Chris
A
s a kid, I was baptized as a Catholic but I never quite experienced a Christian lifestyle until I met Dawn. It was during our dating days that she brought me to our former church, and it was then that I received God into my life again. In the eyes of many, we were a perfect and loving couple. Dawn and I went everywhere together, whether it was to church services, serving in the same ministry or attending Bible study groups. We were inseparable. As time passed, though, we allowed the ways of the world to shape us. The stress of work mounted, the demands of living with Dawn’s family grew and the expectations of achieving success wore us down daily. Buckling under the strain of these pressures, something had to give and, unfortunately, it was our relationship with God. Missing church services became regular. Over time, we stopped going to church altogether. We tried to justify this by saying we needed the space and personal time to recuperate from the strains of our work life. Even after we realized we had strayed too far from God, we turned to the next excuse of needing to find a church that was livelier and more passionate to make our decision seem reasonable. As our spiritual life spiraled downwards, our marriage life, too, began to show cracks. We ignored it at first but it got worse. Compounding the issue was the constant tension in her family. When Dawn got upset with her mother, she would redirect her unhappiness towards her only avenue — me. As things got more heated under the same roof, it began to wear us down. Additionally, Dawn’s work constantly required her to work later than the agreed-upon hours — a norm for most of us here in Singapore. The problem was I usually had to wait in the car to pick her up without a clue when she would knock off. This grated on me. I felt so unimportant and used. These factors led to constant verbal matches. The emotional emptiness I felt within me grew to a point when I decided to throw in the towel. At that point, I felt Dawn no longer cared enough to want to understand 32
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