Get comfortable. It’s a long story.
After nearly 26 years of marriage, I was divorced last year.
The marriage was never easy. We married within the first six months of dating and were still in the “honeymoon” stage of our relationship. Neither one of us had seen a happy, healthy relationship between our parents, and neither one of us had dealt with our childhood hurts. When you are still trying to fix your childhood family with your spouse and current family, it really is doomed to fail. It was disappointing from the start, then difficult, and eventually destructive. I know we both wanted a happy family and thought it was just about choosing the right person, having a “no divorce” conviction, and loving Jesus…and several other unconscious ideals and beliefs that were unrealistic. Somewhere along the way, even the friendship died.
So in the autumn of 2023 when my husband gave me a nine page letter outlining all the ways I had failed as a wife, it was the exclamation point on decades of conflict. We had seen five different therapists in seven different seasons of our marriage, and I had heard many of these accusations before. Still, it was devastating, and we entered therapy again where it was suggested that we attend a marriage intensive to see if we could rebuild what we had lost. God turned my heart back toward my husband, and I was hoping against the odds.
I later came to realize that my husband was more inclined to view those next six months as a trial where I needed to convince him to stay. He made it very clear that he was unwilling to commit to our marriage and didn’t care if I walked away first. I clung to the hope that God could change his heart, and that maybe if I loved him harder, he would soften and love me again. I thought, wouldn’t a restored marriage glorify God?
This is all a condensed version of things I will write more about in the future, but it is the necessary backdrop for the two barn swallows.
While we were in pre-retreat intensive therapy for two days before, we were given an exercise as homework. Both of us needed to pray individually and ask God to show us something that we needed to ask the other to forgive us for. I had been doing a lot of that since The Letter, but God still showed me that I had taken for granted my husbands hard work to support our family. I repented and went to our session the next day prepared to share that and ask him to forgive me.
The next day when it came time to share, my husband told me he believed he had nothing to ask for forgiveness over, and instead that God had told him that his anger toward me was righteous and that he was right to call me a bad wife.
Friends, fellow Sparrows, let me tell you that I knew he had not heard God say that. The Bible says that even while we are sinners, Christ died for us. God knows we are messed up, sees it, and has compassion for us. He forgives us and still blesses us, sometimes with discipline, but always with love. He isn’t the kind of parent who yells at or swats at his kids as they run by. I have only ever known him to speak into my heart with gentleness, even when I mess up. He also tells us to love our enemies…I was obviously an enemy in my husband’s mind. (If you are wondering, despite what he said to me, I still apologized to him.)
Later, he told me that God had shown him something else while he was praying and that he didn’t understand it. A vision of a blue bird flying through dense branches. It was struggling but eventually got free and flew away. He asked me if I understood it, and after asking a few clarifying questions, I did.
The bird was a barn swallow, a bird I loved and identified with as an equestrian and frequent barn inhabitant. The branches were my difficulties…I believed God wanted me to know that I was going to get through these hard times. Many times I despaired, believing that my husband’s heart was too hard to reach. This vision was also meant to show me that God could communicate to my husband, even if my husband didn’t understand him.
As time went on, that vision changed in my mind. The swallow wasn’t flying alone anymore but being led by a dove. I painted it one day to remind myself that I don’t struggle alone, and there is always a way through our trials with God.
That same weekend, God showed me something else with that little barn swallow. During a gratefulness exercise, I saw her again, but sitting on a stack of my journals. Seeing my journals stabbed me with anxiety—my journals are what I have used for years to help me work through my feelings and pain. Just seeing them reminded me of years of pain. But then I felt the Holy Spirit in me stir and say, “you have never been alone. You are not alone now, and you will never be alone.”
To someone who was on the verge of abandonment, this was life-giving.
To someone who had spent half of her life believing that being alone was worse than being unloved, this was lifesaving.
This is where I am coming from… Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” This is one verse that has been very comforting to me. My heavenly father has been close; I have not been alone even though I have felt lonely. I have felt betrayed, replaced and rejected, but he has answered all these feelings and is helping me heal even the wounds that predate my marriage and divorce.
Do you notice all the sparrows around you? I know I don’t. But I know God does, and he knows when even one of those tiny, nondescript birds die. The same God knows how many hairs are on my graying head. The same God knows my heart—good and bad—and sent his son to die for me anyway. My husband did not choose me in the end (and maybe never really did) but I have a God who has and will never un-choose me.
These are the beliefs I cling to. I am one of those sparrows. We all are, and we can find a place to rest in that truth.
where sparrows rest 
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