Last week, we all celebrated Valentine’s Day, and it got me thinking about what true love is. Current statistics show that in the United States, 50% of all marriages end in divorce, and the average length of those marriages is eight years. As I sat, this past Valentine’s Day, across the room from my wife of 37 years, I found myself thanking God for her tenacity in our marriage. As I said a moment ago, it got me thinking about what true love really is. In our current throwaway society, can true love endure through all of life’s hardships?
Jamie and I met in the summer of 1981 while working at Windermere Baptist Assembly. Windermere was a retreat center located on the Lake of the Ozarks in the booming metropolis of Roach, Missouri. Yep, Roach, Missouri! Roach is a little township on Highway 54 with a small population of about 800 at the time. It did have its own post office and an actual Roach Motel, which is now gone. There were definitely jokes about people “checking in but never checking out.” (You would have to be around my age to get that reference to the old Black Flag commercials of the late 70s.) Most of the summer staff at Windermere were high school and college-age students from all over Missouri. Even though Jamie and I were both from St. Louis and didn’t live that far from each other, we had never crossed paths until we were hired for the summer at Windermere. She was a lifeguard, and I worked in the cafeteria washing pots and pans. I vividly remember seeing her for the first time. During the first few days of working there, all the summer workers decided to get together at Lakeside Cafe to get to know each other and hang out. At this get-together, I first saw the young woman who would eventually be my wife and the mother of my children, Jamie Brown. I was sitting with the whole group, but I was not saying anything at all due to my extreme shyness. I saw her while everyone was talking and laughing, and my heart sang. It was love at first sight for me. She was absolute perfection in my eyes. Her smile was contagious. Her eyes sparkled. As Thumper in “Bambi” said, I was twitterpated. So I did what any shy, red-headed, 16-year-old boy would do: I said absolutely nothing to her. The group broke up for the night, and everyone returned to their dorms. Eventually, that summer, Jamie ended up dating one of my good friends on the staff there, and I became the third wheel that summer. Picture the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. My friend would have been Ferris Bueller. Jamie was Sloane Peterson. I was Cameron Frye. Being the third wheel allowed me to overcome my shyness and talk to Jamie. We began a wonderful friendship working together at Windermere over the next two summers.
Jump ahead to 1985. Jamie and I were dating other people when circumstances crossed our paths again. This time sparks flew for the both of us, and we had our first official date on October 3, 1985. We were engaged on December 3, 1985, and married on July 12, 1986. There is a whole lot more to that part of our story, which we covered in Jamie’s series “Guard Your Heart,” so I won’t repeat the information. I would just encourage you to read those blog entries. Like any marriage, our first four years together had ups and downs, but we were incredibly happy. It was not until my mom passed away in January 1989 that we would begin the most challenging trial of our lives. From January till April of 1989, our life was a huge pressure cooker.
At the end of 1988, I had lost my job of four years and had not found a new job yet. Our finances were incredibly strained as we tried to live off unemployment. In January, Mom passed away from a year-long battle with brain cancer. My behaviors became more erratic as I lied about jobs and refused to deal with my immense grief from losing Mom. Finally, in April 1989, I experienced my first dissociative fugue episode. It is hard for anyone who is not familiar with this specific form of mental illness to understand what it is like. I remember going to bed that night in April 1989 like any other night. The next thing I knew, it was six days later. I was in a motel room in Atlanta, Georgia, with no memory of how I got there. I contacted Jamie, hoping to get an explanation, but she had none. I had just drained our bank account, left a suicide note, and disappeared. Remember that this was 1989, and cell phones were not standard. I didn’t have an iPhone in my pocket so that someone could be tracked. I had just disappeared, and no one knew where I was for six days. Jamie has told me that she had experienced every type of emotion during my six-day absence—fear, worry, anger, resentment, and then just repeating the cycle of emotions over and over. I still had our car but had no money to my name. My Dad wired me money so I could drive back to St. Louis. Upon returning, I soon found myself in Missouri Baptist Hospital for a two-week stay in a psychiatric ward.
This incident was the beginning of a 12-year period in which I would suffer regularly from these episodes of leaving. No one knew what it was or why I was doing it. Sure, I was given different diagnoses over the years, but none of them seemed to explain what was going on totally. I was put on multiple medications to “treat” my suspected mental illness diagnosis, but nothing seemed to help. Many of the side effects of these drugs were worse than the actual illness. The level of stress in our lives escalated for many reasons. Because I would disappear without warning, I could not hold a job for long. Who would want to employ someone unreliable? Since I desperately struggled to stay employed, our finances suffered a lot. In addition, we both suffered through a horrible time of desertion. Because of the circumstances, we both experienced the loss of a lot of our friends. These were not friends we had recently met. Some of these relationships were lifelong friends who had stood with us at our wedding. Some of these friends would tell Jamie I was a horribly irresponsible person. They would ask her what kind of loving man would leave his wife and kids. These “friends” often encouraged her to throw the towel in and file for divorce. I’ve asked Jamie many times during our discussions of those years if she ever considered the idea. She admits there were moments she considered divorce. There were times when the stress and confusion of it all became so bad she didn’t feel she could continue our marriage. But what kept her in our marriage? It was two-fold. One, she had made a commitment before God and our families on our wedding day “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until parted by death.” Secondly, she knew me. Our longstanding friendship had shown her my character and my personality. Neither of those qualities lined up with my weird behavior. She told me she knew something was wrong and committed to praying to God for an answer.
That long-awaited answer came in 2001, right in the midst of one of my many episodes. Jamie and I had begun seeing a licensed Christian counselor to help us navigate the stressful issues in our relationship. We had an appointment scheduled that day with our counselor, and despite the fact I had disappeared, Jamie still went to the appointment. After a short prayer time and listening to Jamie update her on what was happening, the counselor took out her copy of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and began reading to her the definition of Dissociative Fugue Disorder. Jamie said it was her life’s most significant “Aha” moment. This definition and description fit like a tailor-made suit. Finally, God had guided this counselor to the very issue I had been dealing with. We took what this counselor told us and presented it to my psychiatrist. To her surprise, she also agreed that this was an accurate diagnosis of what I was suffering from. She had never met anyone who had Dissociative Fugue Disorder because it is an extremely rare and uncommon disorder. Most psychiatrists never treat anyone with it in their entire professional career.
Unfortunately, having a diagnosis did not stop my episodes or cure me, but it put a name to what I was experiencing. It also helped Jamie feel justified in her commitment to our marriage. When most people would have “cut bait and run,” Jamie felt steadfast in her soul to stick things out. She knew that I wasn’t doing these things on purpose to hurt her and the children. It didn’t make these episodes of leaving any easier, but it certainly pointed us both in a positive direction of hope.
When I look back on our 37 years together, I am reminded of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
I am not going to pretend that our marriage is perfect. That would be a disservice to the truthfulness of this verse. Despite the many people, including family, who told Jamie I wasn’t worth staying married to, she never gave up. Despite my having over 31 of these fugue episodes in our marriage, she never lost faith and was always hopeful. Despite all the financial issues and hardships my mental health issues have caused, she endured. Her faith in God, that He was sovereign and in control of everything going on, helped her do these things. Jamie has become my number-one advocate in seeking help in dealing with my rare mental illness. Even though she admits that her hope wavered at times and she didn’t always handle these intensely stressful times perfectly, her faith in God remained solid.
When I want a true definition of true love, I only have to look across the room at my beautiful bride. She has sacrificed so much over the years. For many years, she endlessly and unsuccessfully researched tracking device options to monitor me. Thank God that technology has finally caught up with our needs. Now, I can be monitored constantly, not only by Jamie but by our adult children as well. Jamie is my constant guardian as she watches out for me and helps me to find ways to lessen severe stress. We are not always successful just because life in and of itself is stressful, but we face all of this head-on together. When I tell people that Jamie is my best friend, it is not just an empty platitude. It is an absolute fact. I know how lucky I am to have her as my soul mate and companion. I know that most women would have left me long ago for “greener pastures.” Much of what I did during those years could have been labeled abusive and abandoning, which are Biblical grounds for divorce. It is only through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that He put a knowledge deep inside my wife’s spirit that something was very wrong. I am one blessed man.
