Love & Marriage Falls Apart; Part I of II
The 80’s, a time to remember with great fondness. They were filled with fun, adventure and a budding romance. Adam and Lane’ were high school sweethearts. After graduating, it only seemed natural they’d take their 5-year courtship to the next level.
“We both had a lot of ideals when we first got married but neither of us were looking specifically to God’s word about how to treat each other and how to act and what our value system should be. So, it was pretty rough,” Adam Albee remembers.
Lane’ knew the Lord but admits to not having a relationship with Jesus Christ.
“I was not very close to God at all. I wasn’t brought up…I was brought up Christian and went to church. I went to Sunday school but going to church I was just the holiday churchgoer,” Lane’ Albee explained.
Adam however, had grown up in a loving, Christian home but had an agenda when it came to his own marriage.
He says, “When I felt like I wasn’t getting what I needed, when I was praying and praying and asking things from God and didn’t feel like He wasn’t answering my prayers then I fell into a lot of the temptations that people do. Pretty heavy alcohol use, started spending a lot of time with my friends and spending more time with people who told me what I wanted to hear and people who were going to be supportive of my behavior and what I thought.”
Two years into the marriage, they had all but given up on each other. However, God had other plans.
Adam recalls, “At the point that I was ready to give up and be done and be divorced…she was pregnant.”
At the time, it was good news but their excitement was short lived.
“After Asher was born and he was about a year old, we separated. When Lane’ finally decided that she had to get out of there we both sat and cried. We just sat and looked at each other and asked, ‘Why? How have we ended up here?’ But we still, at that point, hadn’t figured it out,” Adam said. “I wasn’t willing to change my lifestyle and wasn’t willing to be someone different, wasn’t willing to provide Christian leadership, wasn’t willing to walk away from the life I was living. And so, there was no resolve. There was no fixing it.”
“It’s a struggle for me, too because I was selfish in the marriage. I was never really taught to…that I should give more to my spouse than worry about myself,” said Lane’ upon looking back on the early years of their marriage.
Through separation, getting back together, separating again, Adam and Lane’ finally divorced. Both, broken and beaten to the point of wanting out. God was about to get Adam’s attention in a way, though that would blind-side him.
