Galatians 2:20 KJV
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
The boy I met in 2005 is not the man I married in 2007. The man I am married to today is not the man I married in 2007. Yesterday Brandon and I celebrated 9 years together. Confused? I know. Brandon is the boy I met in 2005, married in 2007, and is still the man I am married to today. But his personality and demeanor, his actions and the way he conducts himself, his very core is completely different. Does a leopard change its spots? Not on his own. But the Lord can change his spots for him.
In April 2005 Brandon was 17. He was carefree, funny, outgoing. You couldn't help but love him. He was hardworking and far more mature than other boys his age. And he liked to hunt and fish, which made him Chuck Deyton approved. I was head over heels. You couldn't separate us. We spent every waking minute we had free together. I didn't want to be anywhere else. I came home after our first kiss and told my Momma he was the one I was going to marry. And I did.
In May 2007 when he was 19 and I was 20 we got married. He was still everything he was at 17 but a little darkness had started to creep in. He had grown up in a family where alcohol and drinking was normal, the polar opposite of my upbringing. Newly married and living on our own, although we were underage, alcohol was suddenly accessible and we availed ourselves of it. It started out minimally but gradually progressed into drinking every night.
By 2011 we had lost our first home and possessions in a fire, we had miscarried our first pregnancy, we had buried our firstborn son, we bought a house, I had lost my job, and I had given birth to our second son and was pregnant with our third. The loss we had suffered and the darkness we had seen in those 5 years had taken their toll on us emotionally. The alcohol only exacerbated our problems and misery. When we lost Lachlan in December of 2010, something in me broke. I turned from God and began drinking heavily to numb the unending pain. After finding myself with a razor blade in one hand and a fifth of liquor in the other, sitting on the side of our bathtub, trying to find a reason to live, I decided something had to change. I had to quit drinking and I wanted Brandon to quit with me. He was harder to convince. Always in the back of my mind had been this nagging reminder from the Holy Ghost that drinking alcohol went against my raising. I couldn't ignore it any longer. I had seen the effects of it and they were ugly. Brandon went one of two ways when he was drinking and it depended on what his poison was. If he was having beer, he was funny, loving, talkative. If it was liquor, he was mean, easily agitated, and wanted to fight. He wasn't the boy I met and fell in love with when alcohol was involved. After one particularly rowdy New Year's Eve party he promised to quit drinking for good. I was 35 weeks pregnant with Kieran and on bedrest. I could deliver at any time and I needed him to be sober. He held true to his word for 5 months, the longest he had been sober since we had been married. Then again it started slow, a 6 pack on the weekend with his family, but it quickly progressed into all night binges. I cannot tell you how many times in the next year he quit, poured out all the alcohol in the house and promised to stay sober, only to fall off the wagon again. He couldn't do it himself and I couldn't do it for him. He was losing himself. We were losing each other.
I began getting increasingly frustrated and upset with him after Kieran was born because I did not want my baby exposed to that kind of lifestyle. I had not grown up with drunk adults staggering around, loud music blaring, cussing and partying into the wee hours of the night. I didn't want my boys raised like that. The turning point came in February 2012. After an explosive, alcohol driven argument with his parents, the Lord spoke to Brandon. We had not been to church in 7 years. Brandon hadn't been raised in church like I had been, it wasn't a part of who he was. But he came home the night after the fight with his parents and announced that we were going to church come Sunday. I was floored. That had been the last thing I had expected to come out of his mouth. But sure enough, Sunday rolled around and we were in church.
The change that took place in him over the coming months could really be described as miraculous. He stopped drinking. He had done it a hundred times before but this time was different. This time he wanted to. This time he had the Lord's help. He quit dipping tobacco, he quit cussing. He actually wanted to go to church. He wanted to read his Bible. He began praying and developed a relationship with the Lord that was astounding. The Lord called him to preach in August of 2012. And there was no doubt in my mind that the Lord had placed that calling on his life because I had seen the metamorphosis take place. He was night and day from the man he had been only months before.
I read Galatians 2:20 and I think of Brandon. Paul said he was crucified with Christ. Literally the old Saul had died and Paul had been born. He was a new man. It was Christ that was alive in him now. Brandon lives now by the faith of the Son of God each and every day. Brandon did not make the changes in his life alone and he doesn't keep himself changed. His faith in the Lord does. It took the hand of God to turn his life around. If he had not heeded God's voice when he did, he would have lost his me and his boys, he would have lost his life, I have no doubt. The Lord did such a work in Brandon that he does not even have a craving for alcohol anymore. He craves the Lord instead.
The man I am married to today is an amazing father and husband. He is kind, loving, attentive, caring. He plays with our boys and he didn't do that before. He talks to me about our life and our Lord and he didn't do that before. He prays with us as we tuck our boys into bed at night and he didn't do that before. The man I am married to today is a blossoming young preacher with a call to evangelism. He is on fire for God and His Word and he has a passion I've never seen in him before. He has a burden to help those that are hurting like we have hurt. The man I am married to today is a changed man, a new man and I cannot thank the Lord enough for what he has done in our lives and for our boys because they will never have to know the man their Daddy was before.
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