The Rescue | Part II
Part 2 - The Descent
Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. (Psalm 139:7-12)
In the months that followed Claire stood between faith and despair, hope and resignation.
She saw Silas less often now but her heart was still full of him. He attended church irregularly but even when he was there they kept their distance.
It gave Claire more pain when he was there than when he was not. To see him, to be so close to him, but unable to speak as they had was torturous.
Sometimes they’d look at each other and that momentary look was worth all of the words that were left unsaid between them. She kept hoping and praying still for a future with Silas.
She was miserable, stuck in this perpetual heartbreak that left her feeling isolated from all of those around her, including her best friends.
It became even more difficult when her best friend became engaged. She began to feel like she would never know that progression in a relationship.
She also felt as though a chasm was widening between Silas’s life and her own.
She saw photos from friends which Silas was in and he felt further from her than ever. She even saw a photo where he seemed happy, leaning in and laughing with another woman she didn’t know.
Although they had no commitment to each other, Claire began to secretly question Silas’s steadfastness.
Claire’s parents didn’t encourage her to continue hoping or praying for a future with Silas. This was frustrating and isolating for Claire. She didn’t understand why they desired to protect her and why they only ever offered her caution instead of hope.
All she saw was the potential and all she felt was love for Silas. She had seen the good before all of the bad and she still held out hope that all of that good wasn’t gone forever. She wanted her parents to hope for that, too. But her love for him and their resistance to a future relationship between her and Silas created friction between them. Where there had always been openness with her parents she now began to hold back her most honest thoughts and feelings in an attempt to protect herself from discouragement.
Autumn gave way to winter and the New Year was fast approaching.
The holidays had been painful for them both. The joy of the season had only emphasized their pain at being apart.
It had been three months since Claire and Silas had agreed to have distance between the two of them,
but finally they would spend the evening at Claire’s best friend's house with a small group of their closest friends to ring in the New Year.
It felt good just to be in each other's presence without the constraint of a church environment where it felt like everyone was watching.
As the evening wore on, they soon found themselves alone on the front porch in the cold air talking as if no time had passed at all. All of the questions and thoughts they had longed to ask each other flowed freely and joyfully between them.
For the first time in months it felt like it had when they first met. They began to feel real hope again.
After that evening communication between them became more open once again. They no longer kept their distance at church and Claire began to feel more encouragement about Silas’s faith. He had stopped drinking for a while now and had been able to put away other vices that he’d previously given into.
He was able to share with her all of the things that he felt God was doing in his life the last few months. He felt that the distance, although difficult, had brought about some good changes in him.
When Claire shared with her parents all that he had shared with her, they also seemed more hopeful about Silas once again.
It was all that she needed for her hope to be reignited and for her to begin smiling again when she remembered all of the wonderful things about him.
She believed that surely if he had stayed steadfast through this season of separation and trial this was the revealing of a real, tenacious faith.
Claire felt her trust in him, her love for him, being rebuilt.
By the middle of February Claire began to feel like it was the right timing to move forward in her relationship with Silas.
During the months they hadn’t been speaking Claire found that her prayer life deepened and her dependence on God had grown. In an effort not to overburden others with how she was feeling, she would pour out her heart privately in her journals and in her prayers.
This deepening of her relationship with the Lord and the closeness she felt to Him gave her more confidence in how she interpreted that He was leading her.
Lately it had begun to feel as if the barriers and concerns that had been there before in her relationship with Silas were disappearing. Silas was in a more peaceful, joyful place, despite the remaining tensions in his relationship with his family.
During the time apart from Claire he’d been able to see just how much he cared for her and how he still desired to fight for a future with her. He didn’t want to throw away the only chance he might ever have of having the life he desired.
The decision to be together happened quickly.
It felt strange, this new freedom to speak openly about their feelings and their hopes for the future. They both felt so much relief at having made it through the time apart and the challenges that had threatened to keep them apart forever.
But in the quiet and the dark, as Silas drove home from spending the day with Claire, his doubts pressed in once again.
He knew that he was happy but he questioned his readiness for this relationship.
Claire was everything he wanted and he knew that the desires she had for her life were everything he would want them to be, but he still felt unsure. Unsure of himself.
He’d been with a lot of girls but this type of relationship was new to him. It was a serious pursuit of marriage and there were protective boundaries around her heart and in their physical relationship that were foreign to him.
Could he bear up under all of her hopes? Could he treat her as she deserved? Could he stay faithful?
He wasn’t used to family being a big part of his relationships. She had around her long-time friends and a church family who’d watched her grow up. In contrast, his relationship with some of the only family he had was now fractured. He was on his own trying to figure out how to lead Claire in the way that she was hoping to be led.
But the following morning bore away his nagging doubts with her happy voice, her “good morning” text, and her glowing face as she greeted him in the parking lot at church.
She was radiant, proud of him, as she sat by his side. With her confidence in him, he felt he could do anything.
Those first couple of weeks felt perfect, beautiful, joyful and each opportunity they had to spend time together felt like a gift.
The desire to build this new relationship on the right foundation this time was important to both of them.
They did Bible studies together, prayed together, served together, and their conversations were naturally full of all that they were learning and how they were both growing spiritually.
Silas’s life was beautifully converging with Claire’s. Although Silas’s own family remained opposed to his being with Claire, her family and friends and her church had welcomed him with open arms.
They spent the majority of their time together at her parents home and it felt like such a blessing to be welcomed into Claire’s family life. They both felt thankful that Silas’s relationship with her family was growing and that their trust for him grew as they watched their relationship unfold.
One evening Silas gave Claire the gift of a beautiful, leather bound Bible. He’d written a heartfelt note to her in the front that captured perfectly all of the reasons that she appreciated his heart for the Lord and for her.
Claire found herself opening up to Silas in ways she never had with anyone. She told him about all of her experiences that had resulted in her gnawing fears and anxieties. She was met with understanding, love, and safety and her trust and love for him deepened.
She felt known and loved in ways she’d always only ever imagined and had always been searching for. True love was no longer elusive or impossible. It sat next to her with an arm around her and offered understanding, kindness, and gentleness. Claire welcomed Silas into her heart’s furthest corners and the fears of being rejected were quietly dispelled.
But only for a moment.
Dealing with Silas’s past was harder than Claire had imagined it would be. It didn’t feel like the past. It was never far behind him and it pulled at him still. It slowly pressed in on their relationship, unresolved and unwilling to be quieted. Like a gathering shadow, it lingered on the edges and Claire began to feel that it may once again threaten their hopes for the future.
When a call came one day to let Silas know that his biological father had passed away, the news ran like subtle shockwaves through the fragility of his identity, their relationship, and his faith.
As Silas processed the news of his dad’s death, Claire could not rid herself of the doubts and the distrust that ran like widening fractures through her relationship with Silas. Like a sudden storm, her fears tore through her again, wild and unrestrained.
Something had shifted once again in Silas. He didn’t speak much about how his dad’s death affected him and she was afraid to ask too many questions since speaking about it only seemed to trouble him. But she could see flickers of the trouble and darkness returning behind his eyes and his smile.
He had begun to work late nights more and more and their time together became more infrequent. He found he had much less time, and desire, to spend studying his Bible and praying.
Claire found that she was still wrestling with the fact that Silas had tried to keep secret parts of his life while presenting to her an image of trust and safety. She could not forget that even when he appeared steady and faithful to her he had been keeping secrets from her.
Could all of this fear be a warning in her spirit, a kind of intuition, or was it meant to be resisted?
It could not be ignored, the way it pressed in and threw everything into shadow and predicted danger around every corner.
The sudden moments of panic threatened to smother her. It rose, dark and unrelenting, and once it had taken shape, there was no calling it back.
Silas’s foundation was built on the shifting sands of peace and perfection. All too quickly, his good feelings and the surges of hope that kept him happy and afloat came face-to-face with the pressures of his own life and being a part of Claire’s.
The life he wanted, the girl he loved, his faith, were directly opposed to the raging desires of darkness within himself. They could only be quieted for so long before they came back with the full force of their aching desire.
Silas had once believed that Claire would be enough to keep him from walking down familiar paths back into his old life. He thought she could be the light that would keep him from wanting to retreat into the dark again.
From the time he’d met her she had helped to quiet his soul and dispel the doubts and fears he had about himself. But slowly she had started to become his faith more than the God he thought he loved.
Claire had once seemed so untouchable to him. It had been enough just to be in her presence, to listen to her voice. But the longer they were together the more he became aware of her cracks, her flaws, her weaknesses, and her fears that removed her from the pedestal he’d placed her on.
He had once desired to walk with her through her own battles and speak truth into the lies she believed about herself, but now, when loving her would require real sacrifice, he began to withdraw. Rather than move toward love or vulnerability, he reached for armor to shield himself and weapons with which to wound her.
Sitting across from her at a table in a coffee shop, just six weeks after the beginning of their formal relationship, he told her that she was selfish and was responsible for an increasing weight he had begun to feel to live up to her expectations and assuage her fears.
He told her that she craved his time so much that it left him little time outside of work to read his Bible or pray.
The night before, he had told her he would just be spending time with an old friend. He told her she was wrong about him becoming drunk again. She was wrong about that being why she couldn’t reach him.
After a long night spent in worry and fear she had felt a rare resolve to end things. It was one of the only times she ever analyzed his behavior and came to a wise conclusion about what her response should be. A fleeting moment that she broke away from the fear of loss and could see that staying in this relationship was costing her more than losing Silas ever could.
But he met her sudden resolve, her strength, with a sudden manipulative resolve of his own. He had become angry that she would now confront him about his behavior. He didn’t like that it made him feel controlled and disrespected. He was willing to lie and make her feel foolish for her suspicions.
Almost immediately Claire saw all the ways that she had failed to trust Silas. It all made sense; she could see how she had become demanding of his time and had used him instead of God to push away her fears.
Amidst the shame, there was also relief that he had done nothing wrong. Relief because now she felt more in control if she was actually the problem.
By the end of that conversation she was thankful and relieved when his familiar warmth and kindness replaced the coldness with which he’d spoken to her.
She’d arrived at that coffee shop and entered that conversation ready to call Silas to account for his actions but she instead left ashamed but thankful for Silas’s patience with her despite the ways she’d failed him.
For months, Claire had long nurtured a sense of being an unworthy recipient of love from Silas.
Unknown to her, she had very broken ideas of what love really was and should look like. She began to feel that she was broken, undeserving of love, and Silas had walked out of a life she didn’t understand and had chosen her.
Although she hated it, his ability to let her calls go unanswered and to disappear completely at times left her feeling that he was in control while she eagerly waited. There arose in her a twisted sense of unworthiness even when he began to treat her with contempt.
At the close of that conversation, she berated herself for the weaknesses and failures that he’d called out in her. She felt permanently broken by how the past had woken in her a fear that she couldn’t seem to overcome.
That conversation was a small, but powerful, turning point. Although Silas didn’t mean for it to be, it allowed him to see how easy it was for Claire to trust him and to follow where he led.
Click here for Part III - The Redemption