Goliath's Mountain

It was his handwriting, and I could almost hear his voice as I read the words aloud. I hid this letter farther under my mattress than the others. Over the next few days, I prayed no one would mention his name or ask when I would be joining him in Germany. Tears and an unsolicited, emotion-stuffed confession would have burdened them. No one asked, and muffled tears in the privacy of my room were enough release to keep me from mental breakdown.

His request echoed in my thoughts. Annulled! He wanted to discard me. The guy who asked my father for my hand in marriage without fear, who supposedly joined the army in order to keep me in his life, who laughed at my jokes and said he loved me, had now made it my sole responsibility to tell family and friends that our farce of a marriage was over.

I was a big girl now. A big girl who had tried being a woman and failed. I’d made a mess of my life, and I couldn’t tell a soul. As far as anyone knew, I was remaining in the States to save money. Pride supported my pretense. This must be my fault, but what had I done?

A friend sensed trouble. She wondered if a rumor that had circulated months earlier had been true. “You would have told me if you were pregnant. Wouldn’t you?”

“You know I would!”

“Anyone who knows you well knows it isn’t so.”

A story had circulated that our wedding was a rushed affair because I had been pregnant. When that rumor would have died for lack of evidence, another story was crafted to explain away the first rumor.

“No, I wasn’t pregnant, and no, I haven’t had a miscarriage.”

“I didn’t believe it,” my friend said. “But you’ve been so down lately, I was beginning to wonder.”

“I just miss Jack. That’s all.”

I wanted to confide in my friend. She was one to be trusted, but something made me want to protect Jack in all this. He had a secret, and until I knew what it was, it was my secret too.

I struggled with the deceit, especially with my close friends and family. Living with such a lie required barriers and withholding from people I loved and people who loved me. The counsel of someone older or wiser might have helped, but what if their answer was to oblige Jack with an annulment? Maybe he had messed up, but I still loved him. I couldn’t admit the truth until I knew what the truth was.

Whatever was happening between us, I didn’t understand. I only knew it was bad and out of my control. My imagination played a variety of scenarios every night before I cried or prayed myself to sleep. He could be having an affair—the obvious. Illicit drugs were prevalent in his unit. I knew, because he wrote about it. There was also alcohol, but I didn’t believe alcohol would affect Jack this way. He wrote about friends and even sent me pictures where he looked fine. Maybe he was under a tremendous amount of stress?

I wondered what part of everything he wrote was a lie. I’d heard about men who told their wives they were in one place far away, when they were actually closer to home, living a secret life, but some of his letters had been mailed using German postage stamps and had Aschaffenburg postmarks. No place was so awful, my imagination couldn’t take me there.

Could he be in jail? Could he be the one who had hurt his friend’s wife? I answered my own thoughts—aloud, “No. That couldn’t be. Jack would never . . .”

I was married to a man I didn’t know, and I couldn’t finish that sentence.

The packet we’d read on our honeymoon remained on my nightstand, under my Bible. I read it again, cover to cover, this time opening my Bible to read all the references. I found answers to other questions, but not mine. We had committed, during our premarital counseling session, to talk to our pastor before considering divorce. I underlined the telephone number on the inside cover—just in case.

God, what did I miss? What did I do other than commit to love someone? Jack repeated the same vows. Is this some sort of test? How could he express concern for my education and talk about an annulment in the same sentence? Does he love me? Did he ever love me? If he didn’t, was any part of those twenty-eight days true? Please make him come to his senses. Please.

It was one of those nights when I thought my questioning might tire God, but a Bible verse came to mind: “We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair” (2 Corinthians 4:8). This time, I said “Amen” before I fell asleep.

With a little rebellious irony, I registered for the next semester, but only one class. It was a German language course.