How Hope Helped Me Through a 27 Month Crisis

Encouragement for How Hope Can Save You

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

For 27 months, I was on the craziest emotional and mental roller coaster I had ever imagined possible. There were times of hope and times of complete hopelessness, times of strength and times of inability to do anything, moments of trust and love and moments of betrayal and a complete loss of love and respect. But throughout at all, I found ways to pick myself up, to carry forward for myself and for my daughters.

You see, I once had a life with a man who I thought was supposed to be my forever, with our two young daughters and a career/calling planned out for us for the rest of our life. But all of that came crashing down beginning with one phone call.

That phone call initiated over two years of struggle, fear, heartbreak, and total loss. Throughout it all, I never lost hope.

Although many of times my hope was misplaced, I never lost hope that one way or another everything would be OK.

Even though the things that I hoped and prayed for did not come to fruition, I still ended up with more than I had ever lost.

I’d like to take you on that journey and show you the ways that hope helped me maintain my strength.

An Expectation of Bliss Turned Upside Down

When you start a family with somebody, your heart is full of love and a promise of a lasting future. But in December 2011, I received a phone call from my ex-husband then Husband with two words “come home".”

When I got home, my husband was nervous and a little jumpy. He said that he had one of our youth group members at the house and that she had fallen asleep and woke up, screaming that he had touched her. After saying it a few times, according to him, she left the house and ran down the street and didn’t come back.

A little later, the police showed up at the door and asked him to come down to the station. Of course, being the wife that believed her husband, I told him that he should go because if there was nothing to hide then there was no reason to be afraid. After that day, we heard nothing for six months and we assumed that everything had blown over that there was nothing to worry about in that life would continue on. We never saw her again, never heard from her, and life was as if nothing had ever happened.

The Nightmare Returned

A tap on the shoulder. “The police are here to see your husband.” My heart sank into my stomach, I knew what they were there for. I walked across the people-filled dining room and whispered into my husband's ears, “the police are here they’re asking for you.” He didn’t say a word, just nodded at his head. As we walked towards the exit, I stopped to talk to two of our closest friends, and asked them if they would finish up the ceremony and take our children home until I could get in contact with them.

Once we were in the hallway, away from the crowd of people, the police read him his rights. I don’t remember if he said anything, but I do remember him turning around and allowing them to put the handcuffs on him.

The next few hours are a blur, for me. Between following the police to the station with him in the backseat, to asking information about how much his bail would be, to calling his parents and mine. And then at the end of the night, tucking my children into bed, and telling them that daddy had to go away for a while on a work trip and that he wouldn’t be able to talk to them, but that he would be home as soon as he could.

A couple of days later, my in-laws arrived, and I sent my children across the country to be with my father for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, it was summertime, and we did not have to worry about school.

A Renewed Sense of Hope Through the Eyes of Those that Loved Us

My entire youth group came over to the house to see me - no one in the congregation could believe that he would do something like that, and they all rallied around me to support me and him indirectly. That moment of support embodied in a room full of people was the moment I needed to push forward and try everything I could to save my husband and clear his name.

Over the next month, his parents and I would take turns visiting him through a thick pane of glass and a wall mounted phone every weekend. Throughout the week, I would spend my time calling lawyers and trying to fulfill a seemingly impossible bail. Because of the nature of his accusation, sexual assault of a minor, a standard 10% through a bail bond was not enough. He was deemed high risk and the bondsman requested, no, demanded 10% down plus 7 people to sign their homes over as collateral.

Somehow, between family and congregation members, 7 people believed in him and trusted him so much, that they put their homes down as collateral. That meant that if for any reason he were to leave and disappear and not fulfill his case, that they would all lose our homes. It was scary, but I was thankful and grateful.

At the end of the month, I finally had enough for the bail bondsman to get him out, and I waited outside nervously in my car for the moment that he walked out the front door. We had been warned that his accusation was often times met with people wanting to attack the accused once they left the jail. But luckily for us, no one showed up to give any problems, and we jumped in the car immediately and went home, which was only a mile or so away. I remember being able to see the guard towers in the distance from the kitchen window.

Feeling the Storm from Afar

We relocated, with permission from the county, to another county in the state. We were no longer allowed to be in ministry, and I stayed at a small house with my girls, while he eventually got an apartment with his brother.

For the next eight months or so, we made the 12-hour one-way drives down to court for multiple hearings. I would sit with him on the courtroom pews, waiting for his name to be called, praying, and believing that God would save him, and that the case would be dismissed. But his name was never called, and the lawyer always came over to say that the case had been continued - a new court date would be sent out.

Over and over again we made the painful trip so full of hope only to be shot down time and again.

Finally, one fateful day, all hope for him was lost.

The Climax Came Harshly

There we sat, once more on our pew in the courtroom, when the lawyer pulled us aside as usual into a separate room.

I knew the routine, and fully expected him to say it was continued once more. That would’ve been amazing news compared to what actually happened.

The lawyer, with shock filling his face, said that the DNA results were finally back and that it was statistically impossible for the results to be anyone else but his.

My husband didn’t say anything other than asking me to leave the room. He had never asked me to leave the room before, but I nodded my head and walked out to sit in a chair outside the courtroom, feeling dread, confusion, pain, and a plethora of other negative emotions.

Finding the Strength to Move Forward

After those initial emotions flooded my body and what seemed like a few minutes, next came all of the questions about what would happen next to me and my daughters. I knew that my marriage was over, that there was a very real chance that he would be sentenced to prison for a very long time, and that my daughters would grow up without a father. Our entire world shattered.

The lawyer asked me to step back into the courtroom once he was done talking with my husband, and I heard him say to the judge at the stand that it was a one-time mistake, and it would never happen again, which meant that they had changed their strategy. It was no longer an attempt to prove his innocence.

The return trip home felt like far more than 12 hours. We barely spoke, and he certainly didn’t want to tell me anymore about the case or what really happened that day long before.

The only thing I remember me saying to him was that I would never go to court with him after that again, that I was completely done supporting him, but that no matter what happened he needed to finish the case to save the homes of those seven people that trusted him.

A New Hope in a New Direction

That week I filed for divorce, and he didn’t contest. He signed over my right to take the children out of state as we moved back home to our original state, and the cases continued. Both his criminal case and the divorce case.

Time flew by pretty quickly from there, and all of my focus switched over to finding a way to get back to our home state. All of my money had gone to his legal fees and to me hiring a lawyer for divorce, but I managed to have enough for a U-Haul and a plane ticket for a friend to come out and drive the U-Haul, so I could drive my car with my kids.

In the summer of 2013, a year and a half after the initial accusation began this entire nightmare, I was back in my father’s house sharing a bedroom with my daughters while he remained 24 hours away, still attending court with his brother.

Closing One Chapter and Beginning Another

For me, life started over, with the kids attending a new school and me finding a new apartment after I got a new job.

Our divorce was final in October and despite multiple attempts of the lawyer to find him and send him notice, he never showed up. Given the nature of his criminal case, and the evidence against him, the judge told me that he would have granted me everything I asked for anyway and wished me all the best. I had hope that at least for me and the kids, everything was going to be ok.

Three months later, he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years of parole. Not one day of jail time.

Instead of fulfilling his parole, he called me after court ended and told me that he was at the US-Mexico border and was about to cross over. He said that from that moment on, he could never come back to the United States.

He had completely removed himself from our lives and turned himself into a fugitive facing 20 years of prison, if he ever returned.

Hope Was Intertwined in Every Step

So much can change in the blink of an eye, and your entire world can crumble. It is always important to prepare yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, in any way you can for when life gets turned upside down.

All I had was a Support system, some skills to get a new job, enough finances to hire a lawyer or relocate if need be, and a deep belief that everything will be OK one way or another.

That belief, wrapped up in everlasting optimism and hope, was the one thing that got me through every single up and down and twist and curve of 27 months.

Hope that it was not the end, hope in new beginnings, and hope in second chances.

Hope saved me and my daughters, and gave us a bright future, no matter how many struggles and hills we had to climb.

Hope can save you, no matter how many challenges you have to endure.

Always look for the silver linings in no matter what storm you’re in, always look for a way out of the storm, and always believe that things will get better one way or another.

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