You may be wondering why I titled this chapter “hard love” since I described in detail what a perfect match Mike and I were and are together. To me, hard love is real life. You skip along together during the sweet times, but you fight for and side-by-side each other when you’re in the trenches. You never turn your back on one another, even when you hurt each other. It’s for better or for worse…especially when those flowery words you spoke on your wedding day hit you in the face like someone throwing ice water on you while you were sleeping. To quote the Urban Dictionary, “You will know your love is “hard love” when you make it through all of the obstacles and challenges, all the good times and celebrations, and at the end of the day look into each other’s eyes and know you made it together. You know you did it for each other. You know it was all perfect.” YES.
The greatest challenges for Mike and I as a couple happened from the moment we became official. You would have thought that it would have been a relief to receive Talking Permission (I will say it again, if you are just joining me, and haven’t read each chapter before this, STOP and go read them! Nothing will make sense, haha) but it dragged us so far backwards in our relationship. Where we had once been practically inseparable, we now could only see each other for 30 minutes per day at lunch, in a loud, crowded cafeteria. Where Mike had once come over nearly every weekend, just to hang out and have dinner at my house, he was now never allowed to come over. And worst of all, where we had once toured the country together on incredible singing trips, we now were separated and Mike had been moved to another group. The week we got our Talking Permission, I showed up for our regular weekly practice for our singing group and realized how awful this was going to be without Mike. I remember sitting on the floor singing barely above a whisper because I cried the entire practice. This was my very first love, my first boyfriend, and it was already harder than I imagined it could be. For couples with Talking Permission, any other contact than your 30 min lunch was forbidden. When we saw each other in the hallway, we had to avert our eyes and just keep walking. If we didn’t, or we did take a moment to stop and chat, someone inevitably was watching and would pull one or both of us aside and yell at us. Or, maybe they’d just skip that step and go tell the pastor that we were being sneaky and talking all the time. We were extremely in love, and extremely paranoid.
At this point in time, the rules of the program had definitely begun to run into staff and staff kids’ lives, but the rules of dating for staff kids were blurry. My sister is 7 years older than me, so she had been dating much longer than me, and had had her fair share of boyfriends. In her dating years, I knew that she’d held hands with guys, hugged them, and no one seemed to have a problem with it. When I started to date, however, our pastor made himself very involved with Mike and I’s relationship. It was hard to keep up with his rules and inconsistencies. I always felt like he favored my sister…she seemed to be able to live her life in a more “pastor-pleasing” way than me. Maybe that was why she had slightly different dating rules than other people. I always got the sense that our pastor didn’t quite get me. Sometimes I could feel him watching me…not necessarily in a creepy way, but with a sense of not knowing what was going on in my head. He would say that to me, actually, that he never really knew what I was thinking. I guess that was my super power…shrink into myself, pretend I wasn’t there, and don’t give him the chance to get to know me. If he tried to get into a conversation with me, I would give the shortest answers possible. Remember also that I had never, ever known a life without this man. I didn’t hate him, I really believed he was a man of God…to be respected above anyone else. But I was utterly terrified of him. Let me be clear that I am not exaggerating that. I was terrified of him. But it never occurred to me to question him, because I believed He was sent by God to be over my life.
Anyway, we got used to our new super-sucky normal of not seeing each other hardly at all, and we tried to enjoy the fact that we had conquered the first hurdle of being able to be a couple. After 4 months, we got to go to the next level…Dating Permission. This was reserved for couples who had gotten to know each other and wanted to become more serious. It was Valentines Day…February 14th, 2005 when I came home from school to a big bouquet of roses and a letter on my bed. At this point, we still had only Talking Permission. In it, Mike had written that he got permission for us to go on an actual date together, chaperoned by my parents, to a fancy restaurant. He wrote about how much I meant to him, how he had prayed every day that we would be able to be a couple, and he was so thankful God answered those prayers…..and at the end of this 3 page letter….he told me he loved me for the first time. My heart exploded! It was so meaningful to finally read those words and know that he was mine. Too sappy? I’ll keep moving.
We went out that night and I was already floating on a cloud. My parents let us sit at our own table, even though they were supposed to be chaperoning. It was during this dinner that Mike gave me even more good news. He had asked our pastor for Dating Permission and it was granted! (Nevermind how insane it is that he had to ask our pastor and not my dad.) We had successfully moved up to the next level. Now, in my mind, I knew that alot of staff and staff kids who had Dating Permission at least held hands. Not on campus or in front of people necessarily, but it happened…at least for the people who were on our pastor’s good list. So after our dinner date was over and we got into the car to leave, Mike and I held hands for the first time. I thought I was going to die from happiness. He held my hand like he would never let go all the way home. It was the best.
Soon though, things became extremely hard and confusing. We were now allowed one date per week, which usually ended up being us hanging out at my house together. It was odd though, because once people started dating in this place, it was like it was a sin to love each other. If we sat too close to each other, we’d be reprimanded. If we talked a little too long in passing, we’d be told we were taking our focus off of God and making our relationship an idol. Since we were allowed to write letters to each other by this stage in the game, that was all we relied on sometimes. We wrote letters to each other nearly every day. Mike would give me one before I went to school and it would get me through whatever confusing scenario we were facing. Our pastor started getting involved in our relationship and would attack us if one of us made a mistake. Around the time when we got our Dating Permission, Mike became a Dean in the boys dorm. That was a huge deal. He worked very closely with all of the boys in the program, and at that time there were nearly 100 of them. He was a counselor, an RA, and was given various duties to perform that revolved around these teens. One of those duties was that he was in charge of mailing out the program kids’ home letters. I forget the details, but one day Mike was late getting the letters mailed out. Mind you, at this point, he had been at this place for 4 years and was at the highest level of Senior Staff. He was 21 and a staff member of the ministry. Unfortunately, being in the position of a Dean put him on our pastors radar. When the pastor heard that the home letters were late being mailed out, he decided to punish Mike by taking him out of his position as a dean, putting him in charge of cleaning the dump (The campus had an area with 2-3 dumpsters where everyone brought their trash, but since the ministry was so poor all the time, they never could pay for the disposal service to come pick up the trash. As you can imagine, the trash would overflow, get pulled apart by animals, and bake all day in the sun. It was the NASTIEST place.) and lastly, taking away our dating permission for 10 weeks.
If you’ve read Chapter 5, this was all happening right around the time I got called into that lovely meeting where our pastor told me I could call him dad. I was shattered. Now, I was not even allowed to *look* at Mike. I had to watch the man I loved, who worked his butt off and always just did what needed to be done with a good attitude, be in charge of cleaning the dump every day for 10 weeks. It felt like torture. And somehow in my twisted mind, I was not even mad at my pastor. In a way, I blamed myself…maybe I had fallen too hard for Mike and God was punishing us for putting each other before Him? This is just another example of the brainwashing and disordered way of thinking that it has taken YEARS for me to try and untangle myself from.
I started writing letters to Mike every day, counting down the 10 weeks until I could give all of them to him. Little did I know that Mike was doing the same thing. One day I found flowers on my desk at school that he had picked from the dump and put there to brighten up my day. Those were the few bright moments of seeing hints of my very best friend through the fog of our lives. Even though I didn’t tell anyone they were from him because I was afraid, I knew more and more that this man was my absolute soul mate. We were taking life’s hits together, and we were going to make it through. Miraculously, we didn’t have to stay apart for the full ten weeks. Mike decided to be brave and ask for our Dating Permission back in time for my birthday, which fell before our ten weeks was up. He said that when he asked our pastor for it back, it was as if he had forgotten that he’d taken it away from us in the first place. I’m sure he had. He had no idea of the Hell he was making us live day by day. But we were so grateful to him when he restored our “us” to us. Sometimes he even gave us permission to hug. Once in a while, Mike would tell me he had asked permission to give me one hug, the pastor granted it (must have been in a great mood that day) and we would wrap our arms around each other and stay that way for 15 minutes. Those hugs, as silly as it sounds, were the only time that I felt safe as us. In Mike’s arms, I felt like I at least had my match, and we could endure whatever it took to make it to marriage, where no one could touch us anymore.
That summer, we weathered another huge hit. I headed off for my last Summer Intensive program in Mississippi, where I would stay for 4 weeks. Mike saw me off with another pastor-approved long hug, and we promised to write letters and call each other every day. Things were great for the first week or so while I was there, but one night I got a call from my mom. She told me that somehow, someone had told our pastor that we were breaking rules of Dating Permission, touching, hugging and I don’t know…being in love too much? All of a sudden, as if he’d forgotten he’d given us permission for literally every hug we’d ever had, he decided to make the rules for dating even more strict, and that he’d make an example out of us. He took our Dating Permission away, this time indefinitely. I got all of this news while sitting on my bed in a dorm alone, thousands of miles from my home and anyone who could remotely understand my life. I cried all night. My roommate asked and I tried to explain it to her, but even as I spoke I knew she wouldn’t understand. No one would. I couldn’t even call Mike to say goodbye. It was over.
I went through the rest of my time in Mississippi in a fog, praying and asking God what I had done wrong. Again, I was conditioned to feel like anything bad that happened to me was a result of my sin. But I knew that loving this man was not a sin. I came home hoping it was all a bad dream, or maybe Mike could miraculously convince the pastor to let us date again like he had for my birthday…maybe Mike would show up at the airport to get me with my parents and surprise me. No such luck. As I said in Chapter 5, I became increasingly depressed. When I did finally see Mike after getting home…the pain in his eyes…I felt like my world had been shattered. And everyone around us knew everything. The culture there was full of people happy to see one another’s failures and punishments. Probably because it meant that for that moment in time at least, you were not the one in the pastor’s bullseye.
Mike and I didn’t speak to each other for about two and a half months. He was pouring himself into being a dean (he had been reinstated after serving his dump-duty) and I was starting my first year as an actual staff person in this ministry. I had graduated high-school in Spring of 2005, and I decided I wanted to work in the department that organized and booked all of the tours for our 3 singing groups. Between all of our groups, one was out on tour nearly every week. I got my own office, I decorated it just how I wanted it and I worked there over the summer. Once school started back up, however, I was told they needed help in the school. I went downstairs to help, and never went back to my office. It was decided for me that I would work in the program girls’ classroom…even though I hated school and never planned on going back into that classroom again after I graduated. But, as usual, I did as I was told. One day I had a meeting with the schools’ principal (who was the pastor’s right hand man) and he told me all about myself….I guess he thought I wanted his advice. He told me that one thing he hoped I would work on in my life was being more assertive. It’s true that I am probably the least assertive person in the world…gee, I wonder why? I walked out of that meeting, into a hallway and there was my pastor coming down the hall towards me. Apparently, he liked me that day and grabbed me into a big bear hug. He said, “Mary, how are you? How are you doing, tell me.” Pushing away how insane it was that he could be so oblivious to the pain he had caused me, I jumped on the moment of knowing he was happy with me, and tried to be assertive.
“Can Mike and I have our Dating Permission back?” I squeaked out. For a moment, I watched as he tried to remember what I was talking about. You don’t even remember taking it away from us, I thought. He responded that he thought that would be alright, and I shrugged out from under his huge arm that was wrapped around me, quickly walked away and told him how thankful I was. I ran to the cafeteria where I knew Mike would be monitoring the program boys’ lunch. I went in and walked right up to him, watching his face go from terror, since I was breaking the rules, to confusion, and finally sheer joy once I told him what I’d just done. We were back as Mike and Mary.
Even though we were thrilled to be back together, this on-again-off-again that was completely out of our control did take it’s toll on us. I was also starting to fall apart, as you read about in Chapter 5. Mike was the first person I talked to about my eating disorders, and eventually I opened up to him about self harm. He was horrified, and rightly so. I remember him making me show him marks I had on my arm and him hugging me and just holding me like I was a fragile glass object. I was fragile, and I was terrified of opening up to anyone. Because of the paranoid atmosphere of the ministry, we never had alot of time to talk things out at length. We could have our 1 date per week, but during the normal day to day, we weren’t supposed to be hanging out or taking too much time to talk, or else we would get reported. With everything we had been through, we could not let that happen again. Gone were the days of talking for 12 hours straight in the van on our singing trips. Now we were allowed one 3 hour date per week. This made it so that if we were having a disagreement, or either of us was really stressed, we could never really address it head on. When we did get time to have a date, we just wanted to enjoy being together. It made communication hard. So many times I would want and need to talk to him on campus during the day….but I could see it in his eyes, and I’m sure he in mine that we were afraid of getting into trouble. He was the one person I really could open up to, but it was like I wasn’t allowed to, which further created the way I am today….avoiding confrontation and having a very hard time opening up.
After the intervention from my mom finding my journal, the slow process of healing did start in me…and Mike was there through it all. He gave me tough love when I needed it, but he also held me together when I didn’t think I could get myself out of that spiral. In the Spring of 2006, I was doing a little bit better. My parents had practically banned sharp objects and journals from my life. I didn’t write or journal for years. If I did start a poem or something, I all of a sudden found no inspiration anymore. It was like that gift I once had was gone. It also became clear that I needed to stop dancing. Once I let the small seed of self hatred in, I couldn’t stand being in a studio anymore. I was beginning to heal in terms of eating disorders, but then I would have to put on a leotard and tights and stand in front of a mirror for hours. I had no confidence in my dancing anymore and I was extremely burnt out. I danced my last performance that spring, and I had had enough of ballet so much that I threw everything I had that had to do with ballet in the trash. It was as if God really was stripping me down to my heart alone. I didn’t travel and tour with Mike anymore. I wasn’t allowed to journal and I couldn’t even come up with a short poem. I had poured years and years of my life into dancing and I had wrecked that too. I did have Mike, but my reality was that our relationship was always on the verge of being taken away.
We all hit rock bottom at some point, and this was mine. I guess in a way, this was where I developed my own “hard love” with God. It was time to build a genuine, lasting relationship with Him…a relationship covered in scars and beautiful second chances. Everything was stripped away and everything ugly in me was exposed. It became obvious that I wasn’t a perfect church kid. Up until that point, being exposed was what I considered to be the worst possible scenario. It turns out though that it was the best thing. It was as if God waited until then, and when I finally admitted to myself and everyone else that I was a mess, He met me right there. I had been avoiding God because I felt like I was too ashamed and unworthy to come to Him. Turns out God wants us just as we are. If we try to do all of the work and fix ourselves, we will fail every time….because that’s His job. Once I did turn to him, all I felt was love. Pure love. No condemnation. No shame. Just His love that only wanted to pick me up and put me back together again. Those days and months I was so raw, and they were some of the sweetest times in my relationship with Jesus. You may ask or wonder why if God loved me so much, why He would allow any of that to happen to me. I don’t have any fantastic answers. But I do know that life will happen to you, whether you love God fiercely or you’re convinced He doesn’t exist. I wasn’t guaranteed a struggle-free life just because I was a Christian. One factor though that set me up for a big fall was that growing up in that place and culture…it was like everyone was trying to keep me from facing any struggles. As if hearing horror stories of troubled teens would somehow inform me enough to keep any of that from happening to me. Church kids WAY too often feel like that. Like, if you love Jesus with all of your heart, you can avoid having low self esteem, or you can dodge all of life’s problems. This thought process left me completely clueless as to how to handle the normal issues I would face as I became a teenager. It also made me feel ashamed and like something was wrong with me. Once the realization dawned on me though that God alone is the only thing that will get me through life’s problems…not around them…I began to heal. That period of time also made me prioritize how much I could rely on Mike to fulfill me. Our relationship was so strong, but also so fragile because we knew it could be ripped away from us at any time. Through all of that I learned an extremely valuable lesson that every girl must learn, and that was that I could not rely on my guy to make me happy. People are flawed, and will always fall short somehow. Every single thing I tried to put my faith in ultimately failed me in the end…but when I returned to God and was ready to be real, He rescued me and never left.
One of the most wonderful days of my life happened on my 19th birthday. Mike came over to my house for a date, and he told me once again that he had gotten permission for us to hug. (ha!)
Thankfully, even though my parents were always home and “chaperoning” they gave us space and weren’t always staring at us and making it uncomfortable. Now get ready, my sweet and wonderful readers….because I’m about to share a big secret with you that almost no one knows about! We obviously hardly ever touched each other, and I had never kissed anyone in my life. However, I always knew I was NOT the girl who wanted my first kiss to be at the altar on my wedding day. I always assumed we would kiss for the first time when Mike and I got engaged. But on that day, my birthday, we hugged our “approved hug” in my living room, and before either of us even realized what was happening, we kissed! It was the best, most tender and wonderful first kiss anyone could have and I am so happy I waited for it, and that it was with Mike. The rest of the day, I was on Cloud 999,999,999.
Mike obviously knew going into our relationship that I was saving myself for marriage and hadn’t even had a first kiss yet. And I knew he was not a virgin and had had a first kiss already. That night though, I texted him the words, “My first kiss…:)” He responded back, “OUR first kiss.” And that it was. As I’ve said before, from day one there was no looking back for either of us. We went through so much in those years…there are too many instances to share, as always, but I always hope I’m picking through the wreckage and sharing the most important ones. We crossed a glorious milestone about three months after that first kiss, when Mike finally proposed to me. I was 19, and my sister and her then-fiance chaperoned us to a nearby gorge that has beautiful waterfalls and hiking paths. We hiked along and came to a little clearing that overlooked the water and I realized suddenly that our chaperones were gone…they had faded away…I turned around and there was Mike on one knee. I actually don’t remember what he said, because all that was going through my mind was “IT’S HAPPENING!” From that point forward, no one could hurt us anymore. My pastor said he would never marry a teenager, so that meant we had to wait until I turned 20….despite being together twice or three times longer than most older couples there ever were together before they were allowed to get married. I always wanted an Autumn wedding, but since my birthday is on April 24th, we decided to screw the pretty leaves and get married in May. On a sunny and beautiful 5th of May in 2007, we became Mike and Mary Rosenberger. It was the best day of my life. The only thing I would change if I could would obviously be to have a different pastor marry us…but for some reason he wasn’t in the mood to be awful that day. I know that he too knew that we were a perfect match. Maybe that’s why he hated us.
But we had made it. That is only the beginning of our story, really. From the second we were married, everything felt finally right. This is how it was supposed to be. We are not a perfect couple, and we continued to face challenges, but enduring all of that bonded us in a way that I don’t see often in other couples. It is a hard love, but it’s been worth every second of it. We have stayed best friends through every thing we have ever faced, and God has remained the glue that holds us together. More twisty and turny roads would come as I now entered a stage in my life where I became a Staff person in this ministry, and I felt the abuse and assaults on my own little family as hard as my parents had felt it when I was a child. Stay tuned.
Until next time. 🙂
God makes a glorious way, somehow, through it all. So happy for this chapter.