Perry L. Gardner: Private Journal #22
Wednesday, October 26, 1988
Up until I was 40 years old, my life had proceeded in a pre-ordained fashion. I considered myself a good Christian of Protestant belief and tried to live by what I remembered of what it said in the Bible. I had gone to college, served in the Air Force, gotten married, and I had four children, I worked to support a family, and had built a house for them to live in. This was the way life was supposed to be, and I thought I was doing it right to the best of my ability. But all of a sudden, it all came apart. My wife of 18 years said she wanted a divorce, and I would have to move out since the kids were staying with her.
Our marriage was not as happy as it was supposed to be, as advertized—but I was not ready for divorce. Why not try to work things out?—marriage counseling at least. As a child of divorced parents, one of my ground rules was No Divorce, but we weren’t playing by my ground rules. I finally had to accept the inevitable. I was devastated when I had to leave the family. Visiting the children was not the same as living with them.
I couldn’t bear the idea of renting an apartment as my wife had proposed, because I was in a state of shock. In desperation, I called on the parents of a friend who lived nearby and asked if they had a spare room, and they did. As a matter of fact, they were going on a trip and needed someone to house sit and feed their horses while they were gone. I moved in and spent a month or so of healing time, but I was really down. I thought that at 40, my life was over, with no future to look forward to. One sticky wicket was that I wanted to be married and not be a lonely bachelor. I was a family man. But the Bible says you only get one wife ‘till death do you part, which was in conflict with my reality. I really was hung up on that one.
Well, one night in my borrowed room where I had trouble getting to sleep, the resolution came to me in what must have been a waking dream. God was not up in Heaven, but inside of me. I saw it all in a blinding light inside of me. The old God wouldn’t let me live, but the new God was life itself, and from that moment, hope returned and life began again. I had as many years to look forward to as had already passed by.