Slow Hope - Prologue

She knew it was over as soon as her second child was born. However, by that time she was barely able to complete a thought, let alone organize a plan for getting out of her marriage. So she just let herself drift, until nothing seemed to matter very much at all.

She still went to church, of course, twice a week. Sundays she sang in the Cathedral choir at the Baptist Church where her husband was on staff as Minister of Music. Thursdays, even though her husband told her he didn’t approve, she attended a Presbyterian Bible Study for women.

And she still prayed. She prayed for guidance and understanding. She prayed for forgiveness and wisdom. And she prayed for help and endurance. But mostly she prayed for deliverance. She wanted out – out of the bonds of her fundamental marriage and out of her feelings of oppression every time she sat in a sanctuary pew.

But praying didn’t help. Eventually, she became convinced that God did not care about her. Not really.

Despair turned from an occasional visitor into a constant companion. On her dark days she thought she might be losing her mind. On her bright days she wondered if there could be a lost and found department for ones sanity.

Only once in all of her despair did she call her mother.

“Mother, I need to tell you something.”

“You’re not calling me with bad news, are you, Anne?”

Her shoulders sagged. “I just wanted you to know that things aren’t going very well.”

Her mother said nothing.

“Please, Mother. It’s been really hard for me lately.”

“Life is hard. Life is always hard. But we all just make the best of it, now don’t we? I don’t want to hear any more. You've told me enough. You’ve made your bed, now you’re going to have to lie in it.”

She hung up the phone. Her despair increased. Time dragged on forever.

Friends would call and inquire, but she couldn’t admit to them how desperate she was. She couldn’t even admit it to herself. How was she ever going to admit to her friends?

And then one day in the middle of the produce aisle of the grocery store, she lost track of why she was there.

It took her forty-five minutes to purchase three small items and when she got home, she couldn’t figure out how to get the brown paper bag that contained the bread, milk, and a box of Pampers into the house.

If someone had told her she was depressed, she would’ve denied it. To her it was an energy problem. She simply didn’t have enough.

"I don't think things can get much worse," she said as she sat and stared out the car window, trying to understand how all of this could’ve happened simply because she loved music