I remember the night I finally decided to trust Bill’s love for me.
A new friend sponsored us to go on a Tres Dias weekend. (You may know it as Walk to Emmaeus.) If you don’t know what this is, I can’t tell you. But I can give you enough details to set up my story. Bill went first to the men’s weekend, and I went about a month later to the women’s. Those Tres Dias people are dodgy. They just smile and tell you absolutely nothing about the weekend. They keep saying, “You’ll see.” Which made us both skeptical. Then after Bill went he was equally dodgy, which somehow comforted me. If he thought not telling me what was going to happen was okay, then I’d be all right.
Trust me, it’s not as weird as it sounds. Bill has called his weekend “a grace bath,” and I’d say that’s an apt description. It is intense and emotional and soul-searching, all in a good way.
On the last night of my weekend, as my group of new-best-friends and I walked down a wide hallway to a large meeting room for the finale, one of them lifted her head in the air and said, “I smell men.”
That was my first clue that Bill might actually be there. That I’d see him hours before I’d hoped. Sure enough, as we entered the room, crowds of husbands, some with their children in tow, filled the chairs facing ours. One by one the women from my “table” (I can’t explain what this term means, although you can probably figure it out) sought out their husbands and made eye contact. Then one by one all of the women from our weekend, fifty or so of them, stood to briefly share their stories. It was pure, genuine drama. Tears on faces everywhere. Except for mine.
I could not find Bill’s face in the crowd.
I remembered him saying he had a business meeting at our church that night, so I couldn’t help but assume that he’d chosen that over being there to meet me. He hated business meetings. But he is a dutiful man, so what else could I think?
He was not there.
I saw the friend who sponsored us. She waved at me, and I tried to look excited to see her. When the final Tres Dias-er had shared her story, and the night was over, my friend and I got in her car and drove the hour and a half home.
I know I’m talking about a meeting, for heaven’s sake, about a small disappointment. But I’m emotional, and this was a supremely emotional event. Bill is logical. His emotions don’t just take a backseat; they’re generally stuffed in the U-Haul trailer hitched to the bumper. But I knew he knew what I’d just experienced. I’d seen him try to contain it for four weeks. I’d seen his heart brim over with things he couldn’t explain. When I’d left for my weekend, he’d told me he couldn’t wait for us to share it with each other fully.
So why wasn’t he there?
Oddly, I was not angry. For a moment maybe, but as I sat in the passenger seat and made small talk with a woman I hardly knew, I sorted it out in the other conversation I was having, the one in my head.
There was a reason I kept wondering, “Why wasn’t he there?” The dissonance I felt was because of Bill’s love for me. He loved me, therefore something about the whole scenario was false. And that something was not him. I began to think, “IF he knew how much I ached to see his face, of all faces, in the crowd, he would have come. IF he knew how disappointed I was, he’d have come. IF he knew what it had been like in that room, he would have moved heaven and hell to share it with me.”
And then, as my mind settled into a peace that belied my earlier disappointment, I got kind of excited. For the first time, I had talked myself off the insecurity ledge in our relationship with Bill absent from the conversation. I didn’t need his reassurance because there was so much of it already in the bank account of my heart. I knew his love. I counted on it. We had a relationship that transcended my present reality. It felt good, like I’d unlocked something new and wonderful.
I had already exercised this trust muscle with God. I was no body builder, but I knew what it was like to grip a love that I could not always see.
The phrase “steadfast love” occurs over 125 times in the Psalms alone (I just now counted). And each and every time it refers to God’s love, not ours. It tells me he carries the weight in our relationship. His love is not dependent upon circumstance or my cognizance of it. He loves me, steadfastly. I can know it. I can count on it.
I can count on this love when it looks like he is not there. When I smell his presence, only to wonder where the heck he is. When I am supremely disappointed that he has not acted in a way that is consistent with my expectations. When I wonder, I can know that he loves me. Small truth, huge implications.
Just like my trust in God, this trust in Bill’s love took years to mature. I wish I’d settled in it sooner, but that’s how relationships work, right? The best parts take time.
By the time my friend dropped me off at home, I’d decided I should probably tell Bill that all the other husbands were there. I wasn’t angry or disappointed anymore, but I couldn’t diminish what had just happened by keeping it to myself.
And his reaction confirmed his steadfast love to me.
He didn’t know he could come. (Remember, they were dodgy about the details.) How on earth could he know, when the wives were not invited to his weekend? Our friend was single and didn’t think to tell him he was welcomed.
He was devastated. I tried to reassure him that I was not angry or hurt. He said, “I appreciate that, but you need to let me be angry and hurt about it.”
He kept saying, “I would have come. I would have come.”
And I believed him. In essence, this is God’s heart, too. More steadfast than we can imagine. Not just “I would have come,” but “I will come.”
We can count on it.
