Unfaithfully Yours

May/June 2009 Issue | Posted by Melissa Hartog in Marriage

By Chris and Julie Francis

Julie:

Christopher and I met in high school and began our “dating” relationship much like our many peers of the mid-1980s. It wasn’t so much a “courtship” as a physical relationship where we sought to fulfill ourselves rather than one another. We had no understanding at all of what love really was. We had no convictions and thus followed the culture and crowd, which told us that if we professed “love” for one another, we were in an exclusive relationship and, even though we weren’t married, it was okay to be intimate.

Throughout our years of dating, our relationship was spattered with what we believed to be little “infidelities.” But, we weren’t in a sacramental covenant relationship, so to what were we being unfaithful?

These “infidelities” occurred through­ out our four years of dating. Yet, on July 28, 1990, a little more than 18 years ago, we were married. Sadly, our wedding day did not change our attitudes or our disordered desires.

CHRIS: And so began our married life — built upon a disastrous foundation that continued to crumble for four and a half years. Repeated acts of infidelity on both sides all but destroyed our marriage.

For my part, my ego, arrogance, and lustful, self-centered attitudes sent us into a tailspin. After we were married, I had one more year of college. As soon as school began, I found having a ceremony and a piece of paper stating we were married did not prevent me from carrying on as I had before we were married.

I prided myself on my restraint, rationalizing that since I was only kissing some girls and not sleeping with them, I wasn’t really cheating.

For Julie, resentment, bitterness, and anger grew as she was torn away from her family and her own dreams by my decision to enter the Air Force after college.

When we moved to Texas for pilot training, I was consumed with myself and my work; Julie and our son Zachary were left to themselves. In an attempt to feel wanted and appreciated, Julie became involved with a local theater group, where she soon found the interest of a young man. He was giving her the attention I was not — and she responded.

Julie eventually told me of this. Though they had done nothing more than kiss, she, unlike me, could not hide her shame and sorrow. My response was self-centered; my pride was hurt. After all, I was going to be a pilot; how could she want anyone but me?

By the time I graduated from pilot training in the spring of 1993, Julie was hurting and I was hurting, but we didn’t turn to each other or to the Lord. Instead, we held our hurt inside.

I had to go away for more training, leaving a pregnant Julie and our son behind. As I drove out of town, that hurt rose up and my pride took over.

I remember saying, “I’m going to have an affair!” I still had not told Julie about the girls at school, and I certainly didn’t remember that now. All I remembered were Julie’s actions. And so, at training, I did have an affair.

After several more months of training, we finally arrived in North Carolina for our first assignment, in the fall of 1993. It wasn’t long after our arrival that I told Julie of the affair I had over the summer.

She showed no emotion, but inside she was deeply hurt.

My thought was that we could put this behind us and start fresh in our new location. We even found a church and went to confession. But there was no change in us on the inside. Neither of us surrendered ourselves to Christ. Instead, we went through the motions of being Catholic without truly living the faith.

After our assignments in Texas and North Carolina, I, without consulting Julie, accepted an assignment in England in February 1995. The Air Force life was difficult enough for Julie, as she was forced to leave her close-knit family behind. At that time, we had two small children, ages 1 and 3. Only days after arriving there, without belongings (because they were still on a ship being transported across the ocean), without a car, without a marriage, and without any family or friends, Julie broke down.

Julie: I had a meltdown; I became depressed. It was hell. There was so much anger, hatred, emotional and verbal violence between us.

Chris wanted a divorce, but logistically it was going to be difficult. With only a few days in a new job, he felt unable to approach his commander and ask him how to go about divorcing his wife on an overseas assignment. So he did nothing. And hell continued.

Until one night.

After putting our two small children to bed, I went to the kitchen to finish doing the supper dishes. Chris was flying that night, so I was able to be alone. In the silence of that big, stone house in the countryside of England, I fell to my knees in anguish. I wept and wept.

My life was a misery. My family was lost. I was a failure. I was ashamed, embarrassed, and filled with sin and guilt, and I wanted it to be gone. I wanted to be made right. I did not want a divorce. I wanted my marriage to be healed.

And so, through tears and in despair, I looked up to the heavens and cried out to God. I wasn’t sure if he knew me, or even cared to hear from me, but I knew, in my heart of hearts, that somewhere out there was the Creator God and if anyone could help me, he would be the one.

In the Gospel of Mark it says, “And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”

And so it was with me. When I cried out his name, I felt as though I had just touched his cloak, and in an instant I knew I was freed from my suffering. I knew my marriage would be healed; I knew my life would be restored.

I did not know how these things would happen, but I tell you, I knew. I believed. I trusted him. I felt his presence very near to me that night. I felt loved like I had never been loved before.

This love filled me so completely and calmed me so entirely that I slept peacefully, like a baby, for the first time in months.

CHRIS: The following day, when I awoke, I knew something was different. For weeks I had poured fuel onto the burning wreckage that was our marriage, both with my hurtful words and actions toward Julie. I was accustomed to giving and getting the same in return.

But that morning was different.

Julie seemed … at peace. She did not retaliate to my ­ verbal darts. In fact, she was nice to me, almost as if she loved me and wanted to be my wife. And that made me mad! The more at peace she was, the angrier I became. As the days went on with this “new” Julie, I could not understand how she could suddenly be so okay with everything. I was still hurting and “knew” she should be hurting, too.

With each passing day, I reacted with hatred; my verbal and emotional abuse increased. My accusations, insults, and threats became more hurtful. If I weren’t at peace, I couldn’t stand the thought that she was, and was determined to make sure she wasn’t.

Julie: But the more he tried to hurt me, the more I ran to the Lord, and found in him the strength to endure whatever my poor husband threw at me.

I found a Catholic priest as soon as I could and went to confession. I found that freed me even more from my sin and guilt. I felt I was walking on air. I felt truly alive. But I wanted my husband to know the same freedom. It made me sad to see him suffering so much.

So I began praying — really I was just learning how to pray — but I did what I could. And as the months went by, Chris began to weaken.

Jesus was winning him over, little by little.

CHRIS: I was like a bad heavyweight fighter at the end of the 15th round: tired of throwing punches that didn’t seem to affect my opponent. Julie literally wore me down with her kindness and her peace.

Looking back, the little things added up: making dinner and breakfast; washing and folding the laundry; a smile; words spoken without enmity or sarcasm; lovingly mothering our children. When I was worn down, stripped of my anger and hatred, I was left with this truth: I wanted the peace she had.

I had no “in the kitchen on my knees” moment as Julie did. But by the grace of God, I did open myself up to listening to her and learning from her. It was through Julie that Christ made himself known to me; and it was through the Mass and the sacraments that Christ became real to me, became a part of my life.

Julie: Just six months after the day Chris declared he wanted a divorce, in honor of our fifth wedding anniversary, we stood, hand-in-hand, on a small bridge overlooking a beautiful canal in the quiet countryside of England. There, with only God as our witness, we said our vows to one another again.

We vowed our marriage would begin anew, this time with God. And we witnessed the miracle of God’s healing hand. It was not so much a physical healing, though its fruits can be witnessed physically.

It was much deeper than that.

It was a true spiritual healing. Our spirits were so sick with disorder and sinfulness. But there we stood, that day, filled with hope; filled with a longing for goodness and love.

God was only waiting for us to invite him into our marriage, and when we did, he came, bringing the fullness of his love into our marriage, our family, and our home. It was a long, slow process of growing and learning, but I can say that, since that day, we have never looked back.

When we were forgiven, we accepted that forgiveness and allowed God to change us.

And change us he has. Our marriage is more beautiful today than either one of us could have ever imagined.

There has not been one incident of infidelity since February 1995. The disordered desires we both struggled with? Gone. The bitterness, resentment, and an­ ­ ger so destructive to our marriage? Gone.

When we began to understand God’s plan for marriage, we began to understand his plan for life and so opened ourselves and our family anew to that privilege called children. God has blessed us with six children — Zach, 17, Rachel, 15, Sarah, 10, Abigail, 8, Mary Teresa, 6, and Joshua, 4 — a thought that would have been inconceivable to us at the beginning of 1995. The people we were could never have come to be the people we are today, if not for the grace of God.E

Julie and Chris Francis live in

Montgomery, Ala. JulieFrancis.net

is their music ministry’s website.

For my part, my ego, arrogance, and lustful, self-centered attitudes sent us into a tailspin.

— Chris

My life was a misery. My family was lost.

I was a failure.

I was ashamed,

embarrassed, and filled with sin and guilt.

— Julie

The Francis family today.