For twenty-three years I was married to the same man.
For nine of those years, I knew — somewhere deep inside, beneath all the excuses I’d been making — that he was lying to me. About big things. About small things. About things that didn’t even matter.
But I defended him anyway.
I defended him to my sister when she pulled me aside at Thanksgiving and said “something isn’t right with him.” I defended him to my best friend when she asked why he never came to church anymore. I defended him to my own daughters when they stopped calling on Sundays because “Mom, we just can’t watch it anymore.”
I defended him to God in my prayers, asking the Lord to “soften his heart” when really, I was the one who needed her heart hardened to the truth.
I told myself I was being a good wife. A loyal wife. The kind of woman my mother raised me to be.
But the truth is, I was protecting a liar. And I was lying to myself to do it.
The Sunday That Changed Everything
It was a regular Sunday afternoon in October.
My daughter Becca had brought the kids over for lunch — a roast, mashed potatoes, the green beans my mother always made. My husband Jim was in his usual chair at the head of the table. The grandkids were running around, the dog was begging for scraps, and I was clearing plates when my granddaughter Lily — seven years old, freckles all over her nose, missing her front tooth — looked up at me from her chair and asked:
“Grandma, why does Grandpa look happy in the pictures, but when he’s here with you, he looks like he wants to be somewhere else?”
The kitchen went silent.
My daughter froze with a casserole dish in her hands. My son-in-law suddenly became very interested in his phone. Jim — Jim just stared at the table, his fork halfway to his mouth, like he hadn’t heard a thing.
But I had heard.
And in that one moment, with my seven-year-old granddaughter looking at me with those big brown eyes, waiting for an answer like only a child can — every excuse I’d made for nine years collapsed.
She had seen it. A child had seen it.
And if a seven-year-old could see it, what did that mean about everyone else? What did that mean about me?
God Had Been Sending Me Signs for Years
I sat down at that table, and I couldn’t speak. My daughter quickly changed the subject, ushered the kids into the living room, and the moment passed like it had never happened.
But it had happened. And it wouldn’t leave me alone.
That night, I lay in bed next to a man I had defended for nine years, and I started counting all the signs God had been sending me. Signs I had ignored. Signs I had explained away. Signs I had told myself were “just my imagination.”
There was the time my sister called me crying after Easter dinner because “the way he looked at you when you weren’t watching, Karen — it broke my heart.” I told her she was being dramatic.
There was the time my pastor’s wife pulled me aside after service and said, “How are you, really?” — and I lied to her face.
There was the time my own mother, on her deathbed, squeezed my hand and whispered, “You deserve better, baby.” I told her she didn’t know what she was saying.
There was the time my dog — my sweet, gentle dog who loved everyone — started growling whenever Jim came into the room. I yelled at the dog.
There was the time the woman from his office called the house and hung up when I answered. Three times. I told myself it was a wrong number.
God had been screaming at me for nine years.
And it took my seven-year-old granddaughter, asking a simple question over Sunday dinner, for me to finally hear Him.
The Bible Says God Cuts the Grass So We Can See the Snakes
I grew up hearing my grandmother say that. Whenever something painful happened, whenever someone was exposed for who they really were, my grandmother would close her eyes and say, “Sometimes the Lord has to cut the grass in your life so you can see the snakes.”
I never understood what she meant. Not really. Not until that Sunday.
For nine years, I had been walking through tall grass. I couldn’t see the snakes because I didn’t want to see them. I had built my whole life on top of a field full of them, and I kept the grass tall on purpose, because if I looked down, if I really looked — I would have to admit what I already knew.
That night, lying next to my husband, I prayed for the first time in years not for him to change, but for me to see clearly.
The next morning, I started looking.
What I Found in the Next Six Weeks
I’m not going to tell you everything I found. Some of it isn’t mine to share — it belongs to the people he hurt besides me, and they deserve their privacy.
But I’ll tell you this:
I found a second phone in the bottom drawer of his tool chest in the garage. The kind of phone you buy with cash. It had been there, my contractor friend later told me, for at least four years.
I found credit card statements I’d never seen, with charges to hotels in cities he supposedly “never had time to visit on his business trips.”
I found photos. Not just of one woman. Of three.
I found out that my best friend’s husband had known for two years and never told me, because “it wasn’t his place.”
I found out that the woman from his office — the one who had hung up on me three times — was the mother of his other child. A six-year-old boy. Living forty minutes away.
I found out my entire life was a lie I had been defending.
Why I’m Writing This
I’m writing this because there is a woman reading this right now, and she is me from nine years ago.
She is sitting on her couch, scrolling Facebook, holding a cup of tea that’s gone cold, and she has a feeling in her stomach that she has been ignoring for years. She has a sister who has tried to tell her. She has a friend who looks at her with sad eyes. She has a child or grandchild who has said something she can’t get out of her head.
She has been praying for the wrong thing. She has been praying for him to change.
Sister — God isn’t going to change him. God is trying to change you. God is sending you sign after sign after sign, and you have been so busy defending the snake that you haven’t noticed the grass getting cut around your ankles.
You are not crazy. You are not imagining it. You are not being dramatic.
You are seeing the truth, and you are terrified of it, because if it’s true, then everything you built your life on is a lie — and that’s the scariest thing in the world to admit.
What Happened After
I left him three months after that Sunday dinner.
I sold the house. I moved into a small two-bedroom apartment ten minutes from my daughter. I got a part-time job at the church bookstore, which I’d always wanted to do but he had always called “a waste of my time.”
It has been four years.
I am sixty-one years old. I am happier than I have been since I was twenty-three.
My granddaughter Lily is now eleven. She has no idea that one Sunday afternoon, with one innocent question, she saved her grandmother’s life. I’ll tell her one day, when she’s older. I’ll tell her that God uses children sometimes, because adults are too busy lying to themselves to hear Him any other way.
And I’ll tell her — and I’ll tell you — what I wish someone had told me twenty years ago:
The man you are defending is not the man God wants for you. The marriage you are protecting is not the covenant God wants you in. The lies you are swallowing are not the cup God has asked you to drink.
Cut the grass. See the snakes. Walk away.
God has something better waiting for you on the other side of the truth.
A Final Word to the Woman Still Defending Him
If you are reading this and you know — you know — that I am writing about you, please hear me:
You don’t have to leave today. You don’t have to leave tomorrow. You don’t have to do anything except this: stop defending him.
Stop defending him to your sister. Stop defending him to your friends. Stop defending him in your prayers. Stop defending him to yourself.
Just stop.
And then watch what God shows you when you stop standing in front of the snake.
He has been waiting for you to move out of the way for years.
Move.
