Tough as nails.

Let's start a few months ago, November 21st.

That's the middle of the story, maybe - months after the depression had set in, months after I'd gone into hiding and dropped out of touch with most friends, months after I'd started escaping from the house several times a day and running out onto the lawn in panicked tears - unsure why I was crying, but certain something was definitely, desperately wrong - months after I'd finally allowed myself to admit to my family that maybe something needed to change, maybe I didn't have to keep living under a heavy black cloud.

So this November 21st was the day I made my decision.

It was a Saturday.

I had the day to myself.

He was off partying somewhere with another set of not-particularly-employed friends, off spending my miserably-earned money on the cheapest beer the cheapest bar had to offer, no doubt regaling those not-particularly-employed friends with more eye-rolling than stomach-turning tales of his mildly deviant bedroom hangups (and he wondered why I wasn't enthusiastic about hopping in the sack with him lately...?). I was driving around aimlessly enjoying a few hours of freedom, thankful I didn't have anyone waiting for me back home. I cling to these moments as my last grasp on some semblance of sanity these days - cling to moments alone where I can feel human again - less emotional, more in control.

I've always championed the human emotional experience, encouraged so many to "feel exactly what they're feeling, when they're feeling it." Now I find myself grateful for an opportunity to dodge any sort of emotions at all....I'm drained.

Tired.

Sick of being angry, or resentful, or sad - or disgusted, even.

There's a lot of disgust I'm feeling these days.

Disgust over the fact that the two of us don't even have real conversations anymore. Actually, maybe we never had real conversations in the first place, it just BOTHERS me more now - bothers me that the only way he can interact with me is to badger me to get naked, bothers me that I'm just a means to his getting-off end, bothers me that he resents me for not wanting him when he doesn't do a damn thing to deserve being wanted. He's a leech - an emotional, financial, physical leech to me these days.

As I'm aimlessly driving a new song on a new CD gives me a jolt - "here comes a release again....for some that's not to play pretend....this doesn't have to be love's end....there's more than you'll ever know."

All of a sudden I could walk away from all of this....

I could walk away from this, stop pretending to be in love, stop pretending I'm not broken and hurting, stop pretending I'm not ashamed of the life I'm living....shake this entire mess off my back and know that YES, I can fall in love again - in a real way; an authentic, honest way - in a way that doesn't require me to force myself to be someone else, play a part, or apologize for the way he is when I'm with my family....I never want to run out of a restaurant in tears because I'm mortified by how childish he's being - mortified that anyone would ever disrespect my family so openly, so unapologetically - I can have a REAL relationship again, someday. A relationship where I don't fall asleep and wake up next to sour whiskey breath (though, these days, there's no falling asleep or waking up together anyway - he stumbles home at 4am and falls asleep on the couch. I get up an hour later, go to work, come home and he's off with some friends)....a relationship where I'm a real, valuable person, not just a warm body in a lonely bed. A relationship where we're partners, soul mates, best friends, passionate, unable to keep our hands off of each other.....precisely what I'd written off for myself inside the ever-shrinking walls of a desperately unhappy household....

And now here's this happy, upbeat, peppy little song suggesting there's freedom in letting go. Letting go is not the end.

To frost the moment with a mild cliche, the hand of God was suddenly in my car's stereo.

The less cliche realization at that instant: God actually had hands.

And those hands actually wanted to be in my car with me.

More than that, those hands wanted to pluck me out of that car seat and set me gently down into a new, more free, more beautiful, more joyful place.

My part: just unbuckle.

I'll call it auto-pilot, the way I drove across town and ended up in the parking lot of a place I hadn't visited in a decade - a place I'd spent years derriding, avoiding, associating with everything I'd come to resent about "the Church these days." Schmucks in suits who spoke a language I didn't understand, a generation of brainless sheep following whatever the Schmucks told them - a mindless army of hypocrites that prayed the big prayers up on the stage, said well-constructed (if somehow meaningless) prayers over groups of eager students just like I'd been, then behaved just like everyone else the second they wandered outside those four walls.

All of a sudden here I was, at the end of the parking lot of that church I hadn't visited in years simply because I knew there were crosses there - beautiful wooden crosses at the end of the parking lot - and I needed to be at the foot of those crosses.

I can't explain how or why I knew I needed to be there - why this church, after all of these years? Why did I physically need the cross?

I unbuckled.

Walked to the foot of those crosses in the dark on a chilly Saturday night.

Got on my knees.

I don't know that I'd ever been on my knees before God - if I had, it had certainly been years ago - 15 years, maybe? Probably at some church camp when "everyone was doing it and so did Heather." Never out of any deep reverence to Whom I knelt before.

It was a really simple conversation, the conversation I had with God that day.

The first conversation I ever really had with God.

The first time I really, truly, utterly believed down to the core of my basically crippled little soul that I was speaking to a real God - a God that loved me - ME! - desperately and had been anxiously waiting for me to show up in that parking lot, on that night, in that November, for just this very moment - waiting for this very moment to show me the full extent of His powerful, merciful love for me.

"Welcome home, sweet girl."

And at that moment I knew I had what it would take to make the most difficult decision in my life. And I spoke back to Him.

"I know that You mean for me to have more than this - to be more than this - to live an amazing, beautiful, vibrant life - that I'm not meant to be trapped inside of this marriage or trapped under the weight of this shame, this disgust, this disappointment and anger and bitterness. I know I'm not strong enough to do it on my own - not tough enough. But I know the two of us together, we're tough enough...and I know the man that hung on that cross had me...even ME...in mind when died....together, we're strong enough to do this. To have this conversation I'm not able to have on my own...through no power of my own I'm tough as the nails that hung You on the cross...tough because of the nails...tough thanks to the nails......and I never really understood that until now......."

And He says to me,

"You're powerful. You're strong. You're beautiful. I made you in My image. And I see you. You think you're in this alone but I see you - and I love you and I ache for you and I hurt with you and I'm here. I've been here. I've been here all along, waiting for you - waiting just for you. And you can do amazing things - things you can't even wrap your mind around right now. You'll see."

And so I made a promise.

I promised I'd come back to this spot one year later and I'd celebrate my anniversary - the anniversary of the day I had my first real conversation with God - I'd come back one year later and I'd be stronger, and more alive, and more free, and more joyful - and this day would be a beautiful day - a day to celebrate everything I'd been missing for my entire life up until this moment, this moment on my knees, this moment spent crying for the amazement of how I'd been scared and terrified and lonely and depressed and then been - in a single instant -transformed into excited and blessed....and tough as nails.

I wasn't in this alone. I wasn't weak, I wasn't afraid, I wasn't discouraged.....

Was the conversation that had to come next easy? No.

To say that it was easy to admit that we were broken and beyond repair would obviously be a lie. To say that it was easy to admit that I deserved better - that I deserved to grow old with a man that wanted to be the father of our babies - would obviously be a lie. To say the next few days and weeks after he moved out weren't difficult and painful as well would obviously be a lie.

But the strange, beautiful truth is that I was supported by the strength of a faithful God that saw me – all of me – in a time I most desperately needed saving and swept in to carry me through that tornado. When I needed strength, He was my strength. When I needed reassurance, He was my reassurance. It wasn't a complicated "religious" thing, it was a simple, loving thing. It was God, plain and simple and present and beyond comprehension. He was there.

He saw me, held me, and transformed me.

Shaped me into a woman comfortable in her own skin again.

Shaped me into a women unafraid of an uncertain future.

Shaped me into a woman proud of who she has and will continue to become through the power of some truly amazing grace.

Shaped me into a woman priviledged to kneel at the foot of the cross and praise the One who saved her because she's now – only by a miracle – as tough as nails.

Happy Easter.

…Praying that all of us have the opportunity to glory in the miracle of simply being alive.