“I got to know Jesus,” he finally said quietly. “He seemed like such a complex person, joyful one moment, gentle the next, warrior-like when needed, speaking with authority on every important matter in life. Jesus said that to see Him was to see what His Father was like.”
Evie nodded but didn’t interrupt the moment with a question.
“When you’re a guy looking at his life,” David went on, picking the narrative up again, “there’s something about Jesus that resonates deep inside. He came to get a job done, to save the world, and He completed that mission even though it meant a painful death on a cross. He valued people without playing favorites, noticed those society overlooked. The ones getting life wrong, He challenged to start doing it right. He treated women with caring respect and was loving to kids. He was authentic. He showed what a man doing life well looks like. The fact He was the Son of God, had never sinned, you could see it in how He lived.” David glanced at Evie, smiled. “I was baptized in the therapy pool five months into my rehab.”
“Good for you,” she said softly.
“Best day of my life in many ways,” David agreed. “No one thought about the implications at the time. Things for me evolved, and getting baptized was where I was in that journey. I accepted Jesus was the Son of God, He’d died for me, had risen from the dead, and I wanted to follow Him, go all-in with the God who loved me like that. So I got baptized and publicly declared my faith.”
He hesitated, then said, “It was assumed because I came to believe rather easily, that Maggie would have the same experience and find faith a step she could take as well, would join me in believing in God. She was with me through those months, listening to the conversations, asking good questions. It wasn’t that this step was something I took without Maggie. We talked about it along with how the rehab was going and our lives and the wedding plans we were moving back because of rehab. It was just part of our lives, my thinking about God and coming to believe in Jesus.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “I can still remember the day it struck me, when I realized I couldn’t marry someone who wasn’t a Christian. It was there in the Scriptures, when Paul tells us we should marry only in the faith, to another believer. To my thinking at the time, it was like ‘Okay, that’s another milestone I need to add to the sequence of things. Maggie will come to believe like I have, I’ll get done with rehab so I can walk again, stand comfortably for the duration of the wedding, and when her concert schedule frees up, we’ll get married, take that long honeymoon.’ Only things didn’t unfold that way.”
Evie, understanding now where this was going, felt a growing sadness.
David put down his fork. “Had the car accident happened six months later, we would already have been married—God would have no problem with me believing and my wife would still be considering that step for herself. We would have our good life together. But we were simply engaged. And with that came a roadblock. We’re in limbo. I can’t give her a wedding date.”
“I’m so sorry, David.”
“Yeah. You can read the passage in Second Corinthians to mean something different, but that’s stretching it to fit what you want. I’d never felt such an intense battle in my spirit as during those next months. I was stuck between obedience to what God said and the word I’d already given to Maggie. I loved her. I had asked her to marry me. She’d said yes. I was the one who had changed, not Maggie. And it didn’t seem like God was asking me to break the engagement. He was simply saying ‘Wait, wait until she also believes, then have the wedding.’ I finally found peace with the situation as it was. I wasn’t going back on my word to God or my word to Maggie.” He shrugged. “God is going to have to fix this for us.”
“I hope He will.”
David nodded. “Maggie’s handled this so much better than me, with such grace. As time passed, I’ve offered to step back, to let her go on with her life. She deserves a good and happy life, the family she wants. She’s wrestled with the question of faith with a sincere heart and hasn’t been able as yet to accept it as hers. And she’s equally wrestled with the question of moving on—at her request we’ve taken several long breaks in the relationship to give her some space—but she isn’t willing to say it’s over unless I too believe it is.”
“She loves you.”
“She does,” David said. “Deeply. As I still love her. For me to say it’s over would be to say she’ll never believe in God, and I can’t accept that. Our marriage aside, I can’t imagine eternity without Maggie in heaven too. So we’re still on this journey. Initially, Maggie removed her engagement ring when the innocently asked, ‘When’s the wedding?’ questions began to shred her spirit. She left it off to test what she felt about going on with life without me, and she moved to New York when her career exploded up another level in fame. I thought it best to give her space, stay in Chicago, but Maggie talked me out of that. She asked me to go with her, to be a person she could trust as her inner circle broadened with new faces. We would try life as friends. Being a New York cop would be a good career move for me, so I made the transition too. I enjoyed the work. And I could be there for Maggie, helping behind the scenes with her security, ground her by being a connection to her roots. I took this task-force job because she wants to move back to Chicago. She misses home.