White Lines II
- Jill Riley
- Jun 12
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 20
The first time I ran into my former husband in adulthood, we were in our very early twenties and he was pushing tidy little white lines of cocaine around on a black tabletop. I was shocked. We had grown up in the same small town, but during our high school years, I moved an hour away. I just didn’t see this kind of thing coming for him. I went home that night and began praying for him. There was no romantic connection to him, I was married to my first husband at the time, so this was simply prayer for a childhood friend. I openly tell this because we shared this story countless times, including on Facebook Live videos. It was simply part of our testimony of God’s great redemption.
In a way, I never stopped praying for him from that time on because he was that person who just kept showing up in my life in the most bizarre ways. We were “those” two people, and neither could help noticing it over the years. We bought the exact same pair of sunglasses on the same day, each on our way to our high school reunion. We posted the same random posts on social media on the same day without knowing it. In our early adulthood, both of our families moved to the same random city at almost the same time. The list of bizarre coincidences goes on and on. Every time our paths crossed, there seemed to be a new reason to keep him, or him and his family, in my prayers. Many years later, he became a worship pastor. So, that was a new reason to keep them lifted up. Then he fell, lost the marriage, and returned to drugs and alcohol. So, that was another new reason to pray and so on.
I prayed for him consistently for almost 40 years, constantly feeling called back to begin praying for him again. Am I writing this to set myself up as a hero? Not at all. I’m writing this for a much more important reason. This blog series covers a three-week road trip I just took. My time on the road was a complete life reset. At 59 years old, the marriage issues and unwanted divorce I had just gone through demanded that I wake up to some things and make some drastic changes.
Last year, I wrote a blog series about the problems in our marriage and fully confessed my part. Many people were concerned about me giving such a one-sided confession. I was openly explaining that I had gotten terribly frustrated in the marriage and had become critical, but never telling what it was I was frustrated about or critical of. Their concern was that it would only further confuse people and reiterate a false narrative about me. I wrote that blog series this way for the purpose of not using his behavior to justify my own sins. I stuck to my guns on this. In this new blog series, it’s important that I tell the full story, and it has become more important the longer I have studied and worked with counselors and trauma ministers to understand what actually happened and, in fact, is still happening.
In addition to the reasons I’ve come to believe this is important to write about and share, we were not famous by any means, but we had over a thousand views per week on our Facebook Live gospel series, and several hundreds more who followed our story over the years and were greatly affected by what they thought they were seeing. That’s the equivalent of a medium-sized church that witnessed what was believed to be a beautiful act of God’s grace, mercy, and redemption in our lives. I believed that this “congregation,” if you will, deserved a confession and explanation. It now seems increasingly important to tell, but not in the one-sided way it was presented the first time around.
I have discovered something in the last year and a half that I believe I am now being called to openly talk about. I have come to believe it is even crucial for the times we live in. So, if you’re interested, I will take you on my road trip as I process out loud with God and get free from something you too can get free from. Now I feel like I know what I was praying about for those nearly 40 years. I’m actually excited about this and what God might do through it. I am not writing this blog series to justify my sin - and that is what it was - sin. I rely on God’s grace alone for that, and I vow to handle this writing with deep care and a sincere heart of love.
Love to all,
Jill
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