Choices

I've been thinking a lot about choices this week.

Each day provides us with unlimited amounts of choices. Some we have to make quickly - what do I want for breakfast? What should I wear today? Some take a little more time - what do I want to plan for this weekend? Where should I go on my next vacation? Some we won't make for a while - what do I want to be when I grow up? Where will I retire?

Some choices we make without even thinking much about them. Sure, I'll go on a date with you. Yeah, I'd like to see you again. You want to come visit? Yeah do it! They seem small, and really quite easy to make at the time. The choice to see someone again that you enjoy being with? Easy. Obviously a yes. But all of these small choices begin to add up. Now you've seen him every weekend this month. You said yes to being his girlfriend. You're dating long distance. Now there are new choices. How often to go visit him, how many days to take off of work, how many nights a week do you want to talk on the phone? Again these choices still feel pretty easy, and like there aren't huge consequences to them. Do I want to stay up a little later to talk to him? Yeah, why not? I can have coffee in the morning and sleep in on Saturday. Should I take a weekend to go visit him and meet his family? Sure! It'll be fun, an adventure.

But then...one day you wake up and realize you love him. You've been talking about marriage. This is real. So many small choices have been doing something. Moving this thing along. Is this where you want to be? Do you want to be with him forever? You know what....yes. Yes I do. It seems like such an obvious choice. I know I love him. So yes - yes again - let's keep this moving forward.

Small, easy choices. Adding up. Seems simple. Life is moving, jump on for the ride!

And you know what? Even sitting where I am now...I'm not sure I would change those choices. I'm not sure I would know how to. If I put myself back in that moment, in that frame of mind, in that season of life...I don't know if I could make any other choice. Because it's not my choices that I regret. It's not my choices I would change. I am okay with what I did. I fell in love with someone, I fell harder than I ever had before - than I ever knew possible. I said yes when he asked. I said I do in my white dress at the altar. And I meant it. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. I would sacrifice whatever it took to be with him, to spend those lazy Saturdays laughing in the park, to make strong coffee and pumpkin pancakes in the mornings together, to talk late into the night until our voices were hoarse. To dance in the kitchen, to watch him play the drums at church. I made the choices that led me to love him, to marry him, to fight for our marriage in every way I knew how.

What I wish is not that I could go back and make a different choice.

What I wish is that we could go back and he could make a different choice. That we could go back even to just a year ago, when I made the choice to move out of our apartment because I just couldn't live with the abuse any longer. I want him to choose to fight for our marriage. I want him to choose to take steps toward change. I want him to own what he did to me, what he said to me, and truly repent, turn around, and choose another way.

But he didn't. He didn't make that choice. Honestly I don't think he even knew how to. So many small choices - to have another beer that night, to say those words in anger, to refuse counseling, to try to willpower his way out of it all, to apologize and really believe it will somehow be different next time...all of these seemingly small choices had added up. They'd trapped him. He said yes to the devil's promptings too many times. It was all he knew to do. And he was not willing to do the impossibly hard work of climbing out of that trap, of reaching to Christ to save him, of admitting that he was broken and in need of serious repair. He wanted to just keep saying yes to what felt comfortable. Because that's what he knew. Those were the choices he was so used to making. The unknown can be paralyzingly terrifying.

So he stayed the same. And I couldn't.

I made a choice to pursue freedom.

Because living in fear, under abuse, and utterly hopeless is not what God designed for me.
And living trapped in addiction and fear and brokenness is not what God designed for him either.

It was the hardest choice. One of those choices that changes everything. A choice that feels like it shifts your whole world. And as impossibly difficult as that choice feels, it's almost like you don't actually have any other options. Once you know that freedom could be found again, that staying enslaved to fear does not do anyone any good, that maybe this is really what's best for everyone involved...how could I choose anything else? My heart ached for freedom. For the ability to make those small choices about my day without fear of if he would be mad, or yell at me for what I chose to do or not to. For the text I didn't send but should have. For the friend I chose to call and shouldn't have because I was preoccupied for 10 minutes instead of sitting with him on the couch. For the laundry I decided to save for tomorrow, for the papers I brought home to grade, the run I went on before he got home so I could start dinner for us. All wrong. All choices I got yelled at and ridiculed for. It was impossible to make a "right" choice in his eyes. And that might sound dramatic but my goodness was it true.

A friend who had been in a similar situation said "The only thing harder than staying was leaving." It's so true. Truer than you can imagine. More on that later. For now, I am grateful for a God who showed me that I did still have a choice. There is always a path to freedom. This wasn't the path I wanted to take...at all. But he made the choice to stay in the broken patterns of abuse, and so my only path to freedom led away from him.

I don't know what choices are ahead of me. For today I'm just going to focus on the small, easy choices in front of me. Where they are leading I'm not sure, but life is moving - whether I'm ready or not.


We can never go back. We can only go on and on.
-Joy Williams