In marriages that are foundationally so broken so as to end in only one outcome—divorce–there are words that echo in our minds spoken in the actual moment of “time of death.”

June 1, 2025 will mark forty years since I married my first husband (and father of my two grown sons). Forty years is a biblical number, and worthy of attention.

Also, since I was married to him twenty years and now divorced twenty, it marks the fact that I’ve now been apart from him a time equal to the time with him. That is significant to me, for many reasons.

It’s a kind of 20/20 moment of post mortem, where I believe I can (arguably) pinpoint that exact date and interaction when this marriage actually died and was beyond any true resurrection.

Whenever we tell a significant life story it is hard to not go down endless, underlying rabbit trails of history, nuances and other things that are interrelated to the actual event. Below I attempt to tell this story again (I’ve shared it before with others at different times) in as much of a matter-of-fact, direct account as possible (for whatever it is worth in this moment of time).

Really, this story seems timeless to me, in some sense. It is a connection to my past, present and even my future. It is a window into my soul, so-to-speak.

This is my account of June 1, 1986 with a preface from mid-May 1985:

Jim and I had a short, three-month engagement that began early February 1985. About three weeks before our upcoming wedding planned for June 1, 1985, we were having pre-marital counseling with one of (my) or possibly (our) Pastors. I shared that I was suddenly having strange feelings as though Jim was a stranger (and a kind of fear that I was about to marry someone I thought I knew but really did not) that would come and go.

Our Pastor was navigating whether this was normal cold feet, or something else.

Then, Jim shared he was having similar feelings and in fact, he shared he had gone to the Deer Park (a local college tavern) and “picked up a woman and kissed her” just to make sure that I was in fact, the “right” woman he should be marrying.

I was crushed and horrified and understandably in fear. (Fear is something I live with every single morning and has been, in some form, since I divorced Jim in December 2005, and fear is an aspect that was also embedded in my 2^nd marriage, as well).

I was afraid because my gut told me I may be making a huge mistake.

I was afraid because our invitations were out, I had bought my wedding gown, and more importantly, I was deeply in love with Jim (even if a misguided kind of love and willingness to give my entire life to him) and the thought of ending it all felt like a huge emotional loss I couldn’t fathom.

I also believed that God had brought Jim and I together and that I was specifically formed to be his “helpmate,” and that our marriage would bring deep healing to him and (indirectly?) to me, as well.

I had also lost my father to death at age sixteen and my mother’s issues seemed to permeate any other consideration of me by godly men during my college days. In my twenty-two-year-old mind/soul, Jim seemed the only hope before me to ever have that which I most deeply desired: to be a Christian wife and mother.

The Pastor explored the entirety of this with us. Jim asked my forgiveness and stated that he “knew” based on that encounter during our engagement with another woman, that “I was the woman God had for him.”

I was so scared and conflicted, but I forgave him. I also knew he was struggling deeply with mental health issues, and hadn’t been too long into his “profession of faith in Christ.”

I chose to be hopeful and trust God that the entirety of what had led Jim and I together including the confusion and conflicts over the relationship itself, was ultimately “of God” and that we needed to marry.

We were actually counseled by both Pastors when we asked a 3^rd time if they would marry us that they sensed our relationship was generally “of God” but we should wait, for several reasons. Yet, we were also counseled it was “better to marry than to burn” (a reference to a scripture text). We were told that they would perform our wedding, but to know that if it did not work out not to expect that they would support a divorce, in the future.

I believe that was understandable–even good counsel–yet, when I got a rude awakening quite quickly into the first months and year of the marriage, I not only did NOT want to divorce but my memory of those words were lodged into my mind.

Divorce was never in my vocabulary or mental engagement as some option until probably around 2003. But of course, back-burner fear of “what if someday…” lurked in my mind and was pushed away as we seemed to move forward through the years, and I gave birth to my two precious sons.

In that Pastoral session of mid-May 1985, we also discussed Jim’s feeling that likely he would never want children. I accepted that with the understanding Jim would be open to reconsider.

I was a young woman who definitely wanted children—and lots of them—why in the world would I have married under those terms?

Why? Because I couldn’t let go of him. Just like I couldn’t later let go of my 2nd husband-to-be when the goal posts/terms of our anticipated marriage were radically changed, requiring me to relocate my entire life and business/sustenance to Alabama, permanently impacting both me and my sons “forever.” [That marriage also ended in a (2nd) divorce and I learned that I may never find a truly godly man especially now that there is so much complication and brokenness in the wake of my past…]

But back to mid-May 1985. I had already imagined our dark, curly headed, brown-eyed daughter who I imagined might look like a sweet little girl named Danielle that was in the toddler room of the daycare I was working at.

Somehow, calling it all off was like also letting go of a theoretical (but very real in my own imagination) life and human conception that had not yet occurred.

And so, the wedding went forward, and I became Mrs. James Elfers on June 1, 1985.

Here is the account of (actual) time of death of this marriage:

June 1, 1986
The evening of our first anniversary.

Jim was reclining on a sofa in our small apartment, reading some type of book. He was smoking a pipe, which he enjoyed.

I had secretly retrieved my wedding gown and veil from a closet and dressed myself in the attire I had worn as I made my lifelong vows to him just one year earlier.

I was nervous still about many things.

But I wanted to please my husband and I desired him. I came into the room quietly and knelt down before him as he was reading a book and smoking his pipe. I touched him on his hand or shoulder (or maybe kissed him on his lips or cheek) to get his attention.

I remember he looked up at me knelt before him on our first wedding anniversary (wearing again my wedding gown and veil), and glared at me with contempt, saying, “What are you doing?”

The image of my young husband puffing out pipe smoke with scorn on his face (even my memory of the cherry flavored smoke) is something I will never forget, and for good reason.

I immediately felt shame.

I’m not sure what I said in reply, but I know I started crying and said, “It is our anniversary…I thought…” and I left the room.

There are really only two words that describe what I felt in that moment, and those are a sense of shame and humiliation.

I went on to bear two sons with this man, and to navigate a dreadful spiritual incompatibility increasingly filled with his obsessions and twisted desires for things I found shameful and humiliating, of which I could never, ever fill his deeply unclean, perverted soul with.

I learned that night, despite his later expressed remorse that continued on and off concerning this event right up through the year we divorced, a basic truth: that I (and all I brought to the table of marriage) was not want he really wanted, despite any statements to the contrary.

At times I felt I was being guilted into just letting this thing (our first anniversary) go, but I could not.

That single encounter represented to me that I was never what Jim wanted.

I was too pure, too sweet, too naive, too vulnerable…and too much unconditionally in love with an inherently unclean, unrepentant man.

Yes, this man had other good qualities, and during those years there were so many times I felt things might just be or become “right” in our world and family. I considered Jim my best friend. Many a night I would listen to his woes and troubles during the night. I enjoyed doing things alongside him that represented companionship.

But nothing was ever what he wanted or needed, ultimately. And he exhibited such overtly staged gestures of love for me and “betterment” of himself over the years…others sometimes watched from the outside and took it all at face value. He believed he had come “so far” from the man I married, and even if this was true in some sense, for me the process itself from the evening of June 1, 1986 forward continued to cause such ongoing deep wounding so as to render it a kind of still insufficient Pyrrhic victory.

Regardless of outward appearances to onlookers and counselors, I knew the truth. Because, each night, I shared a bed with that truth.

In a recent email exchange I initiated asking him the following, just part of his reply (several exchanges) included the sentiment that (paraphrased) “slipping off his wedding band was the very best thing that ever happened in his life and liberated him from [ (me)…with lacerating, wicked and untrue descriptors given] and that he would not trade even one single night of that marriage with me for what he now has and has become, essentially…”

What Jim was really saying between the lines, to my ears, included an indirect reference to the two nights that brought forth the lives of my two sons. I now say my sons with intention, for a number of reasons others may think harsh or wrong.

As for me, I ponder why I don’t share these sentiments and still treasure so many (good) moments with that man and would still “do it all again” knowing that outcome so that my sons would have the life God envisioned, foreknew and gifted to them from within the context of my deeply wrong yoking with my first husband. Maybe this also highlights the inherent differences between me and him.

To be fair, I was young and still had not fully detangled my own self, traumas and other things. My father’s loss to death was only six years in my “past” and though I thought I was a fully-formed Christian woman, I was not. I was a “babe” in Christ of less than four years.

I recall a phone conversation with the Pastor who married us, back in 2008, in a difficult situation involving one of my sons who was then under, essentially, my spiritual care as both father and mother.

We got to talking about some things post mortem, and I believe he was sincere when he remarked that I was probably the closest thing to genuine love that Jim would ever experience in his lifetime.

____

This was my message I sent to Jim on March 9, 2025:

Jim,
I am wondering if you are willing to open up some dialogue about our son, Jonathan, and our grandchildren Arlo and Zola? I understand if you are unwilling.

I need to first ask again a direct question, so that I can process things and not make presumptions.

What is your current relationship with Christ? When we married, I was under the belief that you had given your life to Christ in a specific interaction where we prayed together at the Delta house in April 1984. I know things were very complex and rocky for awhile. We did make a Christian marital covenant officiated by Bruce and Neil on 6/1/85. Had we stayed together, we would be celebrating forty years of Christian marriage. I also recall you made another profession of faith I “think” around June 1986 at a Black Rock retreat in Quarryville where you decided to be baptized by immersion along with some others. This was a public confession of Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

I need to ask, just so I am very clear on this, have you continued in the faith and do you consider yourself as belonging to Christ, or have you made a conscious or unconscious decision otherwise?

I just need to personally know the answer to this, before we can have deeper dialogue. Regardless of where you now stand or if you possibly have either renounced the faith or now believe your profession was not genuine, I still have another question for you of a very practical matter.

I would appreciate for the sake of our son(s) that you might answer me. I believe it is a very fair question at this junction, given a number of things.

Sincerely,
Eileen–the wife of your youth