The Flog – The Fabry Log

Here are a few responses we received to yesterday's Chris Fabry Live! conversation about admitting infidelity.

I am still dumbfounded about your program today... nothing there convinces me one should “confess” their infidelity after 10 years... It is cruel!!!

That last caller made me upset to say that it's terrible to let your wife know about the adultery. It’s a selfish act in and of itself and then on top of that to not confess your sin is horrendous. You cannot have a relationship built on lies and deceit.

I was there 35 years ago. Some overzealous Christian told my husband to tell me. Thanks a lot!! Now it became also my problem?! We had come through a hard time and had solved all that and were doing well. I forgave him and we continued but even now 35 years later when the question comes up it hurts my soul. LET IT BE!!

Things that are done in the dark will come out in the light. God has given John a chance to come clean on his own, if he believes the whispers of the enemy to stay quiet, and that in doing so he is protecting the so-called nice relationship he and his wife have, he is basing his reality on a lie.

I would have to say that if the person has confessed the affair to the Lord, and repented, then they should trust in God's forgiveness and not let Satan use this mistake in their life to destroy their marriage and their family. Satan is the destroyer and he will destroy as much as he can using guilt to do so. Every situation is different, but if at all possible confess to a trusted, faithful friend who can keep it confidential. We are all responsible for our own mistakes, but don't let Satan take advantage of them by doing horrible damage to your loved ones.

Didn't our Savior Himself say, "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free?" I've been on both sides of the issue of unfaithfulness, and I believe the truth should be made known! An unfaithful mate is living a lie, and has broken vows made before God and witnesses. The best way to kill a lie is to blast its soil of secrecy away with the Light of Truth! Truth frees! Truth heals!

I enjoy your show, but sometimes wish you wouldn't tease us along with "I have a 5 word question to pose, but I'm not going to ask it yet"... After yesterday's question about the infidelity, I was determined to start listening to past programs on the internet, because I desperately want to hear how this discussion plays out.
(I apologize—the 5 word question that I never gave you is, “What does love look like?”)

As the wife of an unfaithful husband I wanted to comment on John's email. I believe his unease with keeping his affair a secret is the work of the Holy Spirit. While it would be easier on him to not confess and just move on, I don't believe the marriage can be truly healed without confession. Trying to just move on is like putting a bandaid over a dirty wound. The only way to heal a festering wound is to go thru the painful process of opening it up and cleaning it all out. It is an ugly, painful thing to go thru but it is the only path to healing.

I have been through the situation put forth in your discussion today. My opinion is that, unless the guilty person is asked or it is very likely that the incident will come out, the information should not be shared with the "innocent" spouse. I am not a weak or emotional person, nor is my walk with Christ weak. I can forgive and did that with all my heart but forgetting is another thing. I remember thinking many times, his burden and guilty feelings seem gone - they've been passed to me. I believe that telling a spouse simply passes a burden from one to the other.

I've been told that most men have thoughts of sex on a regular basis. In the New Testament, Jesus addresses that sin ("in the heart," which may be somewhat different) as unfaithfulness. Would you tell your wife every wayward thought you have? Or, would your wife tell you of hers?

I speak from personal experience. As a woman whose spouse was unfaithful years ago, I find this to be a very traumatic experience. I believe he should confess to his pastor or a spiritual friend in order to heal personally. There are days that I pray and tell God I wish I never found out about this.

Please, never discourage confession of a sin to the one who has been offended. God cannot bless a marriage where sin is kept in the dark and Satan has the authority to use it to steal, kill and destroy!

Have been listening today and I don't think you need to "hang out your dirty laundry" after so many years. What good is it going to do? Except make you feel better. What bothers me -- is if this man confessed this to our Lord--then why hasn't it been pointed out to him that Satan is the accuser. God has forgiven and "cast it into the deepest ocean and hung up a No Fishing sign."

I was appalled at the various callers who "justified" the lies in their marriages regarding their infidelity by "protecting" their poor fragile spouse, or for the betterment of the marriage. There is NO scriptural basis for lies in a marriage. On the other hand there is an abundance of scripture supporting confessing sin. The notion one is protecting the spouse is nauseatingly self-serving.

It all boils down to this... you have to want to be right with God even more than you want to be right with your wife. God is able to sustain your marriage and make it even stronger after you both work through this together.

I am a Christian Marriage and Family counselor. One of my areas of focus is working with couples where there has been one or more affairs. What I heard you say was something like- if a person is only telling their spouse the truth about a past affair to ease their guilt and put it on their spouse, that this is a selfish reason and they should not do it. What I would say is that all of us develop complicated systems of rationalization around the thoughts and behaviors we have that we don't want to bring out into the light. God tells us to confess. He does not tell us to wait until our motivations are pure. The truth has a way of opening us up to the realities of what is going on inside of us. Without confession our relationships have barriers to healing and we are at risk of repeating these behaviors because we don't experience the pain of consequences nor do we shift our personal boundaries that might strengthen our marriages and our relationship with God. Pain is the greatest motivator for change. Spouses do fall apart, there is anger, and sadness, and distrust, and grief, and shame, and finally hope. It starts with the truth. I feel strongly about this because I have seen God do mighty work in relationships that have been so completely devastated by affairs.

I'm going to be appearing on Janet Parshall's program this afternoon at 4:00 Central Time. We'll talk about the radio program, my book Almost Heaven, and whatever else Janet brings up. If you've listened to Janet, you know what a grasp she has on issues and her heart for communicating truth in the marketplace of ideas. Which raises the question, "Why is she having me on?"

I guess we'll both find out, and if you don't hear it live, you can listen to the podcast or stream. We'll probably talk about Christian radio, connecting with people, writing, stories, and Almost Heaven. I believe in the power of stories. I think they can change lives. This one seems to have captured the imagination of some people who need some encouragement.

Fiction is hard to do on a talk program. There are only so many ways you can ask, "How do you come up with your stories?" But Janet is a pro. She can make reading the phone directory interesting, so I'm hoping it will encourage some listeners.

Many hearts are heavy for the people of Japan. In a strange way, Almost Heaven begins with a cataclysmic event that reminded me of their pain. The Buffalo Creek flood happened in 1972. There was no radiation leak, but many houses, cars, homes, and lives were washed away because of a breached coal slurry dam at the mouth of the hollow. It's as close to a tsunami as you get in West Virginia. The thirty-foot wall of water ran down the hollow for 17 miles leaving death and destruction. This is how Billy Allman's story began. Through it all, God was walking with him.

I wonder if there are Billy Allmans in Japan right now who feel like life is stacked against them? I wonder if there are people there who feel like giving up? My prayer for the Japanese people is that they will rise above all of the mountains that stand before them. May this tragedy lead them to an eternal relationship that can't be taken away.

I’m speaking at a men’s conference/retreat in a month. I know the message but the illustrations are hard to choose. Today some things came together and one strong memory returned.

The message is about dropping our nets and following God. The example is of our dog, Pippen. I hadn’t remembered this until the other day when we were talking about socks. Pippen, when he could still see, would go through the house and pick up our socks from the floor. I have no idea why. He just loved to pick them up and carry them in his mouth. Maybe it’s a dog thing.

I used to find socks outside where he would carry them and drop them in the yard. At first I couldn’t understand why the kids were so irresponsible. Then I watched Pippen closely and discovered his secret sock stealing. When I found him with a sock in his mouth, I would say, “Pippen, drop it.” Sheepishly, he would put his mouth to the carpet and let the sock go. Just as quickly he’d pick it up again.

When he tried to run with my socks in his mouth, dangling, he’d get tripped up. When he needed to drink or to eat, he had a hard time deciding whether to get nourishment or keep the sock. Even when Pippen went blind, he managed to find socks and carry them around. It affected his ability to follow us or come when he was called.

I’m so much like him. There are things I hold onto tightly that aren’t good for me. There are good things I hang onto that I shouldn’t. They slow me down and keep me from running, keep me from being free, keep me from following more closely to my master.
It’s not just a dog thing, I guess. It’s a people thing, too.

I hate the smell of insulin at 1:30 a.m. I hate the smell of just about anything that early, but especially insulin. It smells like something stored in an army footlocker. Maybe old combat boots. Perhaps a textbook on WWII tactical weaponry.

At 1:14 this morning Colin awakened me, his face close to mine. “I feel low.”

I hate those three words, too. Not because I have to get out of bed but because I know what it’s doing to his body. How ravenous he will be. I’ll need to act counterintuitive to that.

Okay, I won’t lie, I hate getting out of bed. It’s a long way up from the air mattress and my bones want to stay close to the ground.

So we do the pancreas dance. He trudges from the room and slumps in a chair, his jaw slack, panting. He gets out his insulin case, opens it, retrieves the poker, gets up, washes his hands, goes back, pokes, gets blood, inserts the strip into the meter, waits for it…waits for it...

I stumble into the kitchen without glasses and stare at the green numbers on the microwave.

1:14.

I hate diabetes.

“Beep.”

“58,” he says.

Normal people have a pancreas that works. Normal people take their pancreas for granted. You eat a bag of Doritos or a Snickers bar and never pray your pancreas will produce insulin. Your pancreas regulates your body’s blood glucose levels to remain steady somewhere between 80 and 120. Don’t hold me to that, it’s early. But that’s basically where you stay. Fall below 70 and you feel it. Fall below 60 and you shake. Keep going down and you’ll eventually pass out. Some people don’t feel it anymore, they can’t tell they’re getting low, but Colin can. Sometimes I think that’s God’s gift to us.

He has a spoonful of organic honey that organic bees have been spitting into organic buckets on organic bee farms somewhere in Organicville. That will bring him up a notch and take the edge off. But we’ve only begun. He has 3 little mini-peeled carrots which aren’t approved by the organic bee society, but I don’t see anybody from that organization in the kitchen at 1:40 and their 800 number isn't staffed at this hour. So he eats the three mini-peeled carrots.

I’ve been known to make a stir fry at this point, chopping onions and cabbage and mixing with an egg or two. It’s protein and will help him hang on until morning. I grab two eggs from the refrigerator in the garage and Colin meets me there, pulling out a special drawer.

“I was thinking this,” he says, holding out a Granny Smith apple. The organic kind with the orange ring around it.

I roll my eyes like it’s fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We haven’t had fruit for a long time but apples are slowly being reintroduced to the diet. I have no idea what this is going to do to his levels. His body will react wildly to the fructose. You will say, “But it’s an apple, leave the kid alone.”

Exactly. It’s just an apple. That’s why I hate diabetes. I have to dose him for a stupid apple.

I hate dosing a shaking kid who gets up in the middle of the night. I hate drawing up the insulin and handing him a needle he shoves into his skin. But if I don’t, his number will rise above 120, above 200, above 300.

So I write all this down in his book I also hate that says when he went to bed he was 111. And I see how much insulin I gave him to keep him in range overnight. We obviously overdid it, but when I compare the number from the previous night that was exactly the same, I wonder. Did he have more exercise? Did he not have something right before bed to hold his levels steady? Am I supposed to click my heels three times and say some magic incantation to keep him above 80? How does a pancreas do it?

I make the eggs, but get shell in the pan, so I have to get a spoon to scoop out the shell, but since I don’t have my glasses on I bend low to see it and I bang my head on the hood above the stove. He eats the apple and watches all this, as if it’s a Disney sitcom. I’m not thinking words they say on Disney.

I hand him the eggs and get out the insulin bottle. We have determined that there were 24 carbs in the apple. There were also a few in the honey and the mini-peeled carrots.

“How much would you have for just the apple?”

“Mom would give me 2 units.”

My wife would give this dose without thinking. She rattles carbs in her brain like a supercomputer. I am right-brained, more creative, which is wonderful if you’re writing a song or a book or an essay on civility, but if you want to keep a kid’s glucose meter from saying “HIGH” and playing Mozart’s Requiem at 1:55, you need the left hemisphere of your brain and I do not have as much as my wife does.

I can’t give him 2 units. I do not want him shaking in an hour or two. But I don’t want him to go high either. That is my conundrum at 2 a.m. Forty-five minutes ago I was under the covers. I'm beginning to think I won't be going back to bed.

I decide on 1.25 units. I feel good about that. It’s a safe dose. I hand him the needle and he puts it in his thigh. Was it enough? Probably not.

He looks in the refrigerator again, the light reflecting off his face and the robe that makes him look like Hugh Hefner’s son. He sighs, closes the door, and rubs his eyes on his way back to bed.

“Goodnight,” he says.

“Goodnight.”

“I love you,” he says.

It won’t be long before he’s doing all of this by himself. It won’t be long before he’s staring into his own refrigerator in his own house or apartment. I’ll be asleep somewhere, oblivious to all of this.

“Love you, too,” I say.

And I do.

No matter how much I hate diabetes and organic bees and sharp needles and writing down statistics of a little boy who didn't do anything to deserve this, I love him. And that’s what will keep me up until 4 when I’ll check him again.

*Addendum*
4:20 a.m. It took me five minutes to wake him, but we tested. His level is 148. Within the acceptable range. Sigh.

This is my friend, Phil, or as we knew him, Phillip. Our friend from Shoney's knew how to operate his camera phone better than he did.