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The kitchen linoleum was covered with rose petals and chicken noodle soup. Among that mess sat our marriage certificate, angrily shredded into little pieces.
I can't remember what triggered the argument that led me to throw my soup across the room, rip the rose petals, and tear into our year-old marriage certificate. That's because my husband, Brian, and I fought all the time. What I do remember is marking the calendar on days when we didn't fight … maybe once a week or month. In fact, the red roses that lay torn on the floor had been a truce from Brian the day before. But truces don't last long in a teenager's war.
It began innocently enough: Brian and I were two good Christian kids who met in our high school's jazz band. We started dating when I was 16 and he was 17. We continued dating after Brian went to a local college on an athletic scholarship. Brian had been the president of his church's youth group; I was an honor-roll student. At the time, my father was a church deacon and my mother a Bible Study Fellowship leader. Having attended church nearly all my life, I'd accepted Christ dozens of times for good measure, and I could recite the books of the Bible by heart. But I made the dangerous assumption that God was happy just to have me on his team. While I was sure there was a God, I found it a little hard to believe he cared about what I did on my dates.
Brian and I didn't drink, smoke, or swear. But when I was 17 and Brian was 18, after a year of dating, we began having sex. Brian and I should have known better. We'd been taught what God says about premarital sex—but we'd also been taught what society—our friends, music, television, and movies—said. We listened to our hormones more than to our conscience.
When I celebrated my 18th birthday, I was a free-spirited college freshman with my entire life ahead of me. But 10 months after becoming sexually active, my parents went out of town for a few days, leaving me home alone. That's when I became pregnant. And 30 days later, I was married.
I'll always remember the night before Brian and I got married; I threw my engagement ring down in a fit and told Brian I didn't want to get married. That wasn't the first time I'd said that.
Yet there we stood on our wedding day the next evening, Mr. and Mrs. Teenage Christian, exchanging our vows, smiling for the cameras, eating cake, and later crying tears of self-pity.
The only bright spot in our marriage was the birth of our daughter, Bryanne, eight months later. But once the "babymoon" was over, reality returned.
Our one-bedroom apartment, which Brian paid for by mowing the complex grounds, grew increasingly cramped. My full-time secretarial job reminded me daily of the life I'd left by dropping out of college. Having to use food stamps humiliated us. Brian continued in school full-time and played baseball, but his grades went downhill. We both felt trapped. Blame, anger, bitterness, and resentment stewed in our hearts. Brian felt he'd been robbed of a promising baseball career; I, from my family. Now, as quickly as the marriage had come, I was ready to dissolve it.
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