourself in the therapist’s office with your betrayed husband after you’ve been found out (and you will be found out). You will hear yourself saying you cheated because your needs weren’t being met. The spark was gone. You were bored in your marriage. Your lover understands you better. One or another version of this excuse will cross your lips like some dark, knee-jerk Hallmark-card sentiment.
I’m not saying these feelings aren’t legitimate, just that they don’t legitimize what you’re doing. If you believed they did, your stomach wouldn’t drop on your way out the door to your lover’s. You wouldn’t feel the need to shower before climbing into the marital bed after a liaison. You wouldn’t feel like a train had struck you in the back when your son asked why you forgot his lacrosse game the other day.
When you miss a family function because of work, you get over it. When you miss a family function because you were in a hotel room with your lover, you feel breathless with misery.
The great sex, by the way, is a given. When you have an affair you already know you will have passionate sex — the urgency, newness and illicit nature of the affair practically guarantee that.
What you don’t know, or perhaps what you don’t allow yourself to think about, is that your life will become an unbearable mix of yearning and regret because of it. It will be difficult if not impossible to be in any one place with contentment.
This is no way for an adult to live. When you’re with your lover, you’ll be working on your alibi and feeling loathsome. When you’re with your spouse, you’ll be dying to return to your love nest. When you are at home, everything in your life will look just a little bit out of register — the furniture, the food in your refrigerator, your children, your dog — because you’ve detached yourself from your normal point of reference, and it now belongs to a reality you’ve abandoned.
You will be pulled between two poles, one of obligation and responsibility, the other of pleasure and escape, and the stress of these opposing forces will threaten to split you in two.
I met the man I cheated with early in my marriage. He was the beautiful twin brother of a friend, something like a young Errol Flynn. I was entranced. My husband traveled a lot and I took advantage of that, finding myself at my lover’s apartment often. But at home with my husband during those ragged months, I was anxious and ill at ease. I should have been focusing on our new house, our new jobs, but my inability to resist the pull of the affair ruined all of that. I could not concentrate on our coupled life and frankly did not care to.
I knew I needed to stop it, but didn’t have the will to do so on my own. I had to enlist my husband, to tell him so that we could battle this together. So I admitted to the affair one evening after dinner.
Almost 20 years after that confession I can still remember how the whole world narrowed down to the two of us sitting there, that new truth congealing between us.
Once the affair is out in the open, you will strive mightily to justify yourself. You will begin many sentences with the phrase, “I never meant to — ” But one look at the hollow-eyed, defeated form of your spouse will remind you that such a claim is beside the point. You can both get over this, yes. But the innocence will have gone out of your union and it will seem as if a bone has been broken and healed, but one that rain or cold weather can set to throbbing again.
So, now take the other side. You discover your cheating spouse, as I once did, and what you experience is not far removed from post-traumatic stress. It is a form of shock. As your mind struggles to accommodate this wrenching reality, you won’t be able to sleep or focus. Your fight-or-flight mechanism will go haywire. You will become consumed with where your spouse is at any moment, even if you see him in the pool with your children.
You will lose your appetite. Stress will blow out your metabolism. You will torture yourself with details known and imagined. You will fit together the mysteries of his daily patterns like a wicked puzzle. Every absence or unexplained late night or new habit or sudden urge to join a gym, for instance, will suddenly make horrible sense. You will wonder why you were so stupid.
But as the writer Paul Theroux says in one of his travelogues, “It is very easy to plant a bomb in a peaceful, trusting place.” That is what the cheating spouse has done. Then detonated it.

Sooner or later your illicit, once-beloved object of affection will become tawdry, wearying. You will come to long for simple, honest pleasures like making dinner with your sons or going out to the movies without having to look over your shoulder.
On the other side, your spouse’s philandering will cease to torment you and instead the whole episode will leave you disgusted and bored and desirous to get out. You will just want to be with someone who does what he says he is going to do, goes where he says he is going to go, and can be found any time you need him because he is not hiding.
I say all this by way of hope, believe it or not. Affairs are one of the adult world’s few disasters that can be gotten over, with a lot of time and kindness. It has to burn out of you over months and months, flaming up and then subsiding as you get used to the fact.
A great deal of comfort will come from your friends, many of whom will offer advice — hate him, leave him, move on — that you should listen to politely and then reject. After all, the consequences of your decisions will be visited upon you, not your friends. They will be only too happy to amplify your confusion, listen to you cry, and then get into the car and drive home to their own intact families.
In the end your marriage may not need to be trashed, though mine was. The affairs metastasized in our relationship from the inside out. By the time all was said and done, there was little left to save. Our marriage had become like a leaf eaten away by caterpillars, where the petiole and midrib remain with some ghostly connective tracery in between. Not enough to hold even a drop of rain.
I look at my parents and at how much simpler their lives are at the ages of 75, mostly because they haven’t marred the landscape with grand-scale deceit. They have this marriage of 50-some years behind them, and it is a monument to success. A few weeks or months of illicit passion could not hold a candle to it.
If you imagine yourself in such a situation, where would you fit an affair in neatly? If you were 75, which would you rather have: years of steady if occasionally strained devotion, or something that looks a little bit like the Iraqi city of Fallujah, cratered with spent artillery?
From where I stand now, it all just looks like a cheap hotel room, whether you’re in that room to have an affair or to escape from the discovery of one.
And despite the sex and the excitement, or the drama and the fix of everyone’s empathetic attention, there is no view from this room that is worth having.

May I offer something from my heart? If your world’s been torched by something like this, or if you’re contemplating striking the match that will lead to it, please don’t hesitate to contact me at <scott@revonwheels.com> and I’ll do everything I can to get you some help and guidance.

Don’t make the worst decision of your married life. Please put out the fire.

I just heard recently from a couple who knows about this kind of stuff: “every troubled marriage is only three conversations away from saving,” they stated.

So…hold everything. There’s (still) hope.