When You Can't Hold On
Mark Galli
Mike would discover that in order to overcome despair, he would have to be willing to let go of the things he so feared losing.
— Mark Galli Michael Wells stood in the kitchen looking at his wife, Joanne, who had just said she needed to talk. Her eyes — sad, fearful, almost panicky — were filled with tears. She started shaking and blurted out, "I don't think you realize how unhappy I am!" Mike's body turned cold. "What do you mean?" "I'm thinking about moving out." The words echoed off the dull tile counters. A heaviness settled on Mike, and his mind went numb. As a Methodist pastor, he had heard parishioners tell him what he thought were clichéd reactions to shocking news. Now they weren't clichés: This is not happening to me, he thought. I'll wake up any minute, and it will be a horrible dream. "Why didn't you tell me? I didn't know you were unhappy." Joanne had been seeing a therapist for a year. Mike had asked her what she talked about in her sessions, but she had always answered vaguely: "Oh, about my parents." Mike had learned that with Joanne the more you push, the more stubborn she became. So he hadn't pursued it. "This is not fair!" he now continued. "We should go to therapy together before you move out." Through her tears, Joanne just kept repeating, "I'm just so unhappy. I need time alone." She promised to be gone only three months. The next few May Saturdays, Joanne went apartment hunting in Austin, Texas, where they lived, and within a month she was ready. The June weekend she planned to move, Mike had previously planned a choir trip for his youth group. That Friday, he and Joanne went to breakfast at a little bakery. Over the aroma of croissants and coffee, they chatted nervously about this and that, and then it came ...
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